There may be little here we haven’t seen before – glassy reflections of Michael Mann’s Heat pop up everywhere you look – but it’s all carried off with brashness and momentum by a director who genuinely seems to be having a blast.

The film’s pleasures are simple – soaring landscapes, old-school DIY adventure and some sweet performances by the child actors. It makes for a charmingly old-fashioned family adventure.

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.

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.

Efficient enough as a thriller, but what makes this mandatory viewing is the return of Pacino. There are isolated scenes as good as anything he's done, and if the role is less demanding than Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon or Michael in The Godfather, his presence lifts the production in the way De Niro lifted Midnight Run.

This also marks what may be Allison Janney’s funniest performance to date: her cheerful, outspoken drunk next door is an absolute hoot.

U.N.C.L.E. has enough style and smarts to make it an amusingly louche summer movie: a cultivated mix of action and wit, suits and cities, that feels refreshingly analogue in a digital world.

Not a lot to it, certainly, but the acting and performances combine to produce an obliquely effective study of the effect of landscape upon emotion, and the wry, dry humour is often quite delicious.

His film is the product of tough-love, arresting, unexpected and worth your time.

The film's quietly angry plea is for compassion, understanding and more than one eye open on this modern horror.

A candid, often shocking documentary portrait of the great photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

The Fits is abstract and atmospheric, intense and surprisingly emotional. There are few explanations in this short tale. It’s hard to pin down, but guaranteed to leave a mark.

With Dolan, you feel you're in the company of a truly original voice and one unafraid to make his mistakes right up there on the screen.

Still, it’s one of the terrorist's wives (Melissa Benoist) who carries the film’s most riveting and provocative scene.

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

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.

What makes this more than just a punishing, fearful, expertly crafted thriller focused on one man’s endurance is heavily down to Emmanuel Lubezki’s attractive, thoughtful photography.

But while she's thoroughly committed to serving both the rom and the com (the film is genuinely sweet, and at times very funny) Scherfig somehow never falls into any of the obvious traps.

Where Antonioni's images made you think, De Palma's merely make you blink, and the baroque plot confuses as often as it frightens. Still, plenty of style, a modicum of thrills, and a suitably s(l)ick ending. Collectors of character performances will enjoy Lithgow's right-wing nut.

It’s a teasing celebration of outsiderdom without being a full-on endorsement

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

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.

Pawlikowski’s film may be bleak and unforgiving, but it’s also richly sympathetic and deeply moving.

Hyena is startling, claustrophobic and penetrating in its analysis of the blurred lines involved in doing good.

No one watches Gone with the Wind for historical accuracy. What keeps us coming back is four-hours of epic romance in gorgeous Technicolor.

Hogg displays a welcome desire to draw on global film influences and ignore the unwritten rules of what British cinema should or should not seek to achieve, especially in the realm of films about the monied and unsympathetic.

Danny Says doesn’t break the rock-doc mould, but it’s a must for fans of noise and nostalgia.

The story is fictional, yet it builds up a chastening picture of divisive separate political and religious agendas holding sway over common humanity, and leading the country deeper into chaos. A striking, tough-minded achievement.