Alike’s journey is a harrowing one, filled with victories and setbacks, heartbreak and heroism, forgiveness and despair. Most of all, however, there is hope and there is love, and no matter how dark the night the light streaming from the horizon at dawn will almost certainly warm the cockles of even the most miserly heart.

Put simply, A Separation is one of the great cinematic achievements I’ve ever seen, and in my opinion is the best film I saw in 2011.

Criterion’s Blu-ray presentation of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men is sensational. Do yourself a favor and add it to your personal collection immediately.

Big, bold and loud, Tarsem Singh’s mythological adventure Immortals is a lot of fun.

Cornish has delivered an invigorating, supercharged frolic. Attack the Block is out of this world, and to call it anything else would be a bloody man-eating crime.

Captain America: The First Avenger is an engaging sensation I didn’t want to end, and when the Avengers do assemble next year, here’s hoping their initial adventure is half as thrilling a spectacle as this one is.

Mike Leigh’s dark, twisted and very, very funny 1993 effort Naked is as raw and as emotionally nude as anything the acclaimed filmmaker has ever made.

Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast is a true classic in every sense of the word.

Terrence Malick’s fifth motion picture The Tree of Life is a breathless cinematic miracle that’s unlike anything else I’ll see in all of 2011.