TERENCE MALICK’S return to the fray was one of the highlights of 2011’s film year.

A SCIENTIFIC exploration to Antarctica uncovers rather more than it bargained for in The Thing (16s), when a structure is discovered buried deep in the ice.

A four-minute sex scene – heavily criticised by the Vatican – may have brought this Italian film to the attention of a wider audience but it deserves to be seen for many other reasons.

Nanni Moretti directs The Caiman (Optimum, €24.99), a sharp political work about a useless film producer Bruno (Silvio Orlando) burdened with debt and a failing marriage, who stumbles across a script about media mogul and Italian ex-PM, Silvio Berlusconi.

Italian director, Nanni Moretti, turns the spotlight on himself and records the dramatic and often humorous and fearful moments in his life, from the day his wife announces her pregnancy in Aprile (Optimum, €24.99).

The Son’s Room, Italian director Nanni Moretti’s stirring account of a family whose happy life is shattered by the death of a teenage son, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival tonight.