1. Aftersun
Released in the UK in November
Charlotte Wells’s Bifa-winning debut feature is an astonishing, understated father-daughter coming-of-age movie that mutates into a mesmerising meditation on memory, love and loss. Superb performances by Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio lend naturalistic heft, but there’s a poetry in Wells’s film-making that evokes the finest works of Lynne Ramsay. Electrifying and heartbreaking.
2. Elvis
June
Austin Butler breathes uncanny life into one of the greatest pop icons of the 20th century, but director Baz Luhrmann’s film isn’t just glitz and glamour. Instead, it’s an astute and often witty reading of Presley’s life and times masquerading as a garish bump-and-grind sideshow. Tom Hanks brings a touch of Elmer Fudd to carnival-huckster/narrator Colonel Tom Parker, who plays Salieri to Elvis’s Mozart.
