The most anticipated films of 2019: 1-10

Stories about notorious murders, palaeontologists in love and a media giant’s downfall are among the starry movies heading our way, in the final instalment of our five-part seriesLook out for our preview of cinema’s spring highlights on 2 January

The 50 best films of 2018: No 1 – Roma

Topping both our US and UK critics’ polls, this is a great piece of storytelling with inspired and surreal setpieces and electrifying sequences in the teeming streets of Mexico City

Polina review – dance drama fails to get moving

The story of a young Russian who abandons the Bolshoi to chase her dreams across Europe is frustratingly inert

The 50 best films of 2018 in the US: No 3 – Loveless

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s stark drama about the dire fallout to a toxic marriage was a loud dissenting cry from within Russia

The 50 best films of 2018 in the UK: No 4 – Loveless

Andrei Zvyagintsev’s stark drama about a couple’s toxic relationship – and its catastrophic fallout – was a passionate dissenting cry from within Russia

An Elephant Sitting Still review – melancholic and mesmerising

The first and last film from the late Chinese director and author Hu Bo has a desolate beauty

Khrustalyov, My Car! review – delirious and visually amazing Russian gem

A rerelease of Aleksei German’s 1998 satire is a journey into a hallucinatory world shot with documentary realism

An Elephant Sitting Still review – on the edge of despair in the new China

In his arresting final film, Hu Bo follows a string of characters struggling against injustice – and dreaming of escape

Return of the Hero review – Jane Austen meets screwball farce

This lively French romcom brings a modern sensibility to its tale of duels and deception in Napoleonic Burgundy

Mug review – overly obvious Polish drama

Cute devices and simplistic morals hamper this film, despite a promising beginning

Basements, Bruges and the easter bunny: the nine circles of film hell

From Georges Méliès to Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built, movie hells remain seriously in hock to the Judeo-Christian playbook

Meteors review – portents of tragedy in Turkey

The trauma of a state crackdown on one village finds celestial expression in this poetic film by Turkish director Gürcan Keltek

Carnival Night / Hakob Hovnatanyan review – a pair of pre-Christmas Soviet treats

A nimble 1950s Russian musical comedy is coupled with a restored 1967 short by the Armenian director of The Colour of Pomegranates

The Wild Pear Tree review – leaves flutter with significance

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest epic tells the story of a graduate returning to his rural home

Plagi Breslau review – blood-spattered serial-killer thriller

Polish purveyor of graphic screen gore Patryk Vega unleashes another tide of visceral mayhem