Martyn Conterio

What Philippe does yet again, as with his his previous documentaries, is a bang-up job of examining what makes great films great, and here it is twofold: showing that The Wizard of Oz is not just an all-timer in its own right, but showcasing how Lynch drew on its emotional and cosmic resonance, in overt and oblique ways, for his own iconic forays.

It’s an important moment for representation on-screen and surprisingly political in nature.

It’s wholesale thievery of what is a director’s famed aesthetic, for sure, but it does somehow fit the lyrical and haunting material, often beautifully so. Also, the shallow field of depth used to heighten – and blur – the boundaries between the magical world and the natural world is successful in creating rich atmospheres.

Bones and All, like the best horror movies, finds poetry in the frightening, in the transgressive, in the perverse. It mines light from darkness and transforms it before our eyes into something universal, shining and true, no matter how ephemeral.

Written by first-time screenwriters Darren and Jeff Allen Geare, The Retaliators deserves praise for its storytelling and plotting. For a good hour or so, the direction in which the film heads is destination unknown.

Director Akay is not messing around with his disgusted assessments of conservative Turkey in 2020.

Sundown is a film full of narrative and emotional surprises, upending the middle-aged bloke having a midlife crisis storyline, with Yves Cape’s cinematography capturing the classy and mundane locations with equally seductive attributes. Roth and Franco’s second rodeo is a melancholic banger.

In a just world, Hadžihalilović would be as acclaimed as somebody like Tim Burton, whose greatest films boast a spiritual connection of sorts to the French director.

For a debut feature, it’s impressive and thoroughly committed to its vision of Hell on Earth. The atrocities, bleak tension and stomach-churning imagery are unstoppable, the director deeming them necessary for maximum impact.

The horror in Knocking isn’t supernatural or down to mental illness: it’s societal. The clever switch in perspective leaves a haunting impression and makes Kempff’s segue into fiction a triumph.

The Vatican using VR technology to seek out victims of the demonically possessed is an intriguing and weirdly logical progression for the 21st century (move over exorcists, now we have techxorcists), but what generally lets the movie down is its bland dialogue, bland casting, and routine approach to frights.

Sono throws everything at the screen – samurai battles, shootouts, Cage shouting and threatening to karate chops the locals – but it rarely provides anything but the sense you’re watching bizarre performance art in place of a good film.

No Man of God sets out to demystify serial killers and achieves its aim.

An ambitious, clever, and inventive psychogenic fugue, Censor is rough around the edges and shot on a shoestring, sure, however Bailey-Bond has compelling and vital comments to make on art, media consumption, politics, and society.

The result is predictably crackpot and enigmatic.

This film throws toxic male aggression right back at them.

Its emotional dilemmas, depictions of trauma, revenge and fractured family ties are handled with such skill and sense of purpose, it is truly exemplary film-making.

A Ghost Waits is an unexpectedly heartfelt gem of micro-budgeted filmmaking.

Don’t Click is anti-torture porn, a rebuke to mindless muck for the sake of entertainment. It’s likely, though, Don’t Click will be quickly accused of being exactly what it’s rallying against.

Entertaining from start to finish and wonderfully played by a largely female cast, David Arquette has a small role as an escaped convict, Grant’s film beautifully upends the sexist notion that women are naturally inclined to nurture. It surprises, too, as a tribute to the fortitude of working-class women.

Suburban suffocation, impending doom, a tragedy waiting to happen, The Swerve is a compelling depiction of existential angst, melancholy, and mental illness, with director Kapsalis opting for subtlety over big-scene meltdown histrionics and much to his credit.

The tradition of star-worship and auteur theory has unnecessarily diminished the key roles of others. Thankfully, Making Waves gives these genius-level background figures their well-earned due.

The Cordillera of Dreams is a stirring look at a nation still recovering from the brutalisation meted out by General Pinochet’s callous and paranoid actions, but Guzmán goes further to offer his opinion of the present issues facing the country, specifically neoliberalism’s assault on land, resources and people.

Zombi Child is a stirring and highly peculiar piece of work.

Some actors can play anything, but asking super-posh and glamourous Seydoux to play dirt poor is an ask too far.

Told respectfully and far from tarring an entire religion with the same brush, Young Ahmed is an exceptionally crafted and intelligent film.

The editing might be unexpected, unconventional, a bit annoying, but it is also very smart. Creating as it does a vital tension between plot and theme, pushing the two characters unrelentingly towards an event horizon and black hole denouement.

If you’re an admirer of Malick’s poetic investigations into the mysteries of existence, faith and our tragic disconnection to the natural world, A Hidden Life will leave you enraptured and profoundly moved.

Although the handling of certain plot dynamics on occasion isn’t as strong as its potent aesthetic finesse, Ly mounts a thriller operating as a savage indictment of social policies and underhand police tactics and ass-covering corruption.

It doesn’t quite click, is too weird, leads to a lurch from one cinematic style to the other and fails to gel as a satisfying whole. Yet the director’s imaginative intention is apparent in the first shot.

This might not be the film you’re quite expecting from the director of arthouse dramas focused on modern life in Brazil, but it fits right in as a variation and continuation of Mendonça Filho’s pet themes.

