Overall this is a terrifically watchable, heartfelt documentary and a valuable glimpse into a singular life.

This isn’t much more than a series of ridiculously dotty sketches, and might have worked better as a sitcom, but it’s surprisingly hilarious.

For lovers of old-fashioned horror, this is your bloody Christmas.

Hughes still manages to play on the anxieties of middle America with fairly devilish skill.

Confused plot and digressive globe trotting notwithstanding, the best Bond in years.

With references to sexting and a hazy Instagram-filtered look, it would be easy to write ‘King Jack’ off as just another modern coming-of-age-story. What sets the movie apart though, is its ability to capture the fear of teenage-hood, without patronising its characters.

Flaws aside, this is a superior, inventive kids' film, and one that's bound to make Rylance's giant a favourite with younger audiences.

Even now at 50, Jarvis is a man who remains head-on crushable while dry humping an amp like your geography teacher on the Bacardi Breezers.

Rohrwacher draws us into this unusual world with the ease of someone who knows exactly what they’re talking about, neither judging nor celebrating and, at her best, just looking with tenderness and a winning sense of humour.

Against a backdrop of tensions between French and Flemish speakers, this is a forceful presentation of social divisions and the urgent need for change from within.

Overall this is giddy, ridiculous fun, a witty, wacky and wonderfully generous sugary gift of a film.

A ferociously paced, wildly silly pastiche of those comic-book blockbusters we’re all getting a bit sick of.

A valuable document.

Lawrence is gritty, real and totally genuine. And, after ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Carol’, here’s another film that passes the Bechdel Test for proper female characters with flying colours.

It’s easy to throw accusations of staginess at film adaptations of theatre like this, which honour the limitations of theatre and make only limited attempts to open up the play. But there’s a hothouse atmosphere to this domestic drama that works well on screen.

Swayze gives up 'Dirty Dancing' for dirty fighting in this violent, spectacular and immensely enjoyable study of Zen and the art of Barroom Bouncing...Mindless entertainment of the highest order.

This finds Bond on better form than he's been for some time. The action sequences are tighter, the visual gags more inventive, and if the plot is no great shakes, the whole thing is served up with a decent approximation to the old panache.

Expanding enormously on the fantasy elements of his earlier films, Carpenter has turned in a full-scale thriller of the supernatural, as a sinister fog bank comes rolling in off the sea to take revenge on the smug little town of Antonio Bay.

Few films make you care about the characters like this one does.

A particularly nice touch is the ability of one of the teenagers to pull people into her dreams, allowing Langenkamp and the threatened kids to gang up against Freddie. The neat script also fills in a little more of the Freddie mythology, including a suitably tasteless account of his conception. A creepy score and Russell's sure grasp of the skewed logic of nightmares helps to sustain the ambiguity between the 'real' and 'dream' worlds, while Englund's Freddie now fits like a glove.

Yamada’s creative direction shows a filmmaker with a distinctive way of looking at the world, following in the footsteps of other maverick Japanese talents like Ozu, Kitano and Miyazaki. Yep, she’s that good.

Four bombed-out astronauts journey endlessly through the galaxy, whiling away the time with jokes, sunlamp treatment, personal diaries on videotape, and games with their own pet alien. Sheer delight.

In what is surely his finest hour, Tom Hardy plays both brothers. Much more than a gimmick, it’s like watching one side of a mind wrestle with the other – literally, in one explosive, fun-to-unpick fight scene.

If anything, this doc reminds you that all relationships are strange, hopeful experiments in intimacy. And it’s that same hope the filmmakers lend to Dina and Scott’s story: you find yourself willing them along, wanting their marriage to work. You end up feeling honoured to have shared these special moments with them.

A startling movie, I Am Not a Witch is many things. It’s a magic realist fable set in present-day Zambia that has plenty to say about gender and superstition. It’s also a satire, a tragedy and a comedy. And, impressively, debut writer-director Rungano Nyoni makes this heady mix work.

This is a whistle stop tour that leaves you wanting more.

It’s full of sharp dialogue and entertaining characters and fuelled by a wryly enlightened view of our world and how it can be at once cruel and caring. For a story built on such dark foundations, it’s weirdly reassuring. It’s also enormous fun.

I’m So Excited is the closest Almodóvar has come in years to early romps like ‘Labyrinth’, ‘Pepi, Luci, Bom’ and ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’

Scarecrow’ feels like an existential fairytale squarely rooted in the reality of America’s fraying backroads and small towns. It’s all a little rambling and anarchic, but later scenes in a jail have real bite. And when the sadness behind Lion’s smile is revealed, it’s also genuinely moving.

It’s a film with the texture and truth of life, and at its heart is a beautiful performance by Cliff Curtis, who never in a million years will be nominated for an Oscar, but deserves one.

These young women have already witnessed enough horror to last a lifetime, and in this unforgiving society their lot seems unlikely to improve. A grim but necessary watch.

The overall impression is one of unbridled enthusiasm on the part of the film’s makers, both for its predecessors and for the brave new universe Abrams and his crew are exploring.

Thorncroft is a gem of comedy creation – played to perfection by Barratt.

