Peter Bradshaw

As with so many of Denis’ films, the point is to contrive an overwhelmingly powerful mood and moment, an almost physiological sensation, this one incubated in the vast, cold reaches of space. It throbbed and itched with me long after the film was over.

It is extremely pleasurable to watch, and shows every sign of having been extremely pleasurable to make.

There are some marvellous supporting performances. This film comes as close as possible to a distillation of pure happiness.

Peter Jackson has created a visually staggering thought experiment; an immersive deep-dive into what it was like for ordinary British soldiers on the western front.

It is a tremendously engaging story which does something that very few movies do: mention money. Something very palpable is at stake, the jeopardy is real and it’s a question of survival.

The movie's blazing energy is still astounding; the vérité street-scenes are terrific and Scorsese's pioneering use of popular music is genuinely thrilling.

One Battle After Another is at once serious and unserious, exciting and baffling, a tonal fusion sending that crazy fizz across the VistaVision screen – an acquired taste, yes, but addictive. The title itself hints at an unending culture war presented as a crazily extreme action movie with superbly managed car chases and a final, dreamlike and hypnotic succession of three cars through the undulating hills. And is the central paternity crisis triangle an image for an ownership dispute around the American melting-pot dream?

Blade Runner 2049 is a narcotic spectacle of eerie and pitiless vastness, by turns satirical, tragic and romantic.

Very few films can make you scared and excited at the same time. Just like the lighthouse beam, this is dazzling and dangerous.

This is a suspense classic that leaves teeth-marks.

Copa 71 is a revolutionary political parable that goes beyond football.

Fire at Sea is masterly film-making.

Something in its mandarin blankness and balletic vastness, and refusal to trade in the emollient dramatic forms of human interest and human sympathy. Kubrick leaves usual considerations behind with his readiness to imagine a post-human future.

By any standards, this would be an outstanding film, but for a debut it is remarkable.

The “fascist” staging could have been hackneyed, but Loncraine carries it off superbly as the showcase for action-thriller noir.

The co-directors created from Rumer Godden's novel an extraordinary melodrama of repressed love and Forsterian Englishness - or rather Irishness - coming unglued in the vertiginous landscape of South Asia.

This is an unmissable commentary on Hollywood's rejection of its silent past: a kind of Sobbin' in the Rain.

It’s a tremendous film that was ahead of its time on LGBT issues and, in some ways, is ahead of ours.

This is a pellucid and gentle film, made with the simplicity and grace of a children's tale and yet its humour, emotional clarity and directness speak directly to adults and children alike - and the pre-teen principals shoulder an adult burden of performance.

There’s plenty for nostalgists and completists to swoon over. . . . Such a pleasure.

Roman Polanski's sensational 1962 debut...is an example of how a superlative director makes a film from the simplest materials.

The law about movie characters needing to be sympathetic is defied in this horribly fascinating true-crime black comedy.

Hard to Be a God creates its own uncanny world: it is beautiful, brilliant and bizarre.

What an addictive romantic drama it is, mixing sentimentality with pure rapture.

The greatest ever making-of documentary.

Ray's language of cinema is a kind of miraculous vernacular, all his own. It has mystery, eroticism and delight.

Paul Greengrass and his cinematographer Barry Ackroyd have created an intestinally powerful and magnificent memorial to the passengers of that doomed flight. It is the film of the year. I needed to lie down in a darkened room afterwards. So will you.

An arrestingly bizarre experience.