Tyrone Power is surprisingly good as the man accused of murdering his mistress, but the swift twists and turns of Ms Christie's plot soon drain Dietrich and Laughton's roles of any dramatic credibility.

This replaces the British version's tight, economic plotting and quirky social observations with altogether glossier production values and a typically '50s examination of the family under melodramatic stress.

Showing how the dream of being a rich and beautiful princess curdled into a nightmare might sound like a hard sell, but Spencer pulls it off in heightened, claustrophobic and truly decadent fashion.

One of the many powerful things about The Image Book is how it so aggressively rejects any sort of gloss or neat packaging. The telling is the story.

This surreal, sentimental journey does provide an excellent encapsulation of everything Ruiz did best: oddball takes on highbrow lit and lowbrow genre conventions, guided tours of characters’ mazelike memory banks, and a reveling in film culture that doubles as a cinephile’s wet dream.

Zestily performed and choreographed, beautifully shot by Robert Burks, full of standards like '76 Trombones' and 'Till There Was You', and endowed with a warming nostalgia for old-fashioned ways.

This is a deliciously languid, slinkily unsettling affair.

It’s a weird and unusually honest film.

Miners' is tiresome and scattershot.

More often than not, September 5 feels like a great 1970s thriller that could only have been made in the 21st century.

An incomplete exercise that lacks crucial emotional brushstrokes despite a rich palette and a piano-heavy score, At Eternity’s Gate still offers the thrill of being inside an artistic process, adoringly interpreted.

A full-bodied and mischievous autobiography in the spirit of Federico Fellini’s "Amarcord," Alejandro Jodorowsky’s return to filmmaking after 28 years of financial frustration explodes with great ideas.

This is a brisk, well-oiled thriller with blistering performances and a crackling, memorable script.

Leavened by an attractive soundtrack that includes the Carter Family’s well-placed “Single Girl, Married Girl” (and the Paul Simon song that gives the film its title), Obvious Child has a loud agenda that will be off-putting to some. Still, it’s a welcome counterpoint to the likes of "Knocked Up" and even "Juno," where the abortion route is an apparent no-go.

The film ultimately plays less like an experiment than a demonstration of a tinkerer’s ingenuity. Tim’s finished Vermeer may resemble the real thing, but Tim’s Vermeer never tackles the true mystery of why the latter is actually incomparable.

Marvellous, toughly eccentric thriller which confirmed that Siegel had more responses to '70s paranoia than a mere Magnum blast, and decisively removed Matthau from the wasteland of Neil Simon wit.

This vision of contemporary Italy as a warped fairyland filled with corpulent slobs and seedy C-grade celebrities recalls the tough-love spectacle of Fellini’s "La Dolce Vita," but Reality frustratingly devolves into a far more tedious mass-media morality tale.

The stars here are not the moms, but the kids-and they are truly amazing.

Adjust to the deliberate rhythms of this hiking movie-set on the lush slopes of Georgia's Caucasus Mountains - and the psychological payoff stings like a blister.

The chemistry between Clift and Taylor is unmistakeable – this is one of the great cinematic portraits of untamed desire – and there’s a compelling sense of unavoidable destiny, of a societal trap slowly, inexorably snapping shut.

Inna de Yard becomes more like a concert movie, with a spine of cultural history, than a narrative documentary.

Despite its wealth of detail and sharp observations about morality, the film remains curiously insubstantial with its refined dabbling in the elements of satire, sentiment and melodrama exploited with such panache in Chaplin's starring comedies.

It's a spectacular return to the shimmering, mesmerising deep-focus animation associated with Disney's classic period: a marvellous use of lighting to create atmosphere, dew-drops glisten from every tree, and the villains are as primally terrifying as cartoon villains should be. The choice of material (Robert O'Brien's novel Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) is less fortunate, since it lacks the wonder of early Disney, and the mouse heroine is far too insipid and twee. It's still a pretty effective family film, though.

This may not quite be the biopic of two women whose achievements decidedly merit one, but it’s an extraordinary story about a man who endured danger, ridicule and desperation to create the circumstances for them to thrive.

