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A clear winner for me, this rates as one of the best films of the past ten years.  In so artfully weaving together a grisly war story and a child's interior fantasy world come-to-life, Guillermo del Toro enriches both genres and achieves a result that is greater than the sum of its parts - an enchanting hybrid, which resonates all along the scale from the most biting realism to the most far-flung escapism.  Horrifying and tender by turns, it is utterly compulsive.  My review

This excellent present-day western updates the genre to tell a profound fable of racial tensions on the Mexican border, and the duties that a bond of deep friendship entail.  Guillermo Arriaga's involved, time-shifting script is well handled by Tommy Lee Jones as director, and his own gritty lead performance is terrific, recalling Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven.   Both innovative and classic, this is a film that reverberates long in the mind.   My review

Philip Seymour Hoffman beat a stone-faced Heath Ledger and others to win the best actor Oscar in the eponymous role, and it was richly deserved - the most astonishing piece of mimicry in recent times.  But Hoffman's performance was well served by a clever script, which chose to reveal just a piece of Capote's life in detail, rather than go for a full biopic.  The story of the creative hazards in writing In Cold Blood is both fascinating and chilling.   My review

This comedy is a triumph, taking the reality/gonzo formula to a pinnacle of insane majesty, which can never be scaled again.  From now on Borat will be mentioned in the same breath as Some Like it Hot, Airplane, Life of Brian, etc, and like these top comedies,  it is continually surprising in its innovation whilst being simultaneously hilarious.  My favourite scene: where the Deep South hostess explains in detail how we wipe our bottoms in the West.

Another great comedy, this road movie about a dysfunctional family could so easily have missed the mark and fallen flat, but sharp writing and bravura acting make it something special.  Steve Carell is particularly good as the gay suicidal uncle, and an aged Alan Arkin sparkles as the lecherous grandpa.  In finding belly-laughs in dark places and brilliantly satirizing the American child beauty pageant circuit, it retains a bed of seriousness beneath the slapstick.

After the initial weirdness of watching actors playing such famous faces - James Cromwell as Prince Philip?  (he's actually very good) - this account of Royal remoteness after Diana's death shapes up as a fine movie about Britain, imbuing that era of early Blairism and Britpop with the kind of nostalgia usually reserved for the sixties or the seventies.  That aside, the film is made by Helen Mirren, who again proves she's the queen of British - if not world - acting.

In rotoscopically animating live action, Richard Linklater has created a striking and seductive look in this edgy Philip K. Dick adaptation about futuristic drug addiction.  The dissociative nature of the story lends itself to cartoonification, and the resulting scale of realism to unrealism works well in the telling.  But it is class acting that really elevates the movie, with Robert Downey Jr. putting in a wonderful turn as a fey, twisted druggy.  My review

Many commentators found this film mawkish and even downright boring, but I thought it a solid piece of work and a return to form for Oliver Stone.  The very nature of a story that has two people trapped immobile underground in near lightless conditions doesn't make for much screen dynamism, but in the sensitive handling of this real-life account, and the intensity of the human drama, Stone gets across a punchy message about  overcoming impossible odds.

Christopher Nolan's Victorian melodrama about the obsessive enmity of two magicians is a kind of The Duelists meets Penn and Teller.  It boasts a rich, colourful texture, some impressive set pieces with crackling Van de Graaff generators, and a career best performance from Hugh Jackman.  With a few logic problems in its plotting, it's a bit too clever for its own sleight-of-hand, but still remains a worthy piece of cinematic prestidigitation.

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