Hiatus: 30