1. Kick-Ass 2
The original Kick-Ass required no sequel and its many sniffy reviews reflect that. However, this is actually a worthy successor that ups both the violence and the comic relief – and hence the jarringness of the shifts between the two – whilst still retaining just a glimmer of heart. It’s reprehensible, but it’s a blast.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £15 (HD Download) | Out December 9 | Buy it now on Amazon
2. January’s hottest Blu-ray of the month: Only God Forgives
Director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling made a cult sensation with ultra-stylish, electro scored meta heist movie Drive. Only God Forgives takes a similar approach with martial arts revenge thrillers, but gives wildly different results. It is much darker than Drive, which was itself hardly a laugh a minute, much slower, and features a “lead” performance from Gosling so restrained, it makes his turn in the earlier movie look like Jim Carrey. The real stars of the show are Vithaya Pansringarm as terrifying Bangkok police chief Chang – an implacable moral force with a taste for karaoke and sword-based limb removal – and Kristin Scott Thomas as Gosling’s repulsive old bag of a mother. The film lifts the stone from Bangkok’s underworld and forces you to look at what’s underneath. The result is as powerful as it is unpleasant.
HD Moment: The gruelling interrogation scene involving skewers is hard to watch but, you know, in a nicely photographed kinda way.
Price: £13 (Blu-ray), £11 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
3. Invasion of the body snatchers
This ’70s remake, looking fine on Blu-ray, takes the ultimate alien-takeover movie and makes it even creepier. Donald Sutherland is great, as always.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
4. Elysium
The follow-up to district 9 takes a similarly heavy-handed approach to sci-fi allegory, making the point that greed is bad by means of some well-shot laser-gun fights. Cheers.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out December 26 | Buy it now on Amazon
5. Upstream Colour
This film from the director of Primer looks good but is impenetrable. Reminiscent of Terrence Malick trying his hand at sci-fi, it’s a classic cult movie – purest celluloid marmite.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out December 30 | Buy it now on Amazon
6. The World’s End
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright reunite! Is it a meditation on middle-aged regrets at missed chances disguised as an alien movie, or vice versa? Good, either way.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
7. The Great Gatsby
Get past the horrible, “Baz Luhrmann2” first hour and the rest of this isn’t bad. Undeniably faithful to the novel in its simultaneous skewering/celebration of opulent emptiness.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
8. The Way Way Back
Hot on the heels of Kings of summer, another great in-parts coming-of-ager. Charming turns from Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, and young Liam James paper over a fairly cheesey plot.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray) | Out December 26 | Buy it now on Amazon
9. Pacific Rim
Guillermo Del Toro’s robotsvsmonsters epic triumphs in terms of its FX and how it builds a mythos in a few hours. Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam are pretty dire, but no matter.
Price: £13 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
10. Man of Steel
A ponderous, humourless Superman reboot that’s actually worse than Superman Returns, despite the best efforts of Michael Shannon, who makes a terrifying General Zod.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
11. December’s hottest Blu-ray of the month: Alpha Papa
It’s mind-boggling to think that Alan Partridge, the awkward sports journalist-cum-radio-host dreamed up by Armando Ianucci and Steve Coogan as a bit-part character for 1991’s On The Hour radio show, is still going strong in 2013. Along the way he’s gathered a back story to put most soap-opera characters or superheroes to shame, from ex-wife Carol to his love for early-1980s synth-pop to his unfortunate encounters with “sex people”. Alpha Papa puts this brilliant comic creation in an “action movie” siege scenario but does little with genre-film conventions beyond a hilariously low-speed car chase and some (imagined) scenes of Partridge daring. Instead, the film lets Coogan and the cast riff on disappointment, lost dreams, bad haircuts (“It looks like a drawing of an explosion”) and idiotic radio jingles. The result is rib-tickling but also oddly heart-warming.
HD Moment: A convoluted series of accidents involving a window escape lead to Alan appearing on live TV in the buff.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
12. Spring Breakers
Subverting the “girls gone wild” genre, this delirious film cut-and-shuts avant-garde director Harmony Korine (interviewed, p106) with the mainstream to head-expanding effect.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out August 12 | Buy it now on Amazon
13. The Place Beyond The Pines
This ambitious, gosling starring sprawler is three films in one: the first ace, the other two not so much, though some hilarious “acting” lifts the last part.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray) | Out August 12 | Buy it now on Amazon
14. Trance
More an enjoyable film than an outstanding one, this tricksy, twisty thriller nonetheless shows director Danny Boyle’s aptitude for just about any style he fancies turning his hand to.
Price: £21 (Blu-ray) | Out August 5 | Buy it now on Amazon
15. September's hottest Blu-ray of the month: Possession
So, how to explain this fi lm? A couple is breaking up. She (Isabelle Adjani) is in the midst of complete mental disintegration; one
scene is her going bonkers in a Tube station for what feels like about 15 minutes. He (Sam neill, giving a performance as mannered
and funny as Adjani’s is naturalistic and extreme) is a spy or assassin or something of that ilk – it’s never really explained and it has next to no bearing on the plot. he thinks she’s having an affair with their hugely pretentious neighbour heinrich. Well, she is having an affair, but on following her to a shabby berlin fl at, neill discovers it’s actually with a multi-tentacled, alien thing. Reality by this point has popped out for a pint and won’t be back for quite some time. Possession is intense, funny, horrifying and weirdly, compellingly watchable. It’s a popcorn movie where the popcorn’s been laced with lSD. unmissable.
HD Moment: An incredible grotesque "alien sex beast" designed, hilariously, by the same FX guy who created E.T.
Price: £13 (Blu-ray) | July 29 | Buy it now on Amazon
16. Gatekeepers
Jaw-droppingly candid interviews with six former bosses of israel’s secret service. got any interest in politics in general or israel in particular? Then you must watch this.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray) | Out August 12 | Buy it now on Amazon
17. August's hottest Blu-ray of the month: Cloud Atlas
The Wachowskis’ epic is mad. You can only applaud its ambition, even as you chortle at its failings…Over at pop-culture website AVclub.com, they have a theory that movies which flop can be divided into three categories: simple failures, “secret successes”, and fiascos. The latter are flicks that aim high, miss, plummet, and fall into a manure wagon, which then gets run over by a tram. They fail, but man is it fun to see. Cloud Atlas is a fiasco. An insanely ambitious attempt to bring together six stories across different timelines, the Wachowski siblings’ epic fail casts Tom Hanks, Ben Whishaw, Halle Berry and others of similar quality in all six timelines. To this end they’re doused in industrial quantities of latex make-up then dragged through an expensive dressing-up box. The results are sentimental, heavy-handed, ill-conceived but so car-crash watchable, the three-hour run time flies past, leaving you thinking, “What the hell was that?”
