Every year I rate my favourite films from the previous 12 months. It’s a way of cataloguing the year’s viewing and revisiting those movies that for one reason or another stayed in my consciousness. It gives the films a longer life, a resonance, beyond the initial viewing. And then because I always compare the list with my good friend Derek Agnew’s best, I find out about those I‘d let slip by. Or if there are films that are highly rated by the cognoscenti that I find myself avoiding, I get an insight into my changing preferences and prejudices. For instance, the more I heard about Parasite and the louder the commendations, the less I wanted to see the thriller/comedy/drama/social commentary by the Korean iconoclast Bong Joon-Ho. Given that it earned best film honours at the Oscars, I may have missed out on one there. But the 10 I rated the most enjoyable were my own personal pantheon for the year. And I finally got around to listing them, roughly in order.

Apollo 11
What an astonishing viewing experience. Ideally, you’re watching this documentary about the 1969 lunar landing on a big screen to truly appreciate the epic scope of the mission, the team and infrastructure behind it, and the ambition of those who put everything on the line to get there. Made entirely from archival footage pieced together with tremendous deftness by director Todd Douglas Miller, the film charts the Apollo program’s most celebrated mission. This was a transportive, mesmerising experience in no small part due to the soundtrack, created entirely with a 1969-era Moog synthesiser by Matt Morton.

Sometimes, Always, Never
I didn’t notice this film on any of the year’s best lists, which is surprising, really. I left the cinema thinking I’d seen something unique, quirky and uplifting, despite a sadness at its core. Bill Nighy plays a natty retired tailor searching still for a son lost now for many years while struggling to connect with the son left behind, and his family. Scrabble is involved.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
Assassin deluxe John Wick has been made “incommunicado” for his actions in the second Wick outing. In this one he dispatches with lethal aplomb legions of fellow hitmen trying to take him out in order to earn the generous bounty on Wick’s head. In this cross-cultural celebration of the art of elimination, somehow Wick survives the depredations of the High Table, its underlings and henchmen, losing a digit and introducing us to horse fu and dog fu along the way.

1917
True, 1917 represents an impressive technical achievement in editing and cinematography, and one can’t help but be impressed by the fluid, seemingly seamless movement of the camera, and the manner in which the film hangs together. But it is also a thrilling, visceral and tremendously emotional depiction of Britain in the First World War, and a moving cinema experience. I wasn’t expecting that.

Avengers: Endgame
There is a lot going on in this epic closing chapter (for now) superhero saga but somehow all the threads in the story are tied together with skill, tact, excitement and sensitivity.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino has famously declared that he will make an even 10 films and then never again call “action” on a feature-length film. But with Once Upon the Time in Hollywood seemingly the most Tarantinoesque film yet – featuring the director’s obsessions, conventions, excessive dialogue, gratuitous violence and generous running time – it’s been suggested this outing – his ninth – should conclude the canon. Brad Pitt (doing his best Billy Jack impression) and Leonardo DiCaprio both shine, but it might just be the costuming and production design evoking 1969 so convincingly that provide the film’s most compelling performance. Leave a bit more of Margot Robbie’s performance on the cutting room floor and this could really have been something extraordinary.

The King
Mendo (Ben Mendelsohn as Henry IV) and Edgo (Joel Edgerton as Falstaff) are standouts in this pared-down retelling of the band of brothers, the happy few, who fought and defeated an upstart contemptuous (what else?) French army.

Diego Maradona
It’s easy to forget how big and how good the little Argentinian soccer superstar was. In this narrator-less (seems to be the style these days) docco, the best example of “big” might be the scene where 60,000 Napoli fans turn up to watch Maradona ink his contract with the Italian giant. So, that’s just to put pen to paper, in his street clothes. And the “good”? Perhaps the footage of the maestro against the English at the 1986 World Cup and the two goals he tallied in the 2-0 triumph. The first was the famous “hand of God” score, but the second sees Maradona take possession and seemingly dodge and weave past every single Brit on the pitch to score and secure the win.

Ford v Ferrari
You don’t have to be a huge gearhead to appreciate this movie, but it probably helps to have an appreciation for cars (Fords and Ferraris in particular). That said, I’m not by any means an autophile, yet this biopic has enough narrative juice to power a V12, lively performances, cracking production design and a moving father-son story. It’s cinema that’s the winner at the falling of the chequered flag.

Amazing Grace
Technical difficulties and contract imbroglios meant footage from this concert, filmed at a church in Los Angeles in 1972 when a 29-year-old Aretha Franklin was at the apex of her considerable powers, sat in cans for about 40 years. This despite the fact that the album made from performances over two nights had been a huge success. Backed by the buoyant Southern California Community Choir and its effervescent conductor, and with the support of the Reverend James Cleveland, the docco provides a transcendent experience.