Armando Iannucci follows The Death of Stalin with a characteristically exuberant reworking of the Dickens classic. Using visual tropes that are more comic-book than Victorian novel, and a varied but vibrant cast headed by Dev Patel in the title role, this is at once funny and colourful, as well as poignant and hard-hitting on the subjects of poverty, class difference and child exploitation. Nothing less than you’d expect from the man who gave us Alan Partridge and The Thick of It, with characters like Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep given new life by Capaldi and Whishaw.

2019 | Dir Armando Iannucci | 119min | UK |  USA