A profound, detail-perfect and soulful slice of American family life, with some of the year’s most sincere performances to date.

Middle-earth's got its mojo back. A huge improvement on the previous installment, this takes our adventurers into uncharted territory and delivers spectacle by the ton.

A story even more delicate and moving than Sciamma’s last effort, this takes an unusual and thoughtful look at girlhood, motherhood and friendship. It’s enchanting.

This is smart, silky, sensitive, and funny old-school movie magic.

Sharp, dark, satirical and bone-rattlingly thrilling, with a career-peak turn from Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s this year’s "Drive."

For those who delight in the Coens' divinely abstract take on reality, this is pure nirvana (cross Blood Simple with Raising Arizona if you must), yet beyond the hysterical black comedy, scattered violence and groovy dialogue, there sounds the same song to human goodness which enriched Fargo.

Arguably Woody's finest, now neurotic intellectuals have a film they can cherish.

While it may not be perfect on a technical level, dramatically it’s a blow-your-socks-off triumph. Be moved. Very, very moved.

Subtle, savage and insightful but with such a big heart it is as moving as it is informative about the value of making art that moves.

Impossible to recommend as a great Friday night out, yet agonisingly vital as thought-urging cinema.

With its genuinely cute hero and appealing storyline, Dumbo's exactly right for younger children but not too milk-soppy for anyone over eight. Indispensible.

Shimmering with awards potential, Leigh’s glorious picture is a hilarious, confounding, wholehearted and dazzlingly performed portrait of an artist as an ageing man.

With luck The Hurt Locker's recent awards haul should draw audiences to this equally intense and actually more brilliant depiction of war. It marks the arrival of a sensational new talent behind the camera and is a debut that deserves to be seen.

As bold as the original Blade Runner and even more beautiful (especially if you see it in IMAX). Visually immaculate, swirling with themes as heart-rending as they are mind-twisting, 2049 is, without doubt, a good year. And one of 2017’s best.

The City Of Lost Children is as great a film as you thought "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was when you were five years old.

Pixar returns with a great big power-chord of a movie — heart-pumping, resonant, and positively harmonious.

Every bit as enchanting as you remember. Molto, molto bene.

Sexual tension hangs in the air as the wind blows and native drums beat, but it's on a visual level that the film excels.

Visceral and intensely moving, this film feels like something you’d stumble across on TV in the small hours and never forget. It might herald a new era for queer cinema.

A charming road movie that develops into a full-blown study of life and roots, offering a beautiful insight into the way families migrate and change.

Argue that von Trier's latest is theatre and not cinema. But at least acknowledge that Dogville, in a didactic and politicised stage tradition, is a great play that shows a deep understanding of human beings as they really are.

Altogether, this is as fine a piece of craftsmanship as one could expect of Eastwood, with Hackman and I Freeman's performances standing out, and given the sombre tone there are entertaining surprises and even some good laughs to be had.

Brady Corbet’s seismic drama reaches for the sky as it surveys the soul of a man and a nation. There will be Oscars.

The comparisons are inevitable, so let's get them out of the way. Hero is a better film than "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Terrific. Top shelf talent at the top of their game, working immediately before they would change Hollywood.

There's a huge amount of style in this picture, but also a huge amount of substance underpinning it.

The most original film of 2021, Annette is a ride like no other, a spellbinding waltz in a storm. See it for truly hypnotic filmmaking, a clutch of great songs and Adam Driver at his most magnetic.

A haunting and moving tribute to the Australians who sacrificed their lives in WWI against not the Germans but the Turks at the lesser sung battle of Gallipoli from the assured hand of Peter Weir.

Think the blazing joys of "Chariots Of Fire" where the race is to the end of a sentence. Can it be that the British are coming?

More than a glimpse into a photographer’s work, All The Beauty cuts to the bone with its incandescent celebration of life and condemnation of those who threaten it. Art and activism are one and the same.

It's heartfelt, hilarious and a highly satisfying adaptation of the book. You don't have to be a geek to adore it; you just have to remember being young. But one word of caution: Hollywood, don't try to make a hundred of these. It won't work.

The greatest laugh-out-loud comedy of the 80s.

