Lynne Ramsay returns with a scuzzy, stripped-back thriller focused on the man, rather than the mission.

Like an arthouse Ghost, this is bold, original filmmaking with a pervasive sense of amused detachment.

A heist movie with serious bite, Widows is both brilliantly tense and strikingly relevant.

Blurring documentary/fiction boundaries, writer/director Jem Cohen’s film is deceptively simple.

Chazelle broadens his horizons with this superbly detailed account of the Moon landing. Gosling and especially Foy are out of this world.

An excellent middle chapter bursting with wit, wisdom, emotion, shocks, old-fashioned derring-do, state-of-the-art tech, and stonking set-pieces.

All politics and posturing, the first two-thirds of the film are stiff and uninvolving, and although the climatic 45-minute free-for-all is genuinely spectacular, it’s clear where the director’s heart lies.

The story itself is more satisfying, while the power of the jolts is boosted by the immaculate sound and sneakily effective subliminal extra frames. See it and shiver. [2000 re-release]

Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs follows up the highly mannered (and highly strung) French Exit (2020) with a slow-burn study of sibling rivalry, parental mortality and the ties that bind.

Full of shivers and subtext, this is scarily good. One of the films – horror or otherwise – of the year.

A brilliantly played, stone-cold '70s classic.

Moving ever-onward from the sequels years, Pixar gets right back in the zone with Soul. Deep, witty, and fast on its jazz-loving feet, it doesn’t miss a beat.

Shot with doc-style immediacy, it expertly builds to a shocking climax.

Touching rather than touchy-feely, it’s a high-stakes story with its fair share of fights, deaths and the jail-or-joy tensions of parole hearings. If it’s also a tad starry-eyed about drama as a cultural cure-all, Kwedar’s empathy for the life-battered inmates makes this a rare, graceful work.

An intergenerational family drama, a search for self, and a big, bouncy comedy sure to entertain.

A brutal army thriller that feels like the truth, thanks to take-no-prisoners storytelling and a tell-no-lies performance from Jack O’Connell.

Like a more obvious underwater twist on Herzog’s "Grizzly Man," Blackfish presents a persuasive, passionate argument: wild nature’s right to freedom demands respect, cock and all.

Proves The Witch was no fluke. Dafoe and Pattinson dazzle in a luminous exercise in maritime madness.

“YOU RIPPED MY FAVOURITE SHIRT!” Cage loses it in a bloody, druggy, superbly crafted revenge thriller. Astonishing.

Like a Cobain mixtape brought to feral life, Montage is scruffy, sharp and insightful on an oft-explored subject. The pay-off is terribly moving – it’ll drain you.

Ridiculously funny and meticulously detailed, The LEGO Movie is far better than a toy tie-in movie has any right to be. Despite a couple of dips, you’ll be grinning throughout.

Sticking tightly to its heroine’s everyday routines and rituals, this deft blend of humour and pathos fully earns its defiantly upbeat dance-floor denouement.

Carried aloft by the remarkable performances of her two young leads, Clio Barnard’s poignant, unflinching slice of hard-knock-life grips tight and lingers long. Britain’s definitely got talent.

The simple approach teases fascinating parallels between art and marriage: essential to both, it seems, are a thick skin and an optimism verging on madness.

Between hidden depths and dazzling surfaces, home truths and virtual wonders, Hosoda’s tale of teenage anguish, connectivity and emotional salvation enraptures.

Unconventional, almost to a fault, Brett Morgen’s impressionistic, experiential Bowie documentary is an electrifying oddity.

Furious, relevant, and funny as hell.

You may not be sure what you've seen, but you've sure seen something. With neither a petticoat nor a wideboy in sight, this is one of the most original and exciting British movies in some time.

A timely look at a fight to be heard – in the boardroom or the press – that’s elegant without being electric.

Vogt’s droll, daring meta-drama flows in subtle, surprising fashion. Petersen provides a magnetic focus for a mischievous, moving debut.

A stark, sinister chamber piece built on atmosphere and performances. Morfydd Clark is a revelation.

A horror film that will haunt your waking hours for weeks. Every frame of It Follows is stamped with nameless dread.

Shot with a retro chic, their courtship is crisp, but there’s enough grit in this Cannes prize-winner to stop it floating away.

The result is a shrewd look at classroom etiquette and an achingly sad study of grief-stricken solitude, built on ace performances by Fellag and the kids-especially 11-year-old scene stealer Sophie Nélisse.

