From Distant Voices, Still Lives to Benediction, the lyrical work of the late director was suffused with the ‘ecstasy’ of cinema – and his fraught Liverpool childhood

From Elvis to Eo, Guardian writers have picked their most indelible scenes from this year’s big screen line-up

He was the explosively talented film-maker who changed cinema for all time. But what did other directing giants make of this movie legend – and did they find his latter films unwatchable?

Tilda Swinton aces Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s dreamy fable, director Clio Barnard’s forbidden affair and Catherine Clinch in The Quiet Girl rank in the pick of this year’s films

The tragic life of the poet and soldier is revisited with melancholy and theatricality in a bleak, and often hard to watch, biopic

From Gus Van Sant to Maryam Keshavarz, Terence Davies to Andrew Haigh, film-makers and writers recall the charged scenes that moved and inspired them – and even helped nudge them out of the closet

Gangsters, superheroes, schoolkids, lovers, slaves, peasants, techies, Tenenbaums and freefalling astronauts – they’re all here in our countdown of cinema’s best movies since 2000

La La Land and The Love Witch wove magic, Moonlight and Lion wrung out tears, while Get Out and Lady Macbeth got nasty. Plus, there were striking debuts, returns to form by seasoned directors and reunions for the Trainspotting rogues