Jamie Graham

Blending The Thing, Prince of Darkness, Hellraiser and Lovecraftian cosmic horror, this falls flat in suspense and characterisation, but ace ’80s FX – all liquefying latex – will delight genre fans.

Certain Women won’t challenge Transformers 5 at the box office, but it’s a deeply affecting triumph.

A murky mishmash of a movie, with the lightest smattering of glorious moments.

Strikingly original, brilliantly acted, this serio-comic masterpiece constantly swerves expectations.

Director Garth Davis’ debut is a touch over-stretched but impossible to resist – a classy crowd-pleaser with an especially magical first half.

Think Luis Buñuel spliced with Hieronymus Bosch.

Could have been a grand folly but instead it’s just grand. Will make audiences break into grins like its characters break into song.

If ever there was a film that epitomised the saying ‘no pain, no gain’, this is it. Packs a real wallop.

The arid landscapes are handsomely shot, the set-pieces punchy and intimate, and the performances robust, with Portman reminding us just how good an actress she is as her no-nonsense Jane gets on with the business of survival.

The great thing about Arabian Nights is that if one story isn't to your liking, another pops up, so the decision to give this tale a feature-length running time is perplexing. But quibbles aside, this is daring, magical filmmaking.

Volumes one and two are especially captivating, as Gomes himself appears onscreen to tell of how he charged a team of researchers with scouring Portugal in search of tales.

One of the princes of arthouse cinema, Miguel Gomes here uses his status to push form and stretch boundaries. Very long but very much worth it.

Bleed for This is made with palpable commitment by all involved and there are scenes to jolt viewers out of their déjà vu.

Scorsese blends his twin religions of Catholicism and cinema to considerable effect.

What Fantastic Beasts lacks in wonderment it almost makes up for in scares and subtext.

The requisite training montage is half-decent, and the split-screen end credits replay Van Damme’s infamous dancing in the original, with Moussi mirroring his every bad move.

With few words and the odd squint, Cruise hard boils all of his charisma into a clenched fist, but is more than happy to let a dynamic Smulders take the lead in many scenes.

A couple of scenes are perhaps too on the nose, but the naturalistic performances are faultless, the righteous anger controlled, and the bleakness dotted with moments of humour and small acts of kindness. I, Daniel Blake is, first and foremost, a deeply humanistic film.

Full of shivers and subtext, this is scarily good. One of the films – horror or otherwise – of the year.

Not quite magnificent but certainly Fuqua’s best since "Training Day" and a rare remake that actually delivers. Yee-haw!

As in director Alexandre Aja’s Horns, the action alternates reality/fantasy to middling effect.

Informed, balanced and deeply humane.

Starts off flavourful, turns rather bland. This Injustice League jaunt proves that DC is still a long way behind Marvel for on-screen action.

The Violators suffers from inevitable comparisons to Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, but is anchored by McQueen’s terrific performance in her feature debut.

A shallow, slow-burn horror that takes an age to get to the strong meat but looks good doing it.

This might have been titled ‘Independence Day: Submergence’. It’s certainly hard not to drown in the sea of CGI, with the exponential increase of pixels being to Independence Day what the Star Wars prequels were to the original trilogy.

Everybody in Everybody smashes it out the park, playing dreamers who exhibit a voracious lust for life as they quest for identity. Well, these actors might have found theirs – the next generation of leading men.

Sure, the core tale of personal redemption is standard stuff but Zak Hilditch’s breathless, batshit-crazy thriller tears through orgies, mass suicides and murderous rampages to conclude on a scene as moving and terrifying as the climax of Melancholia. Hold on tight.

With Streep on grandstanding form and Grant given a rare chance to show his range, this is an intelligent dramedy that moves and amuses.

This is Malick turning graceful, ever-decreasing circles, though there’s a thrill to seeing him traverse hotel rooms and studio lots, nightclubs and strip clubs, after a career wrapped up in the period and pastoral.

Taken as a throwback to the thrillers of Carpenter and Spielberg’s cinema of wonder, it is special indeed. Not least because it honours its influences and yet remains, first and foremost, a Jeff Nichols film.

As unnerving as it is surprising.

Robert Eggers’ measured, meticulous debut builds into one of the most genuinely scary horror movies of recent years.

Charlie Kaufman shows us what it is to be human. Plus the best use of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ in the movies.

