EMPIRE: The 50 Best Films Of 2013

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
Best for... taking us out of this world.

It wasn't even close this year. Leaving aside the fact that Gravity is a technological marvel that reduces VFX artists to giddy pools of sheer disbelief, it's a great piece of storytelling and an astonishing piece of cinema. Sandra Bullock is the astronaut lost in space, and she's never been better, but it's Cuarón and his team who emerge with the lion's share of the plaudits, constructing an impossibly tense example of pure cinema thrill.

Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus, Max Martini, Catherine Keener
Best for... humanising both sides in an impossible true story.

Paul Greengrass is back, and thank goodness for that. The true-life tale of Captain Phillips (Hanks), abducted and held hostage by Somali pirates after an attempt to rob his ship goes wrong, is a masterclass in cranking the tension and keeping it high – even if you know how it all ends. The unknowns cast as the pirates, in particular Barkhad Abdi as Musa, are flawless as the powers ranged against them line up, and Hanks is as good as ever, particularly in a ravaged final scene.

Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Brühl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara, Pierfrancesco Favino
Best for... showing us all how it feels to suffer the need for speed.

Whether you are a Formula 1 aficionado or the furthest thing from a petrol head, this story of clashing egos and contrasting styles in the quest for the driver's championship is a compelling portrayal of ambition, determination and going really fast in circles. Chris Hemsworth takes off Thor's goody two shoes (and everything else) as the hard-living James Hunt while Daniel Brühl is his more considered rival. At times it looks like it might become a fight to the death, but beyond the mortal peril it's the combination of bitter competition and mutual respect that gives this its edge.

Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepard, Michael Shannon
Best for... plunging you into a sun-baked coming-of-age tale.

Mark Twain and Matthew McConaughey collide at last in the latest film from Jeff Nichols, the man who previously brought us the excellent Take Shelter and Shotgun Stories. McConaughey plays the titular man-on-the-lam who holes up on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River in wait for his lover (Witherspoon). There, inquisitive teens Ellis (Sheridan) and Neckbone (Lofland) stumble on him and unwittingly find themselves a tattooed, superstitious father figure who speaks in riddles and represents a serious aiding-and-abetting rap. Nichols, who goes from strength to strength, got the best out of his terrific cast that included muse Michael Shannon, on a short break from filming Man Of Steel, McConaughey and eye-catching newcomers Sheridan and Loveland. And, yes, McConaughey took his shirt off.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, David Strathairn, Sally Field, Bruce McGill, Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader
Best for... summing up a great man's character in one short span of weeks.

Steven Spielberg. Daniel Day-Lewis. The greatest US president in history (discuss; 10 marks). It's a dream team even before you get to the supporting cast (Strathairn, Spader, Field) and it only gets dreamier from there. By focusing on the struggle to pass the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, Spielberg sidesteps the brutality of the US Civil War (somewhat, at least) to focus on the high ideals for which Lincoln, at least, fought. So inspiring that you may find yourself singing the Star-Spangled Banner by the end.

Director: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Jacki Weaver
Best for... creepy atmosphere and novel uses for pencils.

A slow-burning coming-of-age story that defies easy categorisation, this gets under your skin and stays there. Matthew Goode plays the mysterious Uncle Charlie who turns up at his brother's funeral to comfort grieving widow Evie (Kidman) and her daughter India (Wasikowska) – but while it's immediately clear that he is hiding something and that all is not quite right in the state of India, it still comes as a shock when you realise what you've been watching all along.

Director: Shane Black
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle
Best for... delivering blockbuster scale while wittily undercutting clichés as it goes.

Newspaper critics love to talk about superhero fatigue, but as long as the films stay as inventive and surprising as this summer's Iron three-quel, it isn't going to hit any time soon. The first post-Avengers outing for Marvel's finest saw Tony Stark with his back against the wall and deprived of his usual home comforts, but all the better for it. Incoming director Shane Black inevitably set the story at Christmas, but delivered surprises both small (a cute kid who isn't annoying!) and huge (you know the one we mean). More fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
Best for... showing us what happens after the happily ever after.

