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.

A bravura documentary which balances the personal and the political as it peers into the First Lebanon War, its animated approach never feeling like a novelty. Astonishing, unforgettable: you have to see it.

An emotionally rich documentary that wows both as a technical achievement and an unforgettable portrait of a terrible period of 20th century history.

At once a frenzied fairy tale and a tender-hearted character study, Anora is an intoxicating pairing of director and star. Baker’s unique, humanistic approach to filmmaking is as riveting and rewarding as ever.

Weird, dirty but accessible, The Favourite is a perfectly performed, thrillingly made period picture that morphs before your very eyes. Come for the top-drawer hi-jinx; stay for a moving look at human foibles and frailties.

Halloween remains about as distilled, raw an experience in terror as is ever likely to be committed to celluloid.

Consistently compelling, capturing all the ambiguity and tension of the book.

The fun and fear, the silliness and heartbreak, are taken to vivid extremes by Walt's entwining of high art and what snobs will always deride as Disney-kitsch.

Damn, damn funny.

Insightful, revelatory and profound, Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary combines riveting interviews, archive footage and - yes - state-of-the-art photographic effects to offer a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine issue.

A truly insightful art film that still manages to be easy-going and unpretentious.

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

An intelligent, engagingly honest study of love lost and, just maybe, regained.

Enigmatic, absorbing and so much more alive than any pottery behind glass in a museum, this is an exquisitely crafted, grown-up Indiana Jones steeped in its own distinctive magic.

A truthful, tender masterpiece about how coming of age has no age-limit — love, for others and for ourselves, is what makes every risk and loss worthwhile. Rarely has a story like this been told as beautifully.

This MGM classic remains the most faithful and powerful adaptation of the great Dickens novel.

Looser and funnier than his recent efforts, sharper and more formally assured than his earliest films, this is Paul Thomas Anderson operating at full capacity. A master at work.

Little can come close to captivating the grandeur and epic quality of William Wyler's magnificent bum numb-er.

A finely-acted, sensitively-written tale.

This is still the definitive version of Charles Dickens' atmospheric and occasionally creepy classic.

First Cow is archetypal Kelly Reichardt, slow, small and perfectly formed, elevated by stellar but understated performances from John Magaro and Orion Lee.

Max’s re-enfranchisement is a triumph of barking-mad imagination, jaw-dropping action, crackpot humour, and acting in the face of a hurricane.

Keeping the dialogue minimal and the action high on the agenda, life in Paris' underworld proves to be surprisingly yet suitably violent and threatening.

A vivid reworking of Daniel Woodrell's novel that brings the book's conflicted heroine to searing life in a piece of unhurried filmmaking too rarely seen these days.

Fascinating, funny, wicked and to the point, this is an excellent film about a week every Briton over the age of 15 will remember vividly.

It’s hard to think of another recent drama that feels so brazenly personal, so yearning, so naked and vulnerable. It feels like forgiveness, for Haigh himself, and maybe for others. He’s letting it all out. These characters are a lifeline for him, too.

And with supporting roles from the likes of Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall and Lee Strasberg, to say nothing of Roger Corman and Harry Dean Stanton in bit parts, this is nothing short of magisterial.

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

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.

It's an hilarious, touching reminder that, sometimes, ordinary folk have the world's most interesting lives.

Paul Thomas Anderson does gothic romance in prestige Brit picture style, eliciting a worthy final performance from Daniel Day-Lewis that’s admirably matched by newcomer Vicky Krieps.

A magnificent comic performance and a film of genial hilarity.

A mysterious army of enemies, with no suggested motive and, what's worse, they're your friendly garden crows. Clamps itself to your recollection and doesn't let go.

Joanna Hogg delivers an object lesson in how to deliver a follow-up: deeper, funnier, more imaginative than its predecessor, The Souvenir Part II is a filmmaker working at the peak of her powers.

Superb dialogue, beautifully played and hummingly atmospheric, this is sexy, poignant and tense with some surpising humour...only the plot shows cracks...

Impassioned, sensitively acted and supersized in scope, Steve McQueen’s tribute to the Mangrove Nine provides a pulsating Black British history lesson — and kicks off his Small Axe anthology with an urgent bang.

Looks like 2004 has given birth to a new superhero franchise after all.

Packed with cultural references and sly satire, this is also a hugely entertaining comic romp.

A modern French crime epic where the smudges and crossings out do not diminish the passages of great dreamlike power.

A masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a whole new level. A film that you don’t merely watch, but must reckon with.

As the anger simmers, Kubrick’s camera remains detached, patrolling the trenches, pacing the courtroom. Terse and remorseless it may be, but the final flourish is perhaps the most fitting gracenote in all of cinema.

Pawlikowski is in complete control of the form, but this is no austere piece of work — he even finds time for a few good jokes. Accessible, humane and compassionate: what a treat this is.

This lesser known Kurosawa feature is worth a look, with outstanding performances and stunning cinematography.

