We said: “In a story based on Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book, McDormand plays a Nevada woman who joins the masses of American nomads – the new dispossessed who migrate in mobile homes, eking out a living from job to job. It has malevolent monsters and horrified victims, and hums with a palpable sense of threat. With the help of SFX genius Rob Bottin, John Carpenter took the bones of Howard Hawks' 1951 The Thing From Another World and crafted an intense, frosty sci-fi thriller featuring Hollywood's ultimate movie monster: one that could be any of us at any time, before contorting into a genuine biological nightmare.Read Empire's review of The ThingBuy the film here, 2006And any argument about whether or not American remakes can ever be better than the foreign-language originals should be ended pretty quickly by mentioning this movie. “The biggest influence is Cronenberg Sr’s eXistenz (1999), which is similarly concerned with assassins who risk losing themselves in the personae that they adopt as their gaming ‘skins’ – and that film’s lead actress Jennifer Jason Leigh is here cast as Tasya’s handler Girder, a once skilled Possessor now determined to pass down the mantle to the next generation.” (Anton Bitel), Read our review: Possessor sends Andrea Riseborough out of her mind. We said: “The celebratory, boundary-pushing story behind Rocks isn’t one of liberal goodwill from white gatekeepers who’ve chosen to decentre themselves. It’s a joyous but gritty drama for which director Sarah Gavron and writers Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson sought to enable the all-female crew and cast of teenage girls to tell their story in their own honest way. In the end, this makes for a terrifying ride with an ambiguous, unsettling conclusion.” (Kim Newman, S&S, December), Read our review: His House gives a displaced couple no happy home, + intervieew: “I like cinema that cracks open your sense of the world”: Remi Weekes on His House. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef are great value as Blondie and Angel Eyes, but it's Eli Wallach's Tuco who steals this Wild West show: "When you have to shoot, shoot. We said: “Nanau refuses to regard the uncovering of wrongdoing as an achievement in itself; he constructs his film from interwoven strands which offer a broader perspective on the administrative toil involved in effecting lasting change, and the crucial contributions of both individual moral choices and wider democratic movements in enabling such a process.” (Trevor Johnston, S&S, December), Read our review: Collective takes a scalpel to the contagion of corruption, + interview: “Incompetence was killing the victims”: Alexander Nanau on his health-service exposé Collective, Where to see it: On various digital platforms. Alfre Woodard puts in a phenomenal performance, expressing Bernadine’s churning inner turmoil through her resigned expression, downcast eyes and hunched shoulders.” (Nikki Baughan, S&S, September), Read our review: In Clemency, death row walls in Alfre Woodard’s warden, Where to see it: available to buy or stream on BFI Player, iTunes, Amazon Prime and other platforms. People with families, hobbies, traditions and songs. Dopo aver incoronato Twin Peaks: The Return come miglior film del decennio l’anno scorso, anche in questo 2020 arriva la classifica del meglio dell’anno per i Cahiers du Cinéma, storica rivista francese … After all, what is Schwarzenegger's Uzi-9mm-toting Terminator, if not an upgraded version of Halloween's Michael Myers?Read Empire's review of The TerminatorBuy the film now, 2006Christopher Nolan's last 'little' movie concerned warring stage magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) in late 19th century London, but was less a period thriller than a stealth sci-fi. Yes, we were entertained.Read Empire's review of GladiatorBuy the film here, 1975Ken Kesey's era-defining novel was in good hands with screenwriters Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, not to mention director Milos Forman — five Oscars were testament to that, including one for Jack Nicholson, who's arguably never been better as a man destined to be chewed up by the unfeeling system (ditto Louise Fletcher, who represents that system in the form of Nurse Ratched).Read Empire's review of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's NestBuy the film here, 2007If America were a person, then oil man Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a vampire. It centres on a man who inherits his grandmother’s house and turns it into a Black socialist collective. We say: Asili’s excellent debut feature is a ‘speculative re-enactment’ of his time in a West Philadelphia Black socialist experiment in collective living. What’s really impressive too is its use of a prelapsarian mood to portray an America built on racial and social diversity.” (Nick James), Read our review: First Cow: Kelly Reichardt’s milk-rustling western rises like a treat, Where to see it: Yet to be released in the UK. Richard Meryman said of Herman: “I wanted to find out how, when he was all but finished as a writer, he could turn around and write Citizen Kane.” Mank’s answer is that Mankiewicz always had the ability to write something that good; it was Hollywood holding him back. Larraín’s latest unleashes Mariana Di Girólamo as a peroxide pyromaniac dancer involved in a wild plot to reclaim her adopted son. It also manages to wring every last drip of funny out of executing spot-on bombastic, Bayhem-style action in a sleepy English small-town setting.Read Empire's review of Hot FuzzBuy the film here, 1994It's the highest-ranking animated movie on this list, beating even Toy Story. Moore and Stewart’s playful and stirring animation conjures an interregnum Ireland of 1650, caught between pagan spirits and the boot of English invaders. We said: “It was always likely that in his third feature Kleber Mendonça Filho was going to take on Jair Bolsonaro. We said: “Uncomfortable, emotional and resolutely unflinching in its gaze, Chukwu’s film is a clear-eyed exploration of the contentious debate surrounding America’s death penalty and, particularly, the way in which death row disproportionately targets African-American men. (Laughs)”, Read our review: I’m Thinking of Ending Things: Charlie Kaufman’s new nightmare surpasses all expectations, + “I don’t know how anyone could feel secure in the world as it is right now”: an interview with Charlie Kaufman. ‘You can manufacture an experience,’ Turner said at Boats, ‘but it doesn’t have to be a manufactured