This ongoing collaboration by writer-director Richard Linklater and his co-writers and stars Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke is one of cinema's most successful experiments. Over 20 years now, we've had the chance to peek into three key moments in the lives of Jesse and Celine as they debate life, love, sex and their own shared future. Their discussions feel so natural (albeit hyper-articulate and well-expressed) that viewers are left secretly hoping that "Julie Delpy" and "Ethan Hawke" are the characters, and Celine and Jesse are still out there somewhere, walk-and-talking in a way that puts even Aaron Sorkin to shame.

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Buccirosso
Best for... re-imagining Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita as a 21st century Roman odyssey.

Tony Servillo and Paolo Sorrentino reunited for the fourth time in an Italian language gem that burst out of the festival circuit in an explosion of energy and ideas. Like their last two collaborations, Il Divo and The Consequences Of Love, it had the wonderfully wry Servillo at his best. It introduced his novelist/writer/bon vivant Jep Gambardella – think Marcello Mastroianni's Dolce Vita hack seasoned by the years and the odd brandy – as a man observing his own disco-fuelled party like a mischievous imp witnessing over the end of days, it takes us on a trip through a city by turns decadent and devout, but never less than mesmerising.

Director: Declan Lowney
Cast: Steve Coogan, Colm Meaney, Felicity Montagu, Monica Dolan, Sean Pertwee
Best for... giving us a definitive answer on the worst sort of 'monger'.

Adapting a beloved TV character for the big screen is a task fraught with peril, but it's one that Alan Partridge managed with aplomb (not a word usually associated with the fictional Norfolk resident). This is a character who works best in a small, damp and mediocre world, and happily for us the filmmakers scotched all suggestions of taking Alan to America or thrusting him onto a bigger and perhaps actually significant stage, and kept the laughs coming by letting Alan get to his day job. So the action sticks to Norwich, the script sticks to local concerns and the polyester sticks to everything.

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong, James Gandolfini, Chris Pratt, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle
Best for... getting the bad guy.

You know you're covering recent history when the ending to your film changes before you can even finish it. Kathryn Bigelow's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker sees her dramatise the hunt for Osama bin Laden in a way that is morally complex, propulsive and fascinating. Jessica Chastain's Mia visibly hardens her skin and stiffens her backbone as the film progresses; surrounded by alpha males, she's soon the most dominant of the lot, driving to launch the final raid on bin Laden's compound on little more than grit and determination.

Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman
Best for... intricate foreshadowing and a compelling look at male friendship and growing up.

The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy concluded in triumphant fashion this summer with an alien apocalypse the likes of which Roland Emmerich could barely have dreamed. Following a zombie triumph and small-town (OK, city) action movie, here we see the end of the world through the eyes of an alcoholic and his long-lost, half-cut best mates. A little darker and more emotionally complicated than what went before, this is a beautifully constructed story covering nostalgia, self-delusion, addiction and smashy egg men. Let's hope this isn't the last collaboration of Wright, Frost and Pegg.

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington
Best for... wish-fulfilment vis-à-vis the proper treatment of slave owners.

Quentin Tarantino likes a bloody story of revenge, but it's rarely been with better cause than in this story of a freed slave, the titular Django (Jamie Foxx) who unleashes hell on the thoroughly rotten plantation owner (DiCaprio) who holds his wife (Washington). It's not exactly subtle or realistic, but the comic-book glee and vim with which the violence is eventually dispatched to the utterly deserving slave owners and their accomplices make it a visceral pleasure – like much of the director's other work.

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Rob Lowe
Best for... diamante, mink and piano music, of course.

