Space, the final frontier. Except that on the slowly dying earth where Christopher Nolan's often awesome sci-fi epic begins, the instinct to reach for the heavens has been crushed by the struggle for survival as crops die and life-choking dust storms sweep across the American midwest.

There's been much talk about Late Turner, to co-opt the name of the exhibition now on view at Tate Britain covering the last 16 years in the English artist JMW Turner's singular career. And as if perfectly timed to chime with those canvases in celluloid terms is Mr Turner, the ravishing film that stands as a testimonial to what one might call Late Leigh. The writer-director Mike Leigh has made period pieces before, most notably Topsy-Turvy in 1999, but even by his own exalted standards this cinematic profile of one artist by another stands a league apart.

And just as Topsy-Turvy was as much a depiction of the man behind the camera as it was about Gilbert and Sullivan, so too does a palpable affinity for Leigh's current subject course through every frame of this Cannes prize-winning film. Leigh has never made any excuses either for himself or his pioneering approach to work, and so it is here with his take on a maverick painter whose aesthetic brilliance co-existed with a social brutishness that is neither condemned nor sanitised during the course of an utterly enveloping two and a half hours; it just is.To that extent, one may be struck by the noises that accompany Timothy Spall's performance as the Covent Garden barber's son (Paul Jesson is a winning presence as Turner père) who went on to shape the way we think about art: Spall spends much of the time grunting and snorting his way through the day, allowing his gathering proto-impressionism to speak more volubly than he himself chooses to do. But one is never in doubt about the visionary grace that seems to take Turner over once a sketchbook or paintbrush come into play. For all Leigh's long-proven mastery of language, Mr Turner reminds us time and again that there are other ways of connecting to the world. Or not, as the case may be.

Indeed, this is hardly the first portrait of an artist as a dysfunctional family man - a jettisoned mistress (Ruth Sheen, another Leigh veteran) pitches up with her brood in tow. Alas, Turner's affections by that point have long since been given over first to an abject-seeming housekeeper (a rivetingly indrawn Dorothy Atkinson, pictured below with Spall) and ultimately to the widowed landlady, Sophia, who takes Turner in, this kind-hearted woman responding first to the man and only secondarily to the celebrated artist with whom she discovers she is sharing a house and then a bed. An open-faced Marion Bailey (Leigh's real-life partner) is a quiet sensation in this part, and one hopes amid all the deserved clamour afforded Spall, Leigh and inimitable cameraman Dick Pope that Bailey gets her due when prizes are doled out. 

The film places Turner in the social whirl of the age - his presence among the Royal Academy's politicking artistic fraternity is vividly caught - and in bustling, beady-eyed contemplation of nature, scene after scene subordinating the artist in pictorial terms to the vistas in front of him, or else capturing in filmic terms something of the heady investigation into the qualities of light that illuminate Turner's renown to this day. The film avoids the glib shorthand that often attends such ventures, and such connections as are made between his daily routine and his output go commendably unforced. There's a lovely sequence in which Turner absorbs a reminiscence from Sophia's then-living husband, Mr Booth (Karl Johnson), about his time aboard slave ships - from which encounter Turner's maritime classic T" (1840) was born. 

But exhilaratingly crisp though the film's look is, it never stoops to the merely pictorial, as if that choice would draw attention away from the inner drive and vigour that propel Turner ever onwards. Spall maps out each new chapter in the painter's art and life like some unsung pugilist forever trying to wrestle what he sees around him into an image that can be contained. And the fact that the painter is rarely if ever heard explaining either himself or his techniques seems in every way right. He's found a corresponding visionary in Leigh for whom empathy is the most majestic explanation there is.

View the trailer for Mr Turner overleaf

At least three composers have set about turning The Fall of the House of Usher into operas, including most famously Debussy, whose abortive attempt, completed by Robert Orledge, was brilliantly staged by Welsh National Opera in June. But there is a good argument that Poe’s story – short on incident and character, long on visual image and atmosphere – lends itself better to film than to the stage.

Adapted from the cult novel by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) and directed by Alexandre Aja, Horns can't keep itself on an even tonal keel for more than a few minutes. Part policier, part doomed romance and part gothic nightmare, I suppose it might even have created its own nano-genre.

“If it bleeds it leads”, proclaims crime news reporter Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) as he investigates the bloody remains of a car crash with his invasive camera lens in a bid to make the biggest bucks out of the exploitation of human tragedy. It’s a mantra which curious onlooker Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal, who has shed a massive 30 pounds for the role) takes to grim and vicious extremes when he sets up his own TV news business.

The key lines are “you’re reborn into an untroubled world” – a world “where everyone’s the same.” The 1956 Don Siegel science fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is often taken as a response to America’s fear of Communism and the associated suppression of self, or as a commentary on the encroaching conformity brought by the spread of consumerism and a regimented suburbia. In both cases, homogenisation and standardised behaviour were the potential result.

