Fortunately, Boyhood concludes on a note of such unbridled optimism, Linklater is defying you to leave the auditorium without a grin on your face. Indeed, few will after experiencing this astonishing cinematic treasure.

Notorious is a phenomenally rich experience whether it is on the first or the hundredth viewing. Hitchcock’s most emotionally nuanced and most adult depiction of relationships feels as vital as ever.

Playtime attacks the good taste of understanding by making you understand the importance of both absence and presence that coexists in a modern shared public space and a gradually disappearing private space.

Touch of Evil proceeds with one of the most celebrated long-takes in screen history. The sequence is a marvel of technical virtuosity and staged action. From the very start, Orson Welles’s grubby and sweaty noir classic has us in its grip with a gloriously devised piece of showmanship emblematic of the director’s audaciously talented spirit.

Bold in ambition and delicate in execution, it will break your heart and then piece it back together.

Intolerance may not be perfect, but with such gargantuan spectacle and timeless mastery of form on show, it is nigh on impossible not to be swept up by this centruy-spanning extravanganza and its medium-shaping impact.

Truly one of the most emotionally devastating films to have ever graced the big screen, Au Hasard Balthazar is an exemplary example of Bresson’s art that transcends its symbolic reverie to Christianity to become an eloquent prayer for the potential power of cinema to truly move us.

As though North by Northwest boasts some of Hitchcock’s most ambitious and memorable set pieces it is also one his most terrifically funny, playful moving pictures, cutting just the right line between suspense and belly laughs.

It’s the film’s humanity which is at the core of its genius.

It was the film that introduced the world at large to master director Akira Kurosawa and his frequent, infinitely watchable star Toshiro Mifune.

With The Passion of Joan of Arc, the world arguably saw the very best of both Dreyer and Joan – whilst also something approaching the very worst of humanity.

It remains a marvel of a modern ethos, particularly in the behaviour of its principal characters: whether it’s the total lack of jealousy or its cinematic style that encompasses newsreel footage, photographic stills and freeze frames.

A haunting, Aesop-like parable of good and evil, The Night of the Hunter is well worthy of classic status thanks to its wonderfully realised cast of Southern players, Walter Schumann’s dexterous original score and Cortez’s enrapturing, expressionistic visuals.

Rather than confront the guilt related to the sins of the past it paints over them in vivid colours, hoping the viewer will collude in its melodramatic muddying of the water.

Kubrick’s film is the most accurate and timeless portrayal of a world facing mutually assured nuclear destruction, and paradoxically accomplishes this feat not through a realistic study but through the blackest surrealism.

As a fictionalised account of what was once described as the worst European genocide in the post-war period, Quo Vadis, Aida? is wrenching and vital in its bitter grief. As a study of political and diplomatic inertia in the face of contemporary global human tragedies, it could not be more urgent.

Parasite is quite simply a supreme feat of film-making, a tense and hilarious jewel box of a film that draws you deeper and deeper into its wicked, absurdist satire.

Heralded as one of the most blisteringly influential films of all time, Eisenstein’s propaganda film has left an indelible scar on the establishment of film as art.

It is a tale of phenomenal creatives from Williams to Kazan and Brando and Leigh.

Although 12 Angry Men dismays at human weakness, it is fundamentally an optimistic film, celebrating reason and basic human decency in equal measure. In an era when both seem in short supply, Lumet’s film is a reminder that there is never a bad time to stand up for what is right.

Alfonso Cuarón returns to his childhood for inspiration with the meticulously beautiful Roma, an autobiographical black and white thank you letter full of warmth and love.

It’s a beautiful piece of celluloid that is worthy of its army of plaudits.

Overshadowed at the time and since, Summer of Soul brings the Harlem Cultural Festival and a pivotal point in American history into the light.

What shapes Breathless as such an influential and long lasting ‘classic’ of French cinema is Godard’s ferocious delivery of simplistic subject matter, his direction of iconic actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and his all-out gallantry in creating the first of many films that broke all the rules, both in his homeland and overseas.

With 12 Years a Slave, McQueen has not only created his finest work to date, but also a potential modern masterpiece.

Comedy is used to undercut the most horribly tragic of moments...given the sadness all the more pathos and offering glimpses of hope in a narrative resistant to catharsis.

It is the masterful ways in which Altman weaves doubt, hard truths, and holds up a mirror to the hypocrisies of contemporary America, that elevates his 1975 film to be one of the decade’s greatest cinematic achievements.

An unmitigated masterpiece from start to finish, Carné’s epic love story through Parisian theatreland feels as fresh and effervescent today as it must have done on its initial release, brimming with perfectly-sculpted heroes, villains and wildly imaginative set-pieces.

The Producers is so effusively inappropriate and so damned funny it is one of the highest examples of low comedy.

It’s all over in the blink of an eye, but Lovers Rock is a party you won’t ever forget.

Revolving around the omnipresent theme of grief (and adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s short story), the film composes a ghostly melancholic reflection on this profound human emotion.

