Ruth Bader Ginsberg is justly considered a feminist icon, and a legal trailblazer. Before she became a key figure of the US supreme court, her legal career set fundamental precedents. In this biopic, we see Ginsberg (Felicity Jones) team with her husband Martin (Armie Hammer) to address a case that has wide-ranging implications for sexual discrimination.

Melissa McCarthy is brilliantly unsympathetic in this revelatory dramatic role as literary fraud Lee Israel. With her writing career permanently stalled, incapable of getting over her ex-girlfriend and job prospects nil, she turns her craft to penning elaborate fake letters from the likes of Noël Coward.

Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) is hired by piano virtuoso Dr Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali, following up his Oscar-winning turn in Moonlight) to be his chauffeur on a concert tour of the American South. Taking two mismatched characters and trapping them on a road trip is the stuff of great comedy, but in Green Book we also get a relevant tale of the 1960s racial divisions.

Following up his surprise Oscar winner Moonlight, Barry Jenkins adapts James Baldwin’s novel of 1970s Harlem in this sumptuous tale of lovers divided by circumstance.

Christian Bale is Vice-president Dick Cheney in this brilliant reconstruction of the madness of the George W. Bush presidency. An arch-manipulator, Cheney plays business, politics and warfare as mere tools for his personal gain, with his wife Lynne (Amy Adams) as his confidante. Sam Rockwell plays willing dupe Bush alongside Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, offering us a panoramic portrait of the craven misuse of political power.

Marie Colvin (played here with impressive conviction by Rosamund Pike) was a tireless correspondent, travelling to some of the most dangerous conflicts in the world – from Sri Lanka to Syria to Iraq – risking her life to reveal the truth about unjust regimes and humanitarian crimes.