Ten winners plus runners up, in alphabetical order.
Nicholson exchanges cool/weird for sad/old in Alexander Payne’s beautifully told tale of a man coming to terms with his diminishing powers. The simple ingredients of a clever script, fabulous acting and a strong, relevant sentiment make this a lean and effective film. And there are some beautiful comic touches.
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Spike Jonze tops his debut masterpiece with the best film about writing ever. Nic Cage’s only good performance since Leaving Las Vegas as he plays genius screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his fake twin - probably the only fictional person to ever get an Oscar nomination.
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Four fossilised old women and one ugly hound are the heroes in an endlessly imaginative tale that helter skelters from a crooked house to the Tour De France via evil French Mafiosi. An off kilter grown up’s cartoon from Sylvain Chomet, with froggie flavour.
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A cinematic punch in the face from Fernando Meirelles which leaves you exhilarated and wanting more. City Of God is one of the most brutal and beautiful films of this or any year, delivering drama, art and authenticity by the bucket load. Simply devastating cinema.
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You'd need to have a heart of stone to avoid being touched by Nicolas Philibert’s documentary about a tiny school in provincial France. The lone teacher is a saint, handling the smiles and tantrums, conflicts and small-town taboos with such wisdom, elegance and sheer human decency that you'll leave the cinema feeling that he’s taught you a lesson too.
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Autumn, 1957. The leaves are falling in Hartford, Connecticut. A lush, dysfunctional utopia peopled with bigots in immaculate clothes. Tight waists and velvet gloves for the girls, raincoats and trilbies for the boys. And heaven help you if the two sides ever blur. Sadness in Technicolour from genius director Todd Haynes.
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This firebrand, renowned for the longest anal rape take in film history (nine minutes), is so much more than a gory grind-house curiosity. Director Gaspar Noé intelligently blasts the most extreme emotions against an immutable wall of fate, yet with soul searing humanity.
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Despite surreal other-worldly chemistry between Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, Paul Thomas Anderson somehow manages to discover the scientific formula for love, bottle it and soak his film negative in it. Scary and disorientating, just like the real thing, so I’m told.
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Pulp Fiction co-author Roger Avary offers up a wonderfully dark and unflinching portrayal of American high school life, complete with sex, drugs and suicide. It also features a startlingly good, brooding performance from James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek). It’s not nice but it is brilliant.
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Poetry in motion from laughing boy director Aleksandr Sokurov. Filmed in one unbroken 90-minute take, this is cinematic history. But it’s also a trippy voyage through Russian history, via the echoing and evocative halls of The Hermitage in St Petersburg. You’ll either love it or loathe it. We love it.
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best of the rest
Auto Focus
Buffalo Soldiers
Gangs of New York
Respiro
Spirited Away
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