As the year is still very much new I'm going to spend the first two January columns indulging in the futile but fun pursuit of picking my Top 20 DVD releases from 2010.

I did a quick trawl and came up with around
50 films, so some very worthy entries unfortunately missed out. Before I start the countdown, the following narrowly missed out on Top 20 places: Where The Wild Things Are, Bronson, The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Road, Animal Kingdom, The Battle of Red Cliff, Sherlock Holmes, Collapse, The Cove, The Fantastic Mr Fox, Exit Through The Gift Shop, I Am Love, and Fish Tank. Here's the first lot. Next week we'll hit the Top 10.

20: The Last Station – A wonderfully literary and literate film about the last days of Russian author Tolstoy and the battle over his legacy, made a joy by a top-class cast with great late-career roles for Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren.
19: Moon – In a wretchedly average year for sci-fi (think Surrogates and Gamer) this film was a beacon of imagination and intelligence, from David Bowie's son Duncan Jones. Made on the tightest of budgets and showcasing a superb solitary turn from Sam Rockwell it has no aliens or explosions, just a haunting examination of what it means to be human.
18: Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 – A duo of French films charting the rise and fall of France's most famous bank robber. Vincent Cassel turns in a career best performance as the mercurial thug from his initiation with Gerard Depardieu's mob boss to his celebrated escapes from the police and inevitable death.
17: Up in the Air – A recession-era romance, carried along by a razor-sharp script and an effortlessly charming and impressively layered performance from George Clooney. Mainstream Hollywood can still do it with class on occasion.
16: Anvil! The Story of Anvil – This documentary on the titular unsuccessful ‘Demigods of Canadian Metal' skews towards Spinal Tap territory but is grounded in the genuine friendship and musical love of the two bandmates. Funny, touching and unflinching in showing the toll a life of unfulfilled dreams has taken on loyal family members.
15: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Ticks all the boxes for a good mystery thriller: a tough complex story, well told, an interesting relationship, and – in the film's heroine – a new and intriguing central character. A masterful adaptation of the book, sadly not matched by the quality of the two sequels.
14: Inland Empire – David Lynch's most baffling and striking work to date. Almost every scene is powerful and engaging, reaching into the subconscious and triggering strange emotional responses: the more you surrender to the spell, the more it gets under your skin. Oh, and can anyone explain the ‘rabbit people'?
13: A Serious Man – The Coen brothers' follow-up to No Country for Old Men is a dramatic comedy about growing up Jewish in small town America, a strange and often delightful parable of searching for meaning amongst life's uncontrollable trials and tribulations.
12: Shutter Island – A film that grew in stature for me as the year went on, Martin Scorsese's lurid mystery boasts a brilliant cast and shows the director as the master he is, with perfect control of a complex structure that deftly balances its deluge of dream sequences, hallucinations and flashbacks.
11: Up – It seems to have been around for years but this animated gem was only released on DVD in 2010. Charming, funny, beautiful to look at, it is easy to forgive the occasional (very tasteful) slide into sentimentality. You will laugh and cry.