"I can't believe Liberace was gay. I mean, women loved him," said Austin Powers on waking from cryo-sleep and catching up on a world gone mad. He could have used Soderbergh's HBO film as a primer on what he missed, lifting the lid on Liberace's private life to show that, yes, the beglittered and flamboyant pianist was indeed gay. But this goes beyond the camp mannerisms and those incredible costumes to show a figure who's often charming, sometimes cruel, hugely insecure and surprisingly sympathetic in this nuanced story. Full marks to both Michael Douglas and Matt Damon for playing out a romance that might have been one note in other hands as a back-and-forth tug of love.

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Adam Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Louis CK
Best for... a portrait of a woman coming apart at the seams.

Ask current Best Actress Oscar holder Jennifer Lawrence about the best performance in cinema history and she will name Cate Blanchett's turn here. And it's easy to see why: Blanchett's nervy Jasmine is well over the verge of the nervous breakdown following the breakdown of her marriage and her pampered lifestyle. Turning on a dime from cool society doyenne to raving neurotic, her performance anchors the film – ably assisted by Sally Hawkins, in particular, as her more grounded and compassionate sister. The result is yet another return to form for that hardy perennial Woody Allen.

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Cast: Brie Larson, Frantz Turner, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Keith Stanfield
Best for... reminding us that American indie cinema can still tell small, perfectly-formed stories.

On paper, it's almost impossible to make Short Term 12 sound appealing to the casual viewer: after all, it's the story of a foster home full of damaged kids and the almost equally-damaged young adults who supervise them. But on screen, there is so much heart and humour that it feels a million miles from the sort of misery fest you might expect. Brie Larson was one of the breakouts of the year after her compassionate, complex turn as the home's leader Grace, who's a rock for her charges but who's crumbling inwardly herself. More of this, please.

Director: Alan Taylor
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Kat Denning
Best for... bringing the hammer down.

The rumours were worrying. There were tales of rewrites, reshoots and every other manner of rethink. Turns out that, not only did we have nothing to fear, but the naysayers were punched into the middle of next week. The second Thor was funnier, more assured and pacier than its predecessor, giving us plenty more bromance between Thor and Loki and lots of capering about for the non-superpowered humans. Sure, the 'science' makes not a lick of sense and you can't get from Charing Cross to Greenwich in three Tube stops, but we were laughing too hard to care.

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm
Best for... a neon-soaked, gorgeously-shot vision of hell.

This is the only film this year to appear on Empire's best and worst lists, a division of opinion that we suspect will please its director far more than universal adoration might. In a colour-saturated Bangkok, a shady American called Julian (Gosling), is reluctantly dispatched by his appalling mother (Scott Thomas) to avenge his brother, who was himself murdered in revenge for killing a young girl. But Julian faces the Terminator-like Chang (Pansringarm), and the crime thriller that follows serves as a Grifters-like family drama, a critique of Western imperialism and an ode to the joys of karaoke.

Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Cast: Tilikum the killer whale
Best for... making you reconsider your theme-park plans.

One of the few films to make the news as well as movie pages of our papers, Blackfish was this year's The Cove. It was also a horror movie if you happened to work in SeaWorld's PR department, because Gabriela Cowperthwaite's angry, enthralling documentary alerted the wider world to the conditions in which captive orcas are kept. An angry rejoinder by SeaWorld, convincing no-one at all that the hard-hitting film wasn't on to something, only drew further attention to the issues raised. The film's account of the death of killer whale trainer Dawn Brancheau, mauled and drowned by a 12,000lb bull orca in 2010, prompted serious questions of psychological trauma and safety but, like The Cove, this was an issues film that raced like a thriller.

Director: Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Doona Bae
Best for... adapting an impossible book in an impossible fashion.

Sure, not all of the make-up quite works, but let that go. Cloud Atlas is an obviously impossible book to adapt, so the Wachowskis and Tykwer would deserve kudos for even the attempt. But in fact they succeed in finding a way to address the book's sprawling ideas onscreen, abandoning the Russian doll structure for an interlocking series of stories linked by the same cast playing characters across eras and races. It's an intricate and at times dizzying approach, but it's hard to imagine another half as effective.

