As with all of Farhadi's films there's a frailty behind his characters, with their insecurities and moral dilemmas bubbling to the surface as the director slowly raises the temperature in this pressure cooker of domestic strife. Nervous editing and sinuous cinematography also give the impression that Farhadi is choreographing his stars rather than directing them.

Its honest and forthright depiction of mental illness, combined with Nicholson’s tour-de-force bull in a china shop performance, mean that it has lost none of its power to provoke and entertain in the four decades since its release.

The total effect of these sequences is the feeling of hanging out with Dylan and his entourage. This is perhaps Don’t Look Back‘s greatest trick – convincing its audience that the Dylan we see here is anything other than a column of air: elusive, shifting and perpetually enigmatic.

While the film rarely approaches the existential gut punch of Toy Story 3’s conclusion, the various answers each of our heroes arrive at are among the most moving of the quartet.

On the Record is at once a heartbreaking account of the survival of a group of courageous women, an analysis of the structural and cultural intersections between racism and misogyny, and an indictment of an industry happy to ignore and condone sexual violence.

Its emotional structure, reconstructing Katia and Maurice’s marriage and their shared passion for exploding mountains, feels far more intuitive and lyrical than its linear narrative structure might suggest. In this, Fire of Love is more portraiture than storytelling.

For all the moral degradation of its characters, Graduation is uncompromising in its vision of the cost of parental responsibility.

Using comedy to chase away the despair of modern life, The Other Side of Hope is a thoroughly satisfying and distinctively lovable film.

Over the years, Phoenix has given us some of the most memorable portraits of dark flawed men from Commodus to Johnny Cash. Here, he is excellent, utterly convincing as a man who has been hammered by the world and so has decided to hammer it back.

It's an offbeat narrative, and it demands patience, but it's so worth the wait in the final moments of the film, proving to be a graceful examination of love found and lost.

Genre film or not, Davis’ depiction of profound grief is tremendously effective, elicited by McQueen’s audacious direction.

Mercier has a presence about him that’s unshakable.

Bombach’s camera captures Murad’s extreme courage, her dignity, humility and sorrow – she is wise beyond her years and the weight of her loss hangs heavily on her.

We all know how this story ends, but in this fable of astronomic ambition it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Snowpiercer evolves steadily, growing richer with every step and slowly feeding us morsels of information - enriching this ludicrous premise with enough magic and wonder to suspend our disbelief entirely.

Featuring a cavalcade of colourful characters, lively merriment and a wit and charm like no other, Jour de Fête marks a spectacularly well fashioned introduction to Tati’s old-fashioned and playful sense of humour.

Weiner may now regret allowing such intimate things to be filmed - indeed he has publicly said that he won't be watching the film - but Kriegman and co-director Steinberg have crafted a hugely lively and compelling portrait.

Rian Johnson’s film is the real deal, a bold, risky venture unafraid to tell its own story, freed from the weight of nostalgia and formula.

Tsai's Stray Dogs is a masterpiece of social-realism, a distinctive and beguiling study of society's displaced and marginalised that plays to the beat of its own drum and refuses to conform to cinema's own commodification.

For fans of samurai cinema, 13 Assassins ranks right up there with Yôji Yamada's The Twilight Samurai (2002) and Takeshi Kitano's The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003) as one of the finer additions to the sub-genre in recent years.

Following the freewheeling day to day life of dogs living on the streets of Istanbul, the initial novelty and intrigue of this extraordinary documentary broadens further to a profound meditation on how mankind treats our so-called best friends, and one another.

De Palma is a timely reminder of one of cinema's most infuriating yet entertaining characters.

With Custody, Legrand has created a family drama that plays out as social realism, but it is as intense as a thriller and, with no generic get outs, far more terrifying than Kubrick's The Shining.

Under the Shadow is not only perfectly paced, the storytelling and plotting is emotionally gripping. The director also uses setting and location, composition and framing like a master of horror.

The Forbidden Room (2015) is Maddin's aesthetic nearing critical mass, a whimsical, genre-spanning opus that demonstrates the totality of his enigmatic style.

Network is an outstanding satire that has become more rather than less relevant with each passing year. It is bitingly funny, whip smart and as mad as hell.

The sumptuous colours, outstanding choreography and toe-tapping tunes are nothing but first-rate.

With The Postman's White Nights, Konchalovsky offers up an intimate and moving pastoral.