Ian Freer

Silent stunner.

In depicting the Johnson County War of 1892 (immigrants versus cattle barons), Michael Cimino delivers soaring ambition and scale, but always syringed with a deep sense of regret.

The filmmaking is immaculate and the emotional wallop undeniable.

Anomalisa has more heart, soul and pathos than 99.9 per cent of live-action movies. The best hotel-set love story since "Lost In Translation."

A consummate display of populist weepie-making.

Inside Out is audacious as it is silly, as funny as it is imaginative.

Although peppered with colourful, sharply drawn characters, this is Stewart's movie, instantly loveable as a small town dreamer who sacrifices everything for others. His journey to despair and back warms the cockles like little else. Enjoy it in a cinema so you can sob among others.

Audacious, retro, funny and heartfelt, La La Land is the latest great musical for people who don’t like musicals – and will slap a mile-wide smile across the most miserable of faces.

Set in the unpromising world of German business consultancy, Toni Erdmann is a low-key triumph, especially for writer-director Maren Ade and star Sandra Hüller. A weird, thoughtful, affecting treat.

Larger than life, faintly ridiculous, completely cool, Goldfinger is the quintessential James Bond movie.

Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams is a peach of a picture. At once miniaturist yet epic, it’s an exquisite film that touches on every human emotion – agony, ecstasy, discovery, surprise, togetherness, loneliness – without contrivance or strain.

Arguably Woody's finest, now neurotic intellectuals have a film they can cherish.

The most original film of 2021, Annette is a ride like no other, a spellbinding waltz in a storm. See it for truly hypnotic filmmaking, a clutch of great songs and Adam Driver at his most magnetic.

TÁR is a masterwork. A gripping, grown-up movie superbly orchestrated by Todd Field and perfectly played by a virtuoso, career-best Cate Blanchett. 158 minutes rarely flies by so quickly.

One Fine Morning is Mia Hansen-Løve on tip top form, drawing a fantastic lead performance from a never-better Léa Seydoux. Some flicks need a bearded assassin or ghostface killer to create drama. Hansen-Løve just needs the stuff of real life.

It's one of the most highly-wrought (indeed, overwrought) films ever made, with art direction, editing, sound effects, weird camera angles and lighting orchestrated to fill every frame with hints of the unsettling.

Of course, Scorsese delivers a stunning, gangster flick but The Irishman is so much more, a melancholy eulogy for growing old and losing your humanity. Savour every one of its 209 minutes, you won’t regret it.

So intense you’ll want to scarper but so riveting you can’t leave, Sirāt is an assault on the senses, mind and emotions. If only all movies took swings this bold.

Shot in stunning black-and-white, Mank delivers Hollywood in a multitude of greys. Built on a towering performance by Gary Oldman, it’s smart, sophisticated, by turns thrilling and difficult, and amongst Fincher’s best.

Nomadland is a Springsteen song in movie form, a beautifully rendered tale of what it means to be disenfranchised in America. Life on the road has never been so tenderly captured, politically alive and profoundly moving.

Avoiding the danger zone of mere retread, Kosinski and co deliver all the Top Gun feels and then some: slick visuals, crew camaraderie, thrilling aerial action, a surprising emotional wallop and, in Tom Cruise, a magnetic movie-star performance as comforting as an old leather jacket. Punching the air is mandatory.

Joanna Hogg delivers an object lesson in how to deliver a follow-up: deeper, funnier, more imaginative than its predecessor, The Souvenir Part II is a filmmaker working at the peak of her powers.

The movie that really showed Tom Hanks' promise as a deliverer of great comedy and heart-warming pathos.

For Sama powerfully mixes the personal and the political to thought-provoking, emotional ends. The result is one of the best documentaries of 2019.

With two astonishing child performances, Capernaum is a real heart-breaker. It can make Ken Loach look happy-go-lucky but it’s a gripping, sympathetic cry for the dispossessed.

First Cow is archetypal Kelly Reichardt, slow, small and perfectly formed, elevated by stellar but understated performances from John Magaro and Orion Lee.

Supernova is a tender two-hander that gradually crushes your heart. What it lacks in cinematic width it gains in well-earned emotional depth, courtesy of delicate writing and two subtle but towering performances from Firth and Tucci.

A made-for-TV movie that proved so remarkable it received a theatrical release (first in Europe, then 10 years later in the US), Spielberg's calling card is as distinctive a piece of visual storytelling as you're ever likely to see.