The Beasts (As Bestas) is all of two hours and 17 minutes long, and yet to look away is never an option. Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen reels the viewer in masterfully as he builds tension and suspense.

Mr Williams (a wonderfully restrained, Oscar-nominated Bill Nighy) is taking time off work from his job in the Public Works department at County Hall in London. It’s the early Fifties and office life is very proper, with bowler hats and a strict hierarchy that reflects the class structure of Britain.

I'm proffering just a tad less than three cheers for Allelujah, the film version of Alan Bennett's 2018 Bridge Theatre play that is also that rare screen adaptation of Bennett not to be shepherded to celluloid by his longtime friend and collaborator, Nicholas Hytner.

The 17th century romantic tragedy Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), Ealing Studios' first Technicolor film, was conceived as a magnificent spectacle. The opulent costumes and Oscar-winning sets, shot in pleasingly muted tones and rendered almost 3D by Douglas Slocombe’s deep-focus cinematography, make for a visual feast in StudioCanal’s restoration. Sadly, it’s a banquet of stodge thanks to Basil Dearden’s cumbrous direction and dire performances by Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood.

Neil Jordan’s take on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is the first since Bob Rafelson’s Poodle Springs (1998), itself a lone outlier after Michael Winner’s misbegotten The Big Sleep (1978). No one seems to have considered why, or what they might add.

There’s a huge amount to admire in Rye Lane, a new romcom set in south London. It’s the first feature directed by Raine Allen-Miller, who has conjured up a love letter to the neighbourhoods she grew up in. The street markets and much-loved Peckhamplex cinema, Brockwell Park with its walled garden and hilltop views, Brixton’s arcades with their mix of food and fabrics from all over the world, are all captured here in eye-popping colour. 

“Trapped?” hisses 40-year-old Rachel (Virginie Efira) at her boyfriend, Ali (Roschdy Zem), who has a five-year-old daughter and is returning, for the sake of their child, to his ex-wife, Alice (Chiara Mastroianni). “What’s trapped you? Nothing at all. You can have kids or not have them, whenever you like.”

The moral of this story is that if you’re going out to commit a robbery, don’t take your iPhone with you. This was the grave error committed by TJ (Anthony Turpel) and his friend Ross (Chris Lee), whose attempted heist was foiled by an angry shotgun-toting citizen. TJ managed to get away, but Ross – carrying the iPhone containing incriminating evidence of the pair’s guilt – was shot and left for dead.

In the sports comedy Champions Marcus and Marokovich (Woody Harrelson) is a basketball coach in the lowly G League. He has ambitions to coach in the major leagues, but a sight of his highly flammable temper is normally enough to conclude that such dreams are likely to remain unfulfilled.

Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius is a multiversal dandy, androgynous harlequin, English assassin and sometimes Cockney, an sf adventure hero who grew through four novels into a walker in the elegiac post-Sixties wastelands. He’s an apocalyptic Swinging Londoner, a protopunk Bond.