Just missing out on top-tier Hansen-Løve, Bergman Island is beautifully played — especially by Krieps and Wasikowska — and retains all the hallmarks of her best work; an intelligent, personal, heartfelt treat.

A fly-on-the-wall look at the band that will thrill fans but may not convert too many non-believers.

Greta Gerwig delivers a new kind of ambitious and giddily entertaining blockbuster that boasts two definitive performances from actors already in their stride. Life after Barbie will simply never be the same again.

Jessie Buckley impresses again in the story of a woman who wants and needs so much more. A seemingly well-worn narrative becomes a more interesting look at the responsibilities and rights of being a mother with a dream.

The message is just as clear with Simpsonian antics -- if it ain't broke, don't make a movie…

You’ll think you know where this sun-baked serial-killer thriller is going, until you don’t. A nifty, chronologically crafty tale, fuelled by bravura acting by Willa Fitzgerald, it’s a small movie with high impact.

This story is emblematic of the passion, obsession and solitary poetry of surfing.

Bleak brilliance.

Room 237 captures the true nature of viewing, talking about and dissecting movies to the nth degree and it is infectious.

A metafictional work elevated into something new: deeply felt and true as a story about parental enigma, spectral remembrance and ingrained British repression.

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.

Pascale Ferran as the first female director to adapt this notorious novel absorbs her successful vision with a uniquely romantic vibe.

It could easily be twee twaddle, but A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood is a nuanced, formally playful delight, a perfectly pitched and played ode to goodness. All hail Marielle Heller.

This unconventional love story — which plays like a Richard Linklater film set in the Arctic circle — is a total charmer, and will have you reaching for an Interrail ticket immediately afterwards.

Lucky is a profound, wry, slip of a movie carried by Stanton’s moving performance. It is a fitting curtain call; one of America’s great character actors might just have saved his best for last.

Ultimately, Irma Vep doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions, but still provides plenty of scathing satire on the state of French cinema.

A heartfelt, wry and decidedly spry film.

As angry and unflinching a piece of documentary filmmaking as you'll see this year.

With a debut film, Katalin Varga, shot entirely in Hungarian, Strickland isn't one for the easy option. This excellent follow-up plunges into equally unusual terrain with similarly pleasing results

The only phoney note, ironically, comes from Miller's gaffe of enlisting retired Yorkshire biochemist Don Suddaby, extractor of the said oil, for a self-conscious appearance as himself. That aside, this is exhausting, intelligent and undeniably moving .

A successful mix of literary adaptation, meta-fictional discourse and inside-showbiz comedy. Both funny and clever.

Provocative, principled and richly detailed, this is compelling stuff. Emotionally it’s a little dry, but as brain-food, it’s absolutely invigorating.

This is a harsh, unsentimental science fiction film, though the performances suggest small surviving flames of empathy and yearning amid the tough, practical attitudes.

Despite the striking photography, this fascinating denunciation of 150 years of persecution and oppression lacks Guzmán's customary trenchancy and restraint.

A sad story, but well told, with respect for its subject and an eye for the Shakespearian tragedy in the tale.

There is true beauty in the realism at the heart of what could come across a fanciful movie plot, with its documentarian coolness of execution, the crisp rhythms of Zinnemann’s direction, we feels we are staring through a window into the shadowy recesses of history.

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.

It gives artistic types an easy ride but it’s a feast of rich writing and great acting. And if you’ve only ever seen Kristen Stewart in Twilight movies, she is in a different class here.