Cath Clarke

Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy is still perfect all these years later.

It's dazzling and rambling, intimate and sprawling, and it's carried along by an infectious, off-the-cuff jazz score. As soon as it ends, you'll be dying to fly with it again.

Vincente Minnelli’s 1952 movie about the movies wears its golden-era confidence as big and bold as Kirk Douglas’s shoulder pads, and it’s pretty close to film heaven.

Calamy is utterly convincing, giving a performance that pulls us right into Julie’s inner world.

Holy Cow is sentimental in the best of ways, with its warmth and hope in human nature.

The film is grimly depressing in places. I covered my eyes during Google Earth time-lapse sequences showing the pace of deforestation in the Amazon; the violence of it is too much. And yet, there is Bitaté: still a teenager, he’s already a skilled communicator.

Pitch Perfect 2 is totally goofy but very sweet.

It’s a delicate, thoughtful film, moving and real.

This isn’t much more than a series of ridiculously dotty sketches, and might have worked better as a sitcom, but it’s surprisingly hilarious.

It’s a measured, quietly powerful film with a performance from Virginie Efira that seems almost telepathic at times; in scenes where she doesn’t say a word, barely twitching a muscle in her face, yet somehow you know what she’s feeling.

Even now at 50, Jarvis is a man who remains head-on crushable while dry humping an amp like your geography teacher on the Bacardi Breezers.

Lawrence is gritty, real and totally genuine. And, after ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Carol’, here’s another film that passes the Bechdel Test for proper female characters with flying colours.

The director is Christopher Nelius, himself a surfer, who has done a brilliant job with editor Julie-Anne De Ruvo of assembling the archive to capture the sport at a moment in time, all youth and energy. Smartly, he lets this exceptional group of funny, tough, talented women surfers, now in their 50s, do the talking.

Few films make you care about the characters like this one does.

What gives the film its distinct flavour is a slightly feverish tone and dream-like logic. In places, it’s hard to see what the magic realism adds, and the script’s ideas about gender and gaze feel underexplored. Perhaps in the end, this sense of unreality opens the door to its characters finding love in this harsh and hopeless place. A touching and moving film.

This is a whistle stop tour that leaves you wanting more.

It’s a film with the texture and truth of life, and at its heart is a beautiful performance by Cliff Curtis, who never in a million years will be nominated for an Oscar, but deserves one.

This documentary about [Moth's] life, directed by the actor Lucy Lawless, is a fascinating portrait of a woman who had two mottoes: “no regrets” and “don’t be boring”.

Thorncroft is a gem of comedy creation – played to perfection by Barratt.

Her poems, read by Giovanni herself and the actor Taraji P Henson, made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

It’s intense but not unwatchably painful, and so much more than an issue film or portrait of a victim. I really hope Knight finds a place in the film industry; with her terrific performance here she’s earned it.

A little of the personality has been lost in adapting Shaun’s world for sci-fi (the Wallace and Gromit movie Curse of the Were-Rabbit pulled off horror with a little more finesse). It’s a minor quibble; Shaun is by no means past his prime.

The whole thing goes down with a few bucketloads of sugar. What keeps it from becoming sticky schmaltz is Thompson, who plays Travers with wit and warmth, adding a spoonful of spoilt child to help the battleaxe go down.

The movie is saturated with emotion and colour, though its novelistic depth brings with it the slightly effortful running time of two hours and 20 minutes.

If you’re the person who watches weepies with a cynical curl of the lip, this isn’t the film for you. Everyone else, prepare to have your heartstrings plucked.

What an engrossing film – and the gender reversal of a male muse inspiring a female painter has got to be one small step for art-world equality.

This Jungle Book has the bare necessities, and then some.

Compassionate and honestly told, it is a real empathy machine of a movie.