Michael Haneke's Palme D'Or winner is uncomfortable, uncompromising, unflinching... and utterly unmissable. Old age may not be a reality you wish to confront, but you must see this film.

A vibrant and vivid documentary masterwork, DiG! will have you celebrating independent filmmaking while lamenting the state of independent music-making.

The comedy is never indulged at the expense of the plot, which flies off in genuinely unexpected directions, culminating in a boundlessly inventive funfair chase sequence.

Arguably the best British gangster movie ever made.

A scintillating piece of filmmaking, the kind of movie you look forward to seeing again even as you're watching it, and an extraordinary response to both the Dogs-Is-Overrated brigade and the He'll-Never-Top-His-Debut sceptics.

It was Roman Polanski's genius, however, that made the film not merely an intelligent and intricate narrative but a great, disturbing vision.

This is Spielberg operating at his peak - an exceptionally made, provocative and vital film for our times.

The year's most fascinating and frightening doc so far, The Imposter delves far beneath the hysterical tabloid headlines.

Marmaladen with gloriously silly jokes, pitch-perfect performances and incidental detail, this is a warm, witty and wondrously inventive great big bear-hug of a movie.

Gilliam's dystopian epic remains among his best, blending his trademark visual inventiveness with a vicious brand of social satire. Unique and essential.

Rarely has a film bared itself to simple majesty...it feels epic yet runs barely over and hour and a half. [22 Oct. 1997]

Faultless, freewheeling-and very funny.

Tight as a drum, glamorous and exquisitely funny, this one should earn them (Coens) enough cash to make five more offbeat minor masterpieces like "The Man Who Wasn't There" -- and the Coens deserve that as much as we do.

21 Grams strives for greatness, and that's precisely what it achieves.

Spartacus' merry rabble swarms across country to face a Roman army that, seen from a distance, resembles either a group of ants moving in perfect formation or living chessboard squares marching in order — an unbeatable, fascist machine. It's a breathtaking moment, which forces you to realise that Kubrick (before CGI) had to command extras as rigidly as Crassus runs Rome.

Displaying a more light-hearted and impressionistic hand than usual, Steve McQueen’s second Small Axe film is a woozy, musical fever dream with wit, sexiness and one unforgettable extended singalong.

A wonderful salute to British decency and a touching portrait of a friendship that bridges national boundaries.

A film that’s at once light, joyful and emotionally devastating, with deeply affecting central performances. A full-hearted romantic masterpiece.

Of course, Scorsese delivers a stunning, gangster flick but The Irishman is so much more, a melancholy eulogy for growing old and losing your humanity. Savour every one of its 209 minutes, you won’t regret it.

A tight plot that's enriched by wonderfully crafted characters that each have their own key weaknesses.

Great effects for its time and some incredible performances makes this a true cinema classic.

Visually, this is an exquisitely composed film, and it teems with curiosities and compassion. If on occasion the story seems to wander, it arrives at an enchanting destination.

For a kids film this is pleasingly dark with Gilliam delivering as much classical fairy tale as knockabout comedy.

Alec Guinness shines in this hilarious British comedy.

An intense mix of horror, thriller and domestic drama, this is exquisite film making.

The director left France during the German Occupation and, many critics would argue, his work never reached the same heights again. But, even with its immediate contemporary relevance softened, this film alone is enough to seal his reputation, as its playful love games, satirical bite and technical marvels refuse to diminish.

Gregg Toland captures the open spaces and big skies of rural America, while the normally conservative Ford puts forward a sympathetic but radical plea for workers' rights and freedom for the people.

Savagely witty on backstage life and audaciously edited, Jazz stands alongside Cabaret as the best “musical” of the last 20 years.

Cleverly wrought and expertly played crime thriller.

With physics-defying, thunderous action, heart-wringing emotion and an astonishing performance from DiCaprio, Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to an undiscovered country.

Possibly Lean's most complicated movie, Kwai is a towering work.

Delightful comedy romance with a clutch of note-perfect performances.

Working as a profound meditation on karma, predestination and guilt and a proper scary movie, this is near career-best work from all involved. Be warned: this is tough stuff.

