1. Let The Right One In

2. Moon

3. Where The Wild Things Are

4. Synechdoche New York

5. Up

6. Encounters at the End of the World

7. In The Loop

8. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

9. Slumdog Millionaire

10. Coraline

Also worth a mention: Sleep Furiously, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Star Trek, District 9

[EDIT: I completely forgot about The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, which suffered from some clunky dialogue at times but more than made up for that with Gilliams uniqueness of vision and imagination. Squeeze that one in at number 6 and bump everything else down one.]

It must be well over a year since the test footage leaked for this film and I’ve been eagerly awaiting it ever since. Sadly, there’s still at least another 6 months to wait (with no word of a UK release date yet). I’m probably looking forward to this one even more than Pixar’s UP. The new official Poster is out now and looks every bit as magnificant as the footage which has appeared so far.

Click through for the list

With everything else that’s been going on this year (the new job, the new house, the new wife) I’ve hardly been to the cinema at all this year so this will have to be a top five rather than a top ten. There’s only one other film we saw at the cinema this year that I can think of (Indiana Jones and the Ridiculously Improbable Third Act (which wasn’t as bad as many people made out but still far from great)). Three of the five were animations, one was British and two were from the Middle East. Wouldn’t have guessed that one.

1. Waltz with Bashir

When I first saw the trailers for this, I figured it was just a Persepolis derivitive but, although I loved Persepolis, this one is easily the better film. One of the best war films I’ve ever seen. Jawdropping, rotoscoped animation and a Max Richter soundtrack tell the directors true story of his invovlment as a young man in the Lebanon war in 1982 and why his brain has blanked out any details of it.

2. Wall-E

3. The Dark Knight

4. Persepolis

5. Happy Go Lucky

We went to see this the day we were originally supposed to move house. That was the day it fell through at the last minute. We, understandably went a bit crazy that weekend and decided to get married on the spur of the moment on the way back home from the GFT. (Three weeks later, we were married and breaking the news to the relatives).

EDIT: and I completely forgot that Son Of Rambow (which I loved on levels normally reserved for Michel Gondry) was this year. So call it a top 6 and stick Son Of Rambow in at 2

So a few things have happened since I last updated…Got the new Radiohead album as mentioned below. loving it! Probably the best thing they’ve done since Kid A. As you might know, I really disliked Hail to the Thief when it came out and have been pushed back to reassess it and realise that I was completely wrong!

Since I last posted, We’ve been to see Manu Chao. Thanks to the Academy plastering big warnings about no bags all over their tickets we decided not to risk taking a camera meaning that all the pics we took were on my phone. Not exactly the best quality gig pictures we’ve ever taken but theres some good ones. fairly annoying to see that there were plenty people there both with bags and proper cameras. Overall a great gig but live he sounds so completely different to his records…his records are generally so chilled out but live everything seems to turn into a trashy rock song half way through. Sounds great when you’re there but not so good on his live CD as just listening to the studio versions.

Went to see Control as well. I don’t think it justified the hype but overall I enjoyed it. The performance of Ian Curtis shows him as self obsessed and kinda unlikable. Pretty much how I had always imagined he actually would have been. To be honest, the only one from the band who came off well from the whole thing was Bernard since he came across as really nice but the rest of the band seemed like complete dicks.

Also had a moment of prime surrealism when we won tix to go and see ‘Once’ at the GFT. Really sweet wee film (although I’m glad I had never heard of it when I went to see it since it seems to be everywhere now and looks like it might become quite big) but the 2 main stars made an appearance afterwards to play some of the music live. Is one of the strangest sensations to watch someone on screen for 90 minutes then turn round and realise they are standing literally 2 feet away from you…made me think of that scene from father ted about dreams/reality.

A few gigs coming up befroe the end of the year…Andrew Bird, Loney Dear & Beirut are all bought and we’re still swaying about Mum and Patrick Wolf…