There Will Be Blood
It begins down a hand-dug desert hole in 1898, but it feels more like the beginning (or end?) of the world. From the visionary director of such rambling ensemble pieces as Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson’s relentlessly intense masterpiece is as much a foundation tale of modern America, as it is a one-man epic about Daniel Day-Lewis’ rootless, sexless, and uncompromisingly ruthless oil tycoon. This is Anderson’s Citizen Kane, and as dark as the depths of any oil well.

Runner-up: The Dark Knight
The Hong Kong skyline has never looked better than it did in its short but memorable cameo in TDK, but even that paled in comparison to the most memorable performance of the year: Heath Ledger's Joker. Dominating this dark and complex comic book mini-epic, Ledger's ticks and chillingly twisted delivery lingered in the mind long after the credits rolled. Rest in peace, Heath.

Second runner-up: 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
Passionate words of praise have been circling for almost a year before this distinguished film from Romania finally hit our screen – and the wait is worth it. There’s nothing too fancy in this bleak drama about a college student’s attempt to get her roommate an illegal abortion through a black market transaction in late-1980s Bucharest. Be it a family dinner at a boyfriend’s home or a quietly nightmarish negotiation with the abortionist in a hotel room: director Cristian Mungiu, with his unflinching camera, puts his characters through hell amid the most mundane of settings, while confirming that the country’s recent resurgence in the film world is certainly no fluke.

Honourable mentions:

Be Kind Rewind
The French sorcerer behind such eccentric delights as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep shows no sign of going sane in this postmodern love song to the 80s’ cinema classics.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Sidney Lumet’s crowning achievement starts off as an intensely executed heist, before quickly developing into a hugely engrossing family drama with complexity to spare.

Happy-Go-Lucky
Sally Hawkins’s eye-catching performance as an ever-so-cheery London schoolteacher may have masked the meticulously crafted character portrait underneath, but there’s little doubt that this top-class comedy by Mike Leigh is aching with humanity.

I'm Not There
A masterstroke of casting sees Cate Blanchett play Bob Dylan in this experimental film of a biopic, with six actors playing seven fragments of the great musician – none of which called ‘Dylan’.

No Country for Old Men
In this bloody faithful adaptation (by the Coen Brothers’ standard) of Cormac McCarthy’s terse literary thriller, Javier Bardem steals the show with his killer hairdo. He then shows what a nice haircut can get you in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a near miss to our Top 10.

Once
A Hoover guy, an immigrant girl, no gun, no smooches, plenty of accents. And yet, this little ‘musical’ from Ireland – shot on DV no less – manages to mesmerize its audience worldwide. This is what we call cinematic magic.

The Warlords
Released in the tail end of 2007, Peter Chan’s thoroughly captivating war epic makes our list by being the one and only truly great Chinese film to grace our screens in 2008. If only John Woo and Zhang Yimou could learn something from it…

 

Readers' choice: The Dark Knight
You were close to unanimous in picking the latest (and greatest) Batman movie as your film of the year.