2013: BEST SHOT

10. HELI (Amat Escalante, D.P.: Lorenzo Hagerman)

Yeh. That's a kid's dick on fire. Dunno about 'best' for that reason, but certainly memorable. And Lorenzo Hagerman's unflinching yet coolly haunting cinematography definitely ranks among the best of the year. Amat Escalante's most mature work to date is full of some of the year's strongest imagery.

9. PRISONERS (Denis Villeneuve, D.P.: Roger Deakins)

A much less explicit but equally horrible image of unthinkable violence. An apparently expressionistic shot of ultimate shadow, a bruised and filthy face only glimpsed by the slightest hint of artificial light from some distant source. The expressionism is imaginary, though, since for this suspected child killer, that enveloping blackness is his reality.

8. JUST THE WIND (Benedek Fliegauf, D.P.: Zoltan Lovasi)

We've only heard of this danger, the danger of death, at the hands of racist murderers. That's dumbing it down a bit, into a sentence's worth. For the family at the centre of Bence Fliegauf's slow-burning eventually startlingly bleak drama, it's a day-to-day concern, at least in recent days. They too have only heard of this danger. Until it is manifested in a mere suggestion, confined to the corner of Fliegauf's frame. He has lit the flame of tension, at long last, and from here on out, it won't let up.

7. THE BLING RING (Sofia Coppola, D.P.: Christopher Blauvelt, Harris Savides)

This isn't even the life she has stolen. This is the life she already had. A kitchen clad in a rosy shade of beige, the family figures' golden complexions blending in to their surroundings, even the hideous white balls of fluff contributing to the sickening shade of nouveau-riche American Dream afforded and abused.

6. NYMPHOMANIAC (Lars von Trier, D.P.: Manuel Alberto Claro)

After all that supposed nonsense in which she so steadfastly held onto, her very own fantasy in a world that denies her access to usual, regular fantasy, comes confirmation. Here's Joe's soul tree, staring her directly in the face. It has taken years of searching to find it, and hours of climbing, and still the divide between Joe and her spiritual representation in nature exists, but so too does that tree. It's as weary and as badly-weathered as she is, but there it stands. There it stands.

5. 12 YEARS A SLAVE (Steve McQueen, D.P. Sean Bobbitt)

Sean Bobbitt and Steve McQueen have a habit of producing some of my favourite movie imagery in their cinematic collaborations' respective years of release. Most of you probably know that I could have chosen any one of many shots from 12 Years a Slave, but this one resonated the longest. The slate grey aesthetic interrupted by the burnt orange shade of Adepero Oduye's dress - it's not a pleasant colour combination, though. It's a horrifying one, a gut-punch of a picture, as these black bodies, secreted in the back of a trailer, are uncovered by their white tormentors, and shuttled off on the next stage in their hopeless travels south.

4. THE ACT OF KILLING (Joshua Oppenheimer, D.P. Anonymous, Carlos Arango de Montis, Lars Skree)

I covered this particular shot a few days back, as my most unforgettable movie moment from 2013. It's not so much the shot composition, but rather the content. It's the year's most shocking shot, as monstrous mass murderer Anwar Congo suffers sudden, uncharacteristic retributive illness... or does he? One way or another, truth or lie, fact or fiction or both, it's certainly one of 2013's best shots.

3. THE GRANDMASTER (Wong Kar Wai, D.P. Philippe Le Sourd)

Philippe Le Sourd's cinematography wasn't perhaps the perfect match for Wong Kar Wai's inimitable style of filmmaking, but their collaboration yielded some stunning visual results. Chief among them, this one of Zhang Ziyi, approaching the fight of her life. She's coming to get ye!

2. GRAVITY (Alfonso Cuaron, D.P. Emmanuel Lubezki)

Alfonso Cuaron's incredible space-set thriller is mostly comprised of shots which would each merit a position on this list were they inserted into any of the other films on this list. But it's not about plain old visual beauty. It's about context as much as content, and it's this heroic closing shot that had me whooping and cheering! Inside my head, obvs. I'm British. Dignity and decorum and that, yanno.

1. WADJDA (Haifaa Al Mansour, D.P. Lutz Reitemeier)

As Haifaa Al Mansour quietly but bravely rails against strict Saudi society, so too does her protagonist. She now can and now will ride her bike, which she has rightfully earned. And she will ride it to the very limits of what she can achieve, and further still. This small, slight, black-clad figure, meeting a male-led country adapting to selective aspects of modern life; on her two-wheeled, manually-driven vehicle, she is quiet, but in this fabulous display of gutsiness, she is as brave as they come. Here she sits, on the edge of a busy main road, a road which we know this young girl will cross. And she'll have no-one to thank for that but herself. The most optimistic image in film from 2013.