HD Moment: Scenes set in the beautifully constructed Neo-Seoul look fantastic on a big, HD screen
Price: £17 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out July 1 | Buy it now on Amazon
18. August 2013: Oz the Great and Powerful
Director Sam Raimi throws everything at this and it looks great in places, but this Oz never becomes magical. The result is more, Oz the Long and Turgid.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out July 1 | Buy it now on Amazon
19. August 2013: Arbitrage
This cross between Wall Street and The Player is pretty good. Gere’s still doing his “acting” where he stands very still and looks quizzically into the middle distance. Yay!
Price: £14 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out July 15 | Buy it now on Amazon
20. August 2013: Foxy Brown
Director Jack Hill and star Pam Grier’s sleazy romp still stands as a high watermark of exploitation cinema, with gleefully dubious attitudes to race, gender and everything else.
Price: £13 (Blu-ray) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
21. August 2013: Maniac
This remake stars Frodo Baggins as a deranged serial killer obsessed with mannequins and stabbing. Filmed entirely from Frodo’s point of view, it’s stupid but effective.
Price: £12 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out July 1 | Buy it now on Amazon
22. April's hottest Blu-ray of the month: The Hobbit
You can work out what this first prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy is like by comparing its Rotten Tomatoes score from critics – a middling 65 per cent – with its 82 per cent IMDB ranking from “the public”. If you loved LotR and simply want more of the same – dwarf banter, epic battles, lip-trembling male bonding, portentous discussions in elvish meeting rooms – then, brother, tuck in.
For us, shorn of its cinema-screen-sized, 3D, 48fps visual assault, what’s left too often feels bloated and empty, with several CGI set pieces that are more exhausting than exhilarating. When it zooms into the, er, “human” level, drops the grating bonhomie and offers something more dark and adult – Gandalf and Galadriel’s tender exchanges, dwarves bereft at the loss of their homeland, Andy Serkis’ all-too-brief reprise of Gollum – things pick up markedly.
HD Moment: Thorin waddling purposefully towards his one-armed orc nemesis through a magically blazing forest is pretty cool
Price: £20 (3D Blu-ray), £17 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
23. April 2013: Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
Is this the best reboot ever? It’s certainly the trippiest – think a vicious, brutal, steroidal gun-fu movie, as directed by Gaspar Noé and/or David Lynch.
Price: £11 (Blu-ray), £14 (Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
24. April 2013: The Bay
We bet when he was making Rain Man, Barry Levinson never thought he’d one day be making a squicky, killer-plague-panic horror fi lm. You know what though? He’s pretty good at it…
Price: £11 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
25. April 2013: Silver Linings Playbook
It’s a romantic comedy, it involves dancing, but there’s nothing schmaltzy about this Oscar-bait film that tackles the issue of mental illness with charm.
Price: £17 (Blu-ray), £14 (Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
26. April 2013: Evil Dead 2
Groovy. Sam Raimi’s comedy-horror, cleaned up and re-released in time for the Evil Dead remake. Pure, chainsaw-packin’ delirium on film, and so quotable. WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!
Price: £14 (Blu-ray), £8 (Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
27. March's Hottest Blu-ray of the month: End of Watch
With the Oscars hoving into view at the time we were going to press, we’ve enjoyed a relentless bombardment of great films hitting Blu-ray that were released into cinemas late in 2012, when potential nominees usually are. Well, this got nominated for nowt, but is hands-down March’s most enjoyable disc. Sure, it’s a cracking, gritty, cops vs cartels drama, with Michael Peña and Jake Gyllenhaal engaging effortlessly as uniformed Los Angeles cops, and director David Ayer marshalling the action expertly. But not only that, it’s also a great date movie, as ladies will absolutely dig that said cops are complete gentlemen, perfect husbands, totally in touch with their feelings and so unafraid to express their love of each other, you almost want to suggest they get a room. It’s the greatest on-screen bromance since Lethal Weapon 2. Great stuff.
HD Moment: A grumpy colleague of the main characters continues to gripe pettily as usual, despite having a knife in his eye
Price: £13 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
28. Argo
Effective, pseudo-political Oscar bait, Argo is more a film to admire than really get in to, as Ben Affleck’s CIA man springs hapless Yanks from underwritten, Iranian loons.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
29. Sightseers
A couple travel the Peak District, visiting pencil museums and stone circles, and murdering people. Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May crossed with Natural Born Killers, it’s unique and a bit wonderful.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
30. The Hunt (Jagten)
Mads Mikkelsen is falsely accused of child molestation and his life is consequently destroyed as his former friends turn on him. That’s it. Horribly compelling; zero fun.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
31. The Master
A balls-to-the-wall, acting and directing masterclass here, as Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and auteur Paul Thomas Anderson take on cults, history and each other.
Price: £17 (Blu-ray) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
32. February's Hottest Blu-ray of the month: Holy Motors
Even in a month as exceptional as this, Holy Motors stands out as the Blu-ray to buy in February. The incredible Denis Lavant stars as a shape-shifting creature known as Monsieur Oscar, who is chauffeured around Paris for nine “appointments”. Although he begins the day being waved off from a large suburban home dressed as a businessman, these see him begging for change on a bridge, rampaging through Père Lachaise cemetery to abduct Eva Mendes, murdering a man who turns out to be him, and meeting a doomed Kylie Minogue, before returning home to his family, who now live in a different house and, er, are monkeys. The genius of Leos Carax’s film is that you can enjoy it “cleverly” as an examination of the whole business of being an actor and film-maker or simply watch in awe as one enigmatic, brilliant and mad moment after another hurtles past you.
