From Sinners to F1 to Highest 2 Lowest, Guardian writers pick the scenes that stuck with them the most this year
Spoilers ahead
Disclosure: I covered auto racing for years and still follow Formula One skeptically. I definitely went into F1: The Movie knowing what I was in for, an answer to the hypothetical: what if the bougiest sport on God’s green earth was turned into a western? But you can’t help going along for the ride once Brad Pitt starts filling the frame with his blue-eyed winks, wry smiles and Butch Cassidy swagger. I should’ve been more indignant about this martinet sport making a literal hero out of the biggest rogue on the grid. But I left disbelief in parc fermé as Pitt’s Sonny Hayes bumped and nicked his way to the season finale at Abu Dhabi to much consternation before his wingman (Damson Idris) takes up the ticky tactics at Yas Marina circuit and winds up sacrificing himself and producer Lewis Hamilton (not again!) to help Sonny win his first race and thwart a hostile takeover of their fragile team. And when the lights went up at my desolate midday screening, it was just me still on the edge of my seat and my disbelief still firmly off track. Andrew Lawrence
Where to start? Jos Safdie’s ping-pong epic is fitted out with one brilliantly imagined sequence after another, any of which could qualify as the year’s best. The death camp honey-licking? The orange-ball sales pitch? The Chalamet ass-whipping? The ping-pong club as mob lounge? You’re spoiling us, Mr Safdie. But I think on balance the most eye-popping bit of all is, of all things, its animated opening credits sequence, which follows, shall we say, a spermatozoa race to the ovum, a pseudo-real version of what Woody Allen got up to in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. This takes its cue from what’s just happened in the film’s opening scene, and ties in (without giving too much away) to its ending. It’s been a long time since I felt my jaw actually drop slightly in a cinema; if nothing else, it tips you off that something ... unusual ... is on its way. Andrew Pulver