The year’s most pleasant cinematic surprise. Once has enough heart, wit, verve and sheer songwriting genius to ensure you’ll see it far more times than its title suggests.

Less a black comedy than an indispensable reinvention of the so-called trauma plot, this grounded post-MeToo story is navigated with a light sprinkling of humour and the utmost grace.

Quiet, thoughtful and deeply human, this is one of Jarmusch’s finest and features Adam Driver’s best performance yet — although you do risk coming out with a new affection for modernist poetry.

This is not a film about boxing. This is a film about the human condition and about cinema itself.

It's easy to see why this has consistently entertained generations of audiences.

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

Jarecki's film brilliantly illustrates the fallibility of memory, the slippery nature of 'facts' and even people's invention of events that may never have taken place.

Alec Guinness shines in this hilarious British comedy.

An extremely entertaining, brilliantly acted, highly diverting film which — like all hustles — delivers less than it promises. Still, it’s worth being taken for the ride.

A bleak and moving drama with reflective performance from Jack Nicolson.

The monochrome animation is stark and beautiful, and Marjane’s an appealing narrator. Often hilarious, sometimes tragic, this may be low-tech, but it’s high-class.

Day-Lewis and Pfeifer are on top form with Ryder giving the performance of her career.

A simultaneuosly touching and harrowing experience that puts the audience directly in the shoes of one man's experience of Vietnam.

Not particularly funny, or even very sunny, but it is Charlie Kaufman’s first whole screenplay, and as wonderful as it is weird.

A painful and poignant excoriation of the American dream.

Sum up the plot and it sounds interminable. Watch the film and it will spit you out elated, exhausted and cheering for an encore.

Already fêted, von Donnersmarck’s debut sets a closely focused, personal story against a more expansive backdrop of politics and power games -- a moving, enlightening tale of recent times.

This is not a film about narrative but loneliness and life on the road, which it captures with a mysterious brilliance.

This is how action movies should be made.

Its skating sequences are impressive, but it’s the intimate examinations of fracturing friendships and emerging adulthood that make Minding The Gap surprisingly resonant.

This magnificent, often anarchic pastiche of Russian literature’s portentous habits with a side order in Bergmanesque death wallowing actually finds Allen at his silliest. Which also means it is extraordinarily clever silliness, with designs deliberately stolen from Chaplin, Keaton and the Marx Brothers. It is film that explores comedy’s infinite variety via the medium of the existential philosophy of those big Russian sagas slumped in history like sulking teenagers.

With this touching story about a boy learning to play chess, Zaillian cuts an impressive debut, brining out strong performances from his cast most notably the young Pomeranc who is genuinely moving a the chess genius, even when he's not talking we are able to know what he's thinking, a rarity amongst child actors.

Even if you’ve skipped the Dardennes’ work until now, this is a talking-point movie — and an outstanding lead performance — you need to see. It’s a rare film of unforced simplicity that will stick with you for a long time. And it’s honest right to its perfectly judged ending.

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.

For Sama powerfully mixes the personal and the political to thought-provoking, emotional ends. The result is one of the best documentaries of 2019.

A shining example of everything Hollywood falling into place, and a masterpiece of cinema.

Magnificent examination of the criminal mind and Cagney's finest moment.

Subtle and multi-layered film-making with compelling performances.

Martin Scorsese’s take on NYC puts a hip spin on Joe Minion’s cleverly constructed nightmare.

The people do the talking in this rage-fuelled doc and only the stone hearted will fail to be moved by the resilience of the affected and the inaction of their government.

Absurd, outrageous, gross, disturbing, insightful, and so funny it’ll burst half the blood vessels in your face.

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

Kubrick's superb version of William Thackery's first novel is meticulous and philosophically stimulating but it can leave some audiences unmoved on an emotional level.

Both a vehicle for Awkwafina’s formidable talents and an incredibly charming ensemble piece. If there’s any justice, it’ll be remembered when it comes to award-scattering season.

Josh Safdie follows brother Benny’s The Smashing Machine with his own sports biopic, of sorts. This uncut gem dazzles, from its spotlit table-tennis contests to its dark portrait of American dreams.

Unique, beautiful and endlessly fascinating. It really is a work of art.

Lavish pirate adventure that launched Errol Flynn onto 1930's screens and ensured that buckles would be swashed for a good few years to follow.

Hollywood over-indulgence at its best.

Although peppered with colourful, sharply drawn characters, this is Stewart's movie, instantly loveable as a small town dreamer who sacrifices everything for others. His journey to despair and back warms the cockles like little else. Enjoy it in a cinema so you can sob among others.

An excellent debut from director Hytner. The real treat, though, is Hawthorne who, whether lecturing his family on regal responsibility or taking a dump in front of the PM, gives what is undoubtedly the performance of his career.

A gripping study of treachery, identity and survival.

Subtle and unflinching, this is genuine and charming.

Full of fascinating behavioural insights and moments that are both hilarious and adorable, this studied treatise on the personality and emotionality of domestic animals should provide plentiful food for thought.