Xan Brooks picks the films you really ought to have seen this year.

Sideways
The New Year hangover had barely abated when Sideways wafted in with a cloud of woozy misadventures. Alexander Payne's brilliant odd-couple outing dispatched lecherous Thomas Haden Church and maudlin Paul Giamatti on a freewheeling jaunt through California wine country: slurping from the slop bucket, bouncing between cheap motels and generally running foul of the women who might just have been able to save them. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this was an early contender for the best film of 2005.

The Woodsman
Turn a blind eye to its dubious redemptive climax and The Woodsman barely put a foot wrong in navigating its charged story of child abuse. Kevin Bacon gave what many felt was a career-best performance as a reformed paedophile, prowling his apartment as the kids play in the schoolyard across the street. Most observers tipped him for an overdue Oscar nomination. In the event, it seemed, the subject matter scared off the voters.

5 X 2
After a misstep with Swimming Pool, Francois Ozon further burnished his reputation as the most distinctive French film-maker of recent years with this sharp, Bergmanesque account of a marriage. The inventive structure flipped the narrative into reverse gear, with its five scenes moving from divorce proceedings to honeymoon, while the performances of Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Stephane Freiss were nigh on perfect.

Downfall
Part sprawling historical document, part intensive character study, Downfall painted a horribly convincing portrait of Berlin in the dying days of the second world war. Skulking at its centre was a full-throated, tour de force from Bruno Ganz as the doomed, deluded Hitler, conjuring up illusory armies to repel the Russians. In the meantime his generals shake their heads and throw anxious glances at the exit door.

The Consequences Of Love
Director Paolo Sorrentino put the mafia movie on strict army rations with The Consequences of Love, his behind the scenes look at the mobster's lifestyle. What emerged was a deft and deadpan mini-masterpiece, topped off by a grand performance from Toni Servillo as the lonesome bagman exiled to an anonymous Swiss hotel.

Kung Fu Hustle
The perfect antidote to martial arts epics like House of Flying Daggers and that one about the squatting tiger. Kung Fu Hustle was a giddy, exuberant pleasure. Director Stephen Chow cast himself in the role of the swaggering deadbeat who finds himself sandwiched between a band of mobsters and the impoverished folk of Pigsty Alley. The result was a cocktail of slapstick action and ribald humour. It all ended happily.

Dig!
Another vintage year for documentaries was crowned by this uproarious account of two American rock bands. The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre both started in the same place, united by a love for 60s psychedelia and the desire to 'get a full-scale revolution going on'. One wound up playing the stadium circuit. The other went down in a hail of rotten fruit. Ondi Timoner's deft film captured their respective fates with wit and aplomb.

The Last Mitterrand
'I am the last great President,' claims Michel Bouquet's ailing Mitterrand as he contemplates his own death, and possibly the demise of socialism, too. Robert Guediguian's stately, soulful portrait painted a fine portrait of the giant's final days. Honourable mention, too, for the ingenious time-travel thriller Primer, and Paul Haggis's portentous but involving Crash.

Innocence
Possibly the year's strangest and most unsettling movie: a warped Little Red Riding Hood, set at a girls' school in the forest, where the students arrive in coffins and leave aboard a magical train. Seen by some as a haunting fable of puberty and by others as a wilfully opaque and maddening walk in the woods, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's debut marked her out as a director to watch.

A History of Violence
David Cronenberg exposed the darkness at the heart of small-town America with his bold pulp thriller about a local hero (Viggo Mortensen) who finds himself preyed on by a reptilian big city mobster (Ed Harris). The setup led us to expect a standard struggle between good and evil, innocence and corruption; the payoff proved altogether more murky and compelling. Cropping up late, William Hurt almost stole the show with a lusty cameo as a twinkling crime boss.

The Beat That My heart Skippe
In which director Jacques Audiard reworked a lost 70s American thriller (Fingers) as a dark Gallic noir and provided a dazzling showcase for rising star Romain Duris - as iconic as the young Delon in the role of a yobbish Paris enforcer (and classical pianist on the side). At the other end of the noir spectrum, we were also taken with Shane Black's tangy, playful Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Lower City
The 'buena onda' of Latin American cinema has largely kept a low profile since the heyday of City of God, Amores Perros, et al. But Lower City served as a reminder of its continued force. Directed with brio by Sergio Machado, this was a torrid, bawdy tale of life and death on the coast of Brazil. Alice Braga starred as the enigmatic pole dancer who finds herself torn between two sailors.