Tom Huddleston

As much as any surrealist arthouse flick, Texas Chain Saw feels like a nightmare made real, an inescapable but entirely authentic vision of pure hell.

Vertov’s experimental essay proclaims its ‘complete separation from the language of theatre and literature’ in the opening titles. What follows is cinema in its purest form: movement, sensation, action and visual trickery.

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.

It’s Carpenter’s direction that makes Halloween tick, and resulted in it becoming (still, possibly) the most successful indie film ever made.

It’s a more self-consciously artful film than its predecessor, an admirable spectacle rather than an entrancing human story. But as a work of pure, imaginative cinema, it comes close to genius.

At once an investigation, a polemic and, in its final sequences, a tribute to human endurance. A remarkable film.

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.

A grippingly violent parable, a touching, tragic romance and – thanks to legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and an unprecedented attention to historical detail – quite simply one of the most beautiful, immersive films ever made.

What 12 Years a Slave is really interested in is creating an honest, believable experience: in culture and context, place and people, soil and skin. The result can, at times, be alienating.

It’s the most haunted and dreamlike of all American films, a gothic backwoods ramble with the Devil at its heels.

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.

This is arguably the high-water mark of Hollywood’s love affair with the infinitely slippery possibilities of the English language.

Jennifer Peedom’s film is stunningly photographed (how could it not be?) and brilliantly sly: she gives the tour guides and their rich, self-absorbed charges just enough rope to hang themselves, and they duly oblige. But it’s also a heartfelt tribute to the resilience of a people.

Rarely has a film used London’s landmarks so cannily, and rarely has screen Shakespeare been so sharp and satisfying.

It may lack the authority-baiting, satire-with-a-purpose edge of Life of Brian, but Holy Grail is the looser, sillier, ultimately funnier film, packed with actual goofy laughs rather than hey-I-get-that cleverness.

The claustrophobic setting and semi-improvised tone might suggest something closer to sitcom than cinema (had Jarmusch seen Porridge?), but Robby Müller’s stately monochrome photography single-handedly lifts it into the realm of Proper Art. It’s a sad and beautiful world indeed.

Best of all is Steven Spielberg’s direction: the camera moves like a predatory animal, gliding eerily across the surface of the vast Atlantic, creating sequences of almost unbearable suspense.

It’s one of the most insightful films ever made about the British class system.

Barry Lyndon is best known for its photography – Kubrick borrowed a low-light camera from Nasa so he could shoot in candlelight – and it is uniquely, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. But there’s much more to it: this is a story of identity, and the lack of it. And it’s fascinating.

Lang’s direction is never heavy-handed. Instead, he glories in the magic-weaving possibilities of cinema, from gorgeous visual effects – there’s a lovely flying carpet sequence – to expressionist sets, dreamy dissolves and postmodern looks-to-camera. This one will haunt your dreams.

It’s Robinson’s mastery of tone that makes Withnail endure

This is quite simply one of the saddest movies ever made, a tale of loss, grief and absolute loneliness, an unflinching stare into the darkest moral abyss.

This is the director’s most vivid, most emotional and humane film, and perhaps his best.

Charles Crichton’s direction is subtle but inventive – check out the snaking, near-single-take opening in a Rio cabana – and the performances, writing and plotting are faultless.

A subversive and psychologically rigorous take on RL Stevenson’s tale of severed souls, ‘Dr Jekyll’ combines gothic horror, aristocratic romance and madcap Freudian psychodrama into a dizzying, exhilirating brew.

[A] calm, reflective, gorgeously uneventful slice of nostalgic romance.