UPSTREAM COLOUR
Director: Shane Carruth
Cast: Amy Seimetz, Andrew Sensenig, Shane Carruth, Thiago Martins
Best for... mind-alteration both narrative and actual.

There's some sort of plot to Shane Carruth's dreamy follow-up to Primer. It involves the lifecycle of a drug that leaves people curiously malleable to outside control, and which has an almost biblical quality (it's expelled from people and into pigs? The drug is a demon?). Dialogue light and almost entirely exposition-free, this leaves you to do all the heavy lifting of figuring out what's going on while you're swept up in how beautiful it all looks. After Primer and this, we can't wait to see what Carruth does next.

ALL IS LOST
Director: J.C. Chandor
Cast: Robert Redford
Best for... the Old Man And The Sea.

Almost wordless but never silent, this is another of this year's slate of stories of an individual alone against the elements and the odds. Redford is the sailor whose yacht suffers a hull breach shortly before he encounters a huge storm. Stoic and determined, he manages to stay afloat through torrential rain and huge waves – but the film never lets you forget that he's a tiny dot in a vast ocean, and help is far from close. Director J.C. Chandor, who delivered a great talky drama with Margin Call, proves that he doesn't need reams of dialogue to hold our attention – and Redford's performance may be a career best.

Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast: Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Salim Kechiouche
Best for... anyone who has a heart.

Tunisian-French Abdellatif Kechiche's film became one of the stories of 2013, an unheralded 179 minute movie with Steven Spielberg's Cannes jury awarding the Palme d'Or not only to the director but, radically, to lead actresses Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. There followed a bitter war of words between the cast and crew – who claimed they were exploited throughout the shoot – and the director, who threatened to withdraw the film from release. Happily Kechiche relented, because Blue Is The Warmest Colour – French title: La Vie D'Adele: Chapitres 1 Et 2 – is what the young people call "totes emosh", a stunning portrait of 15 year-old Adele (Exarchopoulos) as it tracks her life from leaving school to her early twenties, dominated by her passionate relationship with blue-haired artist Emma (Seydoux). But forget the much talked-about, ridiculously explicit sex scenes: this is a touching, beautifully observed, perfectly played coming-of-age story about finding your own space in the world, be it in the workplace, the living room orm indeed, the double bed. Chapitres 3 et 4 can't come soon enough.

Director: Jon S. Baird
Cast: James McAvoy, Eddie Marsan, Jamie Bell, Imogen Poots
Best for... men behaving badly.

On the page, the hero of Irvine Welsh's Filth is a pure sort of scumbag, a corrupt cop who's typically on more mind-altering substances than the criminals. On screen, he's still thoroughly appalling, with a rancid lack of morality you can touch, but James McAvoy gives him enough nuance and humanity that you almost feel sorry for the shitty, exploitative bastard. Meanwhile, the film transfers the book's outrageous humour and air of decaying sanity intact, so that Mary Whitehouse herself would have to give in and laugh at his desperate attempts to land a big promotion and show his rivals who's boss.

Director: Ben Wheatley
Cast: Michael Smiley, Reece Shearsmith, Julian Barratt, Richard Glover, Peter Ferdinando, Sara Dee, Ryan Pope
Best for... things that make you go shroom.

Ben Wheatley's first foray into England's rich and largely deranged history surely won't be the last judging by how well this fun he clearly had with his Civil War mindfuck. Trippy isn't the half of it as alchemist's assistant Reece Shearsmith encounters army deserters Peter Ferdinando and Richard Glover, before mysterious Irishman Michael Smiley turns up, magic mushrooms get ingested, holes dug and minds lost in a sporesomely surreal (mis)adventure. Peter Watkins' docudrama 1964 Culloden was something of a reference point, and many were quick to cite Witchfinder General too, but in truth the results were like nothing we'd seen before. Never mind Jacob's Ladder, here was Jacob's shovel.

Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Sam Claflin, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Jeffrey Wright, Jena Malone
Best for... proving that the odds are very much in Katniss's favour.

