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Daniel Day-Lewis works rarely these days, but when he does it's always an event to remember.  His portrayal of a misanthropic oilman in this excellent drama is a tour de force and almost certainly an Oscar winner.

A middle of the road year all around.  My selections are included in the above.

A commendable collection of three early ITV plays from Potter - Shaggy Dog, Moonlight on the Highway and Lay Down Your Arms.  All very interesting for the ways they prefigure his later more famous works.

Last year was a fairly good one, on balance, and here is my pick.  With a couple of comedies, some sf and fantasy, a period piece, and a number of different kinds of real-life dramatizations, it's varied, and hopefully reflects the current state of artier cinema. 

A look at the increasing selection of the legendary film & TV writers' works now available on disc - and what isn't and perhaps never will be available.

The second installment in Shekhar Kapur's life of the Queen of Queens is showier and more crowd-pleasing than the first, but it still remains high quality and visually rapturous drama, with Cate Blanchett as good as ever.

Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg team up once again in this edgy, off-beat crime drama, featuring the Russian Mafia in London and a naked fight scene that shows this now veteran director can still astonish us with his genius.

The latest Ian McEwan adaptation turns the material into an English Patient-like worn torn romance, featuring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.  Does it do justice to the novel's depth and complexity?

David Lynch's metafilmic odyssey through Hollywood and Poland is another reality-bending, nightmare- like puzzle to rival Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, featuring a superb performance from Laura Dern in a role of many facets.

Coming so soon after Capote, do we really need another film about the diminutive writer?  Toby Jones' portrayal is fun to watch and Daniel Craig takes on a difficult character role, showing he's keeping up the edgier work alongside Bond.

The Zoë Heller novel comes alive onscreen with some fine acting performances, but after starting well, plot fault lines and various implausibilities drag it down.

This lesser-known piece of 60's whimsy stars a young Susan George being romanced by older man Charles Bronson in a Lolita meets Breakfast At Tiffanys-like tale.

This typically British crime caper sports a great ensemble cast, including Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick and Richard Attenborough, and a plan to conquer the world that inevitably goes awry.

With four stories and six languages, stretching from Mexico to Japan, via Morocco, the concluding part of the  Iñárritu/Arriaga trilogy is ingenious in the way it juxtaposes disparate lives and creates threads that unexpectedly link them together.

Like a present day Goya of cinema, Guillermo del Toro pits the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War against the mythic imaginary world of a young girl, caught up in frightful circumstances.  The result is absolute pure perfection and the standout  film of the moment.

A Philip K. Dick film with a difference.  Richard Linklater uses state-of-the -art animation to paint a menacing sci fi future world of drug addiction, paranoia and psychosis, with cameras watching your every move.

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