Ultimately story is secondary to Russell’s delicious detailing of character and milieu.

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.

The effect is talismanic: overlaid by a thoughtful voiceover, it invites the audience to share the pain in a cathartic act of imaginative reclamation.

This is a film built on sensation, misdirection and randomness. The result can be maddeningly obtuse, but it’s also breathtakingly lovely and genuinely unsettling.

Cat lovers (and possibly fans of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’) will appreciate the role of an ageing black feline as a symbol of the sudden changes in Nathalie’s life. Everyone else should warm to the way that Hansen-Løve distils the chaos of life and the life of the mind into such a warm, thoughtful, surprising drama.

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.

The result is entertaining and insightful, balancing cold statistics with real-life stories of success and tragedy, presenting a broad, clear-eyed view of an increasingly complex issue.

It’s in contextualising Sands’s struggle that ‘66 Days’ is most effective.

Catching Fire looks and feels epic. Hands down it’s one of the most entertaining films of the year.

A wonderful Maggie Smith plays all this dead straight, poker-faced for maximum laughs. It’s a peppery, unsentimental performance. She’s hysterically funny, till she’s not – flooring you as the regret and tragedy behind Miss Shepherd’s vagabond life is revealed.

[Chazelle's] soaring, romantic, extremely stylish and endlessly inventive La La Land is that rare beast: a grown-up movie musical that's not kitschy, a joke or a Bollywood film. Instead, it's a swooning, beautifully crafted ode to the likes of Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain.

By the climax all concerns have gone out the window, as Vigalondo delivers an operatic finale that feels both earned and genuinely cathartic. For better and worse, you won't have seen a movie like Colossal before, and you won't again. And that, in itself, is a strong recommendation.

Rush is fast, slippery, stormy and dangerous.

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

After a period of directorial uncertainty, the film demonstrated Eastwood's ability to recreate his first starring role, as the mythic Man with No Name of the Italian Westerns, and to subtly undercut it through comedy and mockery.

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.

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

A jangling, lunatic sugar rush of a movie, in love with everything it satirises and bursting at the seams with psychotic energy

A lusty ballad of love and heartbreak sung with passion and power, and just a handful of off-key notes.

This is an imperfect film, bold but occasionally baffling, and one that in its final act grows into something much more exciting than you might initially expect.

This is a film with a big heart and an even bigger imagination.

At times, you ache to put the brakes on the chaos, but still Pixar manages to do with all this what they do best, turning the everyday rough and smooth of childhood experience into a thoughtful, inventive adventure, full of totally appropriate lurid and strange imagery.

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).

As a director, Gordon-Levitt demonstrates considerable technical flair through stylistic flourishes and coaxes great performances out of his co-stars, while he remains centre stage throughout.

An empathetic, often heartbreaking piece of work, at times tough to watch – one party scene is particularly grim and confrontational – at others calm and contemplative.

The casting of comedian Koechner as the sleazy host is a masterstroke, but all four actors relish the salty dialogue and farcical cruelty, as the film moves towards a bleak but satisfying ending.

This is easily Coppola’s funniest film. Leslie Mann is hilarious as Nicki’s phony spiritual mum.

It can be very funny, but there’s a bittersweet streak underpinning even the lightest moments.

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.

During the 94 minutes of this delightful movie, the Muppets graduate from college, hit New York, are parted and reunited minutes before curtain-up, with Kermit saved from amnesia by a right hook from Miss Piggy.

Everyone has a different story. I found myself holding my breath listening to them talk. The story twists like a thriller.

This might be the most downbeat blockbuster in memory, a film that starts out pitiless and goes downhill from there, save for a fleeting glimmer of hope in the final moments. It’s a bold statement about the unforgiving nature of war, unashamedly political in its motives and quietly devastating in its emotional effect.

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

The film keeps its good-evil borders compellingly supple, at least until a wobbly finale that requires Sarah to act like the Hollywood heroine she has so strenuously avoided becoming. It’s a minor blot on a film otherwise propulsively alive with prickly politics.

This Danish crime thriller is so dark and stormy it will leave you dazed as the credits roll.

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.

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.

You won’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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

Passing from the depressing grey-blue of Joe's office through LA's neon brashness to the abstract colours of the later scenes, this engaging fable builds from a slow bubble to an outright eruption of comedy, romance and tear-jerking sentiment. If you go with the flow of Joe's Capraesque journey of self-discovery, you may be swept along.

Tracks might be a bit slow for some, but it’s one of those films that quietly creeps up on you.

