Soul

In the first Pixar cartoon to have an African-American lead character, Jamie Foxx provides the voice of a music teacher who dreams of making it as a jazz pianist in New York. But just after a successful audition, he falls down a manhole, and finds himself in an astral realm where human spirits are assigned their personalities. And things get even more surreal from there.

Nomadland

When Fern (Frances McDormand) is widowed, she can't afford to live in a house of her own, so she packs her few belongings into a camper van, and drives off into the Nevada desert. She soon discovers that she isn't alone: there is a large community of senior citizens who have been forced to live on the road, supporting themselves with short-term jobs along the way. What makes Nomadland unique is that while Fern is played by an Oscar-winning actress, nearly all of the people she meets are real nomads who recount their own experiences. Written and directed by Chloe Zhao (The Rider), the film is a "hybrid of documentary and fiction".

Wolfwalkers

The year's finest animated film doesn't come from Dreamworks or Pixar, but from Cartoon Saloon, an Irish studio specialising in Celtic folklore and stylised hand-drawn 2D art. Their latest rousing fairy tale is set in the mid 17th-Century, when English soldiers are trying to tame the wild woods near Kilkenny. One hunter's daughter learns that there aren't just wolves in the forest, but "wolfwalkers" who can change into wolves at night. Richard Whittaker in the Austin Chronicle praises "a heartwarming story of family and friendship, a family-friendly examination of the horror of repression, a bracing adventure about two girls finding themselves, and a stealth art history lesson... Wolfwalkers stands proud as a new classic."

The Croods: A New Age

The prehistoric family from 2013's hugely enjoyable cartoon, The Croods, makes a welcome return, so we can expect more frenetic adventures, bizarre hybrid animals, and endearing vocal work by such well-cast actors as Nicolas Cage, Catherine Keener, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds. In the much-delayed sequel, they meet another family, the Bettermans (voiced by Peter Dinklage, Leslie Mann and Kelly Marie Tran), whose advanced lifestyle and technology makes the Croods look even more primitive than they did already. "The Croods lead with their heart, and the Bettermans lead with their brain,” says Joel Crawford, the film's director. “Of course, there's conflict, they face challenges, but they learn to appreciate each other's differences. There's a lot of wonderful, powerful themes. But it's a ridiculous comedy too."

Tenet

If any film is going to tempt crowds back to cinemas, it's Christopher Nolan's Tenet, a brain-frying science-fiction blockbuster with a high concept and a higher budget. John David Washington stars as a secret agent who learns about mysterious weapons that move backwards through time, and then dashes off on a mission to find the man responsible, a sadistic Ukrainian arms dealer played by Kenneth Branagh. Tenet is a Bond movie that squeezes Back to the Future 2 and Edge of Tomorrow into its last act. After six months with almost no new films in cinemas, it's good to see a film so crammed with exotic locations, snazzy costumes, shoot-outs and explosions that you get six months' worth of entertainment in two and a half hours.

Onward

Dragons, unicorns and other fairytale creatures are usually consigned to a mythical past resembling Ancient Greece or Medieval Britain, but the big idea behind Pixar's latest animation, Onward, is that they are all still alive and kicking in the US today. Tom Holland and Chris Pratt (better known as Spider-Man and Star-Lord) provide the voices of two elf brothers who go on a road trip – or a magical quest, depending on how you look at it – in an attempt to bring their father back from the dead. Ben Travis writes in Empire that Onward is "pure, perfect Pixar – a film with such warmth, whip-smart humor and creative energy that it's a sheer joy to spend a few hours in its presence".

Saint Frances

Kelly O'Sullivan is both the screenwriter and star of this sensitive indie comedy about Bridget, a directionless Chicago thirtysomething who gets a job as a six-year-old's nanny. Of course, Bridget is soon learning as much from Frances (Ramona Edith-Williams) as Frances is learning from her. Saint Frances was the audience-award winner at last year's SXSW festival, where Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert wrote that "the movie really snuck up on me and walloped me emotionally in the final scenes in ways I wasn't expecting". The reason: "we believe in its characters... Bridget makes mistakes, but they feel organic and genuine, not designed as 'movie lessons'."

Hillbilly Elegy

JD Vance's fraught account of his poverty-stricken Appalachian upbringing in Ohio was a New York Times bestseller in 2016, when it was viewed by some commentators as a window into the soul of US white working-class. The film of Hillbilly Elegy is directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) and written by Vanessa Taylor (The Shape of Water). Both writer and director have worked on Oscar-winning hits, but awards-watchers have their eyes on its two female stars: Amy Adams plays Vance's unstable, drug-addicted mother, and Glenn Close is the tough grandmother who raised him. "Between them," notes Yohana Desta in Vanity Fair, "the pair have 13 total Oscar nominations but zero wins – making Hillbilly one of the more intriguing titles on this year's awards circuit. Will one of them finally break their Oscar spell next year and land an acting statuette? Will both of them win? It's possible!"

Emma

Did the world need one more Jane Austen adaptation? Not really, but this enchanting, colourful version is a very welcome addition. As Emma, Anya Taylor-Joy captures the heart and warmth beneath Austen's bossy, match-making heroine. Johnny Flynn is irresistible as her improbable love, Mr Knightley. And Bill Nighy gloriously steals every scene as Emma's comically overprotective father.

Ammonite

Kate Winslet plays Mary Anning, the Victorian fossil hunter whose discoveries on the Dorset coast made her a heroine to palaeontologists, but who was never quite accepted by male scientists in her lifetime. Saoirse Ronan plays Charlotte Murchison, an aspiring geologist who visits Anning's home in Lyme Regis. BBC Culture's Caryn James says that Francis Lee's "exquisite" period romance is "visually stunning, emotionally enduring [and] brutally honest".