Epic performances in a movie that seethes with atmosphere.

Just perfect. Script, character, animation....this manages to break free of the yoke of 'children's movie' to simply be one of the best movies of the 90's, full-stop.

An often brilliant '50s-throwback character drama that never feels nostalgic, with terrific central performances and a luminous, unforgettable visual beauty.

A movie that could only have been produced by the 1930s studio system. Absolutely spectacular.

Unlike its newly trim director, Kong does boast some flab around the middle but by the final reel there’s little doubt that what could have been Jackson’s folly is a triumph, the kind of romantic action spectacle that makes the big screen silver and provides box-office gold. Puts the prime in primate.

Monumental stuff: a story about the deadly legacy of America’s colonial sins, both vast and intimate in scope. Exceptional filmmaking, by an exceptional filmmaker.

A subtle criqiue of the main character that contains some astonishing set pieces.

The Keep wears its crap bits proudly on it's sleeve, its qualities are more hidden and emerge only once you've watched it, dismissed it and then found that it's atmosphere refuses to disperse.

It was the complete nightmare that invented the "summer blockbuster", launched the genius on a global scale and delivered an astonishingly effective thriller built on a very primal level: fear.

Matching its blockbuster scale and spectacle with the smarts of a great, grown-up thriller, Captain America: Civil War is Marvel Studios’ finest film yet.

Superb performances and a compelling script have made this film a strange mix of Oscar-winner and Cult Classic.

There is simply nothing like it out there: profound, idiosyncratic, complex, sincere and magical; a confirmation that cinema can aspire to art.

Key to its success - along with its vivid characters and brilliant performances - is the snappy pace throughout. Non-stop gags, invention, twists and comic incident flow, as Joe and Jerry - sexy Curtis and screamingly funny Lemmon - elude mob boss George Raft by wriggling into an all-girl jazz band, with Josephine and Daphne’s legendary drag act taking in amorous adventures, seductive deceptions and madcap pursuits.

Inspired, innovative, stunning, with unforgettable performances and images, this is up there with the great screen Shakespeares. The playwright surely would be thrilled with it in its full-blooded vigour.

Beautiful, funny, timely and tender, this is the American arthouse movie of the year.

Stark but utterly compelling, this chilling take on Macbeth is a visually stunning tour de force. It’s as good as you’d expect from this cast and crew, which is saying something.

Make a date to catch this on the big screen and be rewarded with pure magic.

An absolute must.

It’s taken a long time getting here from across the Pond, but some things are worth waiting for. A wonderful, witty and weird spin on an old favourite, which seems destined to become a classic itself.

TÁR is a masterwork. A gripping, grown-up movie superbly orchestrated by Todd Field and perfectly played by a virtuoso, career-best Cate Blanchett. 158 minutes rarely flies by so quickly.

What makes Freddy truly terrifying, and an inspired invention on Craven's part, is that he exists not in the real world but in the shadowy realm of dreams.

It’s all about heart - not that the spectacle falters; this is the finest popular entertainment since the Rings trilogy closed. Superman doesn’t fly - he soars.

If you want only one Astaire-Rogers musical, Top Hat is obligatory for Astaire at his most debonair with Irving Berlin's title number and Cheek to Cheek in this screwball confused identities plot.

By putting technology on trial as the chief parasite causing modern malaise, but fusing it with a melodrama about love, Bonello has created a wholly original work that pulses with prescience.

The final act of The Great Escape is a masterfully sustained piece of action and tension as the various escapees struggle for freedom via train, bicycle, motorbike, row boat and hitchhiking. The Great Escape should always be seen. It reminds us of a history that is all too quickly forgotten.

The gorgeous backdrop of the film makes the violence and darkness even more disturbing - but this is more than just a horror film. There's real substance in themes, performances and John Boorman's superb direction.

The best sports movie for years, as it's not about sport at all. Forget fears of jingoistic grandstanding, this is an un-American all-American tale that deserves attention.

Part body-swap comedy, part long-distance romance, part... something else. If you only see one Japanese animated feature this year, see this one, and see it more than once.

Utterly compelling - Sean Penn is a powerhouse in support - and with a railway station set - piece in which De Palma actually betters what was his previously Untouchable effort.