experience.’, “The debates over truthiness that swallowed Bloody Nose at Sundance felt irrelevant and backwards. The director of the acclaimed ‘Court’ (2014) won a Fipresci prize in Venice for this Mumbai-set drama about a man (played by real-life musician Aditya Modak) striving to attain his teachers’ artistic and spiritual standards as he pursues a career performing classical ragas. Empire super-stardestroys thanks to the way it deepens the core relationships — none more effectively than Han and Leia's. Buy the book at AmazonBuy the movie at Amazon, Bauer Media Group consists of: Bauer Consumer Media Ltd, Company number: 01176085, Bauer Radio Ltd, Company Number: 1394141, Registered Office: Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough, PE2 6EA H Bauer Publishing,Company Number: LP003328, Registered Office: Academic House, 24-28 Oval Road, London, NW1 7DT.All registered in England and Wales. The real-life horrors of Relic, Mogul Mowgli confronts Riz Ahmed’s rapper’s battle of the soul, Mank prints the legend of Hollywood as a gilded cage, Limbo gives a Scottish welcome to four far-flung refugees, “We did a real séance on Zoom”: Rob Savage on video call horror Host, Ema: Pablo Larraín lights some kind of delirious inferno, Little Women emancipates Louisa May Alcott’s spirited sisters, Les Misérables: 24 hours of violence in the Paris streets, Ladj Ly on Les Misérables: “Film is a tool. ), starred that schlubby fellah from Parks And Rec, and was directed by the guy who turned Michael Rooker into a giant slug-monster in Slither. The film stars his regular muse and partner, Kim Minhee, as the apparently happily married Kim catching up, in turn, with three old female acquaintances over several days when her husband heads off on a business trip – her first time alone for several years. It makes for an intimate, perceptive, occasionally humorous snapshot of these women’s lives, the subtle shifts in perspective belying the seeming artlessness. Petzold’s ambiguously hopeful film is a declaration of love.” (Giovanni Marchini Camia, S&S online), Read our review: Undine is Christian Petzold’s slippery love song to Berlin, Where to see it: Not yet available in the UK. Some set pieces feel inspired by Miyazaki Hayao’s Princess Mononoke (1997). A twist made all the more effective thanks to Kevin Spacey's insistence he wasn't billed until the end credits.Read Empire's review of SevenBuy the film here, 1998You've got to hand it to the Coen brothers. She loves him. Not that any studio these days would dare put out a summer blockbuster that's half monster-on-the-rampage disaster, half guys-bonding-on-a-fishing-trip adventure. We said: “Sam Rockwell rediscovers himself as a superlative straight man and is a small miracle. Paul Walter Hauser portrays the security guard who discovered the Atlanta Olympics bomb only to find himself accused of planting it, in Eastwood’s all-American tale of apostasy. From the outset, this manages to inhabit both a Ken Loach-type drab urban space and an insidious netherworld. “The savvy decision to allow the actors to play their younger selves in flashback sequences reinforces the film’s central thesis that past and present are intertwined. 2001For a Western world raised on Disney movies, Spirited Away was a bracing change of pace – pure, uncut Studio Ghibli. We say: “The pandemic may have delayed the release of mega-bucks sci-fi extravaganzas like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, but Andrew Patterson’s film was an exhilarating discovery for dark lockdown times and further proof, if you ever needed it, that a small budget (less than $1 million) is no barrier to the sublime. Petzold’s fantastical ode to Berlin concerns an art historian who has a passionate affair with a diver, and appropriates the mythological figure of the undine – a water nymph – to fashion a love story that doubles as a myth about the city. Throw in psychotropic drugs, a drone that resembles a 1950s B-movie flying saucer, assassins in neon motorcycle suits and a posse of foreign mercenaries thirsty for blood, and what emerges is a shape-shifting genre yarn with surprises aplenty but maybe at times too much on its plate.” (Isabel Stevens), Read our review: Bacurau is a tough and timeless Brazilian frontier western, + Bacurau first look: a way out weird western for menacing times, Where to see it: On Blu-ray and to stream on Mubi. As star Don Lockwood, Gene Kelly brings a sense of exasperation at the film industry's diva-indulging daftness, making it a gentle piss-take, too.Read Empire's review of Singin' In The RainBuy the film here, 1984As high-concept comedies go, Ghostbusters is positively stratospheric — a story of demonic incursion… with gags! Also, because of a lot of the issues that are brought up in the show, I thought, ‘He’s gonna get this.’ We first met in the 80s. Read here, Read Empire's review of Good Will Hunting, Read Empire's review of Lost In Translation, Read Empire's review of No Country For Old Men, Read Empire's review of Shaun Of The Dead, Read Empire's review of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, Read Empire's review of The Social Network, Read Empire's review of Captain America: Civil War, Read Empire's review of A Clockwork Orange, Read Empire's review of Singin' In The Rain, Read Empire's review of Return Of The Jedi, Read Empire's review of Avengers Assemble, Read Empire's review of Inglourious Basterds, Read Empire's review of Once Upon A Time In The West, Read Empire's review of It's A Wonderful Life, Read Empire's review of Lawrence Of Arabia, Read Empire's review of The Silence Of The Lambs, Read Empire's review of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Read Empire's review of There Will Be Blood, Read Empire's review of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Read Empire's review of Saving Private Ryan, Read Empire's review of Mad Max: Fury Road, Read Empire's review of Guardians Of The Galaxy, Read Empire's review of The Usual Suspects, Read Empire's review of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Read Empire's review of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Read Empire's review of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Read Empire's review of The Return Of The King, Read Empire's review of The Godfather Part II, Read Empire's review of Back To The Future, Read Empire's review of The Fellowship Of The Ring, Read Empire's review of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Read Empire's review of The Shawshank Redemption, Read Empire's review of The Empire Strikes Back.