Tom Huddleston

This isn’t quite tense or funny enough to become the masterpiece some Hawks lovers claim. But it is smart, incisive and often very funny.

It’s a film of stark, superbly judged and beautifully sustained contrasts, the soundtrack hopping confidently from Tammy Wynette to Chopin as Bobby and his waitress girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black) travel from the lusty, sun-baked south to the cerebral, rainswept north to pay final respects to Bobby’s dying father.

As a story about how hard it is to make your own way in the world, Kiki’s Delivery Service is truthful and scalpel-sharp. That it manages all this while remaining consistently funny, optimistic and exciting – even for little ones – is a mark of Miyazaki’s genius.

These young women have already witnessed enough horror to last a lifetime, and in this unforgiving society their lot seems unlikely to improve. A grim but necessary watch.

It doesn’t all work: The pace can feel a little slow, and there are points where Park tries to have his tasty feminist cake and eat it too. But mostly, this is smart, sumptuous and wonderfully indulgent.

Kore-eda’s insight is so unflinching, his affection for his characters so intimate and sure, that not a moment here feels wasted.

This is a provocative, intelligent movie for those with a strong emotional constitution.

The supporting cast is flawless, with a special mention owed to Brad Dourif as poor, doomed Billy Bibbit. But the script lacks the woozy, otherworldly subtlety of Kesey’s book, relying instead on pop psychology and finger-pointing: once again, it turns out women are to blame for pretty much everything.

Graced with a throbbing orchestral score from Philip Glass and John Bailey’s luminous photography, this is appropriately monumental filmmaking.

From the slam-bang direction to the relentless pace to the not-a-word-wasted dialogue and even the driving synth score, everything else about The Terminator just works.

William Friedkin’s full-throttle adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel works because it fuses the extreme and the everyday.

An enormously satisfying film: carefully observed and consistently compelling, it feels like an instant American classic, if a minor one.

The LEGO Movie is sheer joy: the script is witty, the satire surprisingly pointed and the animation tactile and imaginative.

It’s impossible adequately to describe the haunting intensity of It Follows: this is a film that makes a virtue of silence, that lives in the shadowy spaces between the splattery kill scenes that punctuate your average stalk-and-slasher.

For all its humanistic warmth and undoubted charm, Short Term 12 just never quite rings true.

The overall impression is one of unbridled enthusiasm on the part of the film’s makers, both for its predecessors and for the brave new universe Abrams and his crew are exploring.

Unique and intoxicating, an art movie that grips like a thriller.

Certain Women moves, as all Reichardt’s films do, at a languid pace, and a handful of characters – notably Williams’s – could have been a little more developed. But it's hard to recall a movie with such a precise, immersive sense of place, and the very specific mood that comes with it.

The word "personal" is bandied around a lot in film reviews, but it’s hard to think of a work that better fits the description than avant-garde icon Chantal Akerman’s intimate swansong No Home Movie.

It’s hard to say exactly what’s at fault here: the performances are flawless – Carell fully justifies his unlikely casting, while Ruffalo is as dependable as ever – and the script is astute, intimate and at times shocking. But there’s just no real life in the film.

Bowie’s performance is riveting, drawing on his history of mime to play a man who is almost, but not quite, one of us.

If Del Toro is pitching for an audience of 12-year-old boys (and we do mean boys: this is old-school macho), he’s done a bang-up job. Still, there are times when Pacific Rim could be the work of any jobbing Hollywood director – the warmth and idiosyncracy that characterises Del Toro’s finest work, from Pan’s Labyrinth to Hellboy 2, is absent.

Overall this is a stupendously entertaining movie, crammed with delights.

Overall this is an absolute pleasure. There are times when Waititi’s script borders on genius.

It’s disappointing when Starred Up begins to lapse into soapy cliché.

This is a tighter, smarter film than either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, and buried beneath all the blue-goo aliens and terrible punning is a heartfelt meditation on the perils and pleasures of nostalgia.

As an insight into the way families cope with adversity this is both razor-sharp and completely heartbreaking.

Abrahamson has pulled off something quietly remarkable: a study of morality which never feels like a treatise, a bracingly realistic film about teenagers which never becomes patronising and a gripping melodrama which swerves sentiment. He may also have unearthed a genuine star.