Peter Bradshaw

Hereditary is basically a brilliant machine for scaring us, and Collette’s operatic, hypnotic performance seals the deal every second she’s on the screen.

The movie is perfectly composed with a light touch that is the work of a certain kind of gravity and sophistication.

Cleverly, it gives us enigmatic backstory hints that may or may not help explain the sudden direction change the film takes in its third act, leading to a denouement of toxic ingenuity. And of all it driven by the sensuality and rage of Pugh’s performance.

Every second of this noir masterpiece is gripping, and the chemistry between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor is utterly thrilling.

It is deeply intelligent, intensely and painfully political, and yet attempts, and succeeds, somehow to transcend politics and perhaps even history itself.

A chilling and utterly brilliant film whose final, excoriating sequence is frankly sufficient on its own to justify the genius tag.

In its simplicity and punch, this is a film that feels as if it could have been made decades ago, in the classic age of Planet of the Apes or The Omega Man.

This is Herzog's journey to the heart of darkness, a film that specifically echoes his earlier offerings The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and his South American odyssey Aguirre, Wrath of God.

Ozu shows how fragile and yet burdensome the institution of the family is.

This is a wonderfully absorbing and moving family drama with a buttery, sunlit streak of sentimentality.

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland is an utterly inspired docu-fictional hybrid, like her previous feature The Rider. It is a gentle, compassionate, questioning film about the American soul.

It is a gripping film: horrible, scary and desperately sad.

Vertigo also combines in an almost unique balance Hitchcock’s brash flair for psychological shocks with his elegant genius for dapper stylishness. Like Psycho, it ends in an “o”, or maybe “oh!” The ancient house adjoining the Bates motel in Psycho certainly has an unearthly similarity to San Francisco’s creepy old McKitterick Hotel in Vertigo. [Rerelease]

Bridge of Spies has a brassy and justified confidence in its own narrative flair.

Everything in it – every frame, every image, every joke, every performance – gets a gasp of excitement.

This movie, visually and dramatically superb in every way, moves with unhurried confidence across the screen, pausing to savour every bizarre bit of comedy or erotic byway, or note of pathos, on its circuitous path to the violent finale.

There is something visionary in this film.

Getting the extraordinary physical specimen of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the lead was a stroke of genius and a stroke of fortune. Each of his pecs is the size of a bull’s flank. It is a tremendous black-comic performance and, without Schwarzenegger, the movie is of course unthinkable.

I watched this film with translucently white knuckles but also that strange climbing nausea that only this topic can create.

This is such a beguiling, generous film from Gerwig. There is a lot of love in it.

It’s a cinema of pure energy and grungy voltage, and the Safdies make it look very easy. This will be the year’s most exciting film. You can take that to the bank.

The film punches out its warped drama with amazing gusto and Clark is lethally assured: not Saint Maud really, but Saint Joan, a spectacular horror heroine.

What a strange confection White is – an opera of male agony and outrageously implausible picaresque adventure. Yet it succeeds amazingly on its own melodramatic terms.

What a mad and brilliant film it is: 1,000-degree proof Seventies cinema. [30th Anniversary Release]

Top Hat reflects a transatlantic kind of universe, the Brit dimension absorbed into American waspy class, and sweetened with some mannered comedy; this was a Hollywood that loved PG Wodehouse.

There is such superb compositional sense in the still life tableau shots and the almost archaeological sense of time, creating something deeply mysterious and unbearably sad.

A superbly elegant, enigmatic drama ... I was on the edge of my seat.

The film features an acting cameo from Siegel’s assistant and protege Sam Peckinpah, who also worked on the script, and is known for its high-octane pulp thrills. It should also be praised for elegant satire.