The first film had to overcome all those ridiculous "next Twilight" tags – which it did with some style. Catching Fire, instead, had to face sky-high expectations and wrestle with the fact that a poor adaptation could have been more-or-less a retread of the first film. Happily, incoming director Francis Lawrence widened the focus and spent most of his running time outside the Games arena, uncovering the world of Panem and explaining just how pivotal a figure Jennifer Lawrence's unfortunate Katniss has become. The result was a film that felt, yes, darker, but also stronger and more powerful.

Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassel
Best for... the art of the long con.

Why have one twist when you can build an M. C. Escher-style puzzle of your movie? Danny Boyle's run of utterly unpredictable film choices continued with this sexy, suspicious thriller, set in a recognisable London but peopled with characters you'd do well to avoid. Given that, at times, the eternally sinister Vincent Cassel is the most trustworthy character onscreen, you know that this is a high-pressured bunch indeed. Meanwhile, McAvoy is as good as ever in a role that sees him change as his own memory comes and goes, and Dawson's never been better.

Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Antje Traue, Richard Schiff
Best for... making us believe that Superman can fly again.

Zack Snyder's reinvented Superman opens big – on Krypton, amid flying dragons and beneath an exploding moon – and then, impossibly, gets bigger even as it strives to keep the focus on the emotional, human conflicts that lie beneath Superman's impenetrable skin. There are moments of pure visual poetry as Clark Kent becomes Superman – his first flight arrowing straight up through the air is one of the shots of the year – but the film makes room for the humans around him to take a role too. Remember, this is the film where Toby Ziegler saves the world, and that is something to cherish.

Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Sean Mahon
Best for... recapping romance novels, making you want to call your mum.

Turning what could have been a Hallmark movie into a riveting mystery, this story of a woman looking for her long-lost son is brought to glorious life by a script that avoids cliché and melodrama and a cast who make the best mismatched buddies since Riggs met Murtaugh. Judi Dench and Steve Coogan provide a study in contrasts on every level: her Philomena is basically hopeful, sometimes naive, often meek when faced with authority; he is cynical, worldly and brash. But even he is moved by her quiet quest, and the audience with him. One of the more moving films of the year, and it succeeds without feeling manipulative.

Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Zegen
Best for... a winning helping of sheer, David Bowie-fuelled Greta Gerwiggery.

Somewhere in Movie Manhattan, probably a stone's throw from Lena Dunham's klutzy hipsterdom and the Woody Allen's therapist, we met Frances Ha, a gauche 20-something with the world at her two left feet. Presented in black and white as elegant as Greta Gerwig's sunny heroine was clumsy, Noah Baumbach's film was a kinda-comedy, kinda-tragedy: a Baby Blue Jasmine. We laughed as Frances blundered gamely through her life with all the sureness of a newborn foal, knowing that time was still on her side, but with more than a tinge of worry for her future as she finds optimism alone won't do the job. Baumbach's script gave her great dialogue to deliver ("Do not treat me like a three-hour-brunch friend!"), perfectly depicting the unique cadence of friendships and the painful changes life foists on you when you're busy organising drinks.

Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Domnhall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lindsay Duncan, Tom Hollander, Margot Robbie, Lydia Wilson
Best for... fathers and sons.

Sometimes a director can use his own reputation as a bluff. From the trailers and synopsis of About Time, we all thought we knew what to expect: it was another gentle romantic comedy of the Curtis school, this time with a time travel twist. But what emerged is as much a story about fathers and sons as one about lovers, and it's in the scenes between Domnhall Gleeson's Tim and Bill Nighy's Dad (it's significant that he gets no other name) that the film's heart really beats, as it becomes a story about growing up and saying goodbye.

Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast
Best for... a raw, deeply emotional depiction of a family in harm's way.

