Martyn Conterio

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

This film throws toxic male aggression right back at them.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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