By SETH HYNES
10. What We Do In The Shadows – This hilarious, relatable horror comedy styles itself as a documentary about a bunch of dysfunctional vampire flatmates living together in suburban New Zealand.
9. The Zero Theorem – Christoph Waltz soars as a neurotic programmer desperate to prove the unthinkable, and his introverted obsession ironically stands out as the only spark of sanity in director Terry Gilliam’s identity-warping, nightmarishly gaudy vision of the future.
8. The Skeleton Twins – Equally depressing and charming, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig make a great misfit pair as siblings who reunite after a long time apart, and come to lean on each other and help accept (and overcome) their mutually disappointing lives.
7. A Walk Among The Tombstones – With Liam Neeson at his sombre best, this is a subtly moving yet deeply unsettling thriller about the barbarism of the present – as Neeson’s character investigates a string of murder-extortions – tragically unearthing the personal demons he’d tried so hard to leave behind.
6. Only Lovers Left Alive – Lyrical, luxuriously slow and bleakly beautiful, this masterful character study by American auteur Jim Jarmusch is one of the best vampire movies in decades.
5. Calvary – A superbly-written, solemnly dignified work that addresses the Catholic Church’s child abuse scandals, Calvary follows a kind-hearted Irish priest as he ministers to his townsfolk, reconnects with his estranged daughter and deals with a death threat stemming from someone else’s crime.
4. The Double – Jesse Eisenberg stars as Simon James, a hapless clerk who finds his life usurped by his exact doppelganger (but who is confident and ambitious where Simon is meek and complacent). This has some of the year’s most precise control of atmosphere – the hum-drum office setting as surreal and macabre – and portrays mounting, riveting madness like few other films.
3. Gone Girl – Featuring flawless performances, unrelenting suspense, one heck of a twist and an uncomfortably lucid insight into the nature of marriage, this is almost the Holy Grail of thrillers.
2. Snowpiercer – A gut-wrenching, clever and gloriously demented sci-fi satire, Snowpiercer depicts a class war inside a never-stopping train that houses the last of humanity in a bitter Ice Age. The premise alone makes it worth checking out, let alone the amazing cast, fascinating world-building, brutal action and compelling narrative depth.
1. These Final Hours – Following a troubled man as he tries to return a lost girl to her father, this is a harrowing yet profoundly uplifting drama about redemption in the face of an apocalypse. Capturing perseverance, revelry, despair and human decency with absolute vivid authenticity, These Final Hours is an exemplary work of Australian cinema.
