Christmas is all around! The great festive film guide 2024

Here are all the best movies to watch this season – from classics It’s a Wonderful Life and Love Actually to Kerry Washington’s rousing war drama The Six Triple Eight and even Godzilla x Kong. Merry flicksmas …

Best films of 2024 in the UK: No 3 – The Zone of Interest

Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning look at the commandant of Auschwitz and his family living blissfully on the edge of the concentration camp makes for a deeply chilling horror

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review – an unmissable, ingenious Christmas treat

Our favourite animated heroes return, facing arch nemesis Feathers McGraw alongside a malfunctioning AI gnome – it’s an exciting, ingenious and utterly timeless joy

‘Very disheartened’: trans actor speaks out as Disney changes her Pixar character to be cisgender

Studio says ‘many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline’

Mufasa: The Lion King review – storytelling takes pride of place in punchy origin tale

This heartfelt prequel to the 1994 classic recounts the dramatic backstory of King Mufasa but is scarred by a forgettable musical score

Can the Russos find a good reason for Chris Evans’s return to Marvel?

Captain America mark one’s reappearance in the forthcoming Doctor Doom needs to do more than clutch at past MCU glories

Richard E Grant’s renaissance is a pleasure to watch – and it all began with Withnail and I

Planning to go away this Christmas? It is worth revisiting this top-shelf comedy about two boozy would-be actors who go on holiday by mistake

Marisa Paredes, Almodóvar star and legend of Spanish cinema, dies aged 78

Roles in All About My Mother and Life is Beautiful cemented her status as one of Spain’s ‘most iconic’ actors

Best movies of 2024 in the US: No 4 – Anora

The Hollywood romcom is turned on it head in this tale of an exotic dancer and an oligarch’s son who get hitched before the honeymoon turns sour

‘Without a voice, she had no self’: who was the real Maria Callas?

A new Oscar-tipped Netflix film sheds light on the later years of the opera legend, played by Angelina Jolie, and the problems she faced

Dolphin Boy review – human baby lives under the sea in watery kids animation

A boy raised underwater by dolphins goes in search of his human mother on dry land in Mohammad Kheirandish’s incoherent fable

Best films of 2024 in the UK: No 4 – All We Imagine As Light

Payal Kapadia’s remarkable feature debut charts the daily lives of three women in Mumbai in a beautifully shot ode to the city and to the power of human connections

Standing Up review – autism gets sappy treatment in didactic family road movie

Familiar worries about how to raise a neurodiverse child are played out with empathy but little subtlety

Investment in film and TV made in Australia plummets by almost 30%, report finds

Global streaming platforms biggest investors but Stan contributed the most locally produced titles

Alex Gibney to produce documentary on UnitedHealthcare CEO killing

Acclaimed documentarian plans documentary on murder of Brian Thompson and larger conversations it has inspired