On the face of it, La Syndicaliste (aka The Sitting Duck) is a conspiracy thriller that runs along familiar tracks: clever woman begins to suspect dirty dealings at a very high level in the high-stakes industry she works for and lands herself in a dangerous mess. There are anonymous phonecalls, menacingly bright headlights behind her… Think Silkwood in stilettos.

It’s impossible not to fall in love with Matthew Tannenbaum, the man at the centre of this delightful film. Reading books and chatting to people about books are two of his favourite occupations, so running a bookstore is his idea of paradise. His pleasure is so infectious that the independent bookstore he’s run in Lenox, Massachusetts for over 40 years has become a hub of bonhomie.

The French auto-fiction writer Annie Ernaux, now 82, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature last year; now a fascinating new facet of her creative life has been released via her home movies.

Multi-media meta-layers land fast in Wes Anderson’s 11th film, overriding reality. Here’s Bryan Cranston’s portentous Fifties TV host (pictured below) in black-and-white, boxed Academy ratio, documenting rehearsals for a televised play, whose fictive reality then becomes a widescreen colour train hurtling through the desert. The latter scene's exhilarating cinema still sweeps you up.

Last year Jennifer Lawrence won critical plaudits for her war-trauma drama Causeway, which seemingly signalled a bold new direction for her career, but how she got from there to No Hard Feelings is a bit of a mystery. Nothing about it feels quite right.

Superhero movies are the nearest equivalent to American holiday parades: they come along with noisy, bright regularity, and crowds either flock to them, many eager persons deep along the sidewalk, or flee to quieter neighbourhoods.

Pretty Red Dress opens with a classic Motown-esque girl group belting out a show tune before cutting to Travis (Natey Jones) as he leaves prison. Waiting for him outside is Candice (Alexandra Burke); she’s sitting in her Audi, singing along to the radio.

At home is their teenage daughter, Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), happy enough to have her dad back in their Lambeth flat on a council estate, but facing her own problems at school with both authority and friends.

Medusa is having a moment. From Natalie Haynes’ feminist novel to the recent Brazilian horror movie, the beleaguered, beheaded, snake-haired monstress of Greek myth rises again, and again, as a symbol of female rage and resistance.

This frothy bio-fantasy about the 18th century composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges and top tunesmith to Marie Antoinette at the French court, could have been a powerful and revealing shout-out to a woefully under-appreciated composer.

Directed by Stephen Williams with a screenplay by Stefani Robinson, it’s more like Bridgerton Goes to the French Revolution, an absurd bouillabaisse of melodrama and characters who may be elegantly dressed but are uniformly paper-thin.

Set on the lands of the Oglala Lakota in South Dakota, War Pony focuses, in a hazy way, on the lives of 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), who has two toddler sons with two different mothers, and 12-year-old Matho (Ladainian Crazy Thunder) who seems to have no mother at all. Both are struggling to get by. Drugs, violence and chaos rule on the Pine Ridge reservation. The women are mainly exasperated with the men. A poodle called Beast also plays an important role.