At 23, Xavier Dolan may not be the new Jean-Luc Godard, but he could be the new Léos Carax. And Laurence Anyways – a tempestuous romantic melodrama spanning the entire 1990s – could be his Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The third feature made by the Québécois enfant terrible dazzlingly demonstrates his prodigious talent as a metteur-en-scène and director of actors, though, at 168 minutes, it’s about 45 too long.

Some say director Thomas Vinterberg has never equalled his triumph with Festen (1998), but with The Hunt it's time for everyone to think again. An assured and claustrophobic drama which ruthlessly picks apart the seemingly civilised facade of a small Danish town, it's a film that reverberates in the imagination and proves yet again what a fine actor Mads Mikkelsen is.

One has low expectations of Great Expectations. As the Dickens bicentenary draws to a close with yet another version, young Pip must once again come to the aid of the convict Magwitch, once again be raised up from apprentice blacksmith to gentleman, once again fall for the cold, unrequiting Estella Havisham. And once again make do without the first-person narrative that gives him his character. 

Stubbled, chubby and aged beyond his 34 years, Yossi, the eponymous hero of Israeli director Eytan Fox’s film played by Ohad Knoller, has a hang-dog loneliness to him that stands out a mile away. He may be a qualifying cardiologist, but his own heart seems stuck at the glacier stage.

Ben Wheatley’s last film Kill List was unmistakable in its moniker, aggressively advertising its deadly subject matter. Taken on title alone Sightseers suggests something more far more innocuous. Depending on your capacity for twisted thrills, you’ll get a nasty or nice surprise; the name may give no hint of the macabre but Wheatley’s third film is hardly less violent than its predecessor. It is, however, a lot funnier.

There's a temptation to roll your eyeballs upwards when you hear Jake Gyllenhaal's introductory voice-over, which sounds like a corny photocopied mission statement they dish out to all new recruits to the LAPD.  "I am Fate with a badge and a gun," he tells us, in his role as Officer Brian Taylor. He didn't make the laws, but he will uphold them with as much force as it takes. The police are the thin blue line.

If Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games had somehow left you in any doubt about the magnetic screen presence of Jennifer Lawrence, prepare to surrender your remaining misgivings. Playing outspoken, emotionally damaged young widow Tiffany, Lawrence is a firecracker, a powder keg, a force of nature. Watching her, you feel simultaneously secure and on edge, as though you’re in safe hands and yet as though anything could happen. 

It’s Gambit in name only. Producer Mike Lobell struggled for 14 years to bring the remake of this beloved caper to the big screen. In so doing, he has broken the new rule of Hollywood: Thou Shalt Not Remake Something Good, especially if you’ve gutted and purged the original story from its redolently good title.

What a year for great British institutions. Sixty years of Elizabeth II, 50 years of James Bond, and a half-century of the Rolling Stones. To recycle an even older cliche, we will never see the like of any of them again.

If the subtitle - The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel - didn't make it clear enough, Hit So Hard was never going to be your average "rockumentary". At about eight minutes in, before the titular drummer properly establishes us in the 1990s US grunge scene that forms much of the backdrop to her story, Schemel is already speaking openly and frankly about the addictions to alcohol and drugs that cost the lives of friends, her role in a platinum-selling rock band and very nearly her own life.