When gifted Spaniard Juan Antonio Bayona followed up The Orphanage with a different kind of horror movie there were grumblings about recasting its true-life family with Caucasian actors. In truth it was soon forgotten, sidelined by the film's self-consciously universal themes and gut-punch impact. The Thai tsunami strike, prefaced by the eeriest flocking of birds since Hitchcock went to Bodega Bay, thundered down on the Bennet clan and left each with a brutal struggle to survive amid the convincingly rendered apocalypse. Naomi Watts and newcomer Tom Holland, an Empire Award winner, were both terrific but Ewan McGregor snuck the MVP prize for a bus station scene that might have been sponsored by Kleenex.

Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, Aaron Tveit
Best for... singing live on set.

Almost a year after it came out, the music of Les Misérables is still echoing in our ears. By dint of having his outrageously talented cast sing live on set, director Tom Hooper kept the emphasis on the emotion, and as a result the music – even where a note wobbled – had more of an impact than the most polished studio performance could have delivered. While Anne Hathaway took away the Oscar for her tragic turn as Fantine, the MVP for us is Jackman's compassionate, often-desperate Jean Valjean.

Director: J. J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Alice Eve
Best for... boldly going all over the place.

2009's Star Trek had the great advantages of low expectations and a relatively stealthy arrival. But its huge success means that its sequel began with all eyes upon it and hopes somewhere in the stratosphere. Kudos, then, to Abrams and team for keeping most of the plot under wraps and delivering some surprises involving rot in the heart of Starfleet and something closer to a '70s thriller than the series has ever attempted before. Cumberbatch's villain proved able to hold his own against the mighty pairing of Kirk and Spock, and every crew member got at least a moment of heroism. Roll on the five-year mission!

Director: John Hancock
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Bradley Whitford, Ruth Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak, Paul Giamatti
Best for... showing that a spoonful of sugar makes even the worst medicine go down.

The trailers made it look like a battle of wills between Mary Poppins author PL Travers (Emma Thompson) and Tom Hanks' Walt Disney – but of course we already know the outcome of that battle. Instead, this functions best when its focus is on Travers herself, with Thompson on exceptional form under a fright perm as the stiff, schoolmarmish but somehow still likeable author. Her horror at American culture is both hilarious and – dare we say it – entirely understandable, and the clash with Disney's style is beautifully judged. Maybe he should have taken her out to fly a kite instead.

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Dane DeHaan
Best for... combining Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper in a sexy chemical reaction that might easily have exploded the planet.

If audiences came for two of People magazine's Sexiest Men, they stayed for a layered parable of crime, families and the responsibilities of fatherhood. Presumably to protect our eyes, Baby Goose and B-Coops share only a few brief scenes in the film that lurches unexpectedly from crime thriller to something more, well, profound at its midway point. If that makes it sound like 2013's answer to Heat, the comparison isn't too far off the mark. Cooper and DeHaan, calculating politico and vengeful youngster respectively, show how bad decisions can reverberate through the years. We knew Blue Valentine's Derek Cianfrance could nail the intimate moments, but this ambitious tale with overtones of Greek tragedy proved that a bigger canvas held no fears for him either.

Director: Rich Moore
Cast: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, Mindy Kaling, Joe Lo Truglio
Best for... letting the bad guy win.

Empire has argued in the past that it's entirely possible to make a great video-game movie, as long as you don't bother making the game first (see also: Crank, Scott Pilgrim) and here is further proof. Wreck-It Ralph takes the side of the underdog, positing that sometimes even the bad guy needs a win, and its hapless (anti)hero's attempts to overcome his own nature make him more interesting than almost any Disney Animation lead we've seen before. With glorious game-hopping adventures (if anything, the film needed more) and a welter of big-name cameos, this has enough heart that you don't have to be a gamer to love it. One caveat, however: the Sugar Rush segments may be leave you with a well-nigh unquenchable craving for sweets.

Director: Jonathan Levine
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Rob Corddry, Analeigh Tipton, Dave Franco
Best for... proving that there's love life after death.

