So what did 2013 at the movies really feel like?

Spielberg went to Cannes but the Palme stayed at home. Bertolucci went to Venice and saw the Gold Lion stay there too but a Romanian took the big prize in Berlin. Haneke met Arnie before heading to the Oscars (lol) where the race looked rich but the winner was poor. Hollywood continued to churn out the sequels and remakes to varying degrees of enjoyment as London shadowed Manhattan as the blockbuster capitol and Matthew McConaughey swung his career into a dramatic U-turn.

 An old master bored us with To the Wonder, a young apprentice tripped with At any Price, Cormac McCarthy wrote a sex scene with a car and Sophia Coppola slipped ever further away. Ulrich Seidl delighted and disgusted with his Paradise series while Thor, Iron Man and the Furious team offered strong entries in theirs. Zach Snyder’s Man of Steel did not.  With Monsters University, Pixar lost a little more sheen but Frozen’s gags and songs gave us a shock Disney treat. In documentaries, Joshua Oppenheimer went to Indonesia and changed the game while Sarah Polley stayed at home and broke our hearts. Soderbergh delivered two great films then threw in the towel. Philip French left the Observer after 35 years of service and Roger Ebert left our planet after 70 years of life. We also lost the young Paul Walker, the wonderful Joan Fontaine and the great Peter O’Toole. Richard Linklater closed (for now) his unique trilogy, Woody Allen returned to the States with a return to form as quietly out east, Hirokazu Kore-Eda laid claim to Ozu’s crown. J.J. Abrams gave new hope for 2015 and Alfonso Cuaron took us to space before Steve McQueen brought us all tumbling down.

Are we facing the death of cinema? Will 3D, digital or downloading wreck the place? On this evidence it would seem not. We all love it too much.  

It was also the first full calendar year in which this humble writer attempted to carve his route into that world so many thanks to anyone who had a quick read, it means a great deal. From a mouldy coffee at a 9am screening of G.I. Joe Retaliation to meeting Werner Herzog I’ve loved the lot.

My top 10 films will follow shortly.

Following Paradise: Love, the first of his trilogy, Ulrich Seidl is back with his second instalment. Paradise: Faith is a wonderfully dark and sordid exploration of humanity at its most bizarre.

We meet Anna, a religious fundamentalist and spreader of the good word whose feelings for her saviour are far from sacred. Anna attempts to keep her emotions at bay by balancing her private moments of weakness with horrendous sessions of self-flagellation. Despite all this and in a quite welcoming twist, Anna is strangely likable. While being in no way relatable she has an earnestness which borders on endearing.

Anna makes the occasional house call, converting and blessing whatever she can, but aside from these excursions the bulk of the film takes place in her apartment. An oppressive and static world precisely framed with strict right angles and parallel lines. The colour system manages to excite and numb accordingly. A dreamlike pale blue for Anna’s prayer group; a stale orange for the kitchen; and a muddy olive green for the bedroom, the setting of her most intimate and base moments.

It all may sound like a crude exercise in provocation but the real dark pleasures of this film do not lie in its tragedy but in its humour. Even those with the most lax sense of PCness won’t see it coming and just wait till Anna’s crippled, Muslim and very horny husband shows up. What a pair these absurd humans make. Physical humour just doesn’t get any darker.

Paradise: Faith is destined to polarize audiences. I challenge anyone to see it and not come out strongly opinionated, one way or another. It’s perhaps a well-worn cliché but a necessary one none the less; any work of art which can garner these sorts of reactions, good or bad, is most definitely worthwhile. This is film making at its most bold and daring.