Prepare To Violently Disagree.

Here's the deal, this is a list of the ten films I have liked the most over the last year. You will disagree. Maybe violently. I'm not going to go into deep analysis of any of them but I will try to get across why I enjoyed them...and you get pictures. Pretty pretty pictures. Obviously I haven't seen every film that came out this year, and I've managed to miss some big ones - which means some films that would obviously be here won't be. Because I haven't seen them yet, and I'm not gonna cheat for the sake of making a futile list more respectable. It's strictly personal preference from a limited selection. OK lets go, I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

10. Walk the Line.

For the part when Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) is auditioning for the first time with his band in front of Sam Phillips. They play their much rehearsed gospel tune, and they bomb. Nobody wants gospel, and Sam Phillips doesn't believe it. He asks Cash if he could play one song, just one, would it really be that song? Or would it be another song? So Cash starts to play a song he's written, and nobody has heard, not even his band.

He starts to play Folsom Prison Blues.

He starts slowly, without confidence, his voice wavering, but like the train coming he just keeps going, with grim determination. His band comes in behind him and Phillips face shows fear.

9. A Scanner Darkly.Linklater does sci-fi. He did the rotoscoping thing with waking life, and rather than overwhelm this film you kind of forget about it not long after it starts. It's obviously quite a nice effect and I thought it was an interesting way to portray Dick's reality/unreality in this story, as you're never sure exactly whose perspective you're watching things from. It's never clear which parts of the story are drug induced, staged, or actually real - especially not to Bob Arctor (Reeves), an undercover agent given instructions to spy on himself.

I know what you're thinking...how can he spy on himself? Ha, it's sci-fi...don't worry about it.

Anyway I'm not going to explain the entire plot, some of you may have read the book, I haven't, but I recommend the film as an interesting, entertaining, and best of all pretty unique take on science fiction.

8. Borat.

You will laugh more than you have laughed all year, and you will feel bad about most of it. You will see the best and most gruesome fight scene of the year. You will see Americans of all shapes and sizes made fools of (although some of them have blatantly been paid for the dubious honour) .

If Sacha Baron Cohen managed not to offend anyone this year, it wasn't through lack of trying. It makes his other comedy appearance this year as a French Nascar driver in Taladega Nights look about as chortle-worthy as having your balls cut off and fed to you. And that was the standout performance in that film.

Come on - how do you protect yourself from shape-shifting Jews? Buy a big fuck-off bear. Genius.

7. Romance & Cigarettes.

It has Christopher Walken singing Delilah. It has Kate Winslet talking dirty in a northern accent. It has Mary-Louise Parker dressed as a punk and playing guitar. It's a film the Coen brothers should have made, but they're busy fucking about with George Clooney. Probably. That is all.

6. The Devil & Daniel Johnston.This is a documentary about Daniel Johnston, who is a cult musician and manic depression sufferer, who I had never heard of. To be honest I was less interested in his music and art - both good - and more about the character of Daniel himself. His own artistic drive and the lengths he would go to to try and 'make it', and how a sliver of that success affected him and shaped the rest of his life so far.

There's a sequence when he's visiting friends in New York - among them members of Sonic Youth - and he goes missing. Knowing his fragile mental state they go out searching the streets for him. As you do. But something that seems strange is they take a video camera with them to document the search.

Why?

It felt like they were perhaps expecting the worst and because it was 'Daniel Johnston' it would be something that should obviously be captured for posterity. These already successful rock stars were filming the search for their famous and mentally ill 'friend'. If he was really their friend wouldn't the cameraman be put to better use helping look for Daniel rather than waiting to profit from his illness and misfortune? Vultures spring to mind.

Glory by association is apparently what it's all about. Kurt Cobain touted Johnston as a major influence, and mentally ill rock stars are hardly rare, but this is less about sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll and more about a remarkable guy who despite everything seems to still have more integrity than those he associated with.

5. Squid and the Whale.

Imagine a Wes Anderson film but based somewhere in New York in the 80's, and in reality. The only time before this that I'd heard of Noah Baumbach was as co-writer on Anderson's Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which I enjoyed but thought weaker than his previous two features (the fantastic Rushmore and flawed but very enjoyable Royal Tenenbaums). I'm going to be looking out for him from now on.

