The powerhouse denouement is a staggering insight into how colonial legacies continues to affect lives today.

Characteristically Kubrick in both its mechanistic coldness and its vision of human endeavour undone by greed and deceit, this noir-ish heist movie is nevertheless far more satisfying than most of his later work, due both to a lack of bombastic pretensions and to the style fitting the subject matter.

If plot, script and supporters are below par, the score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields is peerless.

Scripted by Steve Tesich, it's Yates' best film since The Friends of Eddie Coyle and displays the kind of unsentimental optimism that went out of fashion with Hawks.

It's impossible not to see Son of Saul as a corrective to past stories that have imposed a neat order (or worse) on such incomprehensible events. Nemes does that too, of course, simply by making this film – but he does so in a way that makes us think of these events afresh.

Dunne, quite simply, is a marvel, deliciously caustic when required, genuinely illuminated by passion, touchingly stoic when events turn against her, while Boyer gains in humanity by using his suave Gallic charm as a mere cover for raging self-doubt. The constantly shifting emotions of their lengthy final scene make it a mini-masterpiece of acting, writing and direction.

A stark, solid, impressively stylish film.

It’s a tale of lonely souls and literalized online dating, and you assume filmmaker Spike Jonze will characteristically mix high-concept absurdism with heartfelt notions. Unexpectedly, the latter dominates, thanks in no small part to Phoenix’s nuanced, open-book performance.

Little Women sometimes plays like a comedy, one that includes a crumpled cry over a bad haircut and several kitchen interludes that feel like Christmas miracles. Yet it’s Alcott’s visionary attitude, well-struck by Gerwig, that stays with you the longest: the loneliness of female liberty.

It seems reductive to call this one of cinema’s great ‘lost’ works because this is one of the great films period, taking its place in the canon with urgency since its re-emergence in the 1990s.

Credit should also go to the crew; to Jack Cardiff for his frond-filled imagery and maestro sound recordist John Mitchell for his atmospheric soundscape.

It might manifest as a straightforward historical documentary, but the fascinating, hypnotic Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat unfolds into something much deeper – and more sinister.

Connery and Caine (both excellent) become classic Huston overreachers, and echoes of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Moby Dick permeate the mythic yarn.

Never extraneous, Flee’s smaller details make this true-life story buzz with life.

The film's strength now derives less from its admittedly powerful but highly simplistic utterances about war as waste, than from a generally excellent set of performances (Ayres especially) and an almost total reluctance to follow normal plot structure.

A film about the importance of cultural history and truth (two things deeply under siege these days), Wiseman’s epic Ex Libris might make you cry with happiness; it’s the good fight being fought. Movies aren’t usually a public benefit, much less an essential one. Here’s the exception.

Watching the first hour of I Was Born, But… (unspooling with a bright, new piano score by Donald Sosin) might remind you of a subdued “Our Gang” skit, and not unpleasantly.

Composed of serio-comic scenes from small town life, heavy with a future perfect sense of Myth-in-the-making, it's driven by tensions between insignificance and monumentality that explode in the histrionic splendour and excess of the celebrated final sequence: Abe Lincoln setting out to scale unseen heights against the portentous gloom of a gathering storm.

A finely wrought image of terminal stasis, national, political (Charles Barr suggests the gang as the first post-war Labour government), and/or creative (the house as Ealing, Johnson as Balcon?). Whatever, Mackendrick immediately upped for America and the equally dark ironies of Sweet Smell of Success.

Polley has gone further into the thorny subject of forgiveness than any of her peers. Her movies ache with ethical quandary; Stories We Tell aches the most.

This is Ross’s first fiction feature and its power comes as no surprise to those familiar with his 2018 calling card of a documentary. Hale County, This Morning This Evening announced a gifted photographer driven by sensitivity to his subjects’ dignity. Accordingly, Nickel Boys miraculously goes against the grain of the story’s devastating trajectory by leading with the same loving eye.

Ultimately, though, The Boy and the Heron is yet another testament to Miyazaki’s evergreen ability to embrace philosophical themes with boundless imagination. Jaw-dropping visuals, tender moments, and a pinch of comedy make it the perfect Christmas treat for Ghibli fans.

Politics apart, though, it's pretty electrifying.

This spry, sharp and relentlessly clever middle finger to censorship is Panahi’s boldest act of defiance to date.

If you’re looking for a more granular account of the Oxy epidemic and its perpetrators, Emmy-nominated miniseries Dopesick and investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s bestseller ‘Empire of Pain’ both have your back. But All the Beauty and the Bloodshed plots a slightly different kind of narrative: one that’s full of defiance and emotion.

Ozu’s final film is a movingly valedictory affair, its familiar story of Ryu’s elderly widower marrying off daughter Iwashita carrying even more poignancy than usual as a poised and wise reminder of passing time and the inevitable approach of mortality.

It shouldn’t all be so funny, but it is, and it’s to Baker’s huge credit that he’s able to inspire laughs and huge enjoyment from this madcap story without leaving you feeling that the woman at the heart of this mess has been short-changed and exploited for our pleasure.

What makes The Favourite work are its women—who rule, both literally within the movie and outwardly, dominating our enjoyment.