A slight but mightily effective adrenaline rush of a movie, with powerful performances all round and precise direction from Kitty Green. Watch it on the big screen and allow it to properly get your heart pounding and palms sweating.

This looks, in retrospect, like nothing much more than a glossy soap passed off as serious drama.

Inevitably, there is a tacked-on quality here, yet Cousins’ flair for providing visual pleasure means that, like that first champagne cocktail of the night, The Next Generation bubbles with sparkling uplift.

Outstanding account of a pivotal moment in small-screen history.

Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker's script is tight, and Badham directs the whole thing with economy and pace but it's Matthew Broderick's film.

Even the excellent Gong has a tough time trying to twist her character into a tragic heroine, while the utter despair to which sympathetic characters are condemned suggests a significant point in Zhang's career, but does nothing to relieve the viewer's ennui.

Thoroughly charming, and thoroughly deserving of its cult status.

A Hitchcockian Poltergeist meets Single White Female, it's exactly as confused as that sounds, but just as intriguing. Stewart shows she’s now one of the most interesting actresses of her generation.

Superbly judging tonal shifts and juggling disparate storylines, this snapshot of a Refice street reveals the class, gender, racial and historical fissures in Brazilian society, while also making for riveting drama right down to the shocking sting in the tail.

Shannon Murphy’s debut film is a refreshing take on a familiar subgenre, offering a nuanced depiction of a family dealing with the worst-case scenario with humanity and sweetness.

Wonderful to look at, this is a more adult, more complex affair than its animated, and more entertaining, forebear. Still, it’s Disney’s best live-action adaptation yet.

As a spectacular war film with a powerful moral dimension, Zulu pre-dates Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan by more than three decades. Like the defence of Rorke's Drift itself, its legend grows with the passing of time.

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

Everything about this hard-hitting film is restrained, like a breath tightly held, and all the more powerful for it.

Noah Bamubach’s While We’re Young is the best Woody Allen film of 2015. A fast, funny, smart take on generational jealousy, with Ben Stiller and Adam Driver on great form.

In tackling homelessness with deep empathy, one of our most exciting young actors proves himself to be a bold new voice in British filmmaking. Leave some talent for the rest of us, Dickinson.

It's Newman's performance itself that really makes this film work and helps it truly get close to Lumet's own '12 Angry Men'.

Get this — Matthew McConaughey is currently the most exciting acting talent at work in movies. Next up, the simple business of a Christopher Nolan.

The most batshit music biopic since Todd Haynes did the Karen Carpenter story with Barbie dolls, Michael Gracey pulls off the biggest cinematic surprise of the year. An absolute blast. 

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

It sounds like a downer but A Single Man is exciting, emotionally alive filmmaking, a potent cocktail of style and substance. And Firth thoroughly deserves the Oscar.

It wouldn’t be like Martin Scorsese to pick up the tabs on a simple sequel, and this glossy, hard-spoken pool drama, a follow-on from The Hustler, never aligns to the simple organising principle of repeat value.

A Jamaican classic with an awesome OST.

A worthy addition to the canon of Iraq war films, The Messenger has a gentle humanity that creeps under your skin. Look out for a terrific Harrelson turn, too.

Woody's neuroses are still gloriously present, and the whole thing is made accessible by Herbert Ross' dynamic direction.

Occasionally slides into a breathless fan tribute, but nonetheless an affectionate and candid portrait of a troubled artist.

Acerbic, unexpected and quietly heart-warming without ever approaching sappy, this takes a no-nonsense approach to big issues - life, love and ageing - and never feels heavy-handed. We should all be so lucky in our grandmothers.

This is a suberbly structured thriller whose excellence is aided and abetted by a spirited cast.