Every year our staff vote for their favourite books, albums, films and TV shows of the past 12 months. Here are our top 10 DVDs of the year, voted for by Readings’ staff, and displayed in no particular order.

(You can find all our best picks for books, CDs & DVDs of 2018 here.)

Call Me By Your Name

Northern Italy, 1983 – swimming, peaches, long summer days. Luca Guadagnino’s swoony adaptation of André Aciman’s novel is a sensual evocation of first love between two young men. Timothée Chalamet delivers a physically expressive performance, rich with yearning, coiled sexual energy, and vulnerability. His beautiful heartbreak will haunt you long after the credits stop rolling.

The Vietnam War

Documentarian Ken Burns turns his keen eye to America’s most controversial war. Joined by co-director Lynn Novick, eighteen hours and ten episodes give time and space to a multiplicity of experiences and voices, including those of the Vietnamese people, plunging us deep into every aspect of the war and traumas of the period to devastating effect.

BPM (Beats Per Minute)

Robin Campillo fuses the political and personal with this raw, emotional story about young AIDS activists fighting for government action in the early 1990s in Paris. This unforgettable film immerses us in the agonies of illness, but also frequently soars with the ecstasies of living every day like it might be your last.

Call My Agent!: Season 1

Set in a Parisian talent agency, this French-language series looks at the intermingled professional and personal lives of agents charged with representing some of France’s most famous acteurs. Both melodrama and comedy, there are great insights here into the ‘business’ and each episode features a great French actor ‘playing’ themselves.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Dark and funny, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest exploration of social mores is an unsettling experience from its first to final shot. Colin Farrell is a heart surgeon forced to make an impossible choice to atone for past wrongs. Drawing on Greek tragedy it features a cast that commit themselves completely to the psychological horrors that ensue.

Love, Simon

Coming of age and coming out collide in Love, Simon. It’s a landmark film – the first (unbelievably) from a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teen romance. Simon (Nick Robinson) points out that he’s just like everyone else while he tries to keep his secret identity from being broadcast in the school cafeteria.

Patrick Melrose

Benedict Cumberbatch is simply brilliant as the drug-addled Patrick Melrose wrestling with childhood trauma in this five-part adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s semi-autobiographical novels. Shattering the tidy veneer of British aristocracy, Patrick Melrose balances wry, often black humour with intensely emotional, redemptive moments. It’s exquisite in every way.

The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 1

This multiple award-winning series extends the world imagined by Margaret Atwood to take on new, ever-more chilling resonance in the era of #MeToo and with the rise of alt-right politics around the world. Elisabeth Moss leads an exceptional cast as the world of Gilead becomes increasingly oppressive. Vital viewing.

The Crown: Season 2

It’s 1956, and as the world faces a potential crisis in Suez, Queen Elizabeth II (the extraordinary Claire Foy) faces one in her marriage. Production and period details remain exceptional, but it’s the human conflicts of royal life that are the real hook, especially scene-stealing Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret.

Paddington 2

Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) is a long way from Darkest Peru; the lovable bear finds himself imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. While his adopted family work to clear his name, Paddington dispenses lessons in kindness and acceptance behind bars. This is one sequel that betters its original.