Oliver Lyttelton

Alps has proven Lanthimos to be one of the most fascinating filmmakers anywhere right now.

It's a state-of-the-nation masterwork, a vitally important piece of work, and should be seen by as many people as possible.

Gravity is about as visceral an experience as you can have in a cinema, it’s a technical marvel, and it’s a blockbuster with heart and soul in spades.

The picture is a triumph: it's arguably Garland’s tightest and most fascinating screenplay to date, brought to life with meticulous filmmaking and sensational performances. It's the first great film of 2015.

The icicle-sharp, endlessly quotable script is one of the greatest ever written, and the film remains relentlessly entertaining. If it’s not the director’s finest, it’s a testament to how much competition there is for that position.

A visionary, thrilling work.

One of the best films of the year.

If there was ever any doubt as to Zvyagintsev's position as one of world cinema's foremost auteurs, it's put to rest here. His filmmaking has always been superb, but he's never taken on the state of his nation in the way he does here. And that makes "Leviathan" not just masterful but also hugely important.

In the end, all the strangeness adds up towards something genuinely significant: an atypically rich and substantial comedy that's stuffed with great scenes and performances even before you start to chew on its bigger questions.

It’s a film that can swing between absurdist humor and brutal gut-punch sadness in a way that’s rare and, at times, truly profound.

The film isn’t a white knuckle ride, and the pacing can be slow at times, but this is one of those cases where that’s sort of the point, and you certainly don’t begrudge it. A Hijacking is an absorbing, highly moving film.

Lafleur maintains a bouncy, consistently funny tone that you'd describe as featherlight, were there not real weight grounding it all. It's a near-miraculous trick, and evidence of the immense talent on display here: he has a real talent for making comedy work visually, and as you might expect from a former editor, a sense not just for landing a joke, but for creating a unique and distinctive rhythm.

It isn’t just one of the best debut films of the year, but one of the year’s best films, period.

It’s as successful as it is ambitious.

For all the film’s politics, Arabian Nights can also be whimsical, swooningly romantic, inspiring, fascinating, or deeply sad.

Fans of Polley’s work to date will be delighted by a documentary that serves simultaneously as a gripping mystery, a moving record of a family and a fascinating investigation into the nature of truth, memory, and the documentary form itself.

This is a filmmaker in total command of every visual element — his compositions more compelling than ever, the production design almost verging on steampunk, and a special mention has to go to the extraordinary costumes — but it doesn’t feel stifling or precious either.

Bone Tomahawk is a proper Western, a proper horror movie, and by combining the two, becomes something else entirely, and proves hugely enjoyable for it.

The film doesn't reinvent the wheel: it is, ultimately, a middle-class-white-boy coming-of-age tale of the kind that the cinema of France, and elsewhere, has never been lacking. But it's written, shot, cut and performed with such palpable joy, intelligence and warmth that it ends up feeling entirely fresh.

An exciting, splattery, funny genre movie that somehow never once feels disposable.

Trier’s sensibility for the dynamics of family, for the depiction of nebulous memory, and for the detail of life (the film’s full of beautiful, complex scenes), means that I’m already eager to take a second look and see what else there is to unpack.

The film's not merely content with being a twisty psycho-thriller. Boyle and Hodge expertly tweak and tinker with your sympathies, and the characters you initially peg as heroes and villains may not be in the same place by the time things wrap up.

It’s the pair’s bond that helps to make the film more interesting than just a study of wealthy murderousness (though it’s great at that too). It’s also a portrait of female friendship that, despite the dark places it goes to, proves to be oddly touching.

The filmmaking here is almost impossibly well-realized, right down to the evocative sound design, adding up to an fairly unforgettable experience.

Paddington is totally delightful.

Eisenberg does an enormous amount with what he has, proving to be sinister and vulnerable virtually within the same breath, and expertly putting across the torment he’s going through.

A beautiful, hearfelt and raw piece of work.

The filmmaking is admittedly functional rather than particularly artful, but you somewhat appreciate that Warchus is determined to distract you as little as possible from the story and characters.

Avranas makes a claim to be considered among the top ranks of international filmmakers.

It might not be the director's most immediately accessible films, but it's among his most fascinating and beguiling.

Strickland' command of tone, aided by Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" editor Chris Dickens and, of course, sonic wizards Joakim Sundstrom and Steve Haywood, is masterful, jarring and discombobulating the viewer as Gilderoy's mind unravels.

Mr Turner, though not without flaws, is something of a twilight culmination of Leigh's work, and very much one in which the filmmaker turns his lens on himself, as is so often the case when directors make movies about artists.

It's a remarkably gorgeous piece of work.

Some might dismiss the film as minor Wheatley — made in just a couple of weeks, on a budget likely smaller than even many of Wheatley’s inexpensive earlier pictures. But there’s a lot going on in it, from the genuinely profound portrait of how families can bring out the most toxic sides of their members when they’re together, to a light sprinkling of state-of-the-nation, post-Brexit commentary.