A likeable shaggy dog of a movie, assuming the music's to your taste.

The first-person recollections of Nanking’s survivors are as uncommonly wrenching as their captors were brutally thorough.

This one’s a crucible of sweaty pre-natal panic, weird knocks at the door, mind games and ultimately, a roaring, miniature apocalypse set inside a single claustrophobic living room. If that already sounds like your home, it's time to go and give it a try.

French director Léonor Serraille’s debut film could easily have been unbearably twee. The fact that it isn’t, at all, is a tribute both to her unsentimental storytelling, and to the prickly strength of Laetitia Dosch’s central performance.

Buscemi's semi- autobiographical first feature as writer/director is a beautifully low-key, disarmingly perceptive blue-collar character-study, reminiscent of vintage Cassavetes in its sociological and emotional authenticity.

A dryly amusing mockumentary from the Kiwis behind the similarly deadpan Eagle vs Shark and Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows unfolds like the darkest movie that Christopher Guest never made.

Basically, it’s an electrifying three-person play, as the determined Winstead, the complexly furious Goodman and Tony-winner John Gallagher Jr. (playing a lucky neighbor who made his way down) have it out in scenes that impart the nauseating futility of George Romero’s mall-ensconced "Dawn of the Dead."

If this profile is marred slightly by thematic tidiness and a willingness to overglorify the champion's rise (Fischer didn't even write his best-seller, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess), it still supplies a cracked, conflicted genius trapped in his ceaseless endgame.

If the movie falls just shy of our highest mark, this is because Cronenberg is tamping down on his usually naturalistic performances - everything feels vaguely mad-scientist-ish.

There aren't many films which tackle the generation gap between middle-aged kids and their old folks with such unsentimental comic acuity - and Reynolds essays her best role in three decades with delectable good grace and charm.

Easily the most gracefully performed grief-porn you'll see this season.

Despite the best efforts of a cast that mixes unstudied newbies such as The Tree of Life’s Sheridan with Hollywood prima donnas like Reese Witherspoon (a starlet-slumming-it distraction as Mud's dim-bulb inamorata), there’s an overall clunkiness that Nichols is unable to overcome.

Gilroy, vastly supported by cinematographer and Los Angeles specialist Robert Elswit (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), directs with the verve of a seasoned pro, even though Nightcrawler is his debut.

The Woman King is a story of sisterhood and racial identity that deserves to pack in the crowds. About time, indeed.

There is an affection – for the people, for the animals, and for the land – that suffuses Lunana with a warm glow.

Though its come-on is playful, this documentary sinks into some swampy subjects, including racism, secret biowarfare and political assassination.

The overall effect is one of wonderment, eccentricity and heartache that will connect deeply with anyone who recently spent an extended period stuck in close proximity with other human beings.

In favouring the dramatic over the didactic, Goldhaber arguably buries the themes of the source text a little too deeply, resulting in a film that isn’t quite the call to action it might have been. Still, its message resonates – and its bomb-setting scenes are as nail-biting as cinema’s best bomb disposals.

A Matrix Reloaded–like cliffhanger reminds that this is only the second installment out of four (good lord), but at least the flick leaves us with more than a tinge of interest in whom the odds will favor next.

Submarine may not be epic cinema, but in a modest way, it's close to perfection.

For devoted filmlovers, Nouvelle Vague is a must-see – a joyful homage to the art of cinema that’ll have you queuing at your local repertory cinema as soon as the credits roll.

Welles' third film, often described as his worst, but still a hugely enjoyable thriller.

With its dazzling camerawork, feverish energy and dark, visceral power, this admirably unsentimental film paints a compelling portrait of moral derailment and salvation in a city in social and spiritual turmoil.

It’s a more self-consciously artful film than its predecessor, an admirable spectacle rather than an entrancing human story. But as a work of pure, imaginative cinema, it comes close to genius.

Into the Inferno may be relatively minor Herzog — it’s sweet and rambling rather than laser-bolt intense like "Fitzcarraldo" or "Grizzly Man." But it is enormously satisfying, filled with wisdom, insight and molten lava.

