The 39 Steps

Ian McKellen is in delicious form as London's most vicious critic, who strikes a Faustian pact with a struggling actor (Gemma Arterton).

A desperate delivery driver gets caught up in the dark underworld of Riyadh in Ali Kalthami’s gripping, pitch-black satire.

Gripping political thriller with Keira Knightley as the intelligence officer who discovers a plot to rig a UN vote on the eve of the Iraq war.

Mark Ruffalo plays an attorney trying to uncover the corporate scandal of a chemical company poisoning a local community, in this searching ecological drama from Todd Haynes (Safe, Carol).

Three Billboards' director Martin McDonagh spins an epic and twisted tale of pets and gangsters, with an all-star cast.

Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman (in his last role) play the military commanders caught in the ethical crosshairs of drone warfare, in Gavin Hood’s gripping military thriller.

Boris Karloff stars as Dr. Laurence, a scientist who has devised a way to put one person’s mind into another’s body.

H.G. Wells' chilling vision of the future, which imagines the 20th Century as a near-endless war and struggle against tyranny, remains a key milestone in British science fiction.

An old woman disappears mysteriously on a busy train in Hitchcock’s delightful classic.

Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier star in a spy drama about the disappearence of prototype military aircraft.

Powell and Pressburger's most personal film combines a Chaucer-inspired pilgrimage with a war-time celebration of English landscape and values to create a gem of British cinema.

Arguably the essential Dickens adaptation, David Lean’s evocative portrayal of Victorian London in sooty black and white features Alec Guinness as a memorably sinister Fagin.

A nurse who doubles as a spy in German-occupied Belgium attracts the attentions of a German commandant.

Madeleine Carroll stars as a vampish actress who comes between a devoted couple, in this light-hearted melodrama from director Miles Mander.

Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film sees a young woman blackmailed for a murder she was forced to commit.

Hitchcock's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel is a classic example of his ingenuity. All the elements are here: the average person in an impossible situation, some amazing cinematic achievements and the gradual, ominous increase in tension.

In Hitchcock’s iconic thriller, Cary Grant plays a man forced on the run across the US.

Alfred Hitchcock’s fifth film features an early variation on his fabled ‘wrong man’plot, as Ivor Novello stands accused of getting a girl pregnant.

Sleepwalking into submerged depths of memory, a mother’s dream and a daughter’s beckoning, this fascinating film tenderly untangles the knots of the past.

Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia's unsettling drama-documentary delivers a powerful commentary on the state of the world today… and tomorrow.

A striking portrait of an artist deserving of greater recognition, directed by Mark Cousins (A Story of Film).

Johan Grimonprez’s involving film essay, anchored by the rhythm of American jazz, reveals disturbing truths about the decolonial struggle between global political powers.

This powerful documentary from a Palestinian-Israeli collective might be one of the most important films of this year.

Shujun Wei's slow-burn noir draws us inexorably into its mysterious psychological journey.