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.