The best movies out right now

A #MeToo horror film that couldn’t be any more timely if it shuffled into a courtroom with a Zimmer frame, The Invisible Man retools HG Wells’s seminal sci-fi novel into a tart statement on toxic men and their gaslighting ways.

Director: Leigh Whannell
Cast: Elizabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid
Rated: R
Release date: February 28 2020
Duration: 125 mins

Mobile reception is on the fritz, the local water supply has been stopped up, there’s a UFO-shaped drone flying about overhead and someone’s started picking off the locals one-by-one. Welcome to the Brazilian town of Bacurau, the dusty hardscrabble setting for a supremely violent guilty pleasure of a movie that crams elements of the western, John Carpenter-y thriller beats, some mordant wit and a streak of peppery political commentary into one hugely entertaining modern exploitation flick. 

It was only ten years ago, with 2009’s larky ‘Looking for Eric’, that Ken Loach was able to show us a man delivering letters and parcels whose workplace was a refuge for him – a place of camaraderie and solidarity in an otherwise troubled life. It’s almost the reverse in his latest, a damning and far darker film. 

‘Swallow’, the tale of a pregnant woman ingesting dangerous objects, has been picking up buzz and awards on the film festival circuit – and it’s easy to see why. With his debut feature, writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis has crafted a polished tale of female empowerment framed inside an effective thriller about the perils of suburban life.

An unseen entertainment mogul haunts Kitty Green’s flawless thriller The Assistant, a hawkeyed probe into systemic abuses of power, set before #MeToo. 

Director: Kitty Green 
Cast: Makenzie Leigh, Matthew Macfadyen, Julia Garner
Rated: R 
Release date: January 31 2020 
Duration: 87 mins 

Little good came out of 2016’s Suicide Squad, but one of its few bright points was Margot Robbie’s anarchic Harley Quinn. Now she gets another shot at the spotlight in this spin-off directed by Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs), who lets her heroine’s mania guide her through a story that’s scrappy, weird and ultimately fun as hell. 

Director: Cathy Yan
Cast: Margot Robbie, Rosie Perez, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ewan McGregor, Chris Messina
Rated: R
Release date: February 7 2020
Duration: 109 mins

France’s Céline Sciamma is one of the most exciting filmmakers around—her Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood are all intimate studies of young women at points of profound change in their lives. Those earlier movies were contemporary, realist tales. Now, with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Sciamma has crafted a powerfully original story of art and love, set almost entirely on a Breton island in the 18th century, and one that operates on the level of a painterly, radical reverie that’s just to the left of reality.

Director: Céline Sciamma
Cast: Valeria Golino, Adèle Haenel, Noémie Merlant, Luàna Bajrami
Rated: R
Release date: December 6 2019
Duration: 121 mins

This endlessly entertaining Hitchcockian noir is nowhere near as glum as its put-upon protagonist, corrupt Bucharest cop Cristi (Vlad Ivanov). Middle-aged, drifting professionally and in up to his neck with ruthless European gangsters, he’s the stony-faced pillar around which its pacy plot and array of back-stabby machinations unfold. His disappointed mum thinks he’s making a mess of his life, and she’s far more right than she knows. 

Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Cast: Vlad Ivanov, Catrinel Marlon
Release date: 28 February 2020
Duration: 97 mins

This long-anticipated sequel feels entirely fresh. The world it creates is charming, the wit sparkles, and—one brief burst of “Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People” aside—the songs are all new. So let go of “Let It Go” and clear some room for a new batch of earworms. 

Director: Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck
Cast: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, Jonathan Groff
Rated: PG
Release date: November 22 2019
Duration: 103 mins

Rarely does a movie combine cinematic fireworks and social commentary as mischievously as Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite does. 

Director: Bong Joon-Ho
Rated: R
Release date: October 11 2019
Duration: 132 mins

A pure adrenaline hit of a movie that takes place mostly in the lethal glare of daylight, Sam Mendes’s stunning, sorta-single-take 1917 hits its greatest heights when darkness falls. 

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: George Mackay, Colin Firth, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong
Rated: R
Release date: December 25 2019
Duration: 110 mins