Its enigmatic lustre encourages you to take another look, like Marianne, to try and see what’s really in front of you.

Although past and current race relations are starkly drawn, Peck's film never feels bleak. This is mainly due to Baldwin's charismatic screen presence, his passion for reasoned argument and the power of his rhetoric.

Wells’ debut is a frankly astonishing work which will leave a lasting impression.

Rocks is a faultlessly authentic study of contemporary young life in the inner city.

While Tarantino's recent output combines a strong craftsmanship and a deep reverence to their genre forefathers, it's Pulp Fiction which still wields that adrenalised needle of originality straight into the heart.

Collective is a brilliant documentary in its own right, but in this time of pandemic, scandal and democratic upheaval it is also the year’s most important.

His Girl Friday is satire of the highest order.

A beautiful entity, near flawless in design, any talk of accolades certainly seems justified.

This film is not just about Franklin, but also the communities that have inspired, guided and celebrated her music.

The director's technical mastery finally transcends craft to become art and, as a result, this is his best film to date.

Haigh's latest is an impressive study of a couple haunted by their past. and a potent reminder both of the fragility of love and the need to keep communication open at all times.

Scorsese’s direction always keeps us uncomfortably close to Travis’ subjectivity, whether we’re prowling night time Manhattan or gazing into a glass of Alka-Seltzer until the whole world disappears into the healing hiss.

Fox and Bogarde bounce sharp dialogue back and forth and are captivating as the psychosexual tension increases between them. Through subtle visual clues Losey artfully blurs sexual boundaries to create one of cinema’s most memorable relationships.

In arguably a career-topping performance, Timothy Spall plays the cantankerous painter as a complex, grunting, snarling and utterly single-minded creature.

With The Irishman, Scorsese offers us his first truly autumnal film – a picture about age’s slow, inevitable decline. There are the signature dolly shots, the period pop music, the bursts of brutality, but there is also a frail melancholy we have rarely glimpsed in even his statelier films.

All of this is achieved with the signature levels of emotional intelligence that Pixar are renowned for. The level of detail with which they have created this world is staggering, with each aspect of the psyche carefully thought out.

Meet Me in St. Louis, made when Garland was still on a career high from the phenomenal success of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, despite being a product of its time still manages to feel as fresh as when it first aired over sixty years ago.

Wilder’s supreme skill at balancing light with dark is almost unsurpassed, and is the perfect fit for the chameleon-like talents of both Lemmon and MacLaine.

Past Lives, a film about love, friendship and fate, is an astonishing debut from South Korean-Canadian director Celine Song, and a devastatingly romantic one at that.

Capturing the agony and ecstasy of young love, Call Me by Your Name is a major addition to the queer cinema canon - a deeply felt movie that's bittersweet, tender and true.

Like the best film noir, with which this in undoubtedly in dialogue, Trenque Lauquen is a film about affect and textural cohesion moreso than logic and catharsis.

Argentinian director Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen is an enigmatic, semi-absurdist puzzle that defies the allure of narrative solution in favour of the liberation of loose ends.

At the heart of Marriage Story are two career-best performances from Driver and Johansson. There is sensitivity, wit and intelligence in abundance, and in one barnstorming scene the kind of raw emotional nudity that’s rarely captured on screen: it’s the painful core of the movie which the laughter might ease but can’t erase.

For all its postmodern smarts, La La Land has a heart as big as its Cinemascope screen. This is primarily down to the two leads, without their performances it would only be an empty, if impressive, exercise in dizzying technical skill and style.

In the cyclical, ethereal narrative of this inventive, tender story of love and loss, one of the finest filmmakers of our time spins a spellbinding magical web.

A lovingly observed, pitch perfect coming-of-age comedy, Gerwig's warm, astute account of the end of adolescence is a stunning solo debut.

What Kore-eda wants to convey to his audience is that good and bad are never absolute, and that good and bad themselves have a reality above and beyond that of man-made laws.

There are numerous delights for the patient and the two leads give prize-worthy performances but at just under three hours this is one drawn-out gag that almost outstays its welcome.

Uncut Gems is not only one of the tightest, tensest American thrillers of recent years but also a fine addition to the New York-set movie canon.

Featuring a breakthrough lead turn from Oscar Isaac as a struggling folk singer, the Coens have returned to the high watermark of such classic efforts as Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink.

Cited as a key influence by such contemporary directorial talents as Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson, this most epic of dramas has lost almost none of its bite, wit and aesthetic beauty over the past 69 years, and stands proudly as one of the greatest cinematic works from the legendary filmmaking duo.

This film will draw you in and demand a second viewing.

Sherpa tells of a contemporary act of defiance which would undoubtedly bring a characteristic grin to the face of the forefather of modern climbing.

Hard to Be a God is a cinematic behemoth, an unshakable monochrome nightmare of squelching bodily discharges that inhabits a world so noxious you can almost smell the pungent deterioration of humanity as it spews forth from the screen.