Feels both modern and traditional – a halfway house between the broodier Nolan way of shaking things up and the louder, bone-crunching style that director Zack Snyder established with films such as ‘300’ and ‘Sucker Punch’. Man of Steel is punchy, engaging and fun, even if it slips into a final 45 minutes of explosions and fights during which reason starts to vanish and the science gets muddy.

Lovering’s taut direction and editor Jon Amos’s skilfully modulated cutting wring the maximum suspense from cinematographer David Katznelson’s multi-camera set-ups, tapping into deep-rooted psychological and primal fears.

Her is a keeper of a film, quietly dazzling.

The world that Zootropolis creates is intelligent and fascinatingly detailed – it feels more like a movie by Disney-owned Pixar than a straight Disney film.

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 is a confident, terrifically enjoyable film, superbly written, shot and performed.

It’s infuriatingly irresistible.

It’s lightly played, often very funny and shot all over Paris with energy and wit, and boosted by superb, inquiring turns from Broadbent and Duncan.

Nighy gives another suave masterclass, and the whole thing positively burns with passionate advocacy for the artists, free-thinkers and social outsiders who’ve been the making of modern London.

What makes it special is that it’s not another romance about finding a man. It’s about finding your people, about being a bit lost in your twenties and not knowing who you are or what you want to be. And it’s got bucketfuls of charm.

This entertaining first spin-off from the Harry Potter movies is both inventive and familiar – and Eddie Redmayne makes an endearing new wizarding lead.

Packed with warmth and wit, this is a lovely lo-fi charmer.

You’ll walk out of this electrifying documentary about the Arab Spring with your blood boiling.

Franco’s script teases out the character’s tangled ambiguities with immaculate control: even as the story proceeds in the lowest of keys, our nerves never settle.

Not much happens in The Midwife, but its depth and texture make this a moving film about families, time passing and shared history – and the handful of scenes in the maternity unit where Claire works, five or six little miracles of birth, somehow add to its sense of a life as mysterious and precious.

If director Thompson isn't quite skilful enough to give the film its final touch of class (many of the shocks are just too planned), the relentlessness of the story and Mitchum's tangibly sordid presence guarantee the viewer's quivering attention.

What emerges is a sympathetic portrait of a genuinely idiosyncratic, outrageous individual whose towering musical talent never stood a chance against his rampaging personal demons.

Irreplaceable builds in intensity as we realise the profound humanity and community spirit embodied by everyday heroes like this. Beautifully done by a writer-director who clearly knows his stuff.

This is sombre, artful and winningly ambiguous.

One of the most pleasing things about Blue Jasmine is that it feels truly knotty and never obvious in how it unfolds.

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

Intelligent and moving.

This is a fun action adventure that resonates because it doesn’t glamorise everything. You feel a warmth after watching it, as there’s something in its depiction of imperfect, loving family relationships that stays with you.

You forget how limited so many movies’ ideas of women are until Amy Schumer launches into an extended tampon joke: nothing is off-limits as she kapows through expectations of female characters.

It doesn’t entirely hold together; the relentless din and repetition flips from thrilling to exhausting and back again more than once. But in those moments when everything clicks...this is absolutely joyous.

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.

Sweet revenge for anyone who has sat through a foreign film suffering from a torrent of bad dubbing. For his first auteur-credit (!), Woody Allen got hold of a 1964 Japanese exploitation thriller and exploited it for his own ends, dubbing it delightfully with gags and Hollywood clichés. Enough one-liners to leave you with happy memories. A jolly oddity.

David Sington (In the Shadow of the Moon) shows extreme confidence in his subject by revealing the deeper truth in fragments, essentially allowing Nick to deliver a monologue or one man show, drawing us deeper and deeper into his story.

This is a lavish pull-out-all-the-stops musical.

This really is Wonder Woman coming to the rescue of the DC Comics universe.

Pesci's variation on New Jersey machismo (vulnerable in this case) isn't enough to fill a comedy; but Dale Launer's script luckily provides some fine routines for the supporting cast, notably the scene-stealing Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito, Pesci's sharp-tongued girlfriend. It's a small, surprisingly gentle affair, prone to fits and starts, but fun.

Better than most Stephen King adaptations, mainly because an exceptionally strong cast adds substance to the facile storyline about a mysterious stranger, Leland Gaunt (von Sydow), who opens the antique shop of the title in Castle Rock, Maine, and, by tapping into the inhabitants' acquisitive desires, sets them at one another's throats.

In a welcome return to suspense, Pakula effectively conveys the claustrophobia of domesticity and courtroom procedure.

A pity that the directors prove less ruthless than their own creations, but there is more than enough here for people who enjoy murder attempts on cute pet poodles.

