The mid-point of the year sneaked past a week or so ago and as has become traditional it seems a good time to look back on the best of the year so far. And it's been a funny year on DVD.

In fact most of the best films for me have been either foreign language or documentaries. And, slightly behind the picks below are Female Agents (France), Elite Squad (Brazil), The Counterfeiters (Germany), Mad Detective (Hong Kong), Burn After Reading, as well as docos Forbidden Lies, Standard Operating Procedure, IOU USA, and Bus 174.

Man On Wire (*****) is an extraordinary and inspiring documentary. It won the Best Documentary Oscar. At the centre of the film is French adventurer Philippe Petit and his bid to (illegally) walk across a wire strung between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre. This works both as a tense thriller, leading us through the planning and set-up for Petit's remarkable feat, and a portrait of a man rightly described as 'one of the most absurd and audacious people I've ever seen in real life or recorded on film.” This is a film to lift your spirits and make them soar.

Honourable doco mention goes to Not Quite Hollywood (*****) the ridiculously entertaining story of Australia's exploitation film industry, from Alvin Purple to Mad Max and beyond. Prepare to be amazed…

Winner of a slew of international awards, including from Cannes, The Band's Visit (*****) is a small intimate character study that is both funny and touching, illuminating lives with deft subtle strokes. In concerns the eight-man Alexandria Police Orchestra from Egypt who, while attempting to play a concert in Israel, become lost and stranded in a tiny isolated town. The locals put them up and tentative friendships are formed. That's it. It's a quiet film, beautifully observed, and shot very effectively in a minimalist style. The opening titles tell us that no one remembers the incident now, that it 'wasn't that important”. But, sometimes, it's the little things that count.

Receiving 5 star reviews all round the world, Let The Right One In (*****) is an unusually atmospheric and intelligent Swedish film. It centres round young Oskar, different-looking and continually bullied at school, who one day meets a strange young girl, Eli. She smells funny, has cold skin and is 'twelve… more or less”. She is, in the most understated way, a vampire. Unlike any vampire film you have ever seen, this ties vampirism and violence (though there is very little) and much hangs on Oskar's reaction to the bullies. Haunting, shocking and different at every turn this rises above the constraints of the 'vampire genre” to be simply a great film.

Ron Howard has a lot of bland rubbish to atone for and does so in style with Frost Nixon (*****), wherein he explores the background of the infamous TV interview in which the previously lightweight David Frost got disgraced US President Richard Nixon to apologise and admit to (at least a part of) his wrongdoings while in office. What makes this so good is the acting (Frank Langella, stunning as Nixon), the fascinating behind-the-scenes detail, and the building tension to what becomes a veritable gladiatorial contest between two clashing egos and minds. Never has a simple interview been so gripping.