It's funny, touching, painful, and quite scarily autobiographical. It's about twenty minutes shorter than any other film I've seen this year. Jeff Daniels will very likely never be better, and for me it's a brilliant composite of enjoyable and stylish film-making with a genuine heart at the core. Best title of the year also...once you've seen it.

4. Grizzly Man.

Yeah it's that documentary about the dude who went and lived with bears in Alaska for blah months a year and one of them eventually ate him and his girlfriend. Werner Herzog made it.

Again, like Daniel Johnston this is here less for the extraordinary life and it's tragic end, more for the extraordinary character and the arc shown on his own footage taken over many years in the wilderness.

I think I maybe just like watching documentaries about crazy people, like that Spellbound about the kids in the National Spelling Bee. They were all clearly fruitloops. I loved that.

Anyway this guy Timothy Treadwell is just an amazing character, although heavily delusional. In the one instance where we see him actually touching one of the bears, the fucker spins round like a scalded cat ready to tear his face off. There's another bit where he's filming a bear standing on it's hind legs next to a tree - Treadwell can be heard whispering 'ooh he's a big bear, he's a big bear, aren't you/ aren't you? yes you are you're a big bear.' Or something like that. You're looking and you think - yeah it's probably quite big. Then in the next shot you see Treadwell go and stand next to the same tree. You realize he's out in the middle of nowhere with creatures ten feet tall, and you kinda get how dangerous it is there. All the time. It's quite amazing.

3. Casino Royale.

I've geeked out about this film far too much already, it's going to be very short. He is T1000 Bond, he runs through a wall, he bleeds and kills messy. He loses and comes back for more, and he comes back harder and faster than them, and without mercy. You see Bond hewn out of betrayal and death. More please.

2. United 93.

I saw this for free and just before it started I was giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl at seeing a work colleague wearing glasses for the first time. Hardly appropriate. I wasn't ready.

Easily the most impressive film I saw this year, for sheer intensity and visceral tension. Which probably shouldn't be possible for a film where you know whats going to happen, but with this it's all about how it happened. You get the terrorists, the passengers, the crew, the controllers - all of the perspectives - all of the fear. Greengrass draws you into this and makes you feel it like no other film I have ever seen, it is not a pleasant experience.

I came out of this feeling shell shocked, and astounded - moving pictures on a screen shouldn't leave you unsteady on your feet. I'm not sure if I'd want to watch it again but everyone should watch it at least once.

1. Brick.

Ha, what balls. I've picked a pulpy, empty exercise in style over content as my favourite film of the last twelve months. I clearly know nothing. It's a noir thriller set in a modern day California high school, complete with hard-boiled dialogue, femme fatales and a surly gumshoe. Yes, the kid with girls hair from 3rd Rock From The Sun is a junior Sam Spade. He's wearing a grey anorak. He has glasses. He wins a fight with the high school jock to get the attention of the local kingpin drug dealer in a bid to get closer to finding out why he found his ex-girlfriend dead in a puddle. It's great.

That's the only argument I have for it really. Chinatown and Miller's Crossing are two of my favourite films, James Ellroy is one of my favourite authors. I enjoy this type of thing, quite a lot. It's the one on the whole list that I can see myself watching over and over again, which is kind of what I do with all of my favourite films, which is why it's here. It has the same stark and bleached California of Chinatown, and the same bullheaded and obtuse actions of Brendan, which smack of Tom in Miller's Crossing. It just looks and sounds good, with quirky and memorable characters around a nice concept.

I'm underselling it, but it reminds me of why I started to like movies in the first place, I don't 'read' movies or generally look for meanings on different levels. I haven't had the training. I like this in the same way I like Pulp Fiction and Leon, which were my favourite films through my teens. They made me want to be a director for a while, they made it seem like films could be mostly about fun, just making a 'cool' film for the sake of it. I was trying to not use the word cool but it's futile, this film is, and it knows it.

There have obviously been better films out this year than some that have made this list and I have no real excuse for not having seen them. Pretty much any of the top five are interchangeable, I've changed my mind about the order three times in the writing of this last sentence. The list of my favourite albums will likely be even less respectable, prepare thyself.