In Tran Anh Hung’s seventh feature, a passion for food becomes a conduit to exploring an appreciation for the beauty and mystery of existence — as well as telling a delicate, complicated love story.

Bouquets all round: Stephen Frears goes broad in Florence Foster Jenkins, and the appeal should be wide.

It’s particularly perceptive when it comes to the ethics of using real lives as material, and the question of the legitimacy of emotional bonds if one party is hiding essential truths about themselves.

This Quebecois romantic comedy is as sharp and perceptive as it is funny.

It’s as cosy as Mr Rogers’ trademark zip-up cardigan, but the sweetness of this film about the beloved US children’s television personality is tempered by the inventive eccentricity of its approach.

While this is a familiar story and backdrop, its tender, empathetic storytelling is elevated by handsome cinematography and heartfelt performances.

Mockingjay — Part 2 proves to be the most satisfying, gripping and emotional film in the franchise, resolving Katniss Everdeen’s odyssey with tense action sequences and a well-earned poignancy.

Watergate is a fascinating film that both draws disturbing parallels and offers the opposition encouragement.

Late Fame is a deliciously acidic examination of the thin line between creative aspiration and pretentious poseurdom.

The sincerity of Rental Family’s characters, the Tokyo location and a narrative playfulness more than make up for the film’s less complex threads.

Robustly entertaining while carrying the weight of impossible audience expectations, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a fascinating, often satisfying mixture of rollicking mythmaking and fan service.

A potent emotional charge, very contemporary eco-consciousness, and film-making that at its best fairly sizzles in its strangeness mark out EO as an animal film that stands defiantly on its own hooves.

As is often the case with this writer-director, Gray’s film has a dim view of the American Dream but, if some of the script’s contours are familiar, Paper Tiger’s quiet intensity and growing sibling tension make it a compelling experience.

Told with raw emotion and lurid violence, it transforms elements of his life story into a disturbing, eye-opening coming of age drama.

Packed with dazzling sets and effects, and touching on multiple genres and styles, it is a sometimes exhausting ride – especially when we’re struggling to engage with a changing cast of characters rooted in Chinese places, history, legend and religion. But it’s also a memorable and exhilarating one.

The most enjoyable film yet from a director whose conceptual seriousness has often seemed daunting.

The fourth fiction feature from Kleber Mendonça Filho is a sweat-saturated riot of a movie: a dual-timeline thriller powered by the kind of anarchic, erratic energy that you would expect to find at the end of a two day bender.

Making fine use of a top-flight Spanish-speaking cast, Asghar Farhadi deftly inserts love, resentment, class, money and family ties into a propulsive narrative replete with doubts, accusations, intimations, red herrings and other welcome ingredients from the suspenseful-drama arsenal.

Ultimately, The Bride! stays the course as exciting, exhilarating filmmaking, a bracing example of creators throwing convention aside and pushing their vision to the absolute limit. Mary Shelley would no doubt approve.

A film that is a small delight, a perfect cinematic short story.

As a snapshot of a time, a talent and an album, Spike Lee’s absorbing, moving and resolutely toe-tapping documentary about the music and impact of Michael Jackson’s album Bad, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, is a wonderfully complex look into the creative genius of Jackson.

With most of the story of Inside Out playing out inside Riley’s mind – the child’s eyes providing the emotion-themed characters’ view of the outside world – the film offers ample scope for the creativity of the filmmaking team.

Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague are both excellent at conveying everything that remains unsaid between these estranged siblings, eschewing melodramatic flourishes for stoic insights.

The honest naturalism of the two young leads is the main reason for the film’s intense grip and power.

Given the recent debates about British identity and the spike in race hatred and racially motivated crime – all as a result of Brexit – the timing of White Riot couldn’t be more apt.

A saga of complicated relationships, longings and heartbreak sometimes strains to fully develop all its disparate elements. Yet this is still an ambitious feat of storytelling delivered with a sensitivity to mood and emotion.

Tigers is a rare and refreshing entry into the sports movie genre. Rather than follow the well-worn narrative trajectory of struggle followed by success, the picture looks instead at the considerable cost of excellence.

Abacus: Small Enough To Jail isn’t as grand or engrossing a treatise as Hoop Dreams or The Interrupters, but in its intimate, well-observed way, the film is deeply moving and subtly shaming.