Guadagnino is also on the form of his life, directing with assured style and structure, and offering a lovely closing device that asks us to relax, calm down and remember that it’s all just playtime.

Where to start with this utterly gorgeous, commanding, terrifying and masterful suspense thriller? Firstly don’t believe the hype — it’s not a horror. It’s bigger than that. Not a slasher, a creeper, a spooker or a demented killer movie. It’s better than that.

Like the man, this film isn’t sentimental but gosh, it packs a punch.

This is a story that is perfectly weighted between bleak and warm, poignant and irreverent.

Robinson's curlicued dialogue and the excellent performances make for rich entertainment; the fusion of writing and acting is particularly fine in the case of the drunken, self-consciously eccentric Withnail, whose many great lines are perfectly delivered by Richard E Grant.

The ending, set in the Globe during a production of Hamlet, is harrowing, meaningful and magnificently sad. You might want to yell out, “Make it stop!” This is, instantly, the essential Shakespeare movie.

Skarsgard and Reinsve are excellent as two damaged people who are only able to open up when they’re working, but you yearn for the film itself to open up. It’s an intriguing premise, stylishly executed but sometimes lacking a bit of heart.

[A] warm and hilarious comedy drama.

Past western, part romance, part philosophical treatise, this Sundance Film Festival stunner also feels like the greatest Terrence Malick film that Malick never made.

This is a movie that’s as difficult to watch as it is to forget. It’s a sensory blitz, a percussive nightmare and a relentless assault on the soul.

I’m not sure if it’s Anderson’s masterpiece, and though Penn is funny in the role of the crazed colonel, he frequently veers towards cartoonish and almost ruins his scenes. Still, it’s an easy best picture Oscar nomination in the bag.

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Very occasionally a movie appears that understands the potential of cinema so deeply that it changes the medium for everyone.

This is original, explosive (literally — you’ll see!) and ovation-worthy, cinema.

This is a film that, at its best, while softly cradling its two battered protagonists, is also howling madly at the shadow of mortality.

The director Joe Wright’s roaming camera gives every exchange an unexpected urgency.

This is nearly two and a half hours of eye-gouging spectacle with jabs of heartfelt emotion, deftly orchestrated by the relatively inexperienced writer, director and animator Jiaozi (remember the name).

It is deliberately punishing material, channelled through unapologetic, galvanising film-making. Politicians should see it. Decision-makers should see it.

The performances are savagely good, with Pearce and Brody both on awards season form. And it’s shot on rarely seen 70mm film stock, which means that it looks like something beautiful, haunting and strange, but always from the long-forgotten past.

Each change of tone is handled with sinuous ease by Baker, one of the best independent directors, who is finally getting the props he deserves.

Up there with Blow-Up and Alfie as the definitive Swinging London movie, this Julie Christie breakout has somehow acquired more gravitas over time than those two.

It’s not often that films get better on a second viewing, but this dense, challenging and intellectually rigorous documentary about “Hitler’s favourite film-maker” Leni Riefenstahl is one of those exceptions.

Schilinski is in such control of every frame, every cut, prop and camera move that it’s often breathtaking just to witness the emergence of this grandly interlaced tapestry of grief.

Here the Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) dives truly deep for a tale of orphanhood, family conflict and the reluctant fight for a throne. It’s often thrilling to watch a film featuring only anthropomorphic animals where the central characters are more rounded than most of their human counterparts at the mainstream multiplex (yes, that means you, Gladiator II).

One of the many classic movies from “the greatest of all years”, 1939 (see also The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and Stagecoach), this epic gangster flick dares to provide psychological back stories for the characters.

The sense of hallucinogenic sweatiness won’t be to everyone’s taste but [Garland] and Boyle should be applauded for taking such big swings and having the flair and confidence to pull them off. It’s an astonishing piece of work.

A nuptial apocalypse has rarely been explored with such dark intelligence and mordant wit as in this often piercing and cringe-out-loud dramedy starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya.

It is difficult to overstate Streep’s importance, and how deeply she inhabits a role that, for any other actress, would certainly be cartoonish — the outfits, the glasses and the whispered catchphrase “that’s all”.