Panahi’s courageousness as an agitator is matched only by his inventiveness as a filmmaker.

One More Time with Feeling is a bold poem in itself, a portrait of the artist struggling to understand the essentially incomprehensible.

Detached, hypnotic and often oblique, the dreamlike Memoria is sure to enchant and mystify in equal measure.

It's triumph is its determined optimism, even if it admits that is probably a fantasy. It's a tale of the fallen who, like Moonee's favourite tree, keeps on growing regardless.

Sissako's film is at turns funny, poetic and deeply moving.

We rarely see films that are so loaded in meaning and symbolism yet subdued in action. It’s a treat to be sure, one that can be relished seventy years on with renewed fervour.

Endlessly thought-provoking, the disturbing nature of this quite incredible work cultivates a long-lasting sense of unease in the viewer and achieves what all good documentaries aim to do – it remains firmly lodged in you mind and refuses to loose its terrible grip.

Glazer’s film is richly daring. It is both meticulous and brutal; aloof and involved; ferocious and cool. It is poetry and cinema, but it is also guilty and it knows that it is.

Four decades after its release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre still justifies its place in the pantheon of all-time horror greats.

Zvyagintsev's pessimism is leavened both by his comedy and his sense of beauty. Mikhail Krichman's cinematography captures the sublime grandeur of the landscape against which the nasty, brutish and short lives are played out.

It’s multi-layered and beautifully observed – as much about the creative process as it is about obsessive love. It’s a glorious affirmation of how experience feeds artistic endeavour.

Although Goodfellas doesn’t aspire to the grandeur of Coppola’s mob, Scorsese’s New Yorkers have their own vitality, even if – or perhaps because – the threat of violence is never far away.

Oppenheimer's first film maintained a passive detachment, allowing the killers to re-enact their own atrocities and metaphorically hang themselves with their own words. The Look of Silence takes a far harder line, probing the killers more deeply and confronting them in an attempt to shake some sense of remorse out of them.

Stylistically it is an indisputable triumph.

Drive My Car is not most films, its story told in minute, passing details that cannot help but grip the attention to the point that the emotional tension and catharsis feel so effortless that hours seem to pass in an instant. That very little happens in the way of narrative action speaks to how brilliantly Hamaguchi harnesses the emotions of his characters into compelling drama.

Saint Omer is a deeply intellectual film – Medea is referenced several times as a frame of understanding – but it’s also heartfelt. There is a compassion to the dispassion: an empathy.

Positing the question of whether the principal objective of incarceration is punishment, rehabilitation or undue persecution, Garrett Bradley’s Time is another vital addition to a growing canon of films to pointedly critique the US legal and prison systems’ unjust treatment of people of colour.

Three Colours: White brings Kieślowski back to his Polish roots and explores issues of equality through nationality and the fragile dynamic of marriage.

Son of Saul is not simply a good film, it feels like an urgent and important one, a warning from history.

Blurring traditional boundaries of documentary with rich, beautiful animation in many shades and colours, the Danish director has a great deal invested in telling this story.

It's as if Wiseman has taken his cue from the old style librarians and has wanted to give a portrait of a community but without the inevitable noise that goes with it, issuing one long "shhhhhhhhh".

At 82 minutes, this is a brisk but hugely powerful work that is cinema of the oppressed par excellence.

Goldin’s career and Poitras’ latest asserts the primacy of the artist as a participant in the world. Something which will make us see the world differently starting from the very walls from which the art might hang: the rooms in which the films are seen.

Hit the Road is damned near to being a masterpiece – if it isn’t simply one already. There are scenes of broad comedy, musical sequences and a wholly tragic episode that plays out in a long wide-shot. The wonderful cast inhabit their roles so fully it’s hard to believe this is not a bona fide family.

Jackson and his entire production team have produced a film which is both a form of cultural monument and a monumental cinematic achievement.

Throughout, Ozu strikes a touchingly profound note whilst imbuing proceedings with his usual playfulness.

At the film’s centre are three irresistable performances.

By utilising a Herzogian blend of existentialist narration with the addition of numerous well-structured interviews (both academic and candid), Guzmán opens up the floor - and skies - to a frank and painfully honest discourse on Chile's past, present and future.

Though the film tries for ironic detachment – twelve chapters with a prologue and epilogue – it ultimately can’t wink away its own heartfelt compassion and sympathy, even as it refuses to provide any trite solutions.

A joyous, hazy and nostalgia-inflected romantic drama.

What we are left with instead is a story of astonishing tenderness; a study of love as a tempering salve to the sublime of history’s passing.

Nothing is too much, and whilst there is the danger that some will find the unremitting havoc tiresome, Miller's endless innovation keeps things fresh despite the surrounding wasteland.

Combining the director’s key interests in dysfunctional family units, social stratification and the seething undercurrent of violence inherent in all positions of power, Coppola’s mafia sequel not only succeeded in dwarfing its still terrific predecessor in terms of drama and scope, but also brought together De Niro and Pacino on screen for the first (but thankfully not the last) time.