No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood are both fantastic films, got to agree that Daniel Day-Lewis was excellent!

Also, Dead Mans Shoes is a film I would recommend

I enjoyed it. A lot actually.

Amazing low budget film, that one - also love Christine from a little later.

No-one has mentioned Once were Warriors, a shocking but inspiring film. Enjoyed many of those already mentioned but I enjoyed all these too:

Etre et Avoir
Wild at Heart
Spirited Away
Goodbye Lenin
LA Confidential
Straight Story
Cinema Paradiso
Labyrinth

and a special mention for Bubba Ho-tep. Any film with a plot line of Elvis and a black JFK in a nursing home fightng a soul-sucking mummy who preys on the elderley gets my vote............

As did I, best one I've seen so far this year.

Shawshank is an awful film full of every oscar winning cliche you can think of rolled into one film.

The narration
The old good guy in prison everyone likes
The old friendly black guy
The evil prison officer
The more evil rapist bad guy
The even more evil megalomaniac prison chief
The always calm under adversity main character
The guy who knows the truth getting killed

i could go on, the film makes me sick.

Tarrantino films are vastly overrated
"mmmm lets take a normal film and put the end in the middle, the middle at the end, not fully explain the beginning and throw a few motherfudgers and 'N' words in"
wow,
no actually,
nonsense.

A film needs a good story delivered well and try to make it edgy or original.

Shawshank is neither edgy or original.
Now if you want a film with Tim Robbins that is actually very good.

Arlington Road

I don't really rank films, films that I've seen recently that I've enjoyed and/or found gripping :

American History X
Leon
Step Brothers
In Bruges
Terminator II
Gladiator
Herbie Goes Bananas