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.