Mondays are sad and I had an hour to kill so here are my top films of 2012.

I think that these films are important works of art and it would be a shame if you missed out on them this year.

As André Bazin once said, ‘The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our desires”, which leads us onto my first top film:

DESIRE

We all have desire don’t we? Yes we do. Running just under 5 hours using just black and white portraits of important people with faces much nicer than most, not since La Jetée has a montage of still images stirred up so many emotions inside me.

Accompanied by a haunting soundtrack, composed entirely on the theremin, with snippets of poetry on the soul by 7-year-old children, this truly is unlike anything you will see all year.

Dir. Unknown. It’s more mysterious that way…just a little inconvenient when it comes to awards season.

SMALL STORAGE

Andrew Reetle (Michael Shannon) leaves his young son in an IKEA play area only to return with his flat pack shelves and be told his son never existed. What unravels is a tense two-hour thriller set entirely in the Swedish nightmare prison of fluorescent lights and free tiny pencils.

Nicolas Winding Refn brings us the best thriller I’ve seen in years. It’s like being shot in the face with a gun and the gun is called entertainment.

101 DALMATIANS III: PUPPY FARM

Werner Herzog brings us quite possibly his best film yet, picking up ten years on from where 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure ended. Roger and Anita, both killed tragically in a scented candle fire, leaves the Dalmatian estate in ruin.

Step in their wayward cousin and Dracula impersonator, Eric Smalls (Alan Arkin). Smalls through a lifestyle of heavy drug use actually believes he is Dracula and hires the 101+ dogs as his hounds of hell. Now just to find some maidens.

It’s like the film Snow Dogs promised but never actually delivered on.