HD Moment: Kylie’s wistful, big production number 'Who Were We?', done live in one take and tailed by a tragi-hilarious roof plunge
Price: £14 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
33. February 2013: Rust and Bone
He’s a bare-knuckle boxer; she’s had her legs bitten off by a killer whale. That admittedly unpromising premise makes for a love film that’s brilliantly acted, brutal and real.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray) | Out February 25th | Buy it now on Amazon
34. February 2013: Looper
This clever sci-fi sets up a believable time-travelcrime plot, then sets Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt free within it to kick considerable ass. Excellent, haunting stuff.
Price: £17 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
35. February 2013: Beast of the Southern Wild
It’s overrated, annoying in places and lumbered with a horribly pompous score. Still, you have to admire the uniqueness and visual flair of this bayou fable.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
36. February 2013: Skyfall
Not as good as the vicious, kinetic Casino Royale, but still an exceptional Bond film: thrilling, well acted and even quite thoughtful as Bond films go, despite some ludicrous techy bits.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
37. January's Hottest Blu-ray of the month: The Expendables 2
The first Expendables was, on one level, a parody of ’roidedout, testosterone-smackin’ ’80s action pictures. On another, more relatable level, it was an 80s action picture, with a small band of preposterously muscular stuntmen-cum-actors, some of them of pensionable age, saving an island called “Foreignvania” or something from some general or someone, with lots of knife throwing, head explosions and Jason Statham duffing up an entire basketball team. How do you follow that? By making the same film again but with more stars – Jean Claude Van Damme is great as a villain who is actually called“Vilain”; Chuck Norris is 100 years old and mining his own internet meme – more explosions and more self-referentiality. It’s ludicrous, ugly and gratuitously violent, but then so is the fascist allegory about a man dressed as a bat fighting crime, below, and everyone loves that.
HD Moment: Two of the biggest stars of the past 20 years toddle along in a Smart Car firing off about 5,000 rounds of ammo
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
38. January 2013: The Bourne Legacy
This kicks off with aeons of tedious exposition. Then it all explodes, there’s an hour of relentless action and you think, “Hey, Jeremy Renner’s even better at this than Matt Damon!”
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
39. January 2013: The Dark Knight Rises
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy draws to a suitably grim close, with politics that are decidedly Ayn Rand-esque. The epic sweep of it impress but it feels like a slog in places.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £10 (SD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
40. January 2013: Dredd
Future lawman and UK comics legend Judge Dredd hits the screen, hard. Like The Raid, it’s more like an unremittingly violent computer game than a film. Nowt wrong with that.
Price: £17 (Blu-ray) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
41. January 2013: Excision
A crazed mix of teen-outsider comedy and blood-soaked, fetish-y, Cronenberg-style body horror, this is the weirdest film of the month. We love it; your mum may not.
Price: £11 (Blu-ray), £14 (Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
42. January 2013: Lawless
Another blood-soaked collaboration between writer Nick Cave and director John Hillcoat, this arty, 1920s gangster flick burns too slow to satisfy but is nicely nasty in places.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray) | Out January 28th | Buy it now on Amazon
43. January 2013: The Amazing Spider-Man
This is a lot more fun than TDKR but it just feels too soon to be rebooting Spidey as we have to learn his origin story all over again. The sequel will be better.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
44. January 2013: Searching for Sugarman
This documentary about the hunt for a lost, wholly obscure folk “legend” is so fantastical, it can only be true. Touching, inspiring and unmissable.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
45. January 2013: Zombie Flesh Eaters
Lucio Fulci’s legendary, undead “video nasty” is the sort of film they’re working on at Berberian sound studios – eye-gougin’, shark-bitin’, boob-showin’ fun for all the family.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
46. November's Blu-ray of the month: Prometheus
Chest bursters, gore, sinister corporations, a strong female protagonist, overwhelming threat on a planet light years from home… all the standard Alien elements are present in Ridley Scott’s prequel, but he has rearranged them brilliantly into something fresh. Noomi Rapace is okay as the Ripley surrogate, but the film belongs to Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron as a robot and a woman who might as well be.
As usual with Scott’s films, you long for a director’s cut that fills in some of the fairly outrageous gaps in the plot and fixes an ending that’s abrupt, overly neat and which sets up a sequel that may or may not come. Still, for about 90 minutes of its run time, this is superb. Prometheus broadens and enriches the Alien mythos while providing regular shocks, icky moments and intelligent pondering on the human condition.
Price: £20 (3D Blu-ray), £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download)
HD Moment: The opening sequence would be used to show off Blu-ray in AV shops, if only it didn’t involve a big alien man in his pants, exploding
47. November 2012: Das Testament Des Doctor Mabuse
Fritz Lang’s masterpiece looks weird now – lord knows what they made of it in 1933. A visually stunning mix of crime thriller and psychological horror. Nice.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray only)
48. November 2012: Ill Manors
This bracing slab of inner city grim lacks the oddly beautiful cinematography of Yann Demange’s Top Boy, but its unflinching, if clichéd, view of estate life is still shocking.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray), £14 (Download) | Buy it now on Amazon
49. November 2012: Avatar 3D
With this and Prometheus, at last there’s a rationale for buying your 3D telly. Only problem: if your telly isn’t 20ft high, plot shortcomings may leap out at you even more than the visuals.
Price: £17 (Blu-ray only) | Buy it now on Amazon
50. November 2012: Cockneys vs Zombies
Have you read the title of this film? Then you know everything there is to know about it. Have you seen the trailer? Then you don’t need to see any more. Great cast; funny idea; lazy film making.
Price: £18 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD Download) | Buy it now on Amazon
51. October's Blu-ray of the month: Avengers Assemble
The perfect men-in-capes movie, Avengers Assemble avoids both the navel-gazing of Nolan’s Batman films and the flab of previous Marvel adaptations such as Iron Man 2 and Thor, despite sharing characters and crew with them. That’s thanks to the pacey direction and snappy dialogue of director/writer Joss Whedon, who keeps the one-liners flying like fireballs and alternates human-level interaction with increasingly awe-inspiring FX barrages deftly.
Our heroes are literally cartoon characters, but all are given depth and pathos by a combination of skilful writing and spot-on casting. Well, apart from Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner, who are saddled with playing Scarlett-Johansson-with-guns and a charisma-void archery enthusiast respectively. Luckily, Robert Downey Jr’s smart-arse Tony Stark and Mark Ruffalo’s doleful Bruce Banner save the day.
