The opening shots in The Middle Man show a brooding urban landscape lit only by refinery flames at night. The streets are deserted, with a lone car scuttling across them at an intersection. It’s Nowhereville, North America, though officially it's called Karmack. 

John Hughes’ most beloved cult film feels like contraband now, a bracingly harsh bulletin from Eighties teen life, full of barbed, uncensored talk between its five school detention misfits – the titular “breakfast club”.

This third Creed film outgrows Rocky, leaving Stallone’s bridging presence behind for a wholly renewed series. Starring again as Adonis Creed, the illegitimate son of Rocky’s late rival Apollo, Michael B. Williams’ directorial debut builds a richly conceived African-American world in and out of the ring.

As films involving cats go, The Cassandra Cat (Až přijde kocour) is up there with the best. Part fairy-tale, part political satire, Vojtěch Jasný’s 1963 fantasy, shot on location in the picturesque village of Telcis, is an offbeat, unclassifiable gem. Unsurprisingly, the post-1968 Czech authorities disapproved, withdrawing it from circulation.

I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is an object lesson in how it was possible to make a feature on a tiny budget despite the restrictions of the pandemic lockdown. The film-makers stuck to the classical unities (time, place, action), cast themselves and members of the crew, called in favours from performer friends, and shot the movie over 10 days, mainly outdoors.

Begin describing Aftersun to someone who’s not seen it and you’ll struggle. Charlotte Wells’ debut feature looks embarrassingly slight on paper, its 93 minutes following a young girl on a Turkish package holiday in the late 1990s with her youthful dad.

Here's a question. A romcom stars a man and woman, friends from childhood, both straight and with no romantic history. He's a Muslim and has decided to pursue an arranged marriage; she has a chaotic love life. What are the odds that they will end up together at the end of the film?

Partially banned in Pakistan, Saim Sadiq’s debut uses a young man’s affair with a trans woman to reveal the sadness and brutality of the nation’s patriarchal norms. It’s also a deeply sympathetic character study written from under the country’s skin, which Sadiq calls “a heartbroken love letter to my homeland”.

This is one of those films where it’s really best to stick with the trailer. The incompetence of the directing and screenwriting is easy to disguise when a crafty promo-maker has picked out the good bits from a large pile of bear scat. 

Filmed ballets involve a different way of watching: you may know a piece well, but you aren’t used to staring into its lead dancers’ eyes as they perform their roles. Not all dancers give good close-up, either. But a new film by the Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia of Akram Khan’s Creature, made for English National Ballet in 2021, has transformed the original live version into a moving drama.