This really is Audiard operating at the top of his game, mostly dropping the contrivances of "Rust & Bone" for incisive character studies and a deeply humane, almost warm, worldview.

Gunn’s careful to keep the focus on the central five, but certainly proves himself capable of the bigger canvas. The film really pops visually, with an admirably bright color palette (DP Ben Davis doing excellent work), and though there are occasionally some geography issues, the action is mostly satisfying.

It’s not exactly doing anything new, but it’s a muscular and textured piece of work that shifts assuredly through tones and genre, features a rich and rewarding performance from Cage, and another excellent turn from his young co-star Tye Sheridan.

It's certainly a crowd-pleaser...and something close to a triumph, if not an unqualified one.

As ever, Moretti creates a rich and incredibly detailed world, one where every character has a life that stretches far beyond their on-screen scenes.

Best of all is the bad guy. Javier Bardem was always a tantalizing choice to play a Bond villain, and his Silva is a terrific creation, and certainly the most memorable villain in the series in decades.

For all its abrasiveness, the film is also capable of real tenderness.

Wiseman's film is the most nourishing example of cinematic brain food you'll have all year.

It makes a deeply human experience, and one that’s frequently both educational (the film’s main purpose: a copy will be given to every school in Britain) and moving. In fact, it’s not so much individual faces or interviews that leave the most lasting impression so much as it’s the cumulative impact of all the faces.

Journey’s End is about as good an adaptation as you can imagine of the material, and a film with compassion and humanity that goes far beyond its perhaps uncompromisingly prestige-y exterior.

Though it has a few elements of its construction that might be questionable, it's mostly a powerful, thoughtful, and visually striking picture.

Mostly, the film's very funny, Sono displaying a sense of how to frame and time a visual gag that feels positively Zucker-ish. But there are real stakes, and bursts of real feeling too.

For the most part, the breadth of its examination of the subject is welcome, and by the end, it ends up feeling like as definitive a film on comedy and the Holocaust as you could ever want.

Most importantly of all: it’s funny. Really, really funny, consistently and constantly.

For most of the run-time, Welcome To The Punch is thrillingly cinematic, beautifully made, smarter and funnier than you'd expect, and a phenomenal showcase for Creevy and his team.

It’s dizzying stuff, and virtually everything that Gomes tries his hand to works: it’s a film that’s moving, sad, exciting, fiery, and funny.

22 Jump Street might not be quite as good as "21 Jump Street," but it's remarkably close, to the point where subsequent viewings could see it elevated above its predecessor.

A very impressive film, one that can only increase the esteem in which both Knight and Hardy are held.

Never, for one second, is Vikander anything less than entirely truthful.

The film is a sickly enjoyable wallow in the scandalous, fucked-up side of showbusiness, and a real return to form for the filmmaker.

Pulling off an ambitious mash-up of genres like Good Manners is no easy feat — that Dutra and Rojas pull it off so successfully suggests we’ll be hearing a lot more from them down the road.

Both fascinatingly theatrical and thrillingly cinematic, a picture that's lingered on our minds more than we expected.

The book is so counter to our contemporary narrative demands that liberties would need to be taken for a movie version, and for the most part Osborne takes the right liberties, ending up with an extremely beautiful, very charming, thematically rich take that’s sure to be one of the better animated movies this year.

It won't change the face of cinema history, and it won't win any awards (it's too downright dirty for that), but it's furiously entertaining, and a very strong piece of drama from a director who hasn't much luck in the last thirty-odd years.

The film is very, very funny, consistently.

It’s a cast full of the sort of faces that regularly pop up on ones-to-watch lists, and it’s the biggest thing that Been So Long has going for it. “Chewing Gum” fans will know how talented Coel is, but she’s particularly good here with a role that’s more adult and serious than her breakout turn (while still letting her have some fun occasionally).

Even if it doesn't quite stick the landing, there's a lot to like here; it's a fundamentally decent, very well-acted and cannily written film.

Even if the film isn’t entirely to my taste, it’s a provocative and powerfully made piece of work.

The film’s undoubtedly a gorgeous look at the Australian outback, but those looking for deeper nourishment will be left a touch disappointed.

Without patronizing or condescending, it’s an examination of how fame can change us and haunt us, and of the complicated relationships that survivors of something like “Star Wars” can have with it.

The filmmaker has a real gift for getting into the political context of her stories while never neglecting the personal, and seeing the Khamas gradually win over his people, while still battling the British establishment, is gripping, rewarding and eventually moving.

Midnight movie programmers of the future will undoubtedly give it a long life years after it’s gone from first-run theaters.

It's an ambitious attempt to meld the kind of social realism that made the names of Andrea Arnold and Clio Barnard with a stripped-down genre thriller, an attempt that's only moderately successful, though it suggests Wolfe is a filmmaker of real promise.

