The final descent – First Man

You get two movies for the price of one with First Man. There’s the workplace drama: just how will Neil Armstrong and his Nasa buddies get his butt to the moon? Then there’s the family drama: just how, if at all, will the Armstrongs save their marriage after their daughter’s death? The answer is out there, and it comes to a head during the landing sequence.

For six minutes Damien Chazelle builds tension through marvelous editing and one of composer Justin Hurwitz’s circular themes. We’ve heard it before, but not this intensely. There are closeups of helmets reflecting lights, inserts of fuel gauges and terrifying alarms. The dialogue is meaningless babble. “1202! What’s 1202?” They don’t know and we don’t know. All that counts is there’s no turning back, we’re on manual control, and when the pressure reaches its crescendo we cut outside to the void of uninhabitable space, the Lunar Module a tiny speck against it. Hurwitz’s second theme charges in counter-melody: the push-pull of triumph and death. The scale of it takes your breath away. JH

The beach – Roma

“Astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended with some degree of horror,” wrote Edmund Burke in his treatise on the sublime. “The ocean,” he added, “is an object of no small terror.” Witnessing those final scenes of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, as the domestic worker Cleo struggles through a violent and thunderous rip current to retrieve her employer’s drowning children, you feel touched by astonishment, terror and the sublime all at once. It’s the most aural and harrowing sequence in the year’s most remarkable film, an embarrassment of sensory and emotional riches.

Water plays an important role in Roma, Cuarón’s visionary portrait of a fractured family in the upper middle-class suburbs of Mexico City in the early 1970s. It’s with a protracted shot of soapy water that the film opens; and in the presence of the ocean that Cuarón achieves his greatest fusion of feeling and film-making wizardry as the camera follows Cleo into the surf, the sounds of which are piercing and operatic. The first two hours of the film lull you into a memory, collapsing space and time, but Cleo’s fearless, humane journey into the sea shakes you awake, and to the core. JN

The mutant bear attack – Annihilation

Alex Garland’s sophomore effort, Annihilation, was one of the most original sci-fi/horror hybrids to come along in years. A loose adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, the film is as much a metaphysical meditation on evolution and entropy as it is an action-packed gals-on-a-mission creature feature.

Of its many unforgettable set pieces, the most thrilling – and grisly – is the scene wherein the surviving members of an all-female expedition team, who have travelled into the spreading alien wasteland known as the Shimmer, face off against the vicious mutant bear that’s been stalking and preying upon them.

A masterclass in tension, as well as a stomach-churning buffet of bone, blood and viscera, the physical carnage actually plays second fiddle to far more upsetting existential implications. The closeup of the diseased death-head as it lets loose not the bloody roar of a monster, but an echo of its last victim’s anguished death cry, is the perfect summation of this deeply unsettling work. Even if the rest of the film weren’t as jaw-dropping (or jaw-severing) as it is, this single scene would make it essential viewing. ZV

The shooting – Widows

By the time we reach the last scenes of Widows, we have lived through the Rawlings’ marriage. Following the spectacularly sexy kiss that opens the movie, we’ve seen their relationship mature and then sour thanks to two separate bereavements and a quietly discovered betrayal.

Viola Davis’s portrayal of Veronica’s lonely grief, whether screaming in her chilly white apartment or waking up in shock to find the bed empty, has been painfully raw. So when Harry (Liam Neeson) appears like a ghost at the film’s climax to undo all her hard work, and mock all that emotional pain, there’s no wonder we feel justified in picking sides. Veronica’s revenge is as unlikely as it is fully deserved. Can it be the sheer weight of moral righteousness that guides her aim? A burst of fury that gives her the speed to beat him to the draw? I’m sure of it. I have seen the film twice now, and each time Veronica shoots the rotter, the crowd has cheered her on. PH

The singsong – You Were Never Really Here

It’s hard for a movie to go off the rails when it was never really on them to start with, but Lynne Ramsay’s disorienting hitman thriller finds a new gear about an hour in, with one fantastically bizarre scene.

