10. Ocean with David Attenborough 

It may have been Richard Attenborough who made the greater contribution to film but this year his little brother took his first foray into cinemas with this brilliant documentary. The images captured are magnificent and the conservation message vital, making it undeniably essential viewing. James Cameron’s third Avatar movie is in theatres right now but if you really want to see a spectacular world captured astonishingly on the screen then this is the place to go.

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9. Warfare

If it is realism you want then that is what this movie aims for too. Based on the accounts of the men who were there, one of who co-directs with Alex Garland, this is a gripping representation of a single mission that took place during the Iraq War and it takes no prisoners. 

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8. Black Bag

If Warfare shows the unblinking reality of nations being in conflict, then Black Bag goes the other way and just makes it look really cool. Happily there is space for this too. Directed by Stephen Soderbergh and centring on the security rather than the armed forces, this follows Michael Fassbender and he searches for a mole amongst his small circle of spooks and it is everything that you’d want that to be. 

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7. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery 

Rian Johnson has spent six years slowly perfecting the whodunnit murder mystery for a modern age and here he nails it. He nails it in the back, he nails it into a coffin and with the Catholic Church setting he also nails it onto a crucifix. Returning as debonair Louisiana French detective Benoit Blanc, Daniel Craig (once the supercool spy himself) also nails that accent. 

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 6. Frankenstein 

Guillermo del Toro has spent a lot more than six years bringing this to the screen, with arguably everything he has previously done working toward this adaptation of Mary Shelley’s brilliant novel. Meticulously planned, masterfully stitched together and brought to life with equal measures of viscera and humanity, del Toro has crafted a beautiful, unpredictable, volatile and powerful creation. Don’t fear it.

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5. Companion 

Bringing undertones of Shelley’s classic story itself, Companion also tells of what happens when the arrogance of man is forced to face up to a new life that technology has created. This tale of a sexbot reaching total self awareness is not just another futuristic horror though, it is a parable of feminism and toxic masculinity with as much to say about social fact as science fiction. 

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4. Superman 

Shelley’s modern Prometheus myth might have been told in many different ways on screen, but so it seems has Superman. In the last twenty years, as many as six different actors have played Kal El in some form or another and now David Corenswet can be added to that list. Surprisingly enough though this new version is great. Sure I love movies with a message but sometimes, when they are done well, I love films that just want to entertain as well and this one does that perfectly.

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3. 28 Years Later

28 Years Later, Danny Boyle’s violent and unrelenting zombie film, opens with a scene that features the Teletubbies. Rather than this being jarring though it operates nicely as a microcosmic introduction to the movie that is to follow. 

Dipsy is representative of the alpha among a group of non verbal creatures that live free in a green wilderness, just like the infected, and the baby faced sun, which is essentially a blazing head held on high in some pseudo spiritual ritual, is a clear precursor to the discovery that Dr Kelson is burning the flesh off skulls and placing them in a makeshift temple. It’s the perfect way to start a movie that has a lot of drama and plenty more surprises up its sleeve. I loved it, right from its CBeebies beginning to its chav Power Rangers epilogue. 

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2. Die My Love

I almost missed this one at the cinema but I am so glad I found a place still showing it six weeks after its release because it is utterly brilliant. Apparently it all started when Martin Scorsese gave the book to Jennifer Lawrence and told her she would be great as the central character. Boy, was he right! 

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1. Sinners 

This list has featured spies, superheroes, robots, zombies and Frankenstein’s monster and now finally we’ve got vampires. (There were a couple of witches just outside the top ten too.)

I’ll admit that I might be more prone to an appreciation of genre movies than some cineastes but what I hope my top ten shows is that filmmakers are doing interesting things with these old ideas. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners; a movie that on the surface is about the iconic undead blood suckers of Stoker, Rice, Collins and Whedon but is actually so much more. It is a genius blending of music, performance, visual storytelling, fantasy, drama, history, social commentary and yes, vampires, and it is superb.