Part memoir, part ode to the power of the movies, The Fabelmans finds Steven Spielberg digging at the family roots that helped make him a beloved filmmaker - and proves he hasn't lost his magic touch.

Young Sammy Fabelman falls in love with movies after his parents take him to see ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’. Armed with a camera, Sammy starts to make his own films at home, much to the delight of his supportive mother. ‘The Fabelmans’ never seems self-serving. It's a humble self-portrait, and the humility is most welcome. Viewers expecting a stirring childhood memoir about the power of cinema may be surprised at how bittersweet and raw the story actually is. But that vulnerability is what makes the film a triumph.

USA 2023 Steven Spielberg 151m

Tremendously shot and terrifically acted, this Neapolitan gangster drama from Mario Martone shatters the rose-tinted spectacles. A siren song to the past that confronts us with a violent, unromantic present.

Middle-aged Felice comes back to his hometown after 40 years away. Felice’s boyhood friend Oreste, with whom he indulged in petty crime back in the day, is now a much-feared dead-eyed local mobster, and clearly has something to do with Felice leaving his beloved Naples in the first place. Don Luigi, the local priest is a passionate critic of Oreste and with Felice hatches a plan to draw him out. A punishing story about the passage of time with immense depth and a lingering sensation of solitude that freezes the soul that we haven't seen since Leone's ‘Once Upon a Time in America’.

From Hirokazu Kore-eda, master of such bittersweet films as ‘Shoplifters’ comes a knotty and funny tale of black market adoption. A gentle, touching and satisfying cinematic experience.

New mothers can leave unwanted babies in a ‘baby box’ at a church. Don-soo is able to pinch the babies before they are taken in and put them up for adoption – for a fee that is. Their operation gets complicated when one baby box drop-off is observed by two police detectives and the mother in question has a change of heart. Cue a romantic road movie, as the two crooks, the mother, the cute baby boy and an adorably mischievous stowaway squeeze into a beat-up van, and set off in search of the child's ideal adoptive parents. (Subtitles)

South Korea/Japan 2022 Hirokazu Koreeda 129m

Cate Blanchette is utterly magnetic as an imperious maestro in this ultra-stylish drama with a shocking climax.

From writer-producer-director Todd Field comes TÁR, starring Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, the groundbreaking conductor of a major German Orchestra. We meet Tár at the height of her career, as she's preparing both a book launch and much-anticipated live performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Over the ensuing weeks her life begins to unravel in a singularly modern way. The result is a searing examination of power, and its impact and durability in today's society. An engrossing piece of cinema, even thrilling, that keeps us wrapped around its finger for a two-and-a-half-hour-plus running time that feels far shorter than that.

USA 2022 Todd Field 158m