Part drama-thriller, part OTT slasher, Pearl doesn’t particularly resolve its internal conflicts, but it does hold the attention.

It’s not judgy or lecturing, and there’s nothing too didactic here – and maybe not a lot to linger over either. But if you’re looking for a couple of hours of sexy Parisians hooking up, falling out and finding their feet again, all set to pulsing electro and with a baked-in romanticism that makes a built-up corner of Paris feel like Casablanca, Audiard and his co-writers have made the perfect film.

For all of Dead’s beards and dirtiness, you never get over the feeling that you’re watching modern actors play frontier-drama dress-up. It’s a deathblow.

The point, of course, is to get lost. As the soft-spoken sage himself notes, “The world is a very puzzling place.” What a pleasure it is, the film suggests, to be perpetually befuddled.

It’s a ruined community grappling with belated ethics; that’s the real story here.

Milestone's direction, veering between stagey two-shots and extravagant but purposeless camera movements, doesn't help either.

The symbolism is lightly worn here in a gently observational film that’s underpinned with humanism and compassion.

For a movie that's essentially about a piece of hardware-the legendary Neve mixing console, an imposing slab of knobs and meters - this geeked-out documentary beats with more heart than could be imagined.

When Stiller indulges in moments of unfulfilled rage, this has real desperation.

The Mend finds the truths that bind families together, but it knows that everyone has to hack their own path to get there.

Every so often, you get the gift of watching an under-the-radar actor bloom into a critical-mass phenomenon before your bloodshot eyes: Franka Potente in "Run Lola Run," or Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds." Add Noomi Rapace to the list; what she does with the title character of this Swedish thriller-cum-pop-lit-adaptation will spawn cults of swooning Rapacephiles stat.

Arguably Sirk's bleakest film - perhaps because it was shot in greyish monochrome rather than luridly stylised colour - and one of his finest, this adaptation of Faulkner's Pylon reassembles the three principles from Written on the Wind for a probing but sympathetic study in failure and despair.

The first hour, sprawling, chaotic and violently messy, is very good indeed, conveying both the complexity and the essential absurdity of war, while the photography by Chris Menges is stunningly convincing in detailing the scale of the carnage.

While Leone's vision still has a magnificent sweep, the film finally subsides to an emotional core that is sombre, even elegiac, and which centres on a man who is bent and broken by time, and finally left with nothing but an impotent sadness. 

May’s biggest get, however, is Ciavarella himself—a man forever rationalizing his shady actions, who emerges as a more complexly tragic figure than you’d think possible.

Taking elements of both the Western and the British horror film, Peckinpah's masterstroke was to shoot Straw Dogs absolutely straight, without the reassuring signposts of either type of film.

Encanto has a few nifty plot pivots and surprising reveals, but it’s the animation itself that steals the show.

Hurt is in good vicious form as the shaded hit man; Stamp once more wears a smile like a halo; and the prospect of approaching death is handled without too much metaphysical puffing and blowing. All in all, a very palpable hit.

By movie’s end, you see flocks of umbrella-adorned commuters in a different light; and what’s often viewed as Japanese humility becomes a doorway to something huge and eternal. Bring the kids.

Built out of complex performances etched with economic flair, unobtrusive camera work and the faintest tinge of comic whimsy (the film’s score, by Japanese trumpeter Jun Miyake, is marvelous), Norman is an intimate film that simply has no drawbacks.

More subdued and much more honest that any of John Hughes' egregious forays into adolescence, the film's only drawback is an artificially upbeat ending.

Tolerably gripping in its old-fashioned way, thanks chiefly to old pro performances from Tracy and March as the rival lawyers and ideologists, but rather let down by Kelly's inadequacy as the cynical journalist who is comfortably denounced as the real villain of the piece.

Mistress America steamrolls through its mesmerizingly dense running time with such joyous violence that its themes only bubble up to the surface in retrospect, the heart of the movie identified like the dental records of a body that’s been burned beyond all recognition.