It's fascinating, warm and immensely watchable stuff, and fans of both Jackson and pop music in general will surely eat the film up.

There’s so much to like about the film, and it’s a mark of Assayas’ skill that it's a hugely engaging watch despite the blankness of the characters.

As a portrait of a legitimately fascinating unlikely superstar, the film really works.

Godard's full length take on 3D is bold, brilliant and exactly what the format needed — a iconoclast taking it and making his own, and almost every time he frames a shot in three dimensions, from opening credits to the final moments, there's something attention-grabbing going on.

For all the film's flaws, Black brings enough to the table that it's far from a chore, and if this level of ingenuity and surprise can be maintained, there'll be no need for Tony to hang up his Iron Man helmet any time soon.

Powerful, engaging and, by the finale, moving. And in the end, At Any Price is certainly one of the most impressive reactions to the recent economic crisis (because that’s exactly what it is) that cinema has produced so far.

It's certainly his best film.

Has more than its share of flaws, but it also gets its balance of tones right, proving spooky, involving and occasionally resonant, while still managing to bring something new to a well-worn tale, and providing a terrific lead part for one of the most promising actresses of her generation.

It's crisply and cleanly shot throughout, and the filmmaker shows a rare feel for how to not only make comedy land, but also to make it actually feel cinematic too.

Queen & Country is hardly reinventing the wheel, but it's charming, evocative and (mostly) well-performed, and were Boorman to continue with his autobiographical cycle, we'd certainly welcome further installments.

While it’s an awkward, uneven picture, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a fascinating one.

Those looking for a substantial meal or an Oscar contender are probably going to be left lacking. But so long as you’re prepared for some rousing medieval action and not all that much more, Mackenzie proves here he can work on a significant canvas with a film that must rank as one of Netflix’s more satisfying bigger-budget ventures to date.

The tale of Choi and Shin is a true stranger-than-fiction one, as good a piece of material as a filmmaker could help for. It’s just a shame that, for the most part, The Lovers And The Despot feels like it’s giving you the Cliff Notes version of the story.

It is overlong, and familiar, and never quite hits top gear -- it's never especially bad, but neither is it especially excellent, beyond the visual wow factor. But there's still a lot to admire in the film, not least that it's engaging from the first moment to the last.

Every time the picture opens a fascinating door, you're held back from going through by a naff filmmaking choice or a rote story move.

It won't linger in the mind longer than it takes for the credits to roll, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts, and we're genuinely looking forward to part 2 at this point.

There’s still a lot of pleasure to be had here, whether from digging your fingernails into the armrest early on, to Freeman’s sly comic performance later.

It's a stinker of an ending tacked on to a disappointing third act (which is at least lifted up by Bartlett's performance), and it's a shame because so much of what went on before was so good: a tender, unsentimental, unexploitative look at an existence that all too many people have, and what it is to be someone who looks after them.

A sly dark comedy that doubles as a very impressive display of wordless storytelling.

There are enough rough edges and interesting kinks across the two-hour running time that you come out forgiving it for the more generic elements, though we'll acknowledge that the flaws might stick out more on a second viewing, when you're not just pleasantly surprised that the whole thing isn't a stinking mess.

At its best, the film becomes something winningly subversive.

There’s much to like, from Waltz’s performance to the typically rich production and costume design.

The film’s well-written, beautifully performed (not least from Huppert, who’s typically stunning as her icy, grief-stricken matriarch, and the moving Servillo, of “Il Divo” and “Gomorrah” fame), and nicely made, if a good 15 minutes overlong.

Though there's an admirable sense of messiness to the scenes of family life, the screenplay itself is rather neat: one has a fairly solid sense of how things are going to play out from the early stages, and for the most part that's how it goes, ticking off a checklist of rather familiar beats along the way.

Far from the home-run laughs of “The Apartment” and “Some Like it Hot,” Irma La Douce is still a fun if G-rated tour of the seedy Parisian underbelly, but coming in overlong at close to 2 1/2 hours, would have benefited from some tighter editing.

For all its flaws, the film offers as compelling and fair a summary of the case and the man for those less well-versed in the tale as you could ask for from a documentary.

Coppola's screenplay neatly restructures Franco's source material into a deceptively tight narrative, and mostly proves to be raw, authentic and often very funny.

It’s a strong and eye-catching debut, but one that doesn’t quite mark its ground as the next big thing in Israeli cinema.

The Winter Soldier is probably in the upper tier of Marvel pictures in terms of quality, but ultimately proves too muddled and frantic to match the heights of "The Avengers."

It is very much a first film, albeit one of rare ambition, and there's every reason to think that Benson will nail it next time around. The film's absolutely worth watching for the performances alone... But in and of itself, the "Them" version of The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts.

It’s a reminder of what a tremendously talented writer and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is, and hopefully we’ll see him venturing back to the big screen sooner rather than later.