This is the anti-Heat: no sheen, no shimmer, no obsessing over highly grandiose themes and precise compositions; just grime and desperation.

Hail, Caesar! is a love letter inked in arsenic, at once celebrating the artistry of Hollywood and cringing at the crass commercialism and rampant phoniness of it all.

A rigorously detailed telling of an important story that never loses sight of the human devastation. Terrific turns from the ensemble cast.

Not without glitches but an energetic study of one woman’s refusal to settle for anything less than her share of the American Dream.

The Hateful Eight brands the western with a big ‘QT’. All you’d expect from a Tarantino movie and more besides. Saddle up.

Defying all boundaries, Martyrs relentlessly dishes the visceral pain and emerges as a work of not just ceaseless terror but also gravity and beauty.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is not perfect nor could it ever be. But for every niggle...there are 10 things that are exactly right, and it says much that no one will leave disappointed despite going in with hysterical levels of expectation.

Fun enough, but not the lightning-bolt-to-the-heart update we hoped for. For a far superior update of the Frankenstein myth, read Stephen King’s Revival.

Jarrold struggles to sweep things along with quite enough vigour – budget constraints crowd the edge of the frame – but Gadon is intoxicating as Elizabeth.

I don’t want people to dislike me. I’m indifferent to if they dislike me,” says Jobs. Well, this won’t be for everyone but it dazzles. Markedly better than Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs…

It’s not iconic sci-fi to match Alien or Blade Runner but it is a topical, supremely crafted, intelligent, heartfelt spectacle with gallows humour to die for. Strap yourself in.

It’s flawed, yes – Frances is frustratingly underwritten, her psychological fault lines spoken of but never shown – but it’s also swaggeringly cinematic. And it has Tom Hardy vs Tom Hardy.

Ambiguity is The Falling’s currency, and it’s all the richer for it.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation might have its hi-tech gadgets, but it's a pleasingly old-fashioned affair.

Like the Toy Story trilogy, Inside Out is about leaving childhood behind. It’s not quite as moving as those films but it is A-grade Pixar, full of Sadness and Joy.

Dear everyone – stop whatever you’re doing and go see Dear White People. One of the freshest, funniest and most vital films of the year.

Hits all the routine beats but is plenty entertaining, with Pacino rediscovering his enviable pizazz to headline a quality ensemble.

Not up there with key US influences "Annie Hall," "When Harry Met Sally" and "Jerry Maguire," but a romcom Brits can be proud of. Make a date of it.

A lunatic vision, as hilarious as it is hellish. And some of the greatest action ever put on screen.

Drags in places and not always certain of its tone but with a sprinkling of eye-bulging visuals that wink to Spielberg’s heyday. Give it a shot.

As a portrait of a privileged, narcissistic sex addict, its magnificence and messiness are intertwined, while Gérard Depardieu’s (literally) naked performance offers a gurning, grunting bedfellow to Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant and Brando’s butterfat Last Tango In Paris protagonist.

The Soska sisters’ feminist ‘T Is For Torture Porn’ has the most to say but everyone will have their own favourites (D, K, T, X and Z, since you asked).

Wan has fashioned a nitro-fuelled thrill-ride that forms a fitting tribute to its blue-eyed bro.

Imagine all of D-Fens’ fury in Falling Down squeezed into one short, then times it by six. A gloriously crazed compendium that fizzes with OMG and OTT moments.

Over-long, but a work of great artistry and emotion. As the woodcutter says upon finding our heroine: “A gift from heaven”.

Misses the energy and vitality of Gregg Araki’s best work, but there’s more going on here than immediately meets the eye.

Who let the dogs out? This is Homeward Bound: The Incredibly Harrowing Journey, with the feelgood payoff arriving after many feel-shit sequences. Well worth it, though.

It’s no "Heat" but the niggles are easily forgiven given the virtuosity on show and the mood oozing from every frame. No one shoots faces, architecture and gunfights like Mann.

A low-budget, highconcept WTF thriller that might have been conceived by Rod Serling in the heyday of his Twilight Zone series. Spread the word.

Wahlberg finds his most interesting role since The Departed in a film that’s heavy on atmosphere and suspense but shy of a full deck when it comes to characterisation.

Never sure if it wants to be a hard-edged character drama or pacy action-thriller, Son Of A Gun has plenty to admire between the tonal wobbles.