Price: £18 (3D Blu-ray), £16 (Blu-ray)
Key Moment: Hulk picking up Loki and smashing him into the floor like a rag doll. It’s genuinely like a cartoon come to life and totally hilarious
52. October 2012: Moonrise Kingdom
This effortlessly charming Wes Anderson romp stars everyone from Bill Murray to Bruce Willis to Harvey Keitel and is a perfect mix of quirk, comedy and gentle anti-authoritarianism.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray) | Buy it now on Amazon
53. October 2012: The Dictator
Sacha Baron-Cohen’s return to scripted comedy is one part political satire to about 27 parts bodily fluid and beard gags. A fine mix of sharp intelligence and intense stupidity.
Price: £18 (Blu-ray), £10 (SD Download) | Buy it now on Amazon
54. October 2012: The Raid
Non-stop gun-fu action from Indonesia. A bit like the climactic scenes from Hard Boiled and Ong Bak spooled out to 90 minutes of explosions, gunfire and martial arts bone-crunch.
Price: £12 (Blu-ray) | Buy it now on Amazon
55. September's Blu-ray of the month: The Hunger Games
It’s not every day you see a film in which children snap each other’s necks and go at one another with bloody great swords, as part of some perverse “game show”, so bravo to The Hunger Games for having this idea first. Oh no, actually Battle Royale did it a decade ago.
Unlike Royale, though, this is relentlessly sombre, so we can all be made aware that kids killing each other for the amusement of adults is A Bad Thing. It initially spends hours bogged down in exposition and training montages, in a faintly ludicrous sci-fi dystopia where men with futuristic beards pour blue drinks from futuristic vases. Yet when the slaying starts, sh*t gets real – it is undeniably very intense. All the actors are good, Jennifer Lawrence superb as the bow-wielding heroine, but we’d like it more if she wasn’t repeatedly saved from peril by deus ex machinas so blatant, several literally fall out of the sky.
Price: £16 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
56. September 2012: This Must be the Place
Quirkmungous road-trip movie sees ageing rocker Sean Penn hunting nazis to the strains of David Byrne’s plangent art-rock. It is a little hard to get over Penn’s wig, it must be said.
Price: £12 | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
57. September 2012: Rec 3: Genesis
This tones down the nastiness of the first two Spanish horrors, but ups the gore. It’s also oddly touching, if you can ignore the demons tearing throats out. A top-drawer B-movie.
Price: £11 | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
58. September 2012: Homeland
Is he a terrorist? Is she loopy? How do they manage to maintain the suspense over 12, twist-filled episodes? The answers to these questions have been redacted.
Price: £30 (Blu-ray), £25 (HD download) | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
59. September 2012: 101 Dalmations
Endlessly charming cartoon classic is near the top tier of Disney films – genuinely scary in places, but with a massive, cute, bespotted heart. At barely 90 minutes it never drags.
Price: £15 | Out now | Buy it now on Amazon
60. August's Blu-ray of the month: Chariots of Fire
If hearing that iconic score accompany Team GB glory over the last few weeks didn't give you goosebumps, watching the film in high def might just have the desired effect. The British Oscar magnet is about two athletes: one Jewish and posh; one Christian and slightly less posh. It's pompous, manipulative but undeniably great, it’s the Rocky of 1920s sprinting.
Price: £9 | Buy it now on Amazon
61. August 2012: 21 Jump Street
Far funnier than it has any right to be, this Channing Tatum/Jonah Hill vehicle mocks cop and high-school movies, yet ends up rather a good cop-cum-high-school movie.
Price: £14.80 (BD and HD download) | Buy it now on Amazon
62. August 2012: King of New York
Gangster meets gangsta as Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne and co shoot the crap out of NYC, aided by pounding hip-hop soundtrack and about for tonnes of crack.
Price: £18 (BD), £10 (SD DL) | Buy it now on Amazon
63. August 2012: Forever Marilyn
Gentleman Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like it Hot all in HD? Don’t mind if we do. Sophisticated, screwball comedies of ravishing wit.
Price: £26 | Buy it now on Amazon
64. July's Blu-ray of the Month: Carnage
Based, obviously, on a stage play, Roman Polanski’s latest jaundiced look at the human condition stars Jodie Foster and John C Reilly as what you might call a lower-middle class, boho couple. They’re having a meeting with Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet – a more, let’s say, upper-middle class couple – whose young son has assaulted their own.
What starts as an ever so reasonable discussion becomes tense as Foster gets increasingly shrill, Waltz’s lack of grasp of mobile-phone etiquette begins to grate, and Reilly and Winslet get sh*t-faced on Scotch. None of the characters are lovable but nor are they monsters, yet because it’s Polanski you’re always waiting for a horrible twist, possibly involving a meat hook, or Satan. Does it ever come? Watch and find out… It’s a smart, funny, nuanced film that, at its best, is almost painfully well observed and acted.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray and HD download) | Buy it now on Amazon
65. July 2012: Iron Sky
Moon-based WWII Nazis are re-invading Earth, using space Zeppelins, and only Sarah Palin can stop them. How can a film with that premise be dull? We don’t know, but this pulls it off.
Price: £12 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD download) | Buy it now on Amazon
66. July 2012: Rampart
Woody Harrelson is so cool in this, you find yourself rooting for his violent, misanthropic, corrupt cop. It’s a troubling fi lm that draws no easy conclusions – a bit of an arthouse gem.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray and HD download) | Buy it now on Amazon
67. July 2012: The Artist
French self-indulgence at its best, this intensely romantic, silent-ish movie boasts monochrome cinematography so lush, you just want to smear it all over yourself and wriggle.
Price: £15 (Blu-ray), £14 (HD download | Buy it now on Amazon
68. July 2012: The Battle of Algiers
Terrorists/freedom fighters take on colonialists/ peace-keepers. Intelligent, thrilling, urgent and brilliant, this documentary-like classic refuses to date, 46 years on from its debut.
