However, as with Dead Ringers, Cronenberg approaches a touchy concept with a mixture of icy tact and cinematic daring, always informing the wilfully perverse material with a penetrating intelligence and (almost subliminally) very black wit.

A giddily entertaining homage to female power that illuminates bold ambition in its stars and director alike, Hustlers is the kind of era-defining film that Hollywood didn’t know it needed.

Intelligent science-fiction sometimes seems an endangered species - too much physics and there's a risk of creating something cold and remote, too many explosions and get lost in the multiplex. Looper isn't perfect, but it pulls off the full Wizard Of Oz: it has a brain, courage and a heart.

It hardly rewrites the rulebook, but Warrior is a powerful, moving and brilliant sports-pic-cum-family drama. Like "The Fighter," but with kicking.

The kind of film that starts off with a climax and builds to a plateau of surrealist delirium that, one way or another, will have you shrieking.

In two-and-a-half hours, a decade of Spielberg’s own life flies by. An autopsy of a marriage and a homage to invention, it’s a bittersweet piece of joy.

Still a classic of the gangster genre, showing neither glorifying the life nor pulling it's punches.

Nickel Boys is a triumph. Its unique approach brings a new dimension to its source material, while amplifying the emotional resonance between the present and a horrifying past.

Unlike a number of director’s cuts, this version does embellish the original film. It won’t, however, win any converts. Fans should see it again, first-timers should believe the hype. Non-believers should suffer eternal damnation. [2000 re-release]

Heart-warming, funny, wise and profound. Not to be missed.

Cut it, print it. These are brutal executions, brilliantly executed. Director Park has said he wants No Other Choice to be his “masterpiece” and he may well have done it. Hopefully he won’t be jobless any time soon.

Gorgeous cinematography, a lilting score and near-faultless performances, under Wright’s assured direction, make this the first contender for next year’s Best Picture Oscar.

A triumph of pure cinema and wonderful visual storytelling from Chandor, who must now be considered the real deal, while Redford is sublime in what could well be the performance of his career.

An amazing achievement for a 'first-time' filmmaker, which measures up to the finest indies for performance and character-work, and the biggest blockbusters for jaw-dropping effects. And it has the year's best sex scene, too.

Superlative crime yarn adapted with precision and skill from the classic James M. Cain novel.

Really quite something: a rare remake that only augments and enriches the original. For Bill Nighy, meanwhile, it feels in every sense like the role of a lifetime.

The Thing is a peerless masterpiece of relentless suspense, retina-wrecking visual excess and outright, nihilistic terror, placing 12 men at an Antarctic station while a shapeshifter takes them over one by one.

Gripping throughout with frame upon frame of standout images and superb performances from the two leads.

A wonderfully stylish and witty movie classic.

Loud and ludicrous, The Jerk is a strong contender for the funniest film of all time.

One of modern American film’s most intelligent and provocative accounts of a nation’s political failings, and a near-perfect depiction of journalism at its purist and most inspired. To be more succinct, it is quite brilliant.

Uncompromising, intelligent and searing cinema. Along with The Assassination Of Jesse James... and No Country For Old Men, this is the best batch of Western-set dramas in decades. John Huston would have been proud.

Tense, kinetic, intelligent and real – as if Paul Greengrass had remade Vera Drake.

One of the most accomplished, influential and enjoyable films of the '70s.

The blend of Schrader's script, Scorsese's direction and De Niro's performance is both riveting and unnerving. A film that will stay with you forever.

An exhilarating fight-flick that, like its scrappy central character, is impossible not to root for.

Allen’s best film in years, astute, humane and shot through with keen observations on the state of the world. It may also, in its pondering the price of deceit and the pain of rebuilding a life from nothing, count as broad social allegory.

Measured in pace, yet thoroughly gripping and completely accessible. The title soft-sells the picture, but it's among the best of this or any year. And Manville should clear some shelf space for well-deserved awards.