Anyone with a beating heart will be forgiven for allowing it to break during this unflinching and thoughtful account of the life and death of the soul singer Amy Winehouse.

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

Alongside archive material and new footage of Chet shot in his signature romantic, B&W style, Weber elicits frank reminiscences from his subject and a host of ex-lovers and friends.

As a story about how hard it is to make your own way in the world, Kiki’s Delivery Service is truthful and scalpel-sharp. That it manages all this while remaining consistently funny, optimistic and exciting – even for little ones – is a mark of Miyazaki’s genius.

Writer-director Francis Lee has drawn on his own farming background and his film is full of convincing detail. The lack of chat feels especially truthful.

A magnificent movie that transcends its familiar tale of a reformed gunman forced by circumstance to resume his violent ways.

It’s intricate and often mature as drama, but it’s also meandering and at times heavy-handed, even melodramatic, and the tight control of time, place and action which made ‘A Separation’ so gripping is just not there.

While it fascinates as much as it frustrates, the film’s saving grace is that it always feels honest and never cynical. It seems both relevant to us and personal to the filmmaker.

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.

Kore-eda’s insight is so unflinching, his affection for his characters so intimate and sure, that not a moment here feels wasted.

This is a provocative, intelligent movie for those with a strong emotional constitution.

It’s not a despairing movie – Mungiu even suggests that a new generation might put things right – but it’s a brutally honest one.

It’s a deeply humane film, as well as a quietly hilarious one.

Its encouragement to let ourselves be captivated by everyday humanity as well as the old masters is both richly illuminating and quirkily endearing. Time well spent.

Amiably engrossing satire on the 'win ethic' that offers a take-it-or-leave-it approach to its serious points about enforcing precociousness on kids, but consistently delights with its panoramic comic invention.

For all the modern gloss, what with poverty and nervous breakdowns it's still highly conventional stuff, but lovingly constructed to produce unremarkable but heart-warming entertainment.

The film is built as a long crescendo, opening at a level of considered, Zen-like reflection and ending with a prolonged cacophony of elaborate, town-wide annihilation.

Demange is a strong storyteller and masks the script’s tendency to nod to every opinion and social division by offering a masterclass in tension as soon as his dramatic bomb starts ticking.

By and large, a rather pitiful parody of the Universal Frankenstein movies, taking typically Brooksian liberties with characters and plot, resorting to juvenile mugging, and relying to a great extent on fairly authentic sets and photography for its better moments.

The LEGO Movie is sheer joy: the script is witty, the satire surprisingly pointed and the animation tactile and imaginative.

Though it’s most successful as a character study, the movie also works as an unusually honest variation on the traditional cinematic love story (it rings especially true on the difficulties of starting over after years of settled family life).

It’s not a pretty story, but its warmth lies in its fondness – love, even – for the two boys at its heart.

Despite being recognised as one of the better 007 films (and one laudably devoid of what would later become the formulaic Bond ending), number two in the series actually proves marginally less memorable than many of the others.

It’s a touching film and a fascinating glimpse into one of those couples you can’t quite believe are still together.

It’s an intoxicating marvel, strange and sublime: it combines sci-fi ideas, gloriously unusual special effects and a sharp atmosphere of horror.

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

It’s raw, funny and incredibly moving.

It’s impossible adequately to describe the haunting intensity of It Follows: this is a film that makes a virtue of silence, that lives in the shadowy spaces between the splattery kill scenes that punctuate your average stalk-and-slasher.

It’s an authentic celebration of the timeless delights of country bike rides and skimming stones. Absolutely lovely.

A masterclass in how the most local, most hemmed-in stories can reverberate with the power of big, universal themes.

The film conceals as much as it reveals, and its beauty is that it pretends to do nothing else. It embraces a mystery and protects it, and it’s thrilling to behold.

Writer-director Anna Muylaert’s observations on family relations and invisible-but-firm class barriers are always acute.

For all its humanistic warmth and undoubted charm, Short Term 12 just never quite rings true.

Recalling the provocative docu-fictions of Abbas Kiarostami and Jia Zhangke, Our Beloved Month of August offers meta-textual manna for adventurous cinemagoers while remaining exhilaratingly true to its sunny, provincial roots.

