Matthew Hays's Top Picks
1. Kinsey Liam Neeson is at his best playing the legendary sex researcher. Rising to the bait, social conservatives could again be heard crying foul over Kinsey's candour, echoing their original response to his 1948 breakthrough study of male sexuality.
2. The Aviator Not Scorsese's best, by a mile, but still well worth seeing. Best fun is watching the cast chew up the scenery playing legendary screen idols of yesteryear. That's Cate Blanchett playing Kate Hepburn, Kate Beckinsale doing Ava Gardner, Jude Law as Errol Flynn and Gwen Stefani channelling Jean Harlow. Rufus Wainwright even does… well, we're not quite sure who he's doing, but he's not half bad as a crooner. After Snake Eyes, Battlefield Earth and The Day After Tomorrow, The Aviator also breaks Montreal's losing streak as a shooting site for empty blockbusters.
3. Super Size Me In true Michael Moore style, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock takes on the Golden Arches; living on a diet of nothing but McDonald's, he gains over 30 pounds in less than a month. Not to be viewed at mealtime.
4. Kill Bill Vol. 2 More talky than Vol. 1, but Tarantino's writing the dialogue.
5. Bad Education After watching this film, I'm tempted to say that Almodóvar can do no wrong. And Gael García Bernal looks great in drag.
6. Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore's attempt to unseat Dubya via the multiplex failed, but it's still a solid filmmaking effort. The shots of Bush responding to news that a second plane had flown into the second tower is worth the price of the DVD alone.
7. Control Room A stunning peak at Al-Jazeera, the much-maligned, oft-misunderstood Arab news network. Vital to understanding why the west, in particular America, is so hated in the region.
8. Open Water Shot entirely on DV, this film evokes Jaws while never ripping off the Spielberg classic.
9. Maria Full of Grace Harrowing story, incredibly told.
10. Seed of Chucky Whoa, how did every critic in the universe (except me) miss the boat on this one? Chucky's foul mouth, rap star Redman, a gender-confused, serial-killing baby doll and Jennifer Tilly's bust - what's not to love?
Honourable mentions: Team America: World Police - puppets go mad! Discordia: When Netanyahu Came to Town, the exemplary feature-length documentary about the riots at Concordia University that shut down Netanyahu's lecture there. And Alter Egos, Laurence Green's thoughtful meditation on mythic Oscar-nominated NFB filmmaker Ryan Larkin.
Bottom five
1. The Passion of the Christ Homophobe Mel Gibson shamelessly rips off homo icon Pier Pasolini (an infinitely more subtle and textured filmmaker), making what must be the most soulless movie about spirituality ever. Championed by the Family Values crowd - you know, the ones who think Christianity compels them to vote for leaders who start wars like the one currently going on in Iraq (civilian casualty figure: 100,000).
2. The Alamo So let me see if I understand the mystery surrounding this movie: people are surprised that a film about America getting its ass kicked didn't catch on with audiences. I can't imagine why that wasn't appealing at this point in history.
3. The Terminal After pretending to be Kubrick with A.I., Spielberg tries to be Frank Capra, with disastrous results. Riffing on the true story of a man who was stuck in the Paris airport for years, here Tom Hanks plays an eastern European who finds Americans are just so dang sweet when they encounter needy lost souls. Truly embarrassing.
4. Welcome to Mooseport If you still love Raymond after watching this dreadful excuse for a comedy, you're mad. Ebert gave this a thumbs up, suggesting he really has gone soft in the head.
5. Spanglish Hollywood finally makes a film acknowledging the massive Mexican presence in L.A., but does so in the form of a syrupy, pointless sitcom. Téa Leoni suffers through a thankless role as a self-obsessed hag.
Sarah Rowland's Top Picks
1. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster The former heavy metal gods who turned into the biggest jokes in rock are laughing all the way to festival award ceremonies, with this behind the scenes look at a band on the brink of breaking up. And God bless 'em: James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich are a constant source of comedy, needing their thousand-dollar-a-day group therapist present so they can be in the same room together long enough to discuss whether they should fire their therapist.
2. Team America: World Police Harrowing story, incredibly told.
3. Hero With his colour-coded martial arts showdown director Yimou Zhang upped the ante for artful action filmmaking, and the sinfully beautiful Ziyi Zhang proved she can be cute, even when she's yodelling in a Miss Piggy tenor as a way to signal a duelling challenge.
4. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence Gorgeous, mind bending Japanese anime. Perfection.
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind In this endlessly imaginative story, Jim Carrey undergoes a procedure to have his ex-girlfriend erased from his memory. Charlie Kaufman, the script-writing guru of our time, conjures the perfect playground in which to explore that most exquisite pain: getting the shaft from the love of your life.
6. Open Water Scary, deeply moving and one of only two films that made it on both of the Mirror's top–10 lists. 'Nough said.
7. Good Bye Lenin! A loving son cocoons his ailing mother in an artificial communist world when she awakes from a coma to a Berlin that no longer has a wall. Cutest film of the year, on par with Run Lola Run, with a brilliant performance from German's answer to River Phoenix, Daniel Brühl.
8. The Saddest Music in the World That twisted genius from the 'Peg has outdone himself. Guy Maddin's masterpiece combines a deathly dark sense of humour, a highly expressionist sensibility, and casting savvy (Mark McKinney, Isabella Rossellini) to make the best movie about a legless beer baroness to hit our screens in a long while.
9. Control Room We're taken behind the scenes of Al-Jazeera, the Arab world's version of CNN. Unlike some of her peers, Jehane Noujaim produced a post 9/11 documentary that is focused, revealing and genuinely objective.
10. Tarnation For $218 you can go on a short but memorable bender, put a down payment on some U2 tickets or make an award-winning documentary about your dysfunctional family, using old home movies and Super-8 reenactments, which is just what Jonathan Caouette did with this perfectly heartbreaking celluloid collage.
Honourable mentions: Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock for putting his own health at risk to take on Rotten Ronnie's, Mayor of the Sunset Strip for proving the cinematic world will never be short on lonesome losers and killer soundtracks. And finally, mad props to the pranksters in The Yes Men for making a mockery of the WTO and the funniest doc of the year in the process.
Bottom five
1. Coffee and Cigarettes While exploring the best laxative known to man, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch casts the coolest actors and musicians he can enlist, including Tom Waits, Jack White and Iggy Pop, all playing themselves in these painfully contrived vignettes. The result is further proof that rock stars shouldn't act.
2. Head in the Clouds Not even the tickle fight between Penélope Cruz and Charlize Theron can save this disastrous attempt at a romantic war epic.
3. The Manchurian Candidate This altered remake of John Frankenheimer's classic paranoid political thriller makes you wonder if Denzel Washington even read the inane script before he signed up for this botch job.
4. Alexander For starters, Colin Farrell's lid was way too distracting. A man's cuffs should always match his colours, even if he's wearing a toga. And since when do ancient Macedonian conquerors sound like The Commitments? Farrell's Irish accent put the final nail in this coffin.
5. She Hate Me In a word: offensive.