By the time it comes, our hero, Joaquin Phoenix, is already in a somewhat damaged state (though you should see the other guys). He returns home to find his beloved mother has been killed. The killers are still downstairs. He shoots one dead; the other drags himself across the kitchen floor wounded, palms squeaking on the linoleum. As he lies dying, Phoenix interrogates him, pours water on him, slaps him with his own tie, prods his injury, then gives him a painkiller. Then Charlene’s 1970s self-discovery anthem I’ve Never Been to Me comes on the radio. The dying man starts to sing along. Phoenix, lying beside him, joins in for the chorus. Then the two men hold hands. Well, why not? The breakdown of social protocol is just further proof of how crazy things have become. The grimness tips over into black comedy. It is both ridiculous and sublime. SR

The last drink – Can You Ever Forgive Me?

There’s a wealth of great moments in Marielle Heller’s deeply felt and riotously enjoyable tale of forgery in early 90s New York, many of which involve Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant drunkenly scheming and bitching in a West Village gay bar.

Their friendship anchors the film yet it’s presented without any real sentimentality, the pair of them shown in all their sweary, fractured glory, quietly accepting each other as necessary but refraining from ever expressly showing it. In their final scene together, the quiet melancholy that’s lingered in the background seeps through to the forefront and they’re forced to face the end of their clandestine fun together, along with an awareness of the Aids crisis that’s attacked their community. All of a sudden, so much sadness fills the screen, from Grant’s haunting eyes to McCarthy’s final bittersweet jab. With each viewing, it hits harder, a rather devastating hangover after such wonderful debauchery. BL

The questionnaire – Private Life

Tamara Jenkins’ Netflix comedy about a couple (Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti) coping with infertility is picking up cheering – if faintly belated – acclaim for its performances, its direction, its deft way with a tricky issue and its dialogue.

But my favourite scene, the one which made me properly roar at my desk, is silent. The sweet, vaguely dappy 20-year-old student Sadie (Kayli Carter) has agreed to be an egg donor. But first she must pass a medical exam, then a psychological test. This she completes online and we watch as she scrolls through the yes/no statements. They are – and I’m sorry for spoiling the scene:

• I am sure I get a raw deal from life

• I am very seldom troubled by constipation

• Evil spirits possess me at times

• I would like to be a singer

• No one seems to understand me

• At times I feel like smashing things

I have no idea whether these are indicative of the ways US agencies really filter out those inappropriate for such a task – but I do hope so. The combination of psychosis and mundanity, crassness and cleverness is absolutely inspired. Such a little nugget also shows the care and detail that mark Jenkins’ movie out from the pack. It may not be widescreen – but it is great cinema. CS

The first fight – Upgrade

“Let me know if you need my help?” asks an intelligent computer chip implanted in the spine of Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), who is paraplegic. He does. Stem is programmed to help Grey walk, which gives him the independence to hunt the men who shot him in the neck, one of whom is presently choking him to death. Until this question, Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade has been a glum sci-fi noir. But when Grey answers yes, granting the smartbot complete control of his limbs, our hero – and the film – becomes limb-whirling, kinetic mayhem.

Abdication won’t end well. But in the shock of the moment, it’s awesome. Whannell’s pivotal fight scene is the best choreography of the year, with Marshall-Green inhumanly spine-straight while his arms punch and block. Buster Keaton couldn’t do better playing a man overwhelmed by his own body. However, Old Stone Face wouldn’t gag as he serrated a man’s face with smashed teacups or sob, “You just stabbed him! Are you trying to piss him off?” That Grey does jolts us into laughing. Except we’re really gasping for breath: Upgrade has now drop-kicked us into a second act where anything can happen. AN

The montage – BlacKkKlansman

I’m sceptical as to whether Spike Lee’s broad, rather baggy race-relations satire was quite the return to form that its proponents have claimed, but it was unquestionably responsible for one of the year’s most indelible movie moments: the point when the film’s risible 70s Klansmen were replaced by the very real and deeply chilling footage of the white supremacist march at Charlottesville and, finally, the act of terrorism that led to the death of Heather Heyer.

When I saw it at Cannes, there was a collective panicked exhalation, as if the entire audience had simultaneously experienced a punch to the gut. It was a potent reminder that for all the claims of progress made, not as much has changed – in America, and beyond – as we would like to believe. GM

The twist – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Coen brothers have always been kings of the movie moment – going all the way back to the drunk-skipping camera and heaving body in Blood Simple. So I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to give this year’s crown to the anthology yarn The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. But which moment? The film is full of them: in fact, you could theorise it is the film’s love of moments that is its major flaw, prioritising smart/clever/funny over narrative heft.

