You know, they laughed at Galileo, too. Especially when he published his list of fifty favourite planets, and other astronomers were like “Dude, we don’t have ten planets in this solar system, and we won’t even discover Neptune for another two hundred years.”

Nevertheless, he was remembered as the father of modern observational astronomy, and I believe the same will happen to me, which is annoying because all I’m trying to do is publish a list of my favourite films of the year.

There are many reasons I do a top fifty. The main one is that with the sheer number of films I see each year, both new releases and film festival titles, if I’m not seeing fifty films minimum that I can say I love – not just like but love – then I’ll pack it in and take up something easier. Like astronomy. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m so hung up on astronomy at the moment.

There are lots of other reasons, but I won’t go into them all now. But the long and short of it is that I loved all of these films and would recommend them in a heartbeat.

Don’t try to look for any logic in the release dates here. I try to go for the film’s proper year of release, which means titles like Django Unchained, The Wolf of Wall Street, Her, 12 Years a Slave and Inside Llewyn Davis were on last year’s list. However, some Australian release dates mean I couldn’t make this an across-the-board rule. And despite my best efforts, I was unable to see titles such as Inherent Vice, Selma, CitizenFour and The Overnighters. So it’s an unwieldy mix, but just go with it.

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