This punky adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel Filth is a glossary of grimness, a dictionary of darkness. But it also dishes up humour that’s blacker than a winter’s night in the Highlands and unpolished anarchy that’s true to Welsh’s out-there, frighteningly frank prose.

It’s taut, creepy, compelling and sexy. And, apart from the location, it’s very much a Dolan film, focused on people testing the limits of their love for each other – and themselves.

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.

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

The cliché-averse will doubtless resist, but the laughter and tears here are never less than fully earned. A lovely film.

As filmmaking, X+Y is unassuming and not entirely remarkable, but the relationships play so sweetly and memorably.

The story is a bit predictable and rough around the edges. But it’s heart-on-the-sleeve sweet.

Sissako’s methods are confrontational, yet never to the point that you feel you’re watching sacrificial lambs instead of people caught in a horrible situation. In this terrible context, madness and death are blessings. It’s living that’s the curse.

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

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

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