Audacious, retro, funny and heartfelt, La La Land is the latest great musical for people who don’t like musicals – and will slap a mile-wide smile across the most miserable of faces.

Ruinously prioritising chic over content, this is intellectually and stylistically shallow when it should have been dynamic and compelling.

In a month of "A Monster Calls" and "Manchester By The Sea," Collateral Beauty serves up a hollow portrait of grief. Despite its quality cast and slick visuals, the result is sombre and saccharine rather than uplifting.

Ruinously prioritising chic over content, this is intellectually and stylistically shallow when it should have been dynamic and compelling.

Vibrantly recreating a seminal period in Jodorowsky's personal and artistic development, this bullishly played saga has enough quirky detail, audacious incident and visual panache to sweep the storyline through its less persuasive phases.

The true story of a revered general instigating one of the most daring ploys in military history might seem like the perfect vehicle for Liam Neeson to return to more serious fare, but even he cannot breathe life into some truly terrible dialogue. It’s left to the Korean actors to save the day.

Objectively ridiculous but mostly fun, this is better than you could have predicted given the title but squarely aimed at a young and undiscerning audience.

The film’s bleak, Coen-esque sense of isolation, cold brutality and clutch of confident performances...make for a decent and engaging story that culminates in an enjoyably nasty conclusion.

The frenetic action is Assassin’s Creed’s saving grace. Inventively choreographed and beautifully executed, its game-inspired brand of wushu-meets-parkour delivers some genuinely awe-inducing feats.

Filled with striking and scarringly disconcerting images of vandalised nature, satanic mills and redundant modernity, this is a mournful tribute to a maligned migrant workforce and a sobering reminder that nothing comes cheap.

Passengers is as surprisingly traditional as it is undeniably effective. A timeless romance wedded to a space-age survival thriller, it may be a curious coupling but Tyldum’s Turing follow-up is a journey well worth taking.

The ultimate Star Wars fan film, it’s short on whimsy but when it gets going there’s enough risk-taking and spectacle to bode well for future standalones.

Aided by a dialled-down Gordon-Levitt, Stone skilfully demystifies one of the Obama era’s most compelling stories. It’s a welcome return to form for a cinematic sleeping giant.

An unapologetic, impassioned biopic, The Birth Of A Nation begins quietly but ends in a howl of rage. It might not be perfect, but it’s powerful enough to stay with you.

Russell Tovey gives a layered, career-best performance in an intense interior drama that never quite shakes its theatrical origins.

A touch twee at times, but the use of classic and original animation is admirable, while Owen emerges as the king of sidekicks.

Breathing new life into the overfamiliar terrain of the serial killer, Irish director Billy O’Brien here both successfully reintroduces Max Records to the world, and elicits Christopher Lloyd’s best performance in a long time. His film deserves cult classic status at the very least.

Less showy than The Last Temptation Of Christ, more gripping than Kundun, the third part of Scorsese’s unofficial ‘religious’ trilogy is beautifully made, staggeringly ambitious and utterly compelling.

Bolt’s golden era may be too recent and the sponsors too dominant for any real warts to be included, but his charm and sheer physical wonder make this a compelling watch regardless.

In a year of Bad Moms, Bad Santas and Bad Neighbours, this is, essentially, Bad Employees: another irresponsible-adults comedy, another great cast, and another erratic script. Catch it for McKinnon.

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.

Eastwood’s message that no good deed goes unpunished feels misplaced, but for the crash sequences and Hanks’ turn it’s worthwhile. But for goodness’ sake, don’t watch it on a plane.

It may be predictable, but Bleed For This still grabs with its astonishing against-all-odds true story, and its belter of a central performance from Miles Teller.

A Molotov cocktail of laughs and anger, Chi-Raq is a powerful state of a nation address. The result is the most creatively exciting Lee has been in a decade.

A photocopy of a photocopy, this could perhaps be the nadir of the wave of decade-too-late comedy sequels. Only Thornton completists, and hopeless nostalgists, need apply.

Quiet, thoughtful and deeply human, this is one of Jarmusch’s finest and features Adam Driver’s best performance yet — although you do risk coming out with a new affection for modernist poetry.

It glides romantically along on the surface while political turmoil boils away underneath. Its plea for tolerance isn’t subtle, but it’s a story that deserves to be told.

Two-and-a-half hours long, but never slow, The Wailing takes its time to burrow under your skin, but by the time it weaves its dark, potent spell, it leaves you with a lingering, unshakeable sense of dread that Hollywood horror films can rarely muster.