Iris (Laure Calamy) and her husband Stéphane (Vincent Elbaz) haven’t had sex for four years. Waiting at school for the parent-teacher conference (they have well-behaved daughters aged ten and 15), she bemoans this fact to a friend, though, she maintains, she has no intention of leaving him.

“Have you considered taking a lover?” asks a mother (Olivia Côte) who’s overheard her. There are apps, she tells Iris, even ones specifically for married people. No sooner said than done. From then on, Iris’s phone doesn’t stop buzzing.

Jesse Eisenberg's first film as writer/director was 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World, which met with modest acclaim. But he’s taken a giant leap forward with the follow-up, A Real Pain, which has been hoovering up critical plaudits from festival showings and its American release.

Czech theatre theorist Ivo Osolsobě’s tick-list for what constitutes an "authentic" musical is quoted in this release’s booklet. Namely that the songs should advance the narrative and express characters’ feelings, that singing, dancing and acting are integral elements, and that the story is rooted in real life.

RaMell Ross’s feature debut follows his poetic documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) in again observing black Southern teenage boys, this time in Sixties juvenile prison the Nickel Academy, where beatings and unmarked graves await the unluckiest. It faithfully adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys (2019), whose writing’s loving warmth made its horrors bearable, his hope for his characters outlasting their fates.

Saskia Baron

Anora

Between the Temples

Io Capitano

Dahomey

Emilia Perez

Green Border

Io Capitano

Monster

A Normal Man

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Someone told me recently that Netflix subscribers can view just 22 films made before 1980. I've no idea if this is true (please correct me if not), but it’s certainly a reason to continue watching and collecting films on physical discs. Plus, there’s the bonus features, booklet notes, commentaries and deleted scenes, all things which you won’t find on streaming services. Here’s my pick of the year’s Blu-ray releases, in no particular order:

Robert Eggers' strength as a director is his ability to bring historical periods alive with gritty, tactile realism. He does this successfully because of his anthropological attention to props, costume and language, but also his willingness to treat the era’s belief system as concrete reality. There’s nothing glib or anachronistic about his films set among 17th century New England Puritans, 19th century fishermen or 11th century Icelandic vikings. 

There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of the patriarchal suppression of women. The suppression was inherent in the original sources from which The Pleasure Garden (1926), Easy Virtue (1927), Champagne (1928), The Manxman (1929), Blackmail (1929), Juno and the Paycock (1930), and The Skin Game (1931) were adapted. 

It’s difficult to believe that the last stop-motion Wallace and Gromit short graced our screens way back in 2008. Describing the pair’s new outing as a return to form is unnecessary: this duo never lost it in the first place.

Three Wishes for Cinderella (Tři oříšky pro Popelku) is one of Czech cinema’s best-loved pohadky, or "fairy tales".