Film: best of 2006

From grizzly bears and French colonial guilt to dancing penguins and Irish Republicanism, Time Out‘s film reviewers pick their favourite movies of the past 12 months

All eyes: Guillermo del Toro crafted a distinctly adult fairytale in 'Pan's Labyrinth'

Black Sun
Gareth Evans
This genuinely visionary essay on the deepest ways of seeing by first-time maker Gary Tarn is a compelling and unique encounter. An assault in 1970s New York left artist Hugues de Montalembert blinded, but the strength of will he discovered in response transformed his trauma into a redemptive global journey of remarkable courage and genuine insight. In a beautifully photographed and fluid filming of the world as it is experienced, not simply viewed, he delivers the perfect counterpoint to de Montalembert’s feature length voice-over on his philosophical passage. Watch this remarkable film artist closely. It is one of the finest debuts in years.

Pan’s Labyrinth
Nigel Floyd
Guillermo del Toro’s darkly brilliant adult fairytale reminded us of the mesmerising beauty, intellectual complexity and utter necessity of grown-up fantasy cinema. Conceived, written and visualised with intense passion, wild imagination and consummate skill, it pierced the hearts and disturbed the minds of all thinking genre fans. Its fusion of haunting, nightmarish images and brutal reality echoed Goya’s paintings, Catholic mythology and the harsh fables of Hans Christian Andersen. Yet the unifying vision was all del Toro’s own. The Mexican filmmaker gave up his fee to get this made exactly the way he imagined it. See it, be grateful.

Children of Men
Mark Salisbury
Grey skies. Pissing rain. Rubbish-strewn streets. Coffee shops. Illegal migrants. Fear of a terrorist threat. The London of Alfonso Cuáron’s thrilling, bold and technically astounding adaptation of PD James’ novel isn’t all that far removed from the one that exists today, despite being set in 2027. As Clive Owen’s reluctant hero in flip-flops strives to protect the first baby born for 18 years, Cuáron’s bleak, dystopian vision offers a paranoid, pertinent and potent reflection of our times, but is never wholly pessimistic, retaining both a cautious optimism and hint of salvation. Filmed in long, documentary-style takes by the gifted Emmanuel Lubezki, it also features two of the greatest cinematic moments of the year: the jaw-dropping sequence inside a moving people-carrier and the ten-minute ‘single’ shot following Owen through a war-torn refugee camp as shells explode all around him.

'The Wind that Shakes the Barley'

The Wind that Shakes the Barley
Cath Clarke
You could almost smell the bile when Ken Loach won the Palme d’Or for ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’. The Mail railed: ‘Why Does Ken Loach hate his country so much?’ Never mind watching the bloody film. As it was, the new Loach, which told of the struggle for a free Ireland, was beautifully shot and thoroughly gripping. It was a prescient and awful reminder that in war it is the boys that do the fighting and dying; a reminder too of the violence committed in the pursuit of empire. Not that we should need telling: as more stories of atrocities emerge from Iraq, including the recent arrest of four US soldiers for the rape and murder of a 14 year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family, Loach’s film feels more current than ever.

Rang de Basanti
Anil Sininan
With energetic, accomplished performances and quirky AR Rahman tunes, ‘Rang de Basanti’ (‘Paint it Yellow’) is a caustic commentary on how corruption and religious bigotry, endemic to modern India, can turn disenfranchised patriotic youths into killers. Skilfully blending two different narratives, Rakesh Omprakash Mehra’s movie has a Renoir-like realism rare in Bollywood cinema. Its refusal to adopt a simplistic Gandhian ‘one man can make a difference’ solution to India’s ‘problems’ makes this a depressing, compelling and admirably brave piece of political cinema. India’s official entry to the next Oscars.