Be that as it may, the moments are still great. Tim Blake Nelson’s gunfights and harp-singing; James Franco’s scaffold gag and girl-eyeing; Liam Neeson’s mournful look into the abyss; Tom Waits’s methodical staking out of pristine prairie. But I think the moment par excellence would have to be the denouement of the story containing Zoe Kazan; it is – SPOILER WARNING – so shocking and heartrending, and is such an abrupt and catastrophic twist, that it gives the film a substance it doesn’t entirely deserve. AP

The vomit – The Happy Prince

At the lowest moment of his humiliation, living in illness and squalor in a Paris flophouse, supine on his seedy bed but still attended by some of his faithful friends, Oscar Wilde vomits over himself. And then he declaims, with a mad and almost ecstatic kind of defiance: “Encore du champagne!” It is the kind of thing he might have shouted at the height of his popularity in London, holding court in a fashionable restaurant after a first night, perhaps. And now, of course, since the disgrace of his trial, all the hangers-on who drank his champagne have turned on him.

Rupert Everett was brave enough to have shown – or imagined – this kind of moment. I can’t imagine the Oscar Wilde portrayed by Peter Finch or Stephen Fry doing anything as brutal. Everett boldly recreates the unthinkable mortification of Wilde, and insists on his not going gently. His Wilde tries to redeem the disgust and mortification of vomiting with some sort of bon mot, turning it into an aesthete’s martyrdom. Of course it can’t work. But Wilde’s spirit is still there. Was Oscar Wilde really like this in exile? Or did he subside into a silence? I like to think Rupert Everett’s version is correct. PB

The chainsaw duel – Mandy

I favour the films that can get a physiological reaction out of me; if I’m laughing or crying or screaming in terror, that’s generally a good sign. But there’s one response on an emotional register beyond all that, a sort of silent scream – dropped jaw, hyperventilation – that denotes pure, soul-lifting transcendence. I spend my moviegoing life chasing this high, and I found it when a psychedelic demon-slayer Nic Cage went chainsaw-to-chainsaw with the leader of a biker gang from Pinhead’s neighbourhood of hell.

The rampaging Cage has set out to avenge his girlfriend’s murder, though I suspect that one could show an impartial third party this particular clip with zero context and it would lose none of its power. It is a self-evident image, overwhelming, and the director Panos Cosmatos blocks the scene for maximum dramatic effect. Cage’s nemesis slowly pulls his extra-long chainsaw out from behind a pile of rubble, drawing out the magnificent reveal. As he keeps dragging the lengthening weapon, the audience’s incredulity melts into awe. It feels like watching a city skyline crest over a bridge; like watching the sun rise after a long dark night; like being born. CB

The horse breaking – The Rider

The moment the director Chloe Zhao first saw the cowboy and rodeo rider Brady Jandreau training horses was the moment she knew she wanted to make a film about him. But even given that his almost preternatural connection with animals was a key impetus for the film, the scene in The Rider in which this slight young man tames a wild horse has an unexpectedly profound, primal impact.

It plays out almost in real time, and, like much of the film, it’s infused by a magic-hour glow that makes the dust kicked up by skittish hooves look like powdered gold. This communion between man and horse has a timeless quality; it’s a connection that spans the ages. But the scene gets added power from the fact that it’s the first time that Jandreau’s character, body broken and spirit dented by a rodeo accident, starts to seem whole again. WI

The car accident – Hereditary

There’s been a lot of debate this year about the supposed “elevated horror” genre: is it just snobbish nonsense made up by critics to dignify what needn’t be dignified? Ari Aster’s sensational debut Hereditary was at the centre of this discussion, thanks to its intricate, grief-fuelled family dynamics — but it pulled off gut-level jump scares to outdo any multiplex shocker.

Certainly no moment in the cinema this year made me jolt, freeze and shrivel inside like the grisly fate of 13-year-old Charlie (played with already unnerving intensity by Milly Shapiro), the crushing culmination in a sequence already frantic with heart-in-mouth panic. Convulsing with anaphylactic shock after ingesting peanuts at a house party, she’s driven recklessly to hospital by her brother, losing her head – literally – to a telephone pole after an ill-timed swerve. Coming early in the film, it’s a brutal violation of the safety line that is presumed even in the horror genre: you don’t kill off the kid, do you? Aster does, and from that point on, nothing in the escalating chaos and terror of his startling film seems out of bounds. GL