You don’t need to be a Swiftie to admire the astonishing staging, endless creativity, and the spectacle of an artist giving her all.

Impressively acted and compassionately observed, it hovers intriguingly between reality and dream-state.

Fizzy, funny, heightened – Hit Man is a damn good time at the movies that will leave you buzzing.

This solid if unspectacular finish to the Apes trilogy features an A-game Andy Serkis and incredible VFX, but its darker excesses threaten to suffocate at times.

The lead character’s called Grace, but don’t be put off: Cretton’s tough-love snapshot of shattered youth is achingly moving rather than manipulative or mawkish.

A stop-motion charmer.

Philosophically complex, spiritual but anti-religious, harrowing yet hopeful.

Buoyant, buffed and with the promise of even better to come, this is the freshest Trek in decades.

Cleverly making the most of the quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUD dynamics of most horror films, the sound is the real star.

Charming, poignant and often very funny, Baumbach and Gerwig’s latest collaboration is a joyous portrait of an unformed personality that should strike chords of recognition in all who watch it.

It’s actually a ruthlessly plausible thriller, stripped clean of music and melodrama, and all the more engrossing for it.

Mielants, who brilliantly conjures a dank, oppressive mood (even a shot of childhood fave Danger Mouse on TV fails to lift the spirits) skilfully avoids any overwrought confrontations; the film’s understated power only grows as it goes on.

Daniel Craig is on fine form leading a killer cast in Rian Johnson’s boisterously enjoyable murder mystery. All the evidence points to a winner.

It might be too heady a brew for some, especially those whose appreciation of tennis is limited to strawberries and cream. On the acting front, though, it’s a virtual grand slam, Zendaya, Faist, and particularly O’Connor fine-tuning their characters’ 13-year romantic imbroglio into a lusty love match for the ages.

Musing on memory and machine-emotion, it echoes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Her. But despite its fine portraits of loss, it never escapes its stage-play origins.

Cut from the same cloth as I, Daniel Blake, Loach’s latest is a powerful state-of-the-nation dispatch.

I don’t want people to dislike me. I’m indifferent to if they dislike me,” says Jobs. Well, this won’t be for everyone but it dazzles. Markedly better than Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs…

Every second is earned in Macdonald's long, generous and rigorously detailed Bob doc. You might wish for more live material but what's here is stirring, probing and moving.

Kaurismäki adeptly weaves rockabilly musical interludes, a stylised colourscheme and droll performances into a warm-hearted salute to both classical French cinema and working-class solidarity.

The Holdovers is a loving testament to the power of the human spirit, albeit one that favours subtle, melancholic grace notes over any need to shout. Though tinged with sadness - be prepared to shed a tear - it’s sure to become a feel-good, festive favourite.

A small film that hits big, Sound Of Metal is a gem you’ll want to bang the drum for.

[A] mesmerising film.

OK, so the ‘Nam firefights are more routine than we’d expect from Lee and the treasure hunt element almost feels it belongs to a different film, but this is a frequently fierce, fascinating picture. The world needs it right now.

With film labs closing down and new formats springing up all the time, this is a timely stock-take of 21st Century cinema.

A barking mad shaggy dog story with imagination to spare. 13/10, would watch again.

In long, static takes, Hogg calmly exposes the gulf between polite facades and repressed resentments.

Certain Women won’t challenge Transformers 5 at the box office, but it’s a deeply affecting triumph.

Tracing how the world’s peaks came to be viewed as playgrounds, it needs to be seen on the big screen for its vertiginous images of high-altitude adventurers.

Molina and Lithgow shine as newlywed grumpy old men in a moving love story that’s also a masterclass in emotional subtlety.

Squeezing every drop of tension from wet-ink recent history, Phillips only falters when making its protagonists mouthpieces in a broader geopolitical debate. Otherwise, it’s full steam ahead to the Oscars.

A truly distinctive epic, blending brutal violence, powerhouse performances and otherworldly imagery into its volcanic rampage of revenge. Unmissable.

Closer in metaphysical spirit to Kiarostami than to Leone, it lingers thanks to beautifully lit widescreen images of lived-in faces and barren, beautiful landscapes.

Sun, sex, psychosis, skinny-dipping: it sounds like genre tat, but Guiraudie’s dark, droll study of a risky attraction upends expectations. It plays by stealth, but its sly grip is sure.

