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Call Me By Your Name

^{Beautiful, sundrenched romance directed by A Bigger Splash’s Luca Guadagnino, chronicling the affair a teenager (Timothée Chalamet) and a visiting American grad student (Armie Hammer) in 1980s Italy. Read the full review}

₂

Moonlight

^{Heartrending account of a black teenager’s struggle to come to terms with his gay identity – potentially difficult material handled with an almost miraculous lightness of touch by director Barry Jenkins. Read the full review}

₃

The Florida Project

^{Follow-up to Tangerine from director Sean Baker, here offering a kids’-eye view of unconventional family life in a motel on the outskirts of Walt Disney World. Read the full review.}

₄

Elle

^{An audacious comeback from Paul Verhoeven has Isabelle Huppert on career-best form as an icy career woman dealing with a violent sexual assault. Read the full review.}

₅

Get Out

^{Politically inflected horror film featuring Skins’ Daniel Kaluuya as the African American boyfriend whose trip to meet his Caucasian girlfriend’s family becomes a gruesome nightmare. Read the full review}

₆

The Handmaiden

^{Supercharged erotic thriller by Oldboy’s Park Chan-wook, adapted from Sarah Waters’s novel Fingersmith and transposed to 1930s Korea. Read the full review}

₇

Toni Erdmann

^{Maren Ade’s near-three-hour German comedy is a sad and ecstatic delight about parenthood and professional priorities in the west today. Read the full review}

₈

Blade Runner 2049

^{Hugely ambitious, wildly atmospheric sequel to Ridley Scott’s influential 1982 sci-fi noir, with Ryan Gosling the cop charged with hunting down rogue replicants. Read the full review}

₉

A Ghost Story

^{Bizarrely and brilliantly conceived “post-horror” film in which car accident victim Casey Affleck haunts his old house (occupied by wife Rooney Mara) wearing a crude white sheet with eyeholes. Read the full review}

₁₀

Manchester by the Sea

^{Kenneth Lonergan’s acutely observed study of a handyman who becomes the legal guardian of his nephew in the Massachusetts town of the title. Read the full review}

₁₁

Lady Macbeth

^{Superbly realised reimagining of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, with Florence Pugh outstanding as the 19th-century wife who falls for a lowly, mixed-race estate worker. Read the full review}

₁₂

Mother!

^{Extraordinary fever dream of horror and dismay, starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Darren Aronofsky, that practically defines the term “critically divisive”. Read the full review}

₁₃

Dunkirk

^{Christopher Nolan’s massive-scale take on the Dunkirk evacuation of the “little boats”, filmed with panache and heartfelt national pride. Read the full review}

₁₄

God’s Own Country

^{Raw, unsentimental gay romance set in the Yorkshire dales, in which an unhappy farmer’s son begins a relationship with a Romanian seasonal worker. Read the full review}

₁₅

The Meyerowitz Stories

^{Enjoyable pseudo-literary comedy drama from Noah Baumbach, with Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler attempting to shore up their ageing artist dad’s fragile ego. Read the full review}

₁₆

Raw

^{Gruesome arthouse horror from French first-timer Julia Ducournau, in which a vet student is subjected to hazing rituals that repel then fascinate her with flesh. Read the full review}

₁₇

The Death of Stalin

^{Armando Iannucci’s follow-up to In the Loop, a black-as-pitch satire on the paranoid machinations surrounding the death of the Soviet Union’s bloodthirsty tyrant. Read the full review}

₁₈

Paddington 2

^{Excellent second helping of the hit adaptation of Michael Bond’s good-natured immigrant bear, with Hugh Grant stealing his scenes as a dastardly cravat-wearing villain. Read the full review}

₁₉

I Am Not a Witch

^{Acclaimed drama from Welsh-Zambian director Rungano Nyoni, following a young girl suspected of being a witch into a “camp” where she becomes a tourist attraction. Read the full review}

₂₀

The Fits

^{Unnerving drama from first-time director Anna Rose Holmes, in which a group of dancers at a local community centre appear to succumb to a kind of mass fainting hysteria. Read the full review}

₂₁

Good Time

^{Robert Pattinson shows off his indie chops as a New York street hustler in this thrill ride of a 70s-referencing crime yarn from the Safdie brothers. Read the full review}

₂₂

Certain Women

^{Kelly Reichardt’s low-key but heartfelt study of three women’s lives in the midwest, with standout performances from Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern and Michelle Williams. Read the full review}

₂₃

Heal the Living

^{Mysterious, beautifully shot film from French director Katell Quillévéré, about a mosaic of lives connected and affected by an organ transplant operation. Read the full review}

₂₄

Neruda

^{Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s sideways biopic of the country’s national poet, with Gael Garcia Bernal as a unlikely copper trying to track him down during a period of political unrest. Read the full review}

