Chock-full of terrific performances, Margin Call is the kind of gripping, grown-up film that these days is usually found on the small screen.

Dark, disturbing and difficult, this is a deep dive into a troubled headspace and never lets you leave. Ramsay is now four for four, one of our most exciting filmmakers. If she could not leave it so long next time, that’s just fine with us.

Garin’s performance is just one of the note-perfect elements in The Return -- unfussy acting, unhurried direction, sublime cinematography and low-key music -- which conspire to draw the audience into a deceptively simple story with numerous hidden depths.

Happy As Lazzaro is s-l-o-w and its narrative twist will alienate some. But this is deliberate, singular filmmaking, at once poetic and down-to-earth, from an unsung talent. Let’s be clear: Alice Rohrwacher should cherished.

They do make ’em like they used to -- a fresh blast of old-school sci-fi, bursting with ideas and a stellar turn from Rockwell.

A garish, gorgeous example of pop art at its finest.

To steal from Ali, this one floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

Shorta is a Molotov cocktail of a movie. For co-directors Ølholm and Hviid, it’s a Hollywood calling card. For the rest of us, it’s a tense actioner, anchored by powerful performances from its leads, who add layers to good cop/bad cop clichés.

DuVernay’s sweeping odyssey is an ambitious (if sometimes messy) spectacle. At its best, it holds a poignant power that provides plenty of food for thought — enough to linger long after the credits roll.

A lean, tough, thoughtful thriller with depth, Blue Ruin establishes Jeremy Saulnier as a promising indie auteur and Macon Blair as an unusual leading man.

A frank look at 21st century mores, this succeeds in saying new things about anxieties as old as the human race.

A unexpected pleasure to watch, disturbing for new parents, slightly silly but ever so enjoyable.

Funny, sad and horrifying. Anti-fundamentalist rather than anti-Christian, this deserves to preach to more than just the converted.

As spectacular and surprising as you would expect from Scott. Its spiritual uncertainty – and lack of triumphalism – perhaps robs it of a truly satisfying, cathartic conclusion, but also makes for a truly modern, thoughtful biblical blockbuster.

Scott's take on Napoleon is distinctively deadpan: a funny, idiosyncratic close-up of the man, rather than a broader, all-encompassing account.

Whatever you want to call Sick, it's anything but a piece of exploitative voyeurism, by turns sombre, hilarious, wince-inducing and inspiring.

Full of wit, intelligence and flair, once more Delpy has created a delightfully irresistible sort-of-romantic comedy.

It has lost none of its power: Scum is, in the final analysis, horrific.

A very strong debut by writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig deals with all the usual teenage concerns — dating, family, school — in a way that tries to go beyond genre cliché, with a heroine who is often unlikeable but always believable.

Director Hui shows a different side to Hong Kong cinema in a tender drama that's illuminated by the marvellous Ip.

The anxieties of a teenage girl weigh universally heavy. Burnham brings wisdom and immediacy to a generation raised online, his debut feature already cementing his presence as a remarkably sensitive filmmaker.

Both leads excel at showing a true feeling (be it love or lust) but both covered in the guilty angst that one will betray the other. Edge of your seat stuff.

A crowdpleaser that also tells an important story about showbiz, it’s fab. You’ll come out singing.

A typically poignant lifestory illuminated by strong turns from Dussollier and Azéma, Alain Resnais' latest is one to stir the brain as well as the heart.

More successful as a coming-of-age movie than a horror, It still ranks among the better Stephen King adaptations — no small praise indeed.

The reach of this avant-garde comic meltdown sometimes exceeds its grasp, but this is still a consistently jaw-dropping joyride through one man’s terrible, very bad, no good week.

Dumas’s classic novel finally gets an epic adaptation worthy of its scope, rendered in delicious French by its dangerously sexy cast. Gird your buckles because they’re about to get swashed.

Mesmerising, magical portrait of smalltown America, dominated by a performance from Paul Newman so outstanding it must surely make him front-runner to hoist the Best Actor statuette come Oscar night.