Ian Freer

Silent stunner.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Slow and difficult to get a hold on, Burning emerges as a brilliantly made one-off; puzzling, intelligent and ultimately mesmerising. And Jong-seo Jun is a revelation.

The bizarre intersection between Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Haruki Murakami and Anton Chekhov makes for a thematically fat, ambiguous, absorbing psycho-sexual drama. It’s not for the impatient, but it’s so precise and delicate, you won’t notice the gear-changes.

Time may be shot in black and white but the world it captures is anything but clear-cut. By turns moving and angry, it’s a thought-provoking hymn to love, family and the power of Black female courage.

If The Force Awakens raised a lot of questions, The Last Jedi tackles them head-on, delivering answers that will shock and awe in equal measure. Fun, funny but with emotional heft, this is a mouth-watering set-up for Episode IX and a fitting tribute to Carrie Fisher.

Weird, dirty but accessible, The Favourite is a perfectly performed, thrillingly made period picture that morphs before your very eyes. Come for the top-drawer hi-jinx; stay for a moving look at human foibles and frailties.

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

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.

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

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.

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."

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.

Sweet Country is epic and personal, daring to tell a simple story in a challenging, arresting way. It’s a demanding two hours but leavened by great performances, especially from newcomer Hamilton Morris.

It might not have the oomph of "Winter’s Bone," but this is a sympathetic, affecting, beautifully realised portrait of lives lived on the margins.

Almodóvar juggles comedy and drama to terrifically entertaining ends, aided by a tip-top Penélope Cruz. It’s hard to think of a more exciting actor-director partnership working today.

Beautifully played — especially by Wang Jingchun — So Long, My Son is sprawling, audacious, sometimes bewildering, ultimately moving. It tests your patience but it’s worth it.

Apollo 11 isn’t a film about the facts and stats of the mission to reach the moon. Instead, it’s about how it feels to be in space and on the ground as history is made. Stunning, stirring stuff.

A moving hymn to outsiders, this thrives on two criminally good performances from Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant. It also confirms Marielle Heller as one of the brightest directorial talents around.

A consummate display of populist weepie-making.

Pain & Glory might see Almodóvar working in a minor key but it is a major work, graced with career-best work from Antonio Banderas.

The Verdict Underground is hypnotic but clear-eyed, finding a different way to put a musical biography on film. And for all its radical formalism, it never forgets to be entertaining.

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