Like so much of the film it's a daft but not too daft proposition; and what redeems it is that the action sequences are superbly filmed, climaxing with Sheen's bullish entry into the arena at make-or-break time, the crowd singing 'Wild Thing' in clamouring unison.

Languorous pace and uneasy self-consciousness notwithstanding, it's in a similar bracket to the work of Hal Hartley and Atom Egoyan; it has a spaced-out charm of its own. And Glover's ludicrous wardrobe and whip-dancing skills make this a must for completists of Crazy Crispin.

Allen's second feature, a tribute to the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, is a wonderfully incoherent series of one-liners centered around a puny New York Jew's unwitting and unwilling involvement in a South American revolution.

A couple of overgrown brats seems an appropriate focus for John The Breakfast Club Hughes first adult movie, but if his direction is slick, his script lacks wit and perception. Essentially, it's the stars' keenly observed nuances of character that make this comedy amiable enough.

A minor but infinitely more appealing comedy vehicle for Pryor than the earlier "Stir Crazy"...An amiable but hardly memorable two-against-the-world farce that can't quite persuade you Pryor's talents are being properly used.

By far the most compelling voices are those of the impoverished Haitian people; unfortunately, they're only heard briefly at the end. While the film's real-life twists and turns are difficult to follow, the human desperation it depicts is all too easy to grasp.

Fundamentally a quite serious movie, relevant to contemporary personality problems and stresses, but shot through with a wicked streak of black humour. It doesn't always come off, but Romero makes stunning use of his Pittsburgh locations to create a desolate suburban wasteland, and at its best it is rivetingly raw-edged.

CB4 is not in the Spinal Tap league, lacking that film's merciless detail and consistency. But in parts it is hugely, monstrously funny.

More notable perhaps for a roster of future stars and Oscar winners than for its unexceptional plot, this well executed film nevertheless has its charms.

As audience movie-making in its purest form, the film is a delight, but it's also so obviously based on Stallone's own personal struggle with success that the mind boggles as to what Rocky can possibly do next.

Cuteness is never far off, though Badham has enough sense of pace, and the robotics are sufficiently inventive, to keep the laughs coming. Only Guttenberg's tongue-twisted Asian sidekick (Stevens) is off-key.

The narrative is a little plodding, but adult punters will soon slip back into reverie for the lost visions of Saturday morning cinema, and their kids can get off on the extraordinary undercurrent of febrile sexuality. Acting honours go to von Sydow as Ming the Merciless and Mariangela Melato as his dark-eyed henchperson.

With an assured visual style, Harlin stokes up the temperature to near-riot conditions before exploding the screen with electrifying special effects mayhem - floors glow red hot, barbed wire is vivified, the very pipes take on murderous life. A tough, entertaining, intelligent hybrid of hard-ass prison drama and horror-shocker exploiter.

For a comedy double-act who make their money out of people stoned beyond discrimination, Cheech and Chong are probably better than we deserve...The plot is, er, like an irrelevant hassle, and the observations on sub-culture work better than the slapstick paced for the brains of the wasted, but there are enough of these - especially a welfare office freak show - to serve as a reminder of how good the high times can be.

Some delightfully unexpected visual gags and off-the-wall one-liners, along with the good-looking period settings and a wealth of minor characters, give the film its strength. It becomes a little predictable in the middle, but the pace picks up in time for the classic final shootout. Despite lapses, infectiously good-humoured.

It's not an action film: there's little in the way of exciting set pieces, and Eastwood's restrained performance is low-key almost to the point of minimalism. Rather, as he slowly tries to tunnel out with a pair of nail-clippers, it's an austere depiction of the tedious routines of prison life, and of the courage and strength of spirit needed in coping with unpleasant warders, tough fellow-inmates, and a life sentence.

De Palma actually has the gall to combine the plots from both Vertigo and Rear Window in one big voyeur-fest and pull it off with a certain sly efficiency.

Based on Kurosawa's Yojimbo, it sets a fashion in surly, laconic, supercool heroes with Eastwood's amoral gunslinger, who plays off two gangs against one another in a deadly feud.

Reitman, who also originated Animal House and Meatballs, manages a reasonable success rate at pulling off the numerous verbal and sight gags with which the script is peppered.

It's basically kleenteen fun. If you're worried about the Ramones, rest assured; they make a very adequate chunka chunka chunka sound.

Richter's comic genre hybrid comes complete with its own mythology, and team of established superheroes, and is curiously appealing.

Given the inevitably knotty plotting, the message is oddly unrevealing, although the film features more than enough intelligently, wittily scripted moments to remain a fascinating insight into a crucial episode in the souring of that old American Dream.

Expect this straightforward, compelling adaptation to provoke just the same level of domestic debate. As ever, the writing is rich, flexible, masterly.