Price: £14 (Blu-ray) | Buy it now on Amazon
69. June's Blu-ray of the Month: David Lynch Collection
From Dennis Hopper huffing pre-coital crazy gas in Blue Velvet to lead actor Bill Pullman transforming into somebody else entirely half way through Lost Highway, David Lynch has crafted some of the most indelible movie images of the past 30 years. This HD boxset is annoyingly incomplete – Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive (above) are the most notable absentees – but with extras from documentaries to Lynch’s shorts, there’s still an embarrassment of riches here. Few other directors can match Lynch’s gift for combining creeping malevolence, extreme violence, deranged sexuality, seemingly random plot twists and gratuitous outbreaks of 50s crooning with moments of genuine sweetness and vaulting visual ambition. Put simply, the guy’s a genius; even this half-finished greatest hits compilation is more than enough to prove that.
Price: £49 | Buy it now on Amazon
70. June 2012: The Grey
This makes a virtue of its limitations, keeping its ropey CGI killer wolves in the dark and Liam Neeson’s winningly one-note performance up front. A top-notch B movie results.
Price: £13 | Buy it now on Amazon
71. June 2012: Chronicle
X Men by way of Cloverfield, this excellent, clever film examines what those gifted super powers would really do with ’em. The “found footage” gimmick is wearing a bit thin, mind.
Price: £15 | Buy it now on Amazon
72. June 2012: Haywire
Not the Bourne-with-tits you might expect, this is actually a classy, 60s-style thriller somewhere between Bullitt and Point Blank. That said, star Gina Carano sure can kick arse.
Price: £11 | Buy it now on Amazon
73. June 2012: Shame
A harrowing, bleak piece from director Steve McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender, this is a numbing study of sexual addiction and broken families. Big laughs, then.
Price: £16 | Buy it now on Amazon
74. May's Blu-ray of the Month: Mission Impossible 4
So, hands up who can remember the name of Tom Cruise’s character in these films? And quite what his role is in the intelligence service or whatever the hell it is? We can’t either, but that didn’t stop us enjoying the hell out of this. Director Brad Bird, the maestro behind The Incredibles, directs like he’s unaware there’s a difference between cartoons and live action, delivering one astonishing action sequence after another.
Even better, Tom Cruise dials back his trademark preening assholism, while Simon Pegg, new-Bourne Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton are given space to add comedy, class and something resembling proper acting. It all feels a long way from Peter Graves infiltrating a top-secret bunker by turning up in overalls and claiming to have come to fix the air conditioning, but we can live with that, frankly.
Price: £18 | Buy it now on Amazon
75. May 2012: War Horse
The unkind might call this spielberg war epic overblown, overlong bollocks of the fi rst order. Still, if you like relentless seriousness and galloping, this is the film for you.
Price: £16 | Buy it now on Amazon
76. May 2012: The House by the Cemetery
Director Lucio Fulci again shows off his Confuse-ORama technique, with terrible acting and ludicrous plotting papered over with frequent, gory slayings. C+.
Price: £16 | Buy it now on Amazon
77. May 2012: The Iron Lady
This has all the insight you’d expect from the director of Mamma Mia, but no tunes. How about Maggie belting out the Winner takes it all while sinking the Belgrano next time?
Price: £17 | Buy it now on Amazon
78. May 2012: La Grande Illusion
Here’s a First World War film so weighty and wise, it makes War Horse look like an Adam Sandler comedy called “Oops, My Balls! A genuine classic and the best thing out this month.
Price: £14 | Buy it now on Amazon
79. April's Blu-Ray of the Month: Demons & Demons 2
Dario Argento's nightmarish art-horror reconfigured for lovers of 80s trash, Demons locks a bunch of characters in a cinema and proceeds to slay them to the pounding pop-rock sound of Billy Idol and Motley Crue. That the cinema goers lured to said cinema to see a gory horror film - very meta - indlude a middle-aged couple who hate each other, a blind man, and a pimp called Tony gives fair warning that nothing that proceeds to happen makes any sense.
No matter: from the priceless dialogue (Toni admonishes one of his "ladies" for putting of a cursed mask that subsequently cuts her face with the immortal, "That'll teach you to touch things!") to the eye-popping gore to the unique mix of unintentional comedy and real, dark horror, this is a film so good, they made it twice - Demons 2 is identical in every respect, except Toni is a body builder and it's set in a block of flats.
Price: £17 | Buy it now on Amazon
80. April 2012: The Awakening
A good old-fashioned haunted house movie, this is a little reminscent of a British 'The Orphanage' with a hay clarse cast including Dominic West and Imelda Staunton.
Price: £14 | Buy it now on Amazon
81. April 2012: Hugo
Scorcese's "kids' film" is a winner despite laying on the "this is a classic and serious film" schtick with a trowel. Arguably the only compelling reason to own a 3D deck to date.
Price: £15 | Buy it now on Amazon
82. April 2012: Wuthering Heights
This couldn't be more calculated to annoy Bronte purists if it featured a scene in which Cathy masturbates with a crucific to the strains of a dubstep remix of the Kate Bush song. We liked it.
Price: £12 | Buy it now on Amazon
83. March's Blu-ray of the month: The Devils
More than 40 years on from its release, Ken Russell’s “mad ’n’ sexy nuns” classic retains awesome power It’s testament to how controversial this deranged meditation on evil and corruption from the late British director Ken Russell still is that this is its first ever outing on DVD. No, it’s not coming out on Blu-ray because, well, Warners just don’t want it to – maybe they worry it’ll seem more blasphemous in hi-def. Ollie Reed was never better than as Grandier, a proud shagger of a priest who comes to seem almost Christ-like in his piety when contrasted with enemies who range from jealous rivals to scheming politicians to a sexually repressed, hunchback nun (an incredible Vanessa Redgrave).
All the nudity, enemas, torture and the jarring presence in the cast of both Tinker from Lovejoy and George out of George and Mildred can’t disguise that this is, at its heart, a righteously moral film, and a great one. The DVD looks very handsome and has some high-class extras.
Price: £12 | Buy it now on Amazon
84. March 2012: Game of Thrones
Warning: this, the epic to end them all, will take over your life. HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s billion-page classic is weighty, violent, utterly compelling and a bit silly.
Price: £36 | Buy it now on Amazon
85. March 2012: Snowtown
A film so grim it makes Tyrannosaur look like Mary Poppins, this Aussie serial-killer drama is based on a true story and feels frighteningly real. Claustrophobic and chilling.