Yes, The Lobster is arch: this is cinema in quotemarks, tongue-in-cheek storytelling that uses absurdity to hold a mirror to how we live and love. At its best, it has incisive things to say about how we shape ourselves and others just to banish the fear of being alone, unloved and friendless.

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.

A Hijacking’ is gripping in the way the best Danish TV is – in its no-frills authenticity.

This low-key charmer of a movie packs an unexpected emotional punch once the brothers finally manage a rapprochement of sorts.

Unique and intoxicating, an art movie that grips like a thriller.

Archipelago confirms Hogg as a daring and mischievous artist, and a major British talent whose next move will be intriguing.

Certain Women moves, as all Reichardt’s films do, at a languid pace, and a handful of characters – notably Williams’s – could have been a little more developed. But it's hard to recall a movie with such a precise, immersive sense of place, and the very specific mood that comes with it.

A languid celebration of the pleasures of the moment, which climaxes with an image of startling sexual candour.

The medical side of things is shown in documentary detail, and it’s fascinating.

The Assassin is a beautiful, beguiling film; it's impossible not to get fully lost in its rarefied world.

Sicario occasionally seems a little too impressed by its own nihilism. Still, this is an involving, grown-up film from a director whose muscular technique continues to impress: one might call it pulp in the same manner one would a plate of minced meat.

The word "personal" is bandied around a lot in film reviews, but it’s hard to think of a work that better fits the description than avant-garde icon Chantal Akerman’s intimate swansong No Home Movie.

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.

To enjoy the film's arresting musings on language, time and how much we can ever understand others, you'll have to close your eyes and ears to the wealth of schlocky hokum surrounding them.

Maybe an hour would have been enough, but even the slower patches have charm to burn.

It’s hard to say exactly what’s at fault here: the performances are flawless – Carell fully justifies his unlikely casting, while Ruffalo is as dependable as ever – and the script is astute, intimate and at times shocking. But there’s just no real life in the film.

An effective shocker which has the blind Hepburn alone in the house when psychotic villain Arkin and his hoodlum pals (Crenna and Weston) arrive to retrieve a doll containing heroin which her husband (Zimbalist) unwittingly brought through customs for them. Though based on a stage play (by Frederick Knott), the skillful use of interiors for once transcends the visual limitations.

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.

Bowie’s performance is riveting, drawing on his history of mime to play a man who is almost, but not quite, one of us.

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.

There are no interviews, characters nor narration, and after an hour it can feel like a chore. Yet the images are staggering.

Overall this is a stupendously entertaining movie, crammed with delights.

Skyfall is a highly distinctive Bond movie. It has some stunning visual touches.... Also, it mostly manages to convince us that there’s something at stake by giving a hint of Bond’s emotional life beyond this story.

You won’t know whether to laugh or cry.

If you’ve ever sat at your desk wondering whether there’s more to life, or been kept awake by an insidious hum in the darkness, this will speak to your soul – even as its enveloping, disturbing, uplifting story sends your mind reeling with giddy possibilities.

Overall this is an absolute pleasure. There are times when Waititi’s script borders on genius.

All the performances are impressive, but Gleeson and Voight are especially memorable, lending an almost tragic air of inexorability to Cahill and Kenny's cat-and-mouse games.

It’s disappointing when Starred Up begins to lapse into soapy cliché.

In its own restrained way, this drama packs an emotional punch.

This is a tighter, smarter film than either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, and buried beneath all the blue-goo aliens and terrible punning is a heartfelt meditation on the perils and pleasures of nostalgia.

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 largely non-professional cast are as authentic as the craggy, unforgiving surroundings, and the way the film balances the simplicity of its central rite of passage with a broader outlook on a people caught in the shifting sands of time is a tribute to the filmmakers’ clarity of vision. A truly memorable first feature.

While the characters lack credibility, the social backdrop and texture of the performances certainly don’t, and Villeneuve manages to say more about the sorry state of the Middle East (Lebanon is suggested but never mentioned) through the bold, crisp way he shoots faces, buildings and parched, beige-brown landscapes. So let’s call it’s a strong film based on a weak story.

As an insight into the way families cope with adversity this is both razor-sharp and completely heartbreaking.