Not without flaws, but nothing to get too worked up about, Alita: Battle Angel is cynicism-free, first-class popcorn entertainment spearheaded by a knockout performance from Salazar. A star is born.

Martin’s film is a thoroughly sobering watch and leaves us with tough questions about how the West chose to deal – or rather not deal – with Assad and the refugee crisis.

Jackson and his entire production team have produced a film which is both a form of cultural monument and a monumental cinematic achievement.

Gonzalez can be masterful in conjuring sexy imagery, febrile moods and erotic frissons, but his grip on the storytelling here is weak. Knife + Heart struggles to regain its initial momentum, falling flat until a lively climax.

Once we start to understand Ayka’s life and reasons for behaving how she does, the film gains tragic dimensions and its humanist voice grows into a desperate cry.

Makes for a generally powerful statement on human misery and grotesque inequality, though some third act creative decisions and maneuvers cause a wobble or two.

The Wild Pear Tree isn’t a showy or boldly radical work, this is still Ceylan’s brand of poetic landscapes and intimate dramas, but it does represent an intriguing artistic progression, so any claims of ‘more of the same’ are redundant.

Serebrennikov...has a great eye for composition and crafting a set piece, but the meandering pace and loose approach to storytelling makes his second feature akin to an album front loaded with banging tunes and the rest is filler.

Husson’s film is first and foremost an appalling account of stomach-churning misogyny and the sickening horrors Kurdish women met at the hands of their vile captors.

The film’s displays of humour give away to harsher scenes of brutality and intense moments where rural calm is suddenly disrupted by mortar explosions and transformed landscapes dotted with corpses.

The final moments veer too far towards the melodramatic, especially when the rest of the movie has exhibited a preference for the intellectual powers of argument, logic and reason, however the sense of desperation and accompanying symbolism is tragically potent.

Involving and well made, rather than something flat-out great and essential.

That Lee has crafted a funny film full of snazzy editing, stylish imagery and a tremendous blues rock score, yet is laser-focused on a very serious subject matter, demonstrates his mastery of the cinematic medium.

Birds of Passage is an enthralling, powerful statement and lamentation on the drugs trade’s inevitable encroachment upon on indigenous peoples and how gangsters casually destroyed them.

The film is freaky, experimental, sometimes hilarious and unnervingly intense.

Ghost Stories is uncomfortably timely, reminding us the haunted past is always haunting the present.

The film is packed with laugh-out-loud moments, full of deadpan observations – a quintessential Anderson touch – and exciting sequences.

Escalante is a master filmmaker when it comes to creating atmosphere.

Cruise rides the Breaking Bad and Narcos train, only not as well as either.

Anderson's comic slasher doesn't quite earn its wings as a potential future classic, nevertheless it's very funny and another welcome indicator that antipodean genre cinema is where it's at right now.

Dirty Grandpa wants to be as filthy as a Tijuana peep show featuring a beleaguered performer and put upon donkey, but ends up as sickly sweet as a Werther's Original.

As a return to the dark, primal and transgressive terrors of the original movie, Alien: Covenant is a success.

Nothing else this year can match Another Evil for its expert chills, comic dialogue, Office-level cringe and disturbing themes.

Verbinski doesn't skimp on thrills, mind you. There are jump scares galore, acts of literally penetrating violence and the denouement goes for full-on operatic perversity. Fans of Gothic horror - treat yourself and take the cure.

Covering depression, grief and pregnancy as body-horror, the end result is a palpably unusual mix of comedy, pathos and gruesome violence

My Father, Die's pummelling violence and existentialist leanings would be too absurd if set in County Kerry or County Mayo, but the doom-filled lyricism - its bloodied, weary soul - might best be described as Beckett with gunplay.

Challenging, daring, provocative, disgusting - We are the Flesh is all those things and then some, but also superbly crafted and always visually compelling.

Abattoir doesn't have a jaw-dropping...shock scene, but the ending does pack an emotional punch, of a type so few and far between in the annals of horror cinema.

Not only is the film a compellingly told tale of suspense and terror, but it's crafted with such precision and sense of timing that one can cry "Masterpiece!" without being shamefaced or wondering if a hyperbole-induced crime against all good sense has just been committed.

Biller is an eccentric talent - always a plus in the world of film - and The Love Witch is a triumph of form and style.

Under the Shadow is not only perfectly paced, the storytelling and plotting is emotionally gripping. The director also uses setting and location, composition and framing like a master of horror.

31 is a horror show delivered in hammer blows, or 'Whitechapel-style'. You either dig it or you don't.

Tod Williams, a journeyman best known for Paranormal Activity 2, has managed to transfer King's very popular brand of horror with a good deal of success.

Displaying an exemplary commitment to knuckle-biting tension, director Serra has made a riveting B-movie.

While not amongst the greater, more celebrated titles in Billy Wilder’s acclaimed filmography, his big screen adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution boasts a fine, scenery-chewing performance by Charles Laughton, here playing a cantankerous barrister defending a murder suspect.

William Faulkner once made the sage point that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Louis Malle’s Golden Lion winner Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) is a Second World War-set film very much guided in spirit by the US novelist’s musing on the febrile relationship between memory, time and individual and collective histories.

Cult of Chucky is by and large a gory hoot, with Jennifer Tilly stealing every scene she’s in.

Jaws is still terrific and has lost none of its bite.