John Bleasdale

A masterful dissection of social inequality and the psychology of money.

Starless Dreams is a fascinating and humane view of the marginalised and forgotten. The girls' voices rise as a startlingly powerful chorus, questioning, challenging and demanding we listen.

Wells’ debut is a frankly astonishing work which will leave a lasting impression.

Östlund has created a full-throated, roaring comedy of hate against the upper-classes. It is cynical, nihilistic and has no issue about punching down.

This is the refined work of an artist at the peak of his powers, and, dare we say it, a masterpiece.

With this near-perfect midnight movie, [Glazer] has given us a work of unsettling and riveting brilliance.

It’s the film’s humanity which is at the core of its genius.

Anomalisa might be bizarre, surreal and far out, but it always feels paradoxically real, grounded and deeply true.

It's triumph is its determined optimism, even if it admits that is probably a fantasy. It's a tale of the fallen who, like Moonee's favourite tree, keeps on growing regardless.

Network is an outstanding satire that has become more rather than less relevant with each passing year. It is bitingly funny, whip smart and as mad as hell.

Shines out as a rough diamond, a masterpiece of British cinema undeniably worthy of its classical title.

Importantly, Spielberg instinctively knows exactly when to keep his camera still and allow what's in front of it to take precedence.

Eggers has created a film of disturbing horror, absurdist comedy and probing psychodrama which defies the generic boundaries as it breaks through them. The Lighthouse is a saltwater gothic masterpiece.

Dhont’s second film is a touching and empathetic treatment of male friendship, superbly acted and beautifully filmed.

Son of Saul is not simply a good film, it feels like an urgent and important one, a warning from history.

This could be seen as a smug, empty exercise in satirical excoriation – and as a smug, empty exercise in satirical excoriation, it’d be one of the best – but there is a genuine heart to the film, as well as intellect. Cheadle, Gerwig and Driver are all superb, while Sam Nivola and Raffey Cassidy give their smart-mouth, role reversal kids an impossible likeability.

The film is heartfelt and sincere in its concern to understand conflict and the plight of good men when they're forced to make impossible choices.

Chaplin’s humour is shot through with darkness, loneliness and violence, like chili pepper in chocolate.

A quietly devastating portrayal of family and theft in contemporary Japan.

The Banshees of Inisherin is a beautifully-shot and deftly-played comedy. It is at once masterful, surprisingly poignant, and profound. Its portrait of a friendship faltering ultimately proves how vital friendship actually is: how vulnerable and naked we are without it.

Saint Omer is a deeply intellectual film – Medea is referenced several times as a frame of understanding – but it’s also heartfelt. There is a compassion to the dispassion: an empathy.

Oppenheimer's first film maintained a passive detachment, allowing the killers to re-enact their own atrocities and metaphorically hang themselves with their own words. The Look of Silence takes a far harder line, probing the killers more deeply and confronting them in an attempt to shake some sense of remorse out of them.

Zvyagintsev is masterfully compiling a cinematic record of suffering, and the indifference surrounding and facilitating it, which will live on.

Hit the Road is damned near to being a masterpiece – if it isn’t simply one already. There are scenes of broad comedy, musical sequences and a wholly tragic episode that plays out in a long wide-shot. The wonderful cast inhabit their roles so fully it’s hard to believe this is not a bona fide family.

Dolan is a director who thinks hard about the possibilities of cinema and explores them with verve and ingenuity, but it is in his latest film that everything has come together.

The Childhood of a Leader is a dark, enigmatic piece of work that hovers between visionary greatness and petty domestic triviality. Corbet's inaugural stint behind the camera marks a stunning debut.

Gnecco has both breadth and subtlety. His Neruda is a complex and fascinating character study, a man fastidiously vain of his status but unconvinced by his own performance even as he enraptures a nation.

Scorsese’s direction always keeps us uncomfortably close to Travis’ subjectivity, whether we’re prowling night time Manhattan or gazing into a glass of Alka-Seltzer until the whole world disappears into the healing hiss.