Dave Calhoun

There’s plenty of flesh (much of it belonging to porn doubles), although the film is rarely, if ever, what most people would call erotic or pornographic. It’s neither deeply serious nor totally insincere; hovering somewhere between the two, it creates its own mesmerising power.

The Invisible Woman is only partly a romance; it’s the tragedy of Nelly’s life that makes itself more powerfully heard.

It’s charmingly simple. But it also offers a sharp modern spin on Michael Bond’s London-set stories without being cynical.

It’s not a pretty story, but its warmth lies in its fondness – love, even – for the two boys at its heart.

Its various riffs on codes, whether moral, sexual, societal or German, are plain to see rather than enigmatic or enlightening. Luckily it’s all anchored in a storming performance from Cumberbatch: you’ll be deciphering his work long after the credits roll.

It’s no masterpiece, but it’s slick and tense, and the camerawork has something of the in-the-moment, on-the-ground immediacy of the French New Wave films.

It finds genuine humour in its characters’ almost down-and-out lot, but it’s fully on their side – the side of those trampled on by modern times.

An intimate, warm embrace of a film, it radiates joy and harmony despite playing out entirely in the shadow of a difficult father's death.

This is Tavernier’s own film story so don’t expect a linear, full history of the cinema of the time. However, it’s anything but dry, as the film swoons with passion for Gallic films and filmmaking.

As a storyteller, writer-director Hafsia Herzi is not coy, but she’s careful, allowing intimacy to emerge with the same tentativeness as it does for Fatima.

The absence of George and John is felt keenly, but Paul and Ringo are a pleasure to listen to as ageing raconteurs.

Baldwin and Toback make a snappy comic duo, and half of their talks with a line-up of luminaries focus on the art of filmmaking rather than the business.

When the film gets outdoors, it soars, and Ceylan continues to dig with acute intelligence into the dark corners of everyday human behaviour.

This film is about wonder, not balance, and it turns us delirious in the white heat of this pair’s chaotic, unflinching passion.

Like the original, T2 Trainspotting is a winning mix of low living and high jinx, a stylized spin on real life.

As the actors move fluidly between various states, shedding one skin while assuming another, Polanski makes this subversive parlour game matter.

Politics and entertainment are never an easy mix, and Jimmy’s Hall is a familiar, slightly unsurprising coming together of the two from Loach and his writer Paul Laverty. Sometimes you can see the joins, but there’s also great warmth, charm and humour among the ideas, and the sense of time and place is especially strong.

In the end, the characters are more lasting than the story, which is a standard save-the-city-from-destruction yarn. But this crew is a riot, and their world is intriguing and even a little meaningful.

Director and co-writer Diego Quemada-Díez condenses many acute observations about life as an emigrant into a sure-footed, credible story.

The Clan shouldn’t be as enjoyable as it is. But it’s a delight to be in the hands of a storyteller who can impress you with his stylistic bravado (one sequence cuts together a nasty death with ecstatic sex) while never losing sight of the suffering at the story’s heart.

Tale of Tales might lack magic in the immediate, flashy sense, but its strange spell is altogether seductive and special.

It might be familiar territory for Almodóvar, but only a master of his art could make it look so easy.

This is a portrait of cycles and change. But the mood of the film suggests that we should be impressed that this ever-growing, ever-changing city of ours is still chasing after new versions of the modern.

Pattinson is great in what is surely his best post-Twilight performance to date.

If Heli lacks enough focus and thematic clarity to make it properly special, it's still winningly provocative and always compelling.

The film’s pleasures are simple – soaring landscapes, old-school DIY adventure and some sweet performances by the child actors. It makes for a charmingly old-fashioned family adventure.

Anyone with a beating heart will be forgiven for allowing it to break during this unflinching and thoughtful account of the life and death of the soul singer Amy Winehouse.

The Secret Agent is vicious and vivid in its sense of place and danger. But it also has a streak of weirdness and offers a very human take on the political-crime thriller genre.