Several quick-witted touches-such as a hilarious nod to Depp's role in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"-can't make up for Gore Verbinski's leaden direction of this digitally animated feature.

Look elsewhere if you want a linear timeline of Sebald's life or don't possess that titular virtue; everyone else will want to make a beeline to their local bookstore.

This unusual film sits in a genre of one.

The Aatsinki siblings never rise past a kind of rotely anonymous masculinity, and overall the film tends to lull rather than engage the senses.

Plaza, who follows up Black Bear with another darker turn, is great in a role that lets her badass side out for a rampage.

If you'll pardon the cleverness, Frank takes time to wrap your own cranium around, faults and all, and that's a wonderful thing.

Holland takes a more prosaic approach, but the ironies bite hard, and occasional farcical moments add an unsettling edge to Perel's fortunes. Holland plays on the paradox of role-playing with moderation, but the moral uncertainties of Perel's survival are no less dizzying for all that.

It's obvious from Easy Money why Espinosa would be going places. So long as he takes Kinnaman with him, the gentleman can have our hard-earned cash.

Maggie Gyllenhaal excels in a thorny indie about boundary-crossing obsession and thwarted ambition.

Despite the unsubtlety of the movie’s stance, a dizzyingly complex portrait emerges: that of pissed-off museum neighbors, arrogant critics and even the NAACP’s dignified Julian Bond, articulating a racial component.

In the thick of reboot culture, The Naked Gun is a prime example of filmmakers taking a nostalgic piece of cinema and making good on its legacy. It honours the humour above all, and you’d be hard-pushed to find a funnier film this year.

Worthy is a marvel, transitioning from pasty wallflower to a glowering, unencumbered threat.

An American remake is already being prepped. We suggest Hollywood simply cries uncle now and calls it a day.

A flawed but immensely appealing film adapted in part from Vardis Fisher's Mountain Man, a superb historical novel which explores the myth and the reality of the tough trappers who roamed the unconquered West in the 1850s.

Though perhaps it tries too hard to be 'respectable' and downplays its tawdry trash vulgarity a little too much (the film is tough, but William Lindsay Gresham's superb novel is even tougher), this is still a mean, moody, and well-nigh magnificent melodrama.

There are plenty of movies which seem to have been made by madmen. Possession may be the only film in existence which is itself mad: unpredictable, horrific, its moments of terrifying lucidity only serving to highlight the staggering derangement at its core. Extreme but essential viewing.

One senses this is a production better suited to the stage.

A brooding, muscular FBI procedural that occasionally explodes into Point Break-y action, Aussie director Justin Kurzel’s (Snowtown) true-life thriller delves, pungently and topically, into the inner workings of white nationalism in America before deciding that squealing tyres and shootouts are a lot more fun.

Although the film was completed too early to document Hanna’s return to music—her new band, the Julie Ruin, released an album in September and has been touring—it still offers a poignant, intimate portrait of a larger-than-life personality—one whose singular voice is still sorely needed in music, culture and, well, everywhere.

It’s quietly absorbing and fitfully shocking as we experience the sights, sounds and smells of the streets where a one-year-old child can wander around alone without anyone stopping to wonder why.

Dwan's deft handling of the action counteracts the dramatic clichés of the conflict between Wayne and his rebellious substitute son, Agar.

Donen and Kelly's last musical together, and an exhilarating - if rather odd - follow-up to the marvellous On the Town.

His “treason” gave credence to ending the war, helped push a corrupt administration toward its ruin and underlined the importance of the First Amendment. Rickety doc or not, Ellsberg deserves every ounce of hero worship he gets here.

A lesser movie might hammer home the idea that the cult squashes Martha's sense of self. This distinctive and haunting effort implies something much scarier: that there is no self to start with.

The result is erratic, occasionally WTF hilarious (three words: revenge by panther!), and in its transgressive tracks-of-my-tears climax, capable of finding pleasure in being bat-shit crazy.

It abounds with intelligently applied stop-frame, slow motion and colour treatment knick-knacks which heighten the excitement and visual impact.