Meet Looper, by a country mile the most resourceful, vivacious and savage science fiction movie of 2012.
In his liquor-soaked Prohibition-era drama John Hillcoat offers an imperfect depiction of family, masculinity and authority.
Despite a few comic book movie trappings, The Amazing Spider-Man is a major success story.
Ridley Scott’s sci-fi saga is an overreaching folly that’s well worth seeing on the biggest screen possible.
Gareth Evans’ deliriously violent Indonesian martial arts flick is the most exciting action movie of the last decade.
There’s adventure all right, and science in spades, but someone buried the piracy in Aardman’s latest stop-motion treasure.
Twenty minutes of Dubai-based blockbuster gold aside, Ghost Protocol is kind of flat, inert and not all that exciting.
Another Earth is original, intelligent and eccentric – a true American indie that deserves to be admired and supported.
Paddy Considine’s eloquent, savagely poetic script is grounded in a cinematic idiom of bleached light, bleak estates and broken lives.
Senna may well have been a victim of F1’s politics, but it’s also clear that he played those games as well as anybody.
The Wolfpack hit Bangkok in this loud, dumb, occasionally obnoxious but truly hilarious sequel.
A jaw-dropping spectacle and brain-melting existential nightmare, Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam opus is touched by genius.
Joe Cornish’s dazzling first feature is a brilliant first film by anybody’s standards.
The Black Swan director reflects on the art of filmmaking, the trials of building a legacy and having a dark side.
If Black Swan is Darren Aronofsky’s claim to creative genius, it’s one that is undermined by the film’s own dual nature.
Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams shine in this emotionally bruising relationship drama from Derek Cianfrance.
Not just one of the most entertaining British films in years, but one of the most intriguing, too.
Olivier Assayas serves up an imaginative but exhausting study of a man who embodied the shifting sands of history.
Stripping away the dazzling veneer of sun-dappled privilege, Stephen Frears reveals a world of betrayal, desperation, bitterness and regret.
Although Scott Pilgrim is a hyperactive feast, its greatest strength is its studied literalism.
Black Dynamite feels as though it’s been recovered from a time-capsule and simply set free.
It may not be art and it certainly isn’t truth. But Inception fulfils one of the basic tenets of cinema: it takes the breath away.
Tetro may echo the themes of Francis Ford Coppola’s past masterpieces, but this is the return of an artist, not a legend.
The problem in this empty cinema of spectacle is that there are hardly any arresting images or memorable moments.
Warwick Thornton captures the spectrum of light and heat that spits and sizzles in the frying pan of the Australian Outback.
Sexy, violent, sharply scripted and brilliantly performed, Matthew Vaughn’s comic book romp is a breath of fresh air.
One of Pixar’s crown jewels revels in both a literal and metaphorical extra dimension.
Beneath all the razzle-dazzle, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is a strangely conventional tale.
The maverick filmmaker of his generation takes on the most popular children’s book of all time with mixed results.
Paul King’s endlessly inventive road movie is very much a case of back to the future for British comedy.
Moon is a thoughtful but imperfect sci-fi alternative to the brain-dead blockbusters that dominate the summer.
A frenzy of sound and fury that takes Michael Bay’s vision to its final, eye-boggling extreme.
Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is a difficult, maddening and elusive film that’s also intriguing, profound and darkly funny.
As an observational study of people and place, Werner Herzog’s documentary is truly fascinating.
This is what happens when logic and taste get hurled head-first out of a 10-storey window.
Tomas Alfredson’s stunning Swedish love story has re-invented the vampire film.
Michelle Williams stars in this tender portrait of a women searching for her lost dog.
Tom Cruise plays a Nazi with a moral compass in this drab historical drama from director Bryan Singer.
A stunning career comeback from Mickey Rourke underpins Darren Aronofsky’s tragic sports drama.
Steve McQueen has produced a biopic of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands that is doused in violence.
The memory of Philippe Petit’s wire walk allows the Twin Towers to stand tall again in James Marsh’s stunning film.
Michael Haneke’s latest is an attack on everything you think you know about cinema. It’s a brutal beating.
Steven Soderbergh’s monochrome mystery has a winning, slightly oddball charm, and Cate Blanchett is brilliant.
An emotional powerhouse that sucks you in and rips you apart layer by layer. An unparalleled experience.
So much of Marie Antoinette is so good, but a story this rich and dramatic deserved more.
This vital eco-doc from Al Gore contains a chilling wake-up call everyone needs to listen to.
John Lasseter has described the film as ‘a present to the world’. You might want to keep the receipt.
Brett Ratner doesn’t have the brains, interest or budget to do the X-Men any kind of justice.
Sin City is not so much an adaptation as the transliteration of a comic book classic to the big screen.