Tom Huddleston

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.

Built on fantasy stereotypes – friendly little folk, evil witches, misunderstood heroes, guys on horseback with bloody great swords – it nonetheless contains enough epic action, narrative momentum and spit-and-sawdust pre-CGI special effects to hold the attention.

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.

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.

Lifeforce is a near-impossible film to review, at once indescribably awful and hugely, brilliantly entertaining.

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

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.

Role Models isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, just polish it up a little. What emerges is a memorable slice of modern slapstick, with charm to spare and just a touch of soul.

The performances are, of course, magnificent: Webb owns her largely thankless role, while Oldman snarls, spits and staggers like he means it, maaan. But we’re never given a reason to care about their characters, beyond the fact they were famous.

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.

Over the course of three wild sequels, Coscarelli expanded his bizarre universe in a variety of imaginative and deliriously entertaining ways – but the original set the standard. [Remastered]

As a self-conscious exercise in kitsch graverobbing, ‘Viva’ succeeds through a combination of cultural nous and sheer aesthetic audacity.

The scene where Sam imparts his wisdom to young buck Bottoms may be the saddest, loveliest moment in 1970s American cinema. And that’s saying something.

There are plenty of movies which seem to have been made by madmen. Possession may be the only film in existence which is itself mad: unpredictable, horrific, its moments of terrifying lucidity only serving to highlight the staggering derangement at its core. Extreme but essential viewing.

The plot is impossibly dense and the characters – perhaps appropriately – feel like little more than cyphers, but for sheer mind-expanding sci-fi strangeness this is hard to beat.

At times deeply insightful, at others wholly crass, Rolling Thunder is a fascinating curio, the meeting point between realism and exploitation.

The Landlord succeeds thanks to terrific performances, political nous, flawless photography from Gordon Willis, a handful of sublimely witty moments and an overall sense of rebellious fun.

David Lean's wondrous romance, adapted from Noel Coward's story, is one of the most emotionally devastating movies of all time.

As befits both its tortuous hand-to-mouth genesis and the devastating conflict it reflects, this is a film of pure sensation, dazzling audiences with light and noise, laying bare the stark horror – and unimaginable thrill – of combat. And therein lies the true heart of darkness: if war is hell and heaven intertwined, where does morality fit in? And, in the final apocalyptic analysis, will any of it matter?

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

Eraserhead is a singular work of the imagination, a harrowing, heartbreaking plunge into the darkest recesses of the soul.

With some dire blue-screen effects, dizzying tonal instability and a total absence of suspense or originality, "Wolverine" is something of a disaster.

Terminator Salvation isn’t the gritty, futuristic blitzkrieg for which fans of the first two films have been salivating. It isn’t even the slick, entertaining Hollywood blockbuster most were realistically expecting. It is a shambolic, deafening, intelligence-insulting mess, a crushing failure on almost all counts.