Kim Newman

Even though he was just staring out, Kubrick instantly mastered the crime genre. A stunning film.

An outstanding film, showcasing a great performance, at once celebrating, analysing and criticising an important writer and his major book. You'll appreciate it more if you've read "In Cold Blood" recently and have seen enough footage of the real Truman Capote to know Hoffman is underplaying.

Among the most purely entertaining films of the year, which cuts its laughter with a dose of Celtic melancholy. It still delivers cop/action requirements - shoot-outs, revenges, daring deeds - and chances are, we'll be quoting lines from this forever.

Overall this film is truly a triumph, its greatness being revealed in its tiny moments - the close-up of a swastika badge that introduces Neeson or the bungled defiance of Fiennes at his hanging.

Now, it's a slower film, with a little more intellect and sentiment, but perhaps the added time to think will make you feel less overwhelmed.

At once a devastating, curiously uplifting inhuman drama and a superbly crafted genre exercise, Let The Right One In can stand toe-to-toe with Spirit Of The Beehive, Pan's Labyrinth or Orphee. See it.

However, as with Dead Ringers, Cronenberg approaches a touchy concept with a mixture of icy tact and cinematic daring, always informing the wilfully perverse material with a penetrating intelligence and (almost subliminally) very black wit.

Intelligent science-fiction sometimes seems an endangered species - too much physics and there's a risk of creating something cold and remote, too many explosions and get lost in the multiplex. Looper isn't perfect, but it pulls off the full Wizard Of Oz: it has a brain, courage and a heart.

The kind of film that starts off with a climax and builds to a plateau of surrealist delirium that, one way or another, will have you shrieking.

Measured in pace, yet thoroughly gripping and completely accessible. The title soft-sells the picture, but it's among the best of this or any year. And Manville should clear some shelf space for well-deserved awards.

Superlative crime yarn adapted with precision and skill from the classic James M. Cain novel.

And with supporting roles from the likes of Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall and Lee Strasberg, to say nothing of Roger Corman and Harry Dean Stanton in bit parts, this is nothing short of magisterial.

A dazzling spy thriller that’s still amazing.

A quality ghost story with an unusual backdrop and great performances.

It shouldn't work, but it does.

The effects, arguably the best of the year, only add to the thrill.

A uniquely British blend of excruciating comedy of embarrassment and outright grue, not quite as disorientating in its mood shifts as Kill List but just as impressive a film.

Strong performances anchor a series of unforgettable scenes. Breathtaking and unfathomable.

An instant gangster classic.

This Neil Simon-scripted pastiche of an array of much-loved detective characters is surprisingly charming.

This is lots of fun and the actors definitely look like they're having a good time.

A war movie with enough honour and heroism to make a grown man weep.

The ideas are good enough for you to allow for some risible performances.

Some Host or DASHCAM fans might be disappointed that Rob Savage has opted for something ostensibly more conventional — but The Boogeyman shows he can also make an involving, ungimmicky ghost story with perfectly constructed menace and mayhem.

Bigger action, more amazing deserted (and devastated) London sequences and biting contemporary relevance, if a touch less heart than the original.

This was controversial at the time and that put alot of people off, believing that the film was probably all hype, but this is a respectful and complex work of fiction around the concepts of the biblical character and his life.

The business of this story in both versions is suspense, and Watkins is very good at ratcheting screws . . . but also springs satisfying reversals and pay-offs.

A provocative, engrossing, often hilarious, frequently tough picture. Not for all sensibilities but it’s among von Trier’s more playful, purely entertaining films, with insight and humour in even the horrors.