The cumulative effect is so stunning and antithetical to anything Hollywood is doing at the moment – the equally audacious Barbie aside – that it feels like a completely different art form. And, frankly, hallelujah for that.

The Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, painful, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away.

Its seminal importance in the early gangster movie cycle outweighed only by its still exhilarating brilliance, this Howard Hughes production was the one unflawed classic the tycoon was involved with.

The first half, set in a single room, echoes Hitchcock's Rope in exploring his moral dilemma while the action takes place off-screen. The second is disconcertingly different in that it focuses excitingly on the police procedures deployed in the hunt for the kidnapper. But the connections, though sometimes overly obvious in appealing to the liberal conscience, span fascinating Dostoevskian depths.

Sorry, Baby is a captivating comedy-drama that avoids the reductive binary of hero or villain. Instead, Victor articulates the flaws of humanity, of people, but also the hope we can find in each other and ourselves.

There’s an edge to The Circus that suggests a man gazing deep into the void, laughing at the darkness and urging us to do the same.

It's a bold, significant piece of work: an investigative thriller with a grave finale that stuns you into silence, then, hopefully, something more.

The use of pop and opera and the black-and-white photography (by Michael Chapman) are exemplary, the actual boxing a compulsive dance of death.

Mercifully, it lacks the pretentious moralising of his later work, and is far more professionally put together. But for all its relative dramatic coherence, it's still hard to see how it was ever taken as a masterpiece.

Charles Crichton’s direction is subtle but inventive – check out the snaking, near-single-take opening in a Rio cabana – and the performances, writing and plotting are faultless.

A dynamite crime comedy and identity meltdown that can rekindle one’s faith in movies.

Magnificent...Scorsese's most poignantly moving film.

Ideally, though, it should prove as gruelling a test of its audience's moral and political conscience as it seems to have been for its makers.

Whiplash scrapes the far edge of crazy passion. It never apologizes.

Marvellous, grimly downbeat study of desperate lives and the escape routes people construct for themselves, stunningly shot by Conrad Hall.

It's absolutely riveting.

Featuring some brilliant camerawork by Liu and the late Dylan Sakiyama, Minding the Gap is an impressive feature that provides an intimate and grounded examination of racism, violence, manhood and economic anxiety in the US. It will warm your heart but possibly break it a little too.

A paranoid police procedural, a perverse parable about the corrupting elements of power, and a candidate for the greatest predated Patriot Act movie ever, Elio Petri's stunning thriller makes no attempt to hide the culprit behind the film's grisly murder.

Serrated with political edge, Scorsese’s true-crime epic is impeccably constructed and utterly gripping.

The popular view of art is that it belongs to the masses. Wiseman casts a more skeptical eye, questioning such egalitarianism with cold, hard historical context. Yet he simultaneously acknowledges that these works live on far beyond their original purpose, even if, as the film’s bold, brilliant climax suggests, they may eventually play to an audience of none.

One of the key films of the '40s.

White Heat = Scarface + Psycho.

The movie that confirmed Kurosawa's greatest strength, his innovative handling of genre.

We are in the presence of a new classic.

The storytelling is brisk, though the wealth of events and characters means you have to let yourself go with the flow. But Gangs of Wasseypur is always compelling, and Bajpai’s charisma means there’s always a colorful presence at the heart of the drama long after the endless hail of bullets has grown tiresome.

It’s at once intimate and expansive – a film with a big heart and not a bad word to say about anyone.

Barry Lyndon is best known for its photography – Kubrick borrowed a low-light camera from Nasa so he could shoot in candlelight – and it is uniquely, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. But there’s much more to it: this is a story of identity, and the lack of it. And it’s fascinating.

Delightfully embracing the specificity of Eastern culture, The Farewell reflects on collective considerations versus individualism, not unlike Crazy Rich Asians. It unearths the universality of complex familial love that defies borders and language barriers.