Pulled from the news but punched up to fever pitch, Sicario represents the perfect mix of cerebral and visceral thrills. Star, director and screenwriter all bring their A-game.

Most importantly, The Long Good Friday features one of Bob Hoskins' best performances, as Harold Shand, the patriotic mobster who's heading for a fall. Without this towering central performance, it's likely that The Long Good Friday would have been sidelined as "that dodgy '80s gangster film" years ago.

An exquisitely crafted sequel that stands shoulder to shoulder with one of the greatest films ever made. Everyone involved is operating at the height of their powers.

If the formula feels familiar, the girls’ personalities obliterate any chance of tedium, with Broadway producer-turned-director Amanda Lipitz providing sensitive insight into their home lives while capturing the toe-tapping with joyful aplomb.

Al-Mansour carefully dodges easy uplift, but her message of hope to future generations of Saudi women is clear.

An intelligent, eloquent and stirring sci-fi that grips from start to finish, Arrival is up there with the year’s best movies.

Overall, Cregger’s twisted fairytale is not only the best horror movie to come out of an already impressive year for the genre, but Weapons is a positively terrifying, heartwrenching look at a struggling community.

Come for the wild ideas, stay for the warm wisdom in the Daniels’ heartfelt carnival of chaos. Yeoh aces every curveball.

Guileless performances, understated direction and bucolic Belgian scenery combine to create a quiet gem of a film.

If the result is unlikely to leave audiences bawling, it’s still a well-observed study of life and loss.

One of the princes of arthouse cinema, Miguel Gomes here uses his status to push form and stretch boundaries. Very long but very much worth it.

Funny, foul-mouthed and frighteningly on-the-money, Top Five is relentlessly amusing even while it’s super-indulgent and selfabsorbed. Rock on.

It may lack the ingenuity of their finest outings, but this is Pixar’s best film in ages. Visually splendid, frequently emotional and culturally nourishing.

Political intrigue abounds as Spielberg grippingly recreates a famous real-life spy-swap case of the Cold War, with both Hanks and Rylance on top form.

A hypnotically disturbing triumph for Miller and his cast. Bruisingly intimate and psychologically nuanced, its spiral into savagery lingers like a bad dream.

Volumes one and two are especially captivating, as Gomes himself appears onscreen to tell of how he charged a team of researchers with scouring Portugal in search of tales.

Portman’s Oscar-worthy work crowns an unconventional study of an icon, while Mica Levi’s score is sublime.

It’s ambitious, artful and unique. As for Bowie… what a star, man.

One of the strangest films you’ll see this (or any) year, it unsettles, bores, elates and amuses in equal measure. Not for everyone, but there’s plenty to chew on.

If not quite on a par with PTA’s best, this is still a richly intoxicating brew of humour, violence and melancholy.

Its shuffling pace and basic animation all add to the heartbreak as the protagonists slowly unravel, even as they fight to keep a grip.

Despite the slightly uneven pacing, Wright’s sturdy performance keeps things on an even keel. The result is a fiendishly sharp poke at questionable notions of Black representation in the modern world.

The results – achieved through small cameras clipped to nets, masts and the crew – will hook some and induce seasickness in others.

“We have to find a product that’s appealing to people!” says Garcia Bernal at one point. And that’s just what Larraín’s created with this Latin spin on "Mad Men."

The strong supporting gallery - including Gillian Anderson and Martin Compston - feels underused, but Meier and her ace DoP Agnès Godard make shrewd use of the dramatic alpine locations.

Tarantino's three-hour feast of Southern-fried trash cinema might be too much – and too bloody – for certain constitutions, but the rewards are plentiful. Be sure to hunt it down.

Equally cool and cruel, stuffed with subtext, this ‘Iranian fairytale’ weaves its spell to a flip, hip ending. Amirpour is one to watch.

Peele doubles down on his genre love with a flawed but full-bore frightener, ripe for debate. Nyong’o is incendiary.

Coupled with the extraordinary lush visuals and fluid camerawork – moulding the ocean’s many moods and textures till it’s practically a character – Moana essays a rich, vivid feel. It might not be a whole new world, but it’s a fantastic voyage.

Full of ear-pleasing lines and obscure R&B tunes, it’s colourful, casual and full of flavour. An unexpected treat.

The Daniel Craig era comes of age with a ballsy Bond that takes brave chances and bold risks. Guess what? Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.