It's a bold film, full of energy and spunk, but a patchy, half-formed, rambling one too.

The film is about storytelling, about how we make connections between people, places, objects and time to create meaning, and how, when these connections shift, meaning changes. Best of all are Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Cinqué Lee as argumentative hotel receptionists hooked on Tom Waits' late night radio show. They, and Jarmusch's remarkably civilised direction, hold the whole shaggy dog affair together, turning it into one of the best films of the year.

There’s great energy to this film: quick dialogue, snappy performances and a lived-in feel make us quickly believe this world, its characters and their hang-ups.

One of Ritt's best films, with fine performances all round, impressive Death Valley locations, and superlative camerawork from James Wong Howe.

Abrahamson has pulled off something quietly remarkable: a study of morality which never feels like a treatise, a bracingly realistic film about teenagers which never becomes patronising and a gripping melodrama which swerves sentiment. He may also have unearthed a genuine star.

This woman has plenty of blunt wisdom to share.

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.

It's a road movie where the origin feels more interesting than the destination, but it's never less than warm and likeable.

A startling examination of how artistic principles translate into real-world actions, and a moving portrait of a genuinely, unexpectedly brave man.

The struggle for LGBT rights in Uganda might sound like a dry or distant subject. It’s the achievement of Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s shocking, moving, enthralling and enraging doc to make it lively and urgent.

Berberian Sound Studio is like nothing before – and whether or not it ‘works’ seems almost irrelevant. In this era of cookie-cutter cinema, Strickland’s deeply personal moral and stylistic vision deserves the highest praise.

The film comes over as a tour de force version of the disease-of-the-week TV movie: half scientific detective story, half domestic drama, replete with scenes of suffering. Throughout, Miller points up every least thing: religious symbolism, snow-dusted Christmas windows for pathos, spinning news headlines, and swirling, diving camera movements. Finally, it begins to seem a little dishonest and self-conscious, as if Miller were trying to make an AIDS movie with hope and a positive ending.

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.

The connections might be a little more strained and diffuse than in "Nostalgia for the Light", but their cumulative power is strong nonetheless.

Low on documentary conviction and political context, but an intriguing exercise in concealing the obvious.

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.

Intelligent and moving.

It’s not a happy watch – but it’s an essential one if you want better to understand the city and people around you.

A leisurely, wise and ultimately affecting meditation on the benefits of letting go.

An extraordinarily inventive fantasy in which schoolboy Warnock is rescued from a dull suburban existence by a band of renegade dwarfs, who emerge from his wardrobe and whisk him off on an incredible journey through time and space. Sometime Monty Python animator Gilliam fills the screen with bizarre images, and directs with a breathless ingenuity.

Structurally, it could be compared to Kurosawa's Rashomon for its subjective cross-examination of Nola's loves; but this delightful low-budget comedy, with its all black cast and black humour, is 100 per cent Lee.

It’s a joyous film, full of love and warmth but unafraid to admit that with sticking out your neck comes struggle and sorrow. Truly lovely.

This is a forceful, initially uplifting, ultimately sobering illustration of how much protest matters, how far those in power will go to stifle it, and how ugly and criminal those efforts look in hindsight.

This unnerving and enigmatic debut feature from Israeli director Nadav Lapid trains its steely focus on the group dynamics of the cops and robbers rather than asking us to get swept along in the specifics of their violence travails.

Outrageously overrated... the film indulges in bland satire, fashionable flashiness, and a sodden sentimentality that never admits either to its homosexual elements or to the basic misogyny of its stance. Add to that a glamorisation of poverty and an ending that makes Love Story seem restrained, and you have a fairly characteristic example of Schlesinger's shallow talent.

This is a thoughtful film, but one that's slightly limited by its own careful restraint.

Don’t be put off by the jock-ish ‘extreme sports’ subject matter, this is an insightful, deeply affecting journey of emotional discovery beyond the thrill of speed and the roar of the crowd.

Only Lovers Left Alive drags its feet and shows serious signs of anaemia as a story.

Bell goes easy on the preaching and heavy on the laughs without losing her feminist message.

It may lack its predecessor’s lofty ambitions, but once the bullets, spears and hairy fists start flying you’ll be too wrapped up to care.