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Anomalisa

^{Charlie Kaufman’s piercingly original puppet animation, an ineffably strange account of a motivational speaker undergoing an identity crisis and his encounter with a fan. Read more}

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Son of Saul

^{Traumatisingly plausible study of the brutalities of a Holocaust death camp, revolving around a Jewish Sonderkommando gas-chamber worker. An astonishing debut from Hungarian László Nemes. Read more}

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Arrival

^{Emotionally intelligent alien-contact sci-fi from Sicario’s Denis Villeneuve,with Amy Adams as the unhappy linguist called in to try and decipher communications from mysterious extraterrestrial arrivals. Read more}

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A Bigger Splash

^{Superbly acted four-hander from I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino, with Tilda Swinton’s musician having her idyllic holiday home invaded by fast-talking (and dancing) Ralph Fiennes. Read more}

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Fire at Sea

^{Low-key, elegiac documentary dealing with a toughly contemporary subject: the life-threatening trips taken by refugee boats across the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Read more}

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Love & Friendship

^{Whit Stillman consolidates his return with a superbly witty adaptation of Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan (with a title borrowed from another early Austen), featuring Kate Beckinsale as a hardheaded society beauty. Read more}

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Little Men

^{Ira Sachs’s follow-up to Love Is Strange, a beautifully observed study of a liberally inclined family with money worries, and the effect it has on their son. Read more}

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The Revenant

^{Fantastically ambitious survival epic which won Oscars for Leonardo DiCaprio and Alejandro González Iñárritu, based on the real-life 19th-century bear attack on frontiersman Hugh Glass. Read more}

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Weiner

^{Freakishly topical documentary about disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, whose addiction to sexting became a contentious feature of the Clinton-Trump presidential election. Read more}

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Sausage Party

^{Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg put their potty-mouthed talents to work on a gross-out comedy animation, featuring food items who have only the haziest idea of what happens outside the supermarket shelves. Read more}

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Victoria

^{Mightily impressive single-shot thriller that follows its protagonist, played by Laia Costa, on a nerve-jangling nightmare through a long Berlin night. Read a full review}

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The Assassin

^{Beautifully shot martial arts fable by Taiwanese master director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, starring Shu Qi as an assassin sent to kill her cousin as a test. Read a full review}

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Nocturnal Animals

^{Tom Ford’s cruelly beautiful adaptation of Austin Wright’s novel Tony and Susan, with Amy Adams as a woman disturbed by the manuscript of a novel she receives from her ex-husband. Read a full review}

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Room

^{Brie Larson won the best actress Oscar for her powerful performance as a kidnap victim confined to a small room, in an astute adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel. Read a full review}

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The Club

^{Jackie director Pablo Larraín skewers Chile’s culture of denial in the post-Pinochet era, through a troubling study of a retirement home for “sinning” priests. Read a full review}

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Spotlight

^{Hard-hitting paean to old-school investigative journalism, starring Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton as reporters on a team who spearheaded the Boston Globe’s 1990s investigation into clerical sex abuse. Read a full review}

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Our Little Sister

^{A tenderly observed story of three sisters whose lives are affected by the arrival of a fourth family member, a half-sister, from Japanese auteur Hirokazu Koreeda. Read a full review}

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Paterson

^{Jim Jarmusch’s slow-burn study of a bus-driving poet, played elegantly and mysteriously by Adam Driver, whose apparently happy life in New Jersey suffers unexpected disruption. Read a full review}

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Hell or High Water

^{Robustly impressive bankrobber movie that carries some of the charge of the Hollywood new wave, starring Chris Pine and Ben Foster as brothers on a complicated criminal mission. Read a full review}

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Mustang

^{Surprisingly engaging comedy-drama about five Turkish sisters and their travails under restrictive, traditional customs by first-time director Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Read a full review}

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Doctor Strange

^{Marvel’s bizarre, surreal tale of Benedict Cumberbatch’s superpower-encumbered medic, enlisted by Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One to fight the evil Mads Mikkelsen. Read a full review}

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American Honey

^{Brit auteur Andrea Arnold heads to the US for a raucous, scabrous road trip following a group of hard-partying kids as they sell magazine subscriptions door to door. Read a full review}

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Things to Come

^{An exceptional performance by Isabelle Huppert ballasts Mia Hansen-Løve’s study of a philosophy professor mired in mid-life crises. Read a full review}

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Deadpool

^{An unexpected comedy hit for Ryan Reynolds as the “pansexual” Marvel character, a smartmouth, self-deconstructing superhero who battles Game of Thrones’s Ed Skrein as Ajax. Read a full review}

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Tale of Tales

^{Gomorrah’s Matteo Garrone conjures up an eccentric, exotic collection of 16th-century Italian folktales, with Salma Hayek, Toby Jones and John C Reilly among the talent on show. Read a full review}

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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

