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.