Becky Hallsmith, owner of the Ultimate Picture Palace, reveals the top ten films of last year — as chosen by her staff

With last year now drawn to a close and the new year beginning, I can now reveal the results of our annual UPP Film of the Year Awards. The polling took place, as it always has, at our Christmas party, which was on December 15. The eligibility criteria is that the films had to have a 2013 UK release date, and also to have already been screened at the UPP, so some recent releases that you might have expected to see on our list, notably Blue Is the Warmest Colour and Nebraska, had yet to start their runs with us.

Here is our Top 10, in reverse order of course:
 

In a three-way tie for eighth place: The Place Beyond the Pines, Captain Phillips and Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty. Our Brookes work placement student Leo had The Great Beauty as his top film, describing it as “a modern day Fellini film, it is both glamorous and critical”.

Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s critically and commercially successful update of A Streetcar Named Desire, came in seventh. (By the way, it’s made us want to see Brando strut his stuff again and we’ll be doing a 35mm screening of Streetcar at the beginning of January).

Then we have a tie for fifth place between Gravity and Philomena. Gravity had only just started its run with us at the time of the party, and I suspect it would have fared a lot better had everyone already seen it.

Stephen Frears’ Philomena has also been a more than popular choice with our audience, so much so that we will be bringing it back in January. Bar volunteer Laura called it “tragic, heart-warming and hilarious”.

In fourth place is the heart-rending story of irresponsible parenting, What Maisie Knew. It was volunteer Kate’s first choice “because I have never seen such an accurately portrayed childhood experience of divorce... and I cried the whole way through”.

In third place comes the bold and the brash, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. Marketing assistant Victoria loved it for its “beautiful visuals, great pace — a good adaptation of the book — wonderful cast”.

Runner-up is Belgian blue-grass drama The Broken Circle Breakdown. Long-serving volunteer Felix (she’s been at the UPP longer than I have) said: “What I like is movies that are enjoyable, have a gritty edge, and deal with real human issues. I left the cinema feeling it was well portrayed and changed my perception.”

For our winner, we go way, way back, to the start of the year for Quentin Tarantino’s uber-stylish and violent slavery Western Django Unchained. It ticked all the boxes for cinema manager James . . . “well written, well paced, good soundtrack, good story”.

Was your favourite film on our list? Projectionist Hog and volunteer Meryl’s top choices, powerful documen-taries The Act of Killing and The Gatekeepers, just missed the cut. And my own film of the year? Yet again it came nowhere near to being placed! It was Joss Whedon’s low-budget screwball adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. Oh well!