Price: £10 (Blu-ray) £14 (HD Download) | Buy it now on Amazon
86. March 2012: The Conformist
Your second masterpiece this month is Bertolucci’s jaw-felling exploration of Fascism. Even better, it’s on Arrow Video, which usually puts out the likes of Frankenhooker.
Price: £16 | Buy it now on Amazon
87. March 2012: We Need to Talk About Kevin
Second best compared to the rest of the month’s crop, this is nonetheless an effectively scary yet poetic film, blessed with a superb Tilda Swinton performance.
Price: £12 | Buy it now on Amazon
88. February's Blu-ray of the month: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Betrayal, suspicion, death, relentless gloom. Hey, let’s party! Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy superbly recreates both the grubby- Burberry’d, morally blank world of espionage and the dull ugliness of Britain in the 70s. gary Oldman channels the spirit of Alec guinness in his portrayal of betrayed master spy george Smiley, all dutiful restraint, stiff pleasantries and heart of ice. The rest of the Premier League cast – Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy just for starters – give rock solid support. The story weaves and flickers from your grasp, coming into focus only as Smiley gets closer to the truth about the MI6 mole. There are no gunfights and, though there is hideous violence, it’s all done off camera, but this cerebral spy fl ick is clearly Oscar nod-worthy for its screenplay, Oldman and director Tomas Alfredson.
Price: £15 | Buy it now on Amazon
89. February 2012: Warrior
Warrior
This cage-fighting movie is a bit like The Fighter but with more steroids, bigger muscles and more homoeroticism. Sorry, we’re too cynical; it’s brutal but very good, actually.
Price: £17.50 | Buy it now on Amazon
90. February 2012: Repo Man
Repo Man
Lobotomised men, punks, gangsters, government agents and Emilio Estevez are all hunting for a car with something very dangerous in the trunk. One of the coolest movies ever.
Price: £13 | Buy it now on Amazon
91. February 2012: Two-Lane Blacktop
Two-Lane Blacktop
Two friends race across America, meeting a man in a GTO and a girl hitchhiking. That’s it. but in the details, you see the vastness and complexity of America. best car movie of all time.
Price: £13 | Buy it now on Amazon
92. February 2012: Tyrannosaur
Tyrannosaur
Actor Paddy Considine’s directorial debut is horrible but gripping. Peter Mullan, Eddie Marsan and Olivia Colman elevate what could be B-list Brit grimness into something lyrical. But grim.
Price: £16 | Buy it now on Amazon
93. January's Blu-ray of the month: Troll Hunter
Troll Hunter
Joining the ranks of all-time cinematic bad-asses, Otto Jespersen makes this film as the titular dispatcher of trolls, tersely growling out wisdom on how to kill them – use a bloody massive torch, basically – and how to avoid being smelled and hence killed by them yourself – cover yourself in their “stench” and don’t, whatever you do, “believe in God or Jesus”. He plays it absolutely straight and so what could be camp and silly becomes seriously engaging. The trolls, brought to life with all the special effects wizardry the Norwegian film industry has at its disposal, similarly work as believable foes despite looking faintly ridiculous, and the thoroughly Scandinavian tone extends to the very dry, dark sense of humour. As a result, it’s hard at times to tell if Troll Hunter is meant as a film for kids that adults can enjoy or vice versa, but it’s none the worse for that.
Price: £13 | Buy it now on Amazon
94. January 2012: The Hangover Part II
The Hangover Part II
If you liked The Hangover you really should dig this, cos it’s the same uproariously cynical film. It also features quite possibly the rudest joke you’ll ever hear in a mainstream movie.
Price: £15 | Buy it now on Amazon
95. January 2012: Arrietty
Arrietty
Military-grade cuteness from Studio Ghibli, with an enchanting toon based on kids’ classic The Borrowers. It’s not quite as good as the same team’s Pom Poko but then, very few things are.
Price: £16 | Buy it now on Amazon
96. January 2012: Brazil
Brazil
How to explain Brazil? It’s George Orwell’s 1984 with slapstick elements. It’s a berzerk bombardment of retina-searing images in which every frame contains something you’ve never seen in a film before. The rhythms of the film and its relentlessly bleak wit mean some may find it a chore to watch, but the pay-off makes it all worth while – the final shot is like being punched in the gut.
Price: £11 | Buy it now on Amazon
97. January 2012:
Final Destination 5
Looking for some quality films for your new 3d setup? Tough, you’ll have to make do with this. It’s terrible, but it does deliver a lot of fleshy things being impaled on metal things.
Price: £18 | Buy it now on Amazon
98. January 2012:
Melancholia
A languorous tale of two sisters’ lives as they prepare for armageddon, enduring depression and having Charlotte Rampling for a mum. A great finale is almost worth the wait.
Price: £13 | Buy it now on Amazon
99. January 2012: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
CGI apes make points about fascism. his Royal Franco-ness, James Franco, brings his slightly otherworldly, earnest handsomeness. Good stuff.
Price: £15 | Buy it now on Amazon
100. January 2012:
The Skin I Live In
Pedro Almodóvar’s unique film takes his usual preoccupations with gender and sexuality and puts them in a creepy setting that’s essentially clinical torture porn. Squirmy.
Price: £15 | Buy it now on Amazon
101. January 2012: The Guard
The Guard
Fun, if stereotype-laden, O’Oirish-meets-Yankee romp with a slightly awkward tone – it’s odd these days to have an ostensibly likeable lead character who’s a racist.
Price: £16 | Buy it now on Amazon
102. 2011: The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element
Luc Besson's colourful sci-fi story ticks all the usual action film boxes - a boy and girl, a comedy sidekick, a terrible evil - but does it with such visual flare and creativity that it feels new all over again. Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman and, yes, Resident Evil's Milla Jovovich, are all on top form.
Price: £8 | Buy it now on Amazon
103. 2011:Spartacus Blood And Sand/Gods Of The Arena
Spartacus Blood And Sand/Gods Of The Arena
The sex and violence yardstick by which all future TV will be measured, Spartacus Blood and Sand starts out as guiltily pleasurable schlock and then abruptly steps up a gear into proper, gritty drama. The mini-series follow-up, Gods of the Arena, is a most excellent prequel, with even more raunchy Roman romping and body parts flying about.
