Ben Nicholson

Above all else John Wick is a lean, mean revenger to go with its ice-cold protagonist. It's not perfect, but you'll be hard pressed to find a more enjoyable action movie this year.

Weiner may now regret allowing such intimate things to be filmed - indeed he has publicly said that he won't be watching the film - but Kriegman and co-director Steinberg have crafted a hugely lively and compelling portrait.

So many thematic and tonal elements of Weerasethakul's later, more celebrated films, are evident in Mysterious Object at Noon that it would be easy to consider as a formative exercise alone, but even as he began to explore these fertile soils, he was creating a work of captivating and arresting beauty.

An understated but spectacularly mounted drama.

Grant is absolutely superb as the impassive Geoff.

Greene seeks a deeper truth amidst the fragments of arch drama and investigatory reportage; artifice and reality bleed into one another with ease, the transitions smoothed by Sean Price Williams' photography.

The dark recesses of a diseased mind may make the headline, but it is the indictment of far more widespread infection that rings out and is striking in its prescience.

Stevens is excellent both as the cordial house guest and the brooding time- bomb ever present beneath his earnest veneer.

Johnson is pushing the audience to see these images as a dialogue between herself and these subjects, both in the frame of her representation of them and their impact on her.

Despite being one of his most ostentatious films to date, the setting, plot, performances and authorial tone on display marry together seamlessly to simultaneously heighten and smooth his trademark style.

The languorous pacing - particularly in the middle section - may lessen the impact on audiences somewhat, and the two-hour runtime seems a little much, but this is important, harrowing and deeply heartfelt lament that deserves to be seen and most definitely heard.

The Dance of Reality is a rich and expressive new offering from a man who has always tried to sculpt something resembling cinematic poetry, whatever that might look like.

While it hardly pushes the envelope in terms of developing Marvel's homogenous narrative conveyor-belt, it does do so in other areas, suggesting that the MCU can see beyond the confines of its first two phases.

Clearly modelled on a familiar western narrative, Pablo Fendrik's The Burning (2014) both embraces and playfully inverts the tropes that define its genre classification.

As with much of Miyazaki’s own output, the film offers a winning heroine and a joyful dip into Japanese folklore, even if it does not stand up against the studios most celebrated works.

With Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon doesn't merely hit it out of the park, he Hulk-smashes it.

While it is serious, Hogg also manages to insert some oddball humour and a little hopeful levity into the proceedings. The fractures provide the absolutely riveting subject matter, but Exhibition shows the potential for healing and confirms its director's place at the forefront of intriguing British filmmakers.

The slow burn lead-up may not be to all tastes, but if you can tune in to its broadcast frequency Midnight Special will shine its light on you too.

Comedy is used to undercut the most horribly tragic of moments...given the sadness all the more pathos and offering glimpses of hope in a narrative resistant to catharsis.

Quieter moments do punctuate the tension - though the mood never sheds the lingering stench of impending death - and the characters are allowed time to breathe and inject a little colour to their long-standing relationships.

Force Majeure is a gripping and deftly observed drama that adds caustic condemnation through its embracing of humour.

22 Jump Street is hugely successful in retaining - and in many instances, improving upon - the qualities of it predecessor and pitching some jokes that will still have people chuckling for days afterwards.

It's a sparse and ravishing meditation on faith.

Wedding Doll may be a small film, but it's deftly executed and built on two remarkable leading performances.

Rife with the director's trademark stylistic preferences, this is a blast of an idiosyncratic comedy full of brilliant deadpan performances that offer a wickedly funny and poignant conclusion to the fable.

Where Tan describes the process of making Shirkers as an exorcism (presumably of Georges), the final product is more akin to a séance, a communion with a lost soul keen to still be heard from beyond the veil.

It is Hall for which this film will be sought out and remembered, and she elicits such a great deal of empathy as to make the inevitable climax all the more gut-wrenching.

Although A Most Violent Year may hit fever pitch when Abel engages in a nerve-wracking chase of a stolen tanker, it's in the murky uncertainties and frosty climate that it endures and excels.