In The Overnighters documentarist Jesse Moss found his story and pursued it with remarkable empathy, all in the best traditions of the genre. He persuaded both sides in this tale of (quiet) confrontation to trust him, and they opened up completely. Then closing minute revelations that come as a total shock take his film to a different level, turning what would have been a strong film in itself into something that will stay in the memory for a very long time.

The Jimi Hendrix redux directed by John Ridley, Oscar-winning scriptwriter of 12 Years A Slave (and the underrated Undercover Brother, among others), was highly anticipated - especially as this take on the great guitarist’s life would not, apparently, feature any hits.

Mother love is mangled, yanked inside-out and tested almost to destruction in Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s heartfelt horror debut. The Babadook enthusiastically fulfils its remit to scare, but finds its fright in the secret corners of maternal instinct, where frustration, grief and violence meet.

As the bald title suggests, Fury is a work of righteous, focussed rage. It's a combat film which swaps preaching and profundity for pure anger at the brutalising, destructive war machine, and still manages to be illuminating. For, even at its most thrillingly Hollywood, Fury retains a keen sense of the waste of life. Director David Ayer's fifth film features explicit, immersive and impactful violence and works best when it's pummelling the audience and Nazis alike, with deafening, meticulously executed action that threatens to punch a hole through both the screen and your ear-drum.

Set in April 1945 in the dying days of World War II, Fury finds the American forces exhausted, diminished, bested by superior weaponry and deep in the heart of enemy territory. With Hitler having declared "total war" and the Germans defending their own soil, the fight is at its most terrifying, desperate and bitter. Brad Pitt (pictured below right) plays Don "Wardaddy" Collier, a tough, seemingly invulnerable tank commander who's made acting sergeant as the Allied numbers dwindle. His devoted, dishevelled team consist of Boyd "Bible" Swan (Shia LaBeouf), Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis (Jon Bernthal) and Trini "Gordo" Garcia (Michael Peña).

Don's replacement for his fifth man, decapitated by enemy fire, is the baby-faced Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), who can type 60 words a minute - not terribly useful given the context - and no-one disguises their disappointment at the new addition to the crew. Told not to get too close to anyone, Norman's ominous and unbelievably disgusting first assignment is to clean his predecessor's blood and bodily fragments from inside the armoured vehicle. Fury is set significantly in the Sherman tank these men call home; snapshots and girly pictures are displayed alongside the Nazi trophies they've ripped from corpses.

With its macho camaraderie and sense that the men are hopelessly and relentlessly outnumbered and outgunned Fury resembles nothing more than a western (The Wild Bunch springs most to mind). It occasionally threatens to tip over into "The Little Tank That Could" territory, and is saved from doing so by its strong handle on not just the colossal, continuous loss of life (with blood and bodies everywhere and danger around each corner), but what is lost in these men, perhaps forever. The animalistic Grady (excellent work from Bernthal) is the prime example of what war does to a man, but even the more sympathetic Don is frequently forced to hide his humanity, adopting a savagely-cruel-to-be-kind approach in order to save them all.

It's much more powerful during scenes of combat

Tight-jawed and thick-skinned with his baby blues twinkling from a battle-scorched face, Pitt is a picture of holding-it-together heroism. The heavy losses see him continuously promoted and there's the slightly hyperbolic sense that the burden of the Allies' success lies solely on his shoulders - but that's perhaps how many in his situation felt. It's a committed and restrained performance, which may even bag him his fourth Oscar nomination. And it's rather a case of Pitt the older and younger here with the similar-looking Lerman establishing his acting chops, and showing a firm grasp of a tough character arc.

Fury is far from perfect - the grim predicament of German women is squeamishly skirted around despite an awkward attempt to address this, and it's much more powerful during scenes of combat than during scenes of (relative) quiet. Filmed in 2012, Ayer's last film Sabotage was released earlier this year and in its wasted cast and messy execution it had all the hallmarks of a film that had been slung together. With the release of the considerably more polished Fury so hot on its heels, we can now see where Ayer's heart was.

BRAD PITT’S BIG MOMENTS

Allied. Doomed but entertaining attempt to revive 1940s Hollywood

Inglorious Basterds. Pitt is gloriously absurd in Tarantino WW2 alternative history

Killing Them Softly. Brad Pitt cleans up an almighty mess in Andrew Dominik’s high-calibre crime ensemble

Moneyball. How Billy Beane created a revolution in Major League baseball

The Big Short. Pitt’s on the money as director Adam McKay successfully makes a drama out of a crisis

The Counsellor. Ridley Scott ensemble thriller is nasty, brutish and short or mysterious, upsetting and alluring

The Tree of Life. Terrence Malick’s elliptical epic leads us through time, space and one family’s story

PLUS ONE TURKEY

World War Z. It's World War with a Zee as Brad Pitt battles the undead and a zombie script

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Fury