Apocalypto (2006)

At first sight, writer/director Mel Gibson's Mayan epic seems intimidating. It's 140 minutes long, has subtitled Yucatan dialogue and is set in pre-Spanish Mexico. Yet despite appearances it's no pretentious art house film but a thrilling chase movie in which Mayan warrior Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is pursued through the jungle by a vicious rival tribe eager to use him as a blood sacrifice. Stocking up on sadistic violence, Gibson matches The Passion of the Christ's bloodsoaked tableaux with a catalogue of astonishingly gory beheadings and impalements, all set against the forbidding backdrop of Mayan pyramids and lush tropical undergrowth. He directs the set pieces with style, creating an exciting, exhausting action adventure that's like a strangely compelling hybrid of Mayan mythology, 1980s video nasty Cannibal Holocaust and Tarzan.