Wiig and Hader give winning, finely nuanced turns in a film that deftly mixes light and dark. Also features the best use of ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ since Mannequin…

A sombre, ’70s-flavoured crime drama with strong, interior performances from Hardy, Gandolfini and Rapace. Feel the (slow)burn.

Iñárritu ditches time-hopping bleakness for a linear, if loopy, satire that buzzes with brio. If Mel Brooks, John Cassavetes and Terry Zwigoff co-directed a superhero movie, this might be it.

Family entertainment with death, limb-lopping and other horrors. If you go Into The Woods today, you’ll be surprised how faithful this is to the dark stage musical.

Scott operates on a suitably Biblical scale and grounds the spectacle with rock-solid turns from Bale and Edgerton.

A masterpiece of animation and imagination.

Gyllenhaal is sensational headlining a pitch-black satire with its finger on the pulse.

Doesn’t have the heft of Zodiac or the verve of Se7en but Gone Girl is a masterful adaptation and a superior crime-thriller. As for Fincher changing the ending… See for yourself.

Among the blood, sweat and (ahem) salty tears are musings on desire, family and emasculation, but this is Kim at his most mischievous, the laughs drowning all.

The Expendables 3 marks a sizeable improvement on the first two outings.

By the beard of Zeus! Brett Ratner delivers fast, fun thrills to score a sound victory over Renny Harlin’s laborious The Legend Of Hercules.

Bigger and better – 22 Jump Street joins the exclusive list of sequels that out-gun their originals. We’re already knocking at the door of no.23.

Willow Creek is a movie to believe in.

The breakneck pace leaves little room for meaningful character development... But there’s imagination, spectacle and thrills to spare.

A cunning, suspenseful thriller that bears comparison to the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple, Blue Ruin is an impossible-to-ignore calling card from writer/director Jeremy Saulnier. Hollywood awaits.

Pioneer features underwater sequences so breathless they’ll thrill even James Cameron (director Erik Skjoldbjærg made the original Insomnia) but Petter’s truth-chasing is at times too frantic and melodramatic.

One of the more solid ’70s horror remakes, but it lacks the verve and potency, romance and heartache of the original. Still, the haircuts are a vast improvement...

An absorbing thriller that favours vivid characters, profound ideas and Old Testament morals over propulsive plotting and set-pieces. With lots of blood.

The one-liners are in evidence but this is more abrasive than you might expect. Blends rigour and vigour to join "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and "Midnight In Paris" as the best of late-period Woody.

Strickland’s nuanced, atmospheric, ambiguous movie transcends genre.

Occasionally potent but mostly risible, this tale of the occult sees Rob Zombie cast a weak spell. Disappointing.

Gosling and Cooper use their star currency to power a slow-burn, heartsick drama. "Blue Valentine" director Cianfrance is a serious talent.

The scuzz-chic visuals, sleaze-synth score and deep-cutting gore are effective, and shooting from the killer’s POV proves a valid USP. But Wood, despite giving his all, cannot match Joe Spinell’s unhinged turn in the original: nightmares in a damaged brain indeed.

A grindhouse mix of "Wild Things," "Killer Joe" and "Streetcar Named Desire," The Paperboy won’t be for all. But it boasts a soupy atmosphere and Kidman’s best turn for years.

Kim Jee-woon's riff on the western is an entertaining frolic back-loaded with gore and guffaws. Arnie's back!

A compassionate, masterful work that deservedly won Haneke a second Palme d'Or after "The White Ribbon's" 2009 victory. Best to avoid on a first date, though.

Too long and with too many characters to get through, Mother's Day holds effective sequences, ramming home its (recycled) message: the animal lurks in us all.

2012 is the year of the Muppet, and we don't mean Ashton Kutcher. After Jason Segel's fur-filled revival, rejoice in a documentary to make you laugh and, yes, cry.

A super-entertaining, super-slick love/hate letter to horror with a final 20 minutes that's stunningly bonkers.

Tiny Furniture announces Dunham as a talent to watch.

Don't expect glamorous outlaws, sunny locales and exotic masterplans – this low-key thriller lifts the rusted lid off an all-too-real world of despairing criminality.

Good enough to survive evoking "Bicycle Thieves" and "The 400 Blows," this small story contains universal truths, told with irresistible force.