One Fine Morning is Mia Hansen-Løve on tip top form, drawing a fantastic lead performance from a never-better Léa Seydoux. Some flicks need a bearded assassin or ghostface killer to create drama. Hansen-Løve just needs the stuff of real life.

Damn, damn funny.

A beguiling and often brutal look at the life of a donkey, this hijacks your heart, your mind, your ears and your eyes from start to finish.

Linklater’s beautiful film is an extraordinary achievement — tender, funny, wise and wistful, full of warmth and humanity.

As a metaphor for England at the dawn of the 70s, The Italian Job is a hard one to top.

A beautifully murky, hard-edged thriller. Quite simply, one of the best films of the year.

Utterly absorbing, extremely smart and - considering this is a sad, shabby, drably grey-green world of obsessives, misfits, misdirection, disillusionment, self-delusion and treachery - quite beautifully executed.

Anchored by two of the most natural, committed performances you’ll ever see, Blue Is The Warmest Colour is the most moving love story of the year.

Foster is simply fantastic as the tough Sarah, unshakeable in her belief that justice has not been done and that she has a right to demand it. McGillis, from a slow start, builds beautifully and by the time the action has switched to the courtroom, she has shed her starchy persona for a true advocate's passion.

What it's really about is taking a second chance to make good on old regrets and dead hopes. Never mind the baseball, this is one for the heart, made beautifully.

Remember your first time with Hard Boiled? Die Hard? This is how it's done - a clean, hard, constant hit of adrenalin. If it's not the best action movie of the year, we'll eat a fridge.

A fascinating film that is by turns fascinating and mysterious.

Inside Llewyn Davis throbs with melancholy, hunches under heavy skies, revels in music history's unsexiest scene and unapologetically leaves you dangling. It is also beautiful, heartfelt and utterly enthralling.

If you only ever see one silent film, this is the one it should be. A masterpiece.

Storytelling doesn't get much better than this.

A hugely accomplished horror achievement, and a significant step up from Barbarian: tense, sad, hilarious, unsettling, ridiculously entertaining, and ultimately oddly uplifting.

A mesmerising, wondrous example of animation’s potential; a thoughtful allegory about ecocide and death; and an adorable ode to four-legged (and two-legged) friends. No ebbs here: Flow is the real deal.

Clouzot achieves an analysis of the human condition at least as bleak as Huston's The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre but without the grandstanding speeches and with more subtle performances.

A whimsical but optimistic tale of mistaken identity, it starred the Material Girl as the cheekily irresistible Susan, and turned Rosanna Arquette (repressed housewife Roberta) into a star.

A thumpingly good ode to friendship, hope, wit, wiles and wisdom, brimming with crackling characters and topped with the most twisteroo of twists since "The Crying Game."

Fans can mouth the words of Grant's big speeches along with him, relishing every viperish turn of phrase...this is and always will be a perfect dark comedy and a student staple.

Manages to capture the pure heart and spirit of this comic book Americana.

Wow! It may not be art or good taste, but throbbing melodrama doesn't come with more conviction. Even to those usually turned off by the tough Crawford, Mildred is compelling.

Astonishing. The definitive take on a monumental moment in history — without ever losing sight of the man underneath the visor.

A monumentally successful Spider-instalment which pulls off a tricky and ambitious narrative trick with all the grace of a balcony-top backflip. At the risk of getting cheesy, it won't just make you cheer, it'll make you want to hug your friends, too.

It's one of the most highly-wrought (indeed, overwrought) films ever made, with art direction, editing, sound effects, weird camera angles and lighting orchestrated to fill every frame with hints of the unsettling.

No ceremonious life lessons here — Booksmart lives in a euphoric moment of unapologetic youth that knows what it deserves. Cherish it, revisit the time capsule of our boisterously ambitious era endlessly.

What drew the crowds back in 1939 and what has kept them coming is not the film's simmering subtexts but the absolutely fantastic ambush sequence as the stage thunders across the salt flats of Monument Valley. With this, Ford transformed the western.

Intelligent and moving depiction of the futility of war with a superb script and mesmerising performances from all.