Perhaps surprisingly, the most romantic version of Romeo & Juliet this year wasn't the sumptuous, Italian-set medieval one, but the grimy, post-apocalyptic one about zombies. Jonathan Levine and his cast pulled off the nearly impossible trick of making us root for the undead in this tale of girl meets zombie, zombie falls for girl after eating her boyfriend's brain, zombie tries to convince girl that he's alright really. It helps that Nicholas Hoult is strangely adorable even when he's half-rotted, but props to the quietly effective Teresa Palmer for selling the other half of the romance.

Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, Emma Watson, Claire Julien, Taissa Farmiga, Georgia Rock, Leslie Mann
Best for... like, totally showing us, y'know, the kids of today at their worst. Or whatever.

In some ways, Sofia Coppola's film is the horror movie of the year, offering up a bleak, almost nihilistic view of the empty lives of over privileged teens in Los Angeles, youngsters who value all the wrong things and are willing to do anything to get them with very little thought to the consequences. In other ways, this is a natural progression for Coppola, who has always focused on people dissatisfied with their own lives and shifting about in an attempt to fill the empty spaces they find therein. But this one's her funniest yet – even if the best lines, like "I want to lead a country one day, for all I know" come straight from real life.

Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach
Best for... road trips for the more mature traveller.

Alexander Payne's follow-up to The Descendants returns him to the middle America of About Schmidt and Election, but often this feels more like the Sullivan's Travels version of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. There are brilliant comedy moments, certainly, but there's also a Depression-era sensibility that's only emphasised by the black-and-white cinematography. As Will Forte drives his addled father Woody (Dern) across the vast state and they revisit the sparsely populated town where Woody grew up, there's an air of loss and emptiness that sets off the rare warmer moments of family bonding and sympathy. And in a Hollywood often obsessed with winning and riches, it's good to see such a triumph about a losing ticket.

Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, Peter Capaldi
Best for... making Brad Pitt-lemonade from troubled-shoot lemons.

The advance word was poisonous. The trailers betrayed virtually no connection to the source material (something the film bore out). And then… it turned out to be a cracking adventure film, with Brad Pitt trekking all over the world, staying just ahead of the oncoming zombie horde, to find a way to save humanity from this latest apocalypse. Great effects and a constant sense of both tension and surprise served to keep knuckles gnawed and bums barely on seats throughout a relatively lean running time (proportionate to the scale of the story, at least). While we'd like to see more of the book in the sequel, this one definitely gets chalked up as a success grabbed from the zombie-jaws of box-office disaster.

Director: Jake Schreier
Cast: Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Peter Sarsgaard, James Marsden, Liv Tyler
Best for... rekindling lost mojos with the help of a robot.

It's been a good year for older stars, with great roles for the likes of Bruce Dern and Judi Dench. Likely to be overlooked – wrongly – is this performance by Frank Langella, as a retired cat burglar stirred back to life by a robot carer who proves amenable to engaging in some light larceny to keep his elderly charge active. The film's too pacy, funny and science fiction tinged to get the awards praise it might otherwise deserve, but Langella's rarely been better and the whole is a beautifully judged look at ageing and last hurrahs.

Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Clark Gregg
Best for... saying hey nonny nonny to The Avengers.

Just after shooting The Avengers, Joss Whedon took two weeks out of the edit suite and made this monochrome take on Shakespeare's comedy of manipulated love. With a team of friends and regulars and a shoot in his back garden, he produced a breezy, easy-going version of the play with none of the self-consciousness that can plague some adaptations. For those under the impression that Shakespeare is only for snoots and stuffed shirts, this brings the Bard home to the pit audience he always kept engaged.

Director: John Krokidas
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Jack Huston, Ben Foster, Michael C. Hall
Best for... showing the Beat poets before they got the Beat going.

The act of violence that drives this drama about the early lives of some of the most influential writers of the 20th century – Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg – is revealed in the opening moments, but the film keeps its real surprises close to the chest. It's only gradually that it becomes clear that this is a lot messier and more complicated than the usual coming-of-age 'Becoming Allen Ginsberg' sort of story, even before we get into questions of murder. Newcomer director Krokidas shows a gift for subtlety and nuance here that marks him as one to watch, and Daniel Radcliffe shows once again that he's more than just The Boy Who Lived.

