Joss Whedon
Why? Fanboy heaven for both Marvel lovers and Whedonites. A giddy exercise in comic book fun that casts down the dark and gritty shackles thrown upon comic book films by The Dark Knight and answers for a second time the eternally confounding question: 'how are they going to make Captain America look cool in a movie?' Answer: They didn't.
Standout moment: Hulk using Loki as a ragdoll.
4. The Raid
Gareth Evans
Why? Because it is undeniably the best all-out action film of the
last decade. An adrenaline shot to the face that leaves you breathless and
wildly, perhaps inappropriately excited.Standout moment: Somewhere between the exploding fridge and the freefall fight out of a window... take your pick.
3. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Why? It is both the most formulaic and laid out police procedural and the most wildly inventive and progressive. The most cathartic film in years, when Ceylan wants you to be calm, frustrated, reflective, bored even, you are. And that's really not a bad thing. Really. Ceylan cements himself as the leading creative coming out of the flourishing Turkish film scene.
Standout moment: A lengthy shot of an apple rolling down a stream with not a lick of digital trickery.
2. Into the Abyss
Wener Herzog
Why? It's Herzog's best film since My Best Friend back in 1999 and a genuinely illuminating and sobering observation on the value of life. The purest and most balanced documentary since Marc Singer's Dark Days.
Standout moment: "Describe an encounter with a squirrel"
1. The Turin Horse
Bela Tarr
Why? I must say that I do not rate films in my reviews. I do not see the merit of rating out of fives, tens or per cents. That's not to say in my own strange, OCD way I don't tend to rate every film anyway in my head to satisfy my obsession with lists and orders, but a great film promotes opinion and debate. That is something that can't be accounted for on a scale of one to five. However, going back to my own crazy listing system I have decided that a five star film, full marks so to speak, should be a film that is as close to perfect as the wonderful medium of film allows. In all the thousands of films I have watched in my life I have a list of about thirty or so films that qualify for such a ratting. I intend to post that unavoidably contentious list after I have written up the list of my personal favourite twenty films. Suffice to say that Bela Tarr's ninth and, as he assures us, last film sits very comfortably on both lists.
Standout moment: The single greatest and most evocative opening take I have ever seen.
The year to come: I feel, being an enormous film lover, the last three years have been brilliant for each bearing what I consider to be a pretty much perfect film, a five star film if you will. 2010 with Of Gods and Men, 2011 with Drive and now The Turin Horse at halfway through the year. If Lawless, The Master and Only God Forgives live up to how brilliant they are destined to be we are in for an absolute stormer of a year. Oh, God, and how could I forget The Great Gatsby... oh, wait...