True to the spirit of the title, writer-director Lee organises the sprawling mess of Mija’s personal life with the control and grace of a master, each digression and seemingly arbitrary encounter all building upon his elderly protagonist’s spiralling sense of distress.

Moonraker is mercifully much better than recent Bondage, with fantastic special effects, some excellent buffery (cracks at Star Wars, Close Encounters, Clint Eastwood, to name but a few), and the usual location-hopping style that makes Versailles feel like Disneyland.

The film’s unwillingness to judge either the decent yet doubt-wracked pastor, or the damaged souls seeking a new start, effectively draws us in to a whole cluster of gnarly dilemmas, where humane intentions prove counter-productive and the truth only makes matters worse.

Too full of incident to reflect a typical night in reality, it's nevertheless funny, perceptive, pepped up by a great soundtrack, and also something of a text-book lesson in parallel editing as it follows a multitude of adolescents through their various adventures with sex, booze, music and cars.

Low key and occasionally frustrating it may be, but Computer Chess is a supremely intelligent, beautifully constructed film, interweaving comedy and character, satire and subtext, and loaded with more ideas than some filmmakers manage in a lifetime.

A somewhat dour, slightly clenched viewing experience perhaps, but delivered with admirable insight, control, and nuanced subtlety by all concerned. It stays in the mind long afterwards.

This dizzying, courageous, utterly humane and slightly unhinged film is a unique achievement.

This captivating drama exists on another level: the devastating ending left me sobbing.

The whole thing goes down with a few bucketloads of sugar. What keeps it from becoming sticky schmaltz is Thompson, who plays Travers with wit and warmth, adding a spoonful of spoilt child to help the battleaxe go down.

A nagging sense of incompleteness means that Civil War isn’t quite as satisfying as the first ‘Avengers’ (it’s all building up to the ‘Infinity War’ two-parter in 2018). But overall, this is Marvel at their best: a pacey, intelligent super-sized blockbuster and a roaringly fun night out.

Even after The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, this brings us chillingly closer to the real story of the post-Iraq shitstorm.

As a portrait of power gained and lost, of unchecked self-absorption and what drives people like Assange to do what they do, it’s absolutely fascinating. Watching it feels like history unfolding in close-up.

Some accuse the filmmaker of being just like the politicians who turn up, look around and do nothing. It adds a confrontational edge to the film’s already startling combination of immersive aesthetics and humane empathy.

If you’re the person who watches weepies with a cynical curl of the lip, this isn’t the film for you. Everyone else, prepare to have your heartstrings plucked.

The plot, concerning the battle of wits between an honest cop and an ambitious politician for possession of the key witness in a Mafia exposé, is serviceable but nothing special. But the action sequences are brilliant, done without trickery in real locations (including a great car chase which spawned a thousand imitations) to lend an extraordinary sense of immediacy to the shenanigans and gunfights.

The cautious chemistry between the three characters means the atmosphere is never less than taut, and it provides the perfect launchpad for a tense, poignant finale that marks Fingleton out as a name to watch.

Gorgeous and haunting, this is a tantalising introduction to Pamuk’s work.

What a stupendously entertaining ride it is. Director and former stuntman Chad Stahelski is back in the director’s chair, and he knows his craft inside out: every punch lands hard, every gunshot roars like thunder.

This Jungle Book has the bare necessities, and then some.

A stop-gap tale that’s modest, fun and briefly amusing rather than one that breaks new ground or offers hugely memorable set pieces.

Perhaps understandably, it’s slightly scrappy and can feel a little like an overextended TV sketch in places. I laughed hard – feeling like a bit of a sicko – but you might find it plain nasty.

It’s a frank and moving exploration of family, faith and the conflict between cultures and generations.

About blood, blood ties and breakdown (of familes, relationships and, perhaps, an entire society), it's an idiosyncratic film, admired by many for its strong atmosphere, and by this writer for its absurd(ist) casting of a barely recognisable Fonda as Donovan's mad uncle Van Helsing.

Eschewing metaphor and mysticism (save insofar as his characters adopt them), [Dumont] has for once given us a film of immense visual beauty, thematic clarity and subtle resonance.

Watching Raw is a bit like seeing a toddler crawl toward a four-lane highway. You can’t tear your eyes away, but at same time you want to squeeze them shut. This is a film that doesn’t just put you through the wringer; it scrapes your insides out. It left me trembling for hours.

It’s all presented as a playful cinematic puzzle by director Eskil Vogt’s confident direction and mischievous humour.

What a knotty, frighteningly real drama The Hunt is.

Big Bad Wolves requires a high tolerance for pain, but its wicked humour and oblique satire rip open Israel's paranoid, militarised system like a jagged saw blade.

The material inspires affection, given its knowing pastiche of everything from Universal horrors to '50s grade-Z sci-fi, and a shamelessly hedonistic, fiercely independent sensibility that must have seemed a welcome relief from the mainstream bombast of other '70s musicals.

Director Athina Rachel Tsangari keeps things brisk, maintaining an almost nature-doc distance from her subjects. Her affection for them is plain, but that doesn’t mean she lets them off the hook.