₂₅

La La Land

^{Oscar-winning musical (though the big one was snatched away) from Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle, reuniting Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in a tribute to Hollywood, music and the movies. Read the full review}

₂₆

Personal Shopper

^{Kristen Stewart is outstanding in her second collaboration with French director Olivier Assayas, playing a fashion industry gofer who thinks she is being haunted. Read the full review}

₂₇

I Am Not Your Negro

^{Eye-opening, Oscar-nominated documentary from director Raoul Peck, focusing on writer James Baldwin’s role in the 1960s civil rights struggle. Read the full review}

₂₈

20th Century Women

^{Annette Bening makes the most of her role as a 1970s free-spirit single mom, recruiting two female friends to help raise her teenage son. Read the full review}

₂₉

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

^{Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman star in the latest bizarre fable from Yorgos (The Lobster) Lanthimos, about a heart surgeon who becomes obsessed with a teenage boy. Read the full review}

₃₀

Silence

^{Intensely serious religious drama from Martin Scorsese, focusing on the attempts of missionaries Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver to bring Christianity to Japan. Read the full review}

₃₁

Graduation

^{Keenly observed, brilliantly performed account of back-scratching and petty corruption in Romania from 4 Months director Cristian Mungiu. Read the full review}

₃₂

Aquarius

^{Sonia Braga gives a towering performance as an ageing music critic who refuses to sell up when developers want to tear down her much-loved home. Read the full review}

₃₃

The Lost City of Z

^{Interestingly-paced account of real-life explorer Percy Fawcett’s obsession with the Amazon jungle, and his quest for the fabled city during the imperial shenanigans of the period. Read the full review}

₃₄

Mudbound

^{Bleak, heartfelt account from director Dee Rees of racial division and segregation in the immediate postwar years, snapped up by Netflix. Read the full review}

₃₅

War for the Planet of the Apes

^{Unexpectedly impressive third instalment in the Apes reboot series, with Andy Serkis’s Caesar facing off against human warmonger Woody Harrelson. Read the full review}

₃₆

Detroit

^{Much anticipated Kathryn Bigelow account of the 1967 riots and the gruesome Algiers motel incident that very much chimed with #BlackLivesMatter. Read the full review}

₃₇

T2 Trainspotting

^{Long awaited Danny Boyle-directed sequel to the hit British film, with Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and co mired in male middle age and disillusion. Read the full review}

₃₈

The Beguiled

^{Sofia Coppola-directed remake of civil-war-set yarn, in which injured soldier Colin Farrell finds himself holed up in a girls’ school. Read the full review}

₃₉

Logan

^{Furrowed-brow finale to the X-Men spinoff series, with Hugh Jackman Wolverine-ing it up for what we assume is the final time. Read the full review}

₄₀

Girls Trip

^{Crowd-pleasing surprise hit comedy following a group of African-American women on a raucously fun weekend trip to New Orleans. Read the full review}

₄₁

Logan Lucky

^{Steven Soderbergh’s return to the big screen, a starry heist comedy in which Adam Driver and Channing Tatum bust Daniel Craig out of jail to help them rob a race track. Read the full review}

₄₂

The Love Witch

^{Bizarre feminist retro horror from writer-director Anna Biller, about a witch who uses “sex magic” to ensnare and kill a series of hapless lovers. Read the full review}

₄₃

Baby Driver

^{Much-liked Edgar Wright pedal-to-the-metal crime caper, in which music-addicted getaway driver Baby (Ansel Elgort) falls for waitress Lily James. Read the full review}

₄₄

Strong Island

^{Moving, angry documentary from trans film-maker Yance Ford, about the injustice surrounding the death of his brother who was shot in 1992. Read the full review}

₄₅

Colossal

^{A genuinely cult item that definitely divided the critics. Anne Hathaway plays a messed-up alcoholic who conjures up visions of monsters attacking South Korea. Read the full review}

₄₆

The Big Sick

^{Popular, fun romcom about a cross-cultural romance that turns to more serious matters when the woman succumbs to a serious illness. Read the full review}

₄₇

The Disaster Artist

^{Entertaining film-about-the-worst-film-ever-made, with brothers James and Dave Franco playing the notorious duo who made the appalling 2003 cult clunker The Room. Read the full review}

₄₈

The Work

^{Extraordinary, gut-wrenching documentary about a group of outsiders who choose to take part in traumatic group therapy sessions with hardened convicts in Folsom prison. Read the full review}

₄₉

A Quiet Passion

^{Terence Davies’s exquisitely designed biopic of American poet Emily Dickinson, whose sedate home life belied her enormous literary talent. Read the full review}

₅₀

My Cousin Rachel

^{Commanding Daphne du Maurier adaptation with Rachel Weisz on top form as a mysterious and manipulative widow with designs on a country estate. Read the full review}

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