^{Highly likable new runner in the Harry Potter stakes, boasting an original JK Rowling script derived from the Hogwarts textbook and Eddie Redmayne as “magizoologist” Newt Scamander. Read a full review}

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The Hateful Eight

^{Quentin Tarantino’s masterly revival western, with Samuel L Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth among a motley group holed up and fighting it out in a snowbound store. Read a full review}

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Dheepan

^{Palme d’Or winning thriller from A Prophet’s Jacques Audiard that follows Sri Lankan civil war escapees fending off threats and violence on a drug-ridden French housing estate. Read a full review}

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Joy

^{Unorthodox but charming biopic of Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop and a shopping-TV success story, with a strong performance by Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role. Read a full review}

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The Childhood of a Leader

^{Prescient study by first-time director Brady Corbet of the origins of fascism, as depicted through the early years of a kid destined to become a dictator. Read a full review}

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Arabian Nights: Vols 1-3

^{Woozily audacious three-part docu-fantasy from Portuguese director Miguel Gomes that depicts Portugal’s austerity as a dream-nightmare inspired by Scheherazade’s tales cycle. Read a full review}

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Chronic

^{Sombre, disturbing drama from Mexican director Michel Franco, with Tim Roth as a carer of terminal illness people who cultivates an unhealthy significance in the final stages of his patients’ lives. Read a full review}

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Sing Street

^{Charming 1980s-set comedy from Once director John Carney about Dublin schoolboys who get a band together to try and impress local girls – particularly Lucy Boynton’s Raphina. Read a full review}

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Zootropolis

^{Entertaining and funny Disney animation about a bunny rookie cop, working in a city populated by animals, who gets a sniff of a missing mammal case and aims to prove her worth. Read a full review}

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Embrace of the Serpent

^{Oscar-nominated story of indigenous peoples in the Colombian Amazon, based on the journals of two 20th-century explorers and detailing the havoc wreaked by the west. Read a full review}

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The Light Between Oceans

^{Swoonsome, melodramatic weepie starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander as a lighthouse-keeping couple who keep a baby they find drifting in an open boat in post-first-world-war Australia. Read a full review}

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Everybody Wants Some!!

^{Subtle 1980s-set comedy from Richard Linklater, conceived as a semi-sequel to Dazed and Confused, as it follows a bunch of jocks to college on baseball scholarships. Read a full review}

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From Afar

^{Raw, disturbing story from Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas (winner of Venice’s Golden Lion) about a well-off middle-aged man who falls in love with a teenage street thug. Read a full review}

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Cemetery of Splendour

^{Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s follow-up to the Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Boonmee is an elegantly mysterious fable set largely in a hospital filled with soldiers who have succumbed to sleeping sickness. Read a full review}

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Hunt for the Wilderpeople

^{New Zealand-set comedy snappily directed by Taika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows), starring Sam Neill as a gruff backwoodsman who heads for the hills with teen delinquent Julian Dennison. Read a full review}

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High-Rise

^{Ben Wheatley’s phantasmagorical adaptation of JG Ballard’s housing-block dystopia, with Tom Hiddleston as a doctor caught in between-floors class warfare. Read a full review}

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I, Daniel Blake

^{Righteously angry, nerve-striking benefits assessment drama from Ken Loach, which won Loach the Palme d’Or at Cannes for the second time. Read a full review}

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The Witch

^{Creepy, disturbing horror with folk-tale elements. Set in 17th-century New England, it follows an immigrant family’s terror as they are tormented by a mysterious, witch-like entity. Read a full review}

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Wiener-Dog

^{Black-comic anthology of dachshund-themed stories by Todd Solondz, with Greta Gerwig, Danny DeVito and Ellen Burstyn among the dog owners whose emotional lives are anatomised. Read a full review}

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Hail, Caesar!

^{Tricksy Coen brothers comedy set in postwar Hollywood, with Josh Brolin as the film-biz fixer trying to hush up the disappearance of George Clooney’s biblical-epic star. Read a full review}

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The Eagle Huntress

^{Eye-opening documentary about a teenage girl who breaks taboos among Kazakh émigrés in Mongolia by becoming the first female to take up traditional eagle-hunting. Read a full review}

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Couple in a Hole

^{Oddball fable about a husband and wife living a primitive, off-the-grid life in an isolated French cave. Paul Higgins and Kate Dickie star. Read a full review}

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The Jungle Book

^{Live-action retelling of the Rudyard Kipling stories, directed with verve by Jon Favreau and garnished with impressive CGI-animated animal performances. Read a full review}

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The Clan

^{Gruesome Argentinian crime thriller from director Pablo Trapero, which offers a political edge in its study of a family who specialise in “disappearing” their kidnap victims. Read a full review}

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The Neon Demon

^{Nicolas Winding Refn’s follow-up to Only God Forgives: a self-consciously trashy and blood-soaked fable about the flesh-devouring LA fashion industry. Read a full review}