Price: £47 | Buy it now on Amazon
104. 2011:127 Hours
127 Hours
A cliffhanger in the literal sense, Danny Boyle's biopic tells the story of Aron Ralston, a climber who got his arm stuck under a boulder, then had to make a rather tough decision involving a pen knife. James Franco is awesome as Ralston and the pen knife scene is faint-inducingly intense.
Price: £12 | Buy it now on Amazon
105. 2011:Akira
Akira
A Japanese cyberpunk biker gang runs into a bit of bother as one of them transmutes into an unfathomable telepathic mutant blob superweapon, er, thing in post-WWIII Japan. THE classic anime for non-anime fans.
Price: £11 | Buy it now on Amazon
106. 2011:Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
We love the smell of triple-disc Blu-Ray editions in the morning. Especially when they contain one of the greatest films of all time. Francis Ford Coppola's acid nightmare take on the Vietnam War and Conrad's Heart of Darkness gets the treatment it deserves here, with gorgeous, remastered prints of both the original cut of the film and the even more sprawling Redux version, plus a disc of interviews and extras.
Price: £18 | Buy it now on Amazon
107. 2011:Attack The Block
Attack The Block
Hoodies fight invading space beasts in this cross between Alien, Assault on Precinct 13 and the riots earlier this year. Directed by Adam or possibly Joe out of Adam and Joe.
Price: £12 | Buy it now on Amazon
108. 2011:Black Swan
Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky's Oscar-scooping movie teeters constantly on the brink of ludicrousness, from Natalie Portman's demented lead performance to the fact the beautiful, portentous score is by the bloke who once sang Beaver Patrol for Pop Will Eat Itself. Much of what happens in this incandescent tale of obsession is irrational, impossible and mad, but when viewed through the prism of Aronofsky's visual genius it all appears perfectly rational - like the logic of a dream.
Price: £13 | Buy it now on Amazon
109. 2011:Blue Valentine
Blue Valentine
The star of teeth-gratingly twee indie abomination Lars and the Real Girl redeems himself with a brave performance in Blue Valentine. He plays a charming but irresponsible bloke whose perfect relationship crumbles to dust. Prepare to weep manly tears.
Price: £9 | Buy it now on Amazon
110. 2011:Brighton Rock
Brighton Rock
Richard Attenborough is flatly terrifying as emotionless, amoral post-war gangster Pinkie in this classic Graeme Green adaptation. The film's heart-rending final scene is an all-time classic.
Price: £10 | Buy it now on Amazon
111. 2011:Burlesque
Burlesque
It's the new Showgirls (remember that?), camper than a row of pink tents and just as unmissable. Ooh, it is awful. But we like it.
Price: £8 | Buy it now on Amazon
112. 2011:Cross of Iron
Cross of Iron
Extreme violence and manliness ahoy as James Coburn's rag-tag platoon try to survive the carnage of the Eastern front. Directed by Sam (The Wild Bunch) Peckinpah, this is a bloke's-night-in classic.
Price: £9 | Buy it now on Amazon
113. 2011:Don't Look Now
Don't Look Now
Sitting in the top tier of all-time great British films, Don't Look Now builds a nerveshredding psychodrama around a husband and wife driven to the brink of insanity through grief at the death of their child. It's a chilling work of genius from director Nic Roeg, and on Blu-ray, it's never looked better.
Price: £7 | Buy it now on Amazon
114. 2011:Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Currently doing lots and lots of acting in Tree of Life, Mr Penn is now a teeth-grindingly serious superthesp. Flash back 29 years, though, and he was perma-monged surf dude Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Check out that barnet: awesome.
Price: £8 | Buy it now on Amazon
115. 2011:Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One
Having had to put up with endless icky articles about herself "flowering" over the last ten years, Emma is now established as an English rose, Burberry model and, if we're being generous, actress. Her last hoorah as Hermione starts here.
Price: £14 | Buy it now on Amazon
116. 2011:Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy
Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy
The original is a real T Rex of a movie, with CGI that still impresses today, and Sam Neill classing it up. Its two sequels are more like a steaming heap of something a T Rex left behind, however
Price: £35 | Buy it now on Amazon
117. 2011:The King's Speech
The King's Speech
It's the thespian Rumble in the Jungle: Colin Firth at his most pained versus Geoffrey Rush at his least mad. It's an emotional tour de force, but my gosh there's a lot of acting.
Price: £10 | Buy it now on Amazon
118. 2011:Let Me In
Let Me In
This remake of ace Swedish vampire horror Let The Right One In is beautifully acted, atmospheric and unflinching in its depiction of just how horrible it must be to be immortal. It's like Twilight for non-morons.
Price: £6 | Buy it now on Amazon
119. 2011:Monsters
Monsters
Very good, low-budget indie with lots o' talkin' and not much action. It's essentially a romantic thriller cum road movie but, er, with 30-foot-tall space aliens as a backdrop. Unusual.
Price: £9 | Buy it now on Amazon
120. 2011:Mr. Nice
Mr. Nice
Howard Marks' life and high times as the world's leading dope dealer are amiably recounted in this engaging biopic. Rhys Ifans is really rather excellent in the title role - now there's a sentence you don't read often.
Price: £7 | Buy it now on Amazon
121. 2011:Machete
Machete
The heavily armed titular anti-hero (Danny Tréjo) has a face like a piece of weather-beaten rawhide that's had a relief map of Ben Nevis etched into it. Naturally enough, then, he's constantly attracting the lustful attentions of large-breasted young ladies, when he isn't blowing up, shooting, decapitating and running over bad guys. Based on one of the faux trailers from Quentin Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse, this is wish fulfilment for ugly men and an absolute scream for about 80 per cent of its 105-minute run time.
Price: £8 | Buy it now on Amazon
122. 2011:Once Upon A Time In America
Once Upon A Time In America
Like a cultier The Godfather, Sergio Leone's sprawling masterpiece is one of the greatest gangster films ever made. Bob De Niro and James Woods are mesmerising.
Price: £8 | Buy it now on Amazon
123. 2011:Paranormal Activity 2
Paranormal Activity 2
The follow-up to the no-budget demonic possession horror sensation inevitably piles on more of everything, but not necessarily to greater effect. There are some good, cheesy shocks to be had, though.