With their unerring eye for potential, the distributors didn't release this hilarious black comedy to cinemas in Britain. Zemeckis subsequently went on to make Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and loadsa money. Infinitely more caustic than these blockbusters, Used Cars runs on a contemporary screwball motor with a slapstick chassis

The Guest is not new, exactly, but Wingard knows just which buttons to push, and he pushes them with gusto. Stevens, meanwhile, has never been better.

It's a terrifically moving film that has a fitting earthbound feel to it.

It’s hugely entertaining.

This is a simple, sweet tale about the basic pleasures of home and hearth, rendered unflashily in a delightful style of hand-drawn animation that employs a beautiful array of warm pastel colours.

This intimate documentary about the leftfield American filmmaker David Lynch is insightful and absorbing.

This Pan is loud, colourful, busy and full of ideas. Not all those ideas work in sync – but most are bold and some are winningly eccentric.

Director Noyce's bravura camerawork conspires with Terry Hayes' spare script (adapted from the novel by Charles Williams) and some edgy cutting to exploit every ounce of tension, right down to a killer ending.

If it wasn’t so violent, the simplicity of the metaphor – how the abused and outcast will rise up – would work for young audiences. And you won’t beat it for dog acting.

Director Alexandra-Therese Keining clearly loves the book and tries to squeeze a little too much of it into her overcrowded film. But it is visually lovely – the transformation scenes are magical – and the young cast are terrific.

The original footage – devastatingly intimate; familiar yet alien – still stops us in our tracks more than six decades later.

Director Amber Fares strikes a perfect balance, telling a righteous, uplifting story of triumph against the odds without ever losing sight of the bigger political picture.

Here’s heavyweight French auteur Bruno Dumont demonstrating his gift for deadpan comedy.

In Between is a great film. The performances are fantastic – as the gorgeous, headstrong Laila, Mouna Hawa is mesmerising. It’s not always uplifting but it is compassionate and intelligent.

As a storyteller, Farr is bold enough to keep us guessing until the film’s final moments, but a late need to explain lets the film down a little.

Mamet's glee in tracking the rackets and his ear for the great American aphasia - 'I'm from the United States of Kiss My Ass' - more than compensate for the sometimes flat direction, and the performances are splendid.

This apocalyptic movie mostly avoids physical gore to boost its relatively unoriginal storyline with suspense, some excellent acting (especially from Warner and Whitelaw), and a very deft, incident-packed script.

The film's central irony is not the usual one of public success at the expense of private pain, but the complex one of success at the expense of personal knowledge. Streisand never looks into the mirrors that Wyler surrounds her with. Well worth watching.

De Palma’s grasp on King’s material is never in doubt: this is a truly throat-grabbing horror movie, sporting a handful of pitch-perfect set-pieces, not to mention one of the few examples of effective split-screen.

An enormously satisfying film: carefully observed and consistently compelling, it feels like an instant American classic, if a minor one.

The shattering downbeat ending is well earned and genuinely shocking.

The action is the attraction. If that means some of the film feels a little distant and chilly, it’s in the admirable service of avoiding simplistic drama or easy sentiment.

A caustically witty look at the American South and its still-surviving chain gangs, with Newman in fine sardonic form as the boss-baiter who refuses to submit and becomes a hero to his fellow-prisoners. Underlying the hard-bitten surface is a slightly uncomfortable allegory which identifies Newman as a Christ figure. But this scarcely detracts from the brilliantly idiosyncratic script (by Donn Pearce from his own novel) or from Conrad Hall's glittering camerawork (which survives Rosenberg's penchant for the zoom lens and shots reflected in sun-glasses).

Scott's sword and sandal spectacular is a bloody good yarn, packed with epic pomp and pageantry, dastardly plots, massed action and forthright, fundamental emotions.

Not just a cheeky stunt, Ferrara’s film is a genuine, worthwhile, thoughtfully unresolved attempt to understand the deepest, darkest mysteries of manhood and power.

This isn’t just the best-looking film of the year, it’s one of the most awe-inspiring achievements in the history of special-effects cinema. So it’s a shame that – as is so often the case with groundbreaking effects movies – the emotional content can’t quite match up to the visual.

Ignore the ridiculous [spoiler omitted] ending of this film, and you have a much more fatalistic exercise in which Coppola eschews easy laughs in favour of the exposure of feeling and the fact that these people's lives, however empty, matter to them. Turner is in the Oscar class.

For a film posing the metaphysical biggies, there is tenderness and laughs. Its bonkers approach to storytelling and life may drive some nuts. The rest of us will soar with the birds.

Overall, Logan is something rather special: a moving and mournful story of life at the end of the line, and the perfect blockbuster for these embittered times.

In the closing act, the film sharpens and becomes something far more compelling.

It's an endearingly loopy, occasionally half-cooked but always ambitious film.

Even just watching this impressive documentary, you feel a little unhinged by the scale of suffering.

We Are the Best! is a joyous celebration of youth, friendship and rebellion, and if there’s a nagging note of regret and bitterness it never manages to undermine the overwhelmingly compassionate tone.

A pleasure and an education.

This Macbeth is ferociously well acted. Fassbender’s prowling energy electrifies the film.