Director: James Wan
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingstone, Lili Taylor, Hayley McFarland, Joey King
Best for... things that went bump in the night – and often the day too.

A monster box office hit, The Conjuring came from nowhere to scare $316m out of moviegoers around the world. It rolled the true-life Amityville murders – for pity’s sake, don’t ever move somewhere that has ‘Amity’ in the name – into a scarefest that blew icy breath down our necks and went “BOO!” all at the same time. The rich period detail, creepy doll prelude and Lili Taylor going all Linda Blair were highlights, but James ‘Saw’ Wan offered an Edgar Allen Poe-y sense of the macabre and the story rattled along at a whip. Unsurprisingly, there’s a sequel coming. The unlikely sounding The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist (what next? The Tottenham Hale Terrors?) is also based on a true story and will be with us in the next year or two.

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Terrence Howard, Maria Bello, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo
Best for... making us wonder how we’d cope.

As much an endurance test as a viewing experience, Villeneuve’s follow-up to the fiery Incendies throws the viewer into a parent’s hell – what if your child was abducted? – and then tightens the screws: what if you identified the person responsible? Where would you stop? The moral dilemma is compelling, but this is carried by the committed performances of Jackman’s increasingly desperate father, Jake Gyllenhaal’s professionally furious cop and Paul Dano’s all-too-punchable suspect. The tone’s as wintry as the perpetually snowy weather of its setting, but this one will hang around in the back of your mind long after spring.

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine
Best for... capes and robbers.

Films about magic often flounder on the fact that cinema itself is magic and can cancel out the impact of their tricks. But the spectacular illusions here and the clever addition of some hapless, helpless FBI and Interpol agents to try to fathom the tricks make for a gleeful caper. The plodding coppers can’t compare with the magicians’ prestidigitation – at first, at least – and Eisenberg, Fisher, Harrelson and Franco have a ball with their sleight of hand, particularly in an inspired chase scene that fully utilises the cops and magical robbers conceit. In an early summer that was full of tortured heroes and apocalyptic visions, this frothier romp was a deserved hit.

Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lily, Luke Evans
Best for... hobbitses.

The second part of Peter Jackson’s sprawling adaptation promises us a dude who turns into a bear, a bunch of elves who fight giant spiders in the forest, a town on a lake and, most importantly, a dragon under a mountain. For Smaug alone, we’d be lining up to see it, but in fact what we’ve seen so far promises us much more in the way of intrigue and adventure. Gandalf will be off battling the Necromancer while the dwarves and their hobbit “burglar” fight their way through Mirkwood to that fateful confrontation with their big, scaly nemesis. Frankly, we can’t wait.

Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate, David Koechner, Harrison Ford, James Marsden, Meagan Good
Best for... the Channel 4 News Team. Yes, we’re talking to you, Jon Snow.

If you were asked to name some film characters who would cope well with change, the chances that you’d name anyone in the Channel 4 News Team are small indeed. And yet that’s exactly what Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy and his crew have to wrestle with as the arrival of cable news and the 24-hour news cycle fundamentally changes their business. Early word suggests that the gag rate is just as relentless as the first film, so we can’t wait to see what Brick declares love for this time, or Brian Fantana’s latest pick-up technique.

Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Adam Scott, Patton Oswalt, Shirley MacLaine, Kathryn Hahn
Best for... daydream believers and, heck, homecoming queens too.

It’s been five years since Ben Stiller directed Tropic Thunder, and the film that lured him back to the director’s chair is a sweet tale of a mild-mannered man who dreams of being much, much more. Quietly fascinated by colleague Cheryl (Kristen Wiig, who’s in for quite a December between this and Anchorman), he finally gets the chance to live some of those daydreams when he sets off in search of a missing negative by a star photographer. Expect glorious dreams and perhaps, in the end, a glorious reality as well.