Price: £11 | Buy it now on Amazon
124. 2011:Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
To win the girl of his dreams, Scott Pilgrim (the notably unsuperheroic-looking Michael Cera) must battle his seven evil, supernaturalpower-wielding exes. Yes, that old chestnut. This flopped at the box office yet currently rides high with an 8.1 approval rating on IMDB.com: that's pretty much the definition of a cult movie.
Price: £8 | Buy it now on Amazon
125. 2011:Senna
Senna
It's odd to think that F1 was once dominated by a true genius, rather than a succession of blandly handsome young men with all the personality of a tin of beans. Ayrton's legend will live on when they've all retired from driving to promote dandruff shampoo full-time.
Price: £15 | Buy it now on Amazon
126. 2011:The Social Network
The Social Network
David Fincher's Oscar-bait biopic of Mark Zuckerberg, his friends and his enemies - there are rather more of the latter, it must be said - fizzes along on Aaron Sorkin's script and performances that are uniformly strong. Justin Timberlake is particularly Oscar-worthy, playing Napster co-founder Sean Parker as a boundlessly arrogant, moderately creepy arse - Parker will no doubt be frightfully flattered. However, this is largely a film about quite dull people who set up a website then sue each other. It also feels rather meanspirited. They made a few mistakes when they were young. Get over it.
Price: £10 | Buy it now on Amazon
127. 2011:The Tree Of Life
The Tree Of Life
In places this film achieves a transcendent beauty. In others, it resembles a high-class life assurance commercial with a script cribbed from The Little Book of Calm. Different, certainly.
Price: £18 | Buy it now on Amazon
128. 2011:Source Code
Source Code
A slightly muddled, overlong but ultimately satisfying sci-fi yarn. Jake Gyllenhaal is excellent - being a cerebral action hero suits him well - and director Duncan Jones and writer Ben Ripley make a fairly gripping fist of the central conceit: that Gyllenhaal has to keep going back in time for eight-minute spurts in a bid to discover who blows up the train he is on - but not stop him, obviously, as that would be too obvious and wouldn't allow for a doomed-romance sub-plot.
Price: £12 | Buy it now on Amazon
129. 2011:Tron Legacy
Tron Legacy
Legacy mixes eye-popping 3D CGI with a Daft Punk soundtrack that's an honourable successor to Wendy Carlos' original. The plot is silly and the pacing turgid, but this is still a lush, hypnotic feast for the senses.
Price: £9 | Buy it now on Amazon
130. 2011:Stanley Kubrick Visionary Film Maker Collection
Stanley Kubrick Visionary Film Maker Collection
Eight films, from 2001 to Full Metal Jacket via A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. An obligatory Blu-ray purchase for its sheer audiovisual grandeur, as well as Kubrick's giddying way with a story.
Price: £25 | Buy it now on Amazon
131. 2011:The Twilight Zone Series One
The Twilight Zone Series One
Series 1 Extras-packed compendium of dark, twisting tales from the first golden age of American telly. The stories can be formulaic - "So, all along the monster was really… us!" - but the stark visuals and tight plotting still impress, with many moments of genuine poignancy, and real scares, too.
Price: £35 | Buy it now on Amazon
132. 2011:Star Trek The Complete Original Series
Star Trek The Complete Original Series
The Shat is back in full HD with the box set that all techy Trekkies have been waiting for. Most of the episodes were shot on film so the quality is astounding. So is Shatner's acting, with different… INTONATION on. Every. Word… HE SAYS!
Price: £106 | Buy it now on Amazon
133. 2011:The Long Good Friday
The Long Good Friday
It's the late 70s and gang boss Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) has big plans for regenerating London's docklands, thereby going legit. Too bad he's about to be sucked into a turf war with the IRA. Still probably the best British gangster film of all time.
Price: £13 | Buy it now on Amazon
134. 2011:The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead
Episode one of this undead apocalypse series is surely one of the best TV shows of all time. It then settles for formula thrills and dunderhead characters, but never to the extent you stop watching. Zombie fans simply have to see it.
Price: £15
135. 2011:The Town
The Town
Pete Postlethwaite, RIP. The late, granite-faced star of The Usual Suspects and Brassed Off gets a decent send-off with blue-collar heist movie The Town. He's terrifying as a reptilian Irish crime lord and gets to shoot Ben Affleck whilst shouting "You pr*ck!" Good man.
Price: £11 | Buy it now on Amazon
136. 2011:Winter's Bone
Winter's Bone
This harrowing, unique film is not an easy watch - the plot is as minimal as it is unpleasant - but it is worth the effort.
Price: £7 | Buy it now on Amazon
137. 2011:Unknown
Unknown
Liam Neeson is back in this very close relative of Taken. Again, it's like the Bourne films, if Matt Damon were an incredibly slow, hulking, middle-aged man who looks like he might keel over from a heart attack at any second. Classic.
Price: £12
138. 2011:The Last Exorcism
The Last Exorcism
Clichéd but effective demonic possession yarn shot in mock-doc stylee. Terribly mannered acting only adds to its retro feel.
Price: £15
139. 2011:Resident Evil: Afterlife
Resident Evil: Afterlife
The epitome of a guilty pleasure. This is - almost unbelievably - the fourth film spin-off from Capcom's legendary series of survival horror games. And it's in 3D! In certain respects, Afterlife feels nothing like the RE games, lacking their moments of dread-soaked stillness and high-class art direction. However, in certain other areas - repetitious and incomprehensible plotting and atrocious acting, for instance - it's actually very true to the source.
Price: £8 | Buy it now on Amazon
140. 2011:Thor
Thor
The most likeable of the recent slew of comic-book adaptations, Thor is forgettable but fun. Chris Hemsworth gives it loads of "What is this metal beast that roars and seats up to five passengers, and the plot, well, we have absolutely no recollection at all.
Price: £15
141. 2011:Tenebrae
Tenebrae
Portentous maestro of the macabre Dario Argento's last great film is like the olympics of splatter. With stabbings, gougings and hackings galore, it's fun for all the family - the Manson Family, specifically.
Price: £15
NextJanuary’s hottest Blu-ray of the month: Only God Forgives
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