Violent, poetic, gripping, thrilling and blackly funny: that’ll be the Coens doing what they do best then. Now with added humanity.

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

So intense you’ll want to scarper but so riveting you can’t leave, Sirāt is an assault on the senses, mind and emotions. If only all movies took swings this bold.

Wonderfully complex but warmly human, Bergman's drama is one of his very best.

Meticulously constructed, beautifully played and poignant.

An extraordinary blend of personal reflection and inspired craft, Flee is a harrowing child’s-eye adventure that lends lyricism to the plight of migrants while showing there’s always a new way to make a documentary.

Pixar has raised the animation bar again, with its most musical — and arguably most magical — film yet. If this is the afterlife we’re all headed to, don’t fear the reaper.

Another great, landmark American film of the '70s.

Sonically flawless, authentically textured and deep-rooted in cultural significance, Summer Of Soul succeeds magnificently in capturing the scale, spiritual resonance and, yes, soul of the Harlem Cultural Festival. It will not be forgotten this time.

Captivating and essential viewing.

The best blockbuster of the summer and the most accomplished thriller since, well, Supremacy. This is the payoff Bourne fans have been waiting for and the standard to which future blockbusters should be held.

To produce a coherent film from Martel's tricky novel would be achievement enough, but Ang Lee has extracted something beautiful, wise and, at times, miraculous.

Intelligent and challenging: Mann's crime epic could take two viewings to fully absorb, but it's worth every devoted minute.

Entertaining, energetic and unfailingly smart, this is theatre at the highest level, performed by a cast without a weak link. You can’t say no to this.

Well, even if it is essentially four hours about a selfish, silly cow, it's impeccably well made, and should be seen by anyone with even a passing interest in romance or movies.

From The Godfather to Heat, the stamp of The Wild Bunch is self-evident. Italian director Carlo Carlei summed up the debt owed to the film and its director when he said, "There is a chain of inspiration like The Bible... Everything comes from Peckinpah."

Grim, gruelling but beautifully shot, this is intelligent, sophisticated horror.

Leone makes the borders of the frame feel limitless, his camera moves striking out unpredictably as if he could barely tame his vision. Ennio Moriconne’s indelible score added a wild swagger to this oddball tale of a lone guman conniving plan to set two gangs of killers against one another.

There are theme-park rides; there is cinema; there are sacred love poems to take with you for the rest of your life. Thank you for giving us the last one, Céline Sciamma.

A compelling, adult period thriller, with an Oscar-assured performance from Angelina Jolie.

A well-warranted remastering of his Aussie new wave classic.

Kurosawa is always worth a look but this is a particular classic that has influenced so much to come, it's almost essential.

Across The Spider-Verse cranks every dial to 11, and somehow doesn’t collapse in on itself. Visually astonishing, emotionally powerful, narratively propulsive — it’s another masterpiece.

In a film tracing the endless battles between style and substance, Brooks delivers both in abundance.

This is not just a treatise on post-colonialism and class. Sembène boldly uses his female characters to comment on Senegal's chauvinist patriarchy.

Its faults - sketchy narrative, overblown abstraction - are counterbalanced by its gripping engagement between man and machine, and its rhapsodic wonder at heaven and earth and the infinite beyond.

A visceral, unique, utterly f**ked-up experience that demands to be seen on the big screen, Midsommar is the horror movie to beat in 2019. Caution: contains distressing amounts of folk music.

Drawing on mythology and body horror, Annihilation is an intelligent film that asks big questions and refuses to provide easy answers. Sci-fi at its best.

The best zombie-ish apocalypse in years. Sennia Nanua is a major discovery, but it’s the dense social commentary and moral dilemmas that will haunt you.

Powerful, intelligent and surprisingly entertaining.

Cruel comedy with a delicious light touch.

Shot in stunning black-and-white, Mank delivers Hollywood in a multitude of greys. Built on a towering performance by Gary Oldman, it’s smart, sophisticated, by turns thrilling and difficult, and amongst Fincher’s best.

A ridiculously entertaining, perfectly paced, ultra-violent cinematic rush that kicks the places other movies struggle to reach.

Demonstrating that the greatest political evil is indifference, this appeal to a world on the verge of war has lost none of its relevance.

The chassis may look familiar but there is a very different engine driving Furiosa from that of Fury Road: it’s a rich, sprawling epic that only strengthens and deepens the Max-mythology. It shall ride eternal!

Alice Diop’s documentarian approach to the courtroom drama is fresh and urgent, consistently commanding attention to the women as they speak and listen. A philosophical discourse delivered with astonishing clarity.

This feels like history-in-the-making, as both a fresh insight into the interior lives of historical figures and a snapshot of a future filmmaking great just getting started.

Friedkin's hand-held documentary style was the perfect vehicle for the film's pumped-up verite.

A remarkable ensemble of performers unite for this combustible, timely chamber-piece that hails the return of Polley as an ambitious and empirical filmmaker.

A monumental thriller, which vividly captures its world’s specifics and calibrates its snaky plot for maximum nail-bitability. Also easily the best film to ever extensively feature Adam Sandler yelling at a TV.

Humane and harrowing, highly recommended. This one will stay with you.

A genre-defying film. Its visual splendour belies its tough, surface-level subject matter, while the performances pull us deep below that surface with their soulful naturalism.

Brutal and brilliant.

One of the strongest, most effective horror films of recent years — with awards-quality lead work from Essie Davis, and a brilliantly designed new monster who could well become the break-out spook archetype of the decade.

A transcendent debut for South Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song, this romantic drama is a masterclass in slow, simmering storytelling. It will stay with you, maybe even into your next life.

Ignored for a long time, this film is now impossible to ignore. Mitchum is magnetic.

A psychologically merciless sequel, everything here is as it should be: deeper, scarier, funnier. Muschietti in particular has stepped up, skilfully guiding us through a rollicking funhouse. It is obscenely entertaining.

An otherworldly tale of childhood and a definitive work of imagination.

An ambitious, provocative swing, Nope feels like that increasingly rare beast: an original blockbuster. Unspooling a horrific parody of Hollywood’s hubris, it’s a crowd-pleaser that wonders about the cost of pleasing a crowd.

Much more fun than its stuffy "Greatest Film Ever Made" tag suggests, with a literate script, stylish direction, a great song and cinema's most romantic couple in Bogie and Bergman.

With such a strong cast, the film almost turns into an ensemble film instead of a star vehicle for Stewart in his first of many collaborations with Mann. An Archetypal Western with the required cowboys, gunfights and damsels in distress, it has become an all time favourite.

Whale's erudite genius brings it all together. He sculpts every nuance of self-parody, social satire, horror, humour, wit and whimsy into a dazzling whole, keeping every one of his fantastical plates spinning until the tragic, inevitable finale.

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

It's a slight tale, of course, and incredibly short, but the characters and songs are pretty much perfect viewing time and again.

One of Woody's most aesthetically gorgeous films as well as his classic love-hate letter to the city of his soul.

DiCaprio's raw performance helps elevate what could have been just another man-versus-nature drama.

Achingly evocative of a time when Hollywood had the courage to invest in complex and morally ambiguous films and an indisputable masterpiece of American cinema. [26 May 2003]

Great songs, great set pieces and solid performances in this colourful and infectiously enjoyable musical.

With cinemas dominated by underwhelming blockbusters and formulaic rom-coms, it’s easy to become disillusioned with the state of the movies. Thank the almighty, then, for Lost In Translation, which in 102 wondrous minutes will restore your faith in the power of the medium.

Still one of the most thrilling and thoroughly entertaining of all musicals.

A sort of Romeo And Juliet with systemic racism replacing the family feud, this is romantic and infuriating, hopeful and despairing. A sensory, desperately emotional experience for lovers and fighters alike.

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

Gothically shot in black and white and numerous shots that have influenced the next generation of directors, this is a classic, no matter how comfortable it is to watch.

The film not only lives up to its "Increase The Peace" subtitle but by refusing to overtly moralise puts its concerns across with astonishing impact.

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