Following the disappointing period dalliance of Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach's latest I, Daniel Blake is something of a return to form. It stands as a succinct and furious raging against the dying of the light, or more accurately the snuffing of the light by a privatised and punitive system more intent on lowering the figures than caring for those in need.

The extraordinary amount of footage, which moves from monochrome, to grainy colour, to vibrant turquoises as technology and time march on, is really a wonder to behold. If, wherever you are in the world, there’s the opportunity to see Playing with Sharks on the big screen, then you should, to fully experience this eye-opening, vivid documentary.

An ornately mounted story marked with tints of antiquarianism, The Lost City of Z is perhaps Gray's most accomplished film to date.

This is fan service elevated into an art form, transcending winking self-aggrandisement to become something of a reflection on the past eleven years, a chugging, tooting, spectacular train of a franchise, careering indefinitely forward.

The film’s displays of humour give away to harsher scenes of brutality and intense moments where rural calm is suddenly disrupted by mortar explosions and transformed landscapes dotted with corpses.

A nefarious misadventure that's technical prowess and heartbreaking lead performance belies its economical pedigree, Saulnier's farcical tale is punctuated with irregular scenes of dark, bumbling humour whilst a wanton disregard for the bellicose testosterone of similar tales successfully constructs a tense and naturally opaque mood that broods with the clammy tension of an impending storm.

Hooligan Sparrow is a chilling reminder of the extent of state repression and corruption in China.

Ex Machina exposes the insecurity of the male ego by showing his lust for creation as simply another strand in the patriarchal power game. The film's trajectory forms a thrilling, exciting corrective.

Despite a first half of great promise, the film is ultimately ground down by the endless suffering even as it bloats with a bizarre lurch into satirical fantasy.

Slaboshpitsky's The Tribe is gripping, tour de force cinema from its opening jab, and from there it continually forces you against the ropes before delivering a knockout punch with a gut-wrenching conclusion destined to leave audiences stunned.

After the profanity-laced Shakespearean barrage of Deadwood, Dewitt and Audiard’s Wild West is a more prosaic place, but it is also sharply intelligent, extremely funny and full of surprises.

Zootropolis is a real delight - an entertaining and endlessly inventive comedy and something with more insight than anyone could have anticipated.

To modern audiences the nostalgia and issues seem dated and trite. Whilst it touches on several interesting themes, Colin Welland's script only succeeds in establishing the tension of the two conflicting characters. He fails to truly engage with the issues at hand, and most surprising of all is how this sporting saga of triumph over adversity fails to ever uplift.

Its social reality – that of the emptying and decline of rural regions in Italy – is contemporary and vital, but there is something deeper and simpler at play here. In that simplicity, with its notes played purely, there is no need of distortion or abstraction to justify itself.

The film isn’t without hope, but it lifts the lid of an ugly truth and asks the tough questions needed.

Delighting in the ancient tradition of storytelling as a means of education and understanding as well as entertainment, Nora Twomey's The Breadwinner is a richly animated jewel.

The work bears the burden of Classical Hollywood, making it not only a film about two people decoupling, but a striking example of forms in combat, struggling for a dominant voice.