Ahead of the pack must be the winning duo of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, whose performances in director Stanley Donen’s masterpiece Charade is as intoxicating as a dry martini.

The directors’ regard Hatidze with reverence and respect, allowing her the space to feel the tragedy and confusion of her plight and to sit with her melancholy as her life is changed by forces she cannot control.

What stands out most in Siegel’s The Killers is its unfaltering commitment to pulp fiction.

It’s the committed turn from Day-Lewis and Hanif Kureishi’s socially-astute, Oscar-nominated screenplay that manages to compensate for the film’s technical shortcomings, alongside the (then) landmark casual representation of a gay relationship on screen.

John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film is a stately and moving depiction of the man’s capacity for dignity and improvement.

Through this absorbing, sometimes disturbing documentary, Spender reveals much about Italy's underworld, as well as the people's passion for spectacle, their machismo, pride and their rivalry.

The Club is an enthralling parable that's calibrated to shock and amuse in equal measure.

After Yang is a moving, subtle and grounded piece of science fiction that doesn’t necessarily get to the core, but certainly hits the heart.

The Brood sees the undisputed king of body horror honing his visceral eye, whilst at the same time offering up several truly iconic images that have quite clearly endured.

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

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.

Sharing its name with a 1950 Joan Crawford film, The Damned Don’t Cry has thematic resonance with its namesake as a study of women’s vulnerability in a patriarchal society and the criminalising of marginalised lives.

The Fits is slimmed down but Holmer achieves a great deal with economical, nuanced storytelling where no image or sound is without meaning.

Youssef himself with his crooked smile and exuberant enthusiasm comes across as someone who in a normal state of affairs would be just another amiably slick joker. But in this context he takes on the bravery and the bearing of a hero.

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.

Drawing from the style of Chinese ink brush paintings, and aided by the rain that pours constantly, the film has a watery, fluid look and texture, each exquisite frame a moving painting.

Happy End may be something of a greatest hits mixtape, but it's also an arresting offering.

Lilting looks set to linger on in the memory of those who seek it out for weeks, months and perhaps even years to come.

This Is Congo is an angry film, yet one which is never blinded by its anger. McCabe offers no solutions – the UN Peacekeeping Force are rounded on at one point by furious locals – and no grounds for optimism. Yet even in its attempts to understand and to communicate that understanding, there is a defiance against the easy fallback of despair.

An expertly handled and brilliantly performed feel-good comedy with an original twist.

If the overall plot is a little two-dimensional, a little ‘tell me something I don’t know’ in its mining of upper-middle-class callousness, it’s hard to fault the magnetic craft of this exquisitely unpleasant picture, like a broiling jacuzzi of hallucinatory sex and violence that you might briefly dip a toe into, if you dare.

Verbinski doesn't skimp on thrills, mind you. There are jump scares galore, acts of literally penetrating violence and the denouement goes for full-on operatic perversity. Fans of Gothic horror - treat yourself and take the cure.

For much of its brisk eighty-two minutes running time, Emelie (2015) is a devilishly good thriller of notably transgressive bent, giving the slasher and home invasion formats a rare matriarchal focus.

Full to the brim with sharp wit, emotional sincerity and overflowing with love, Supernova sees the star power of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci align.

Too Late to Die Young is Castillo’s remarkable endeavour to relive memories, sensations and lived moments from a time and place she has long since left behind.

While it hardly pushes the envelope in terms of developing Marvel's homogenous narrative conveyor-belt, it does do so in other areas, suggesting that the MCU can see beyond the confines of its first two phases.

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

To follow-up a successful film is a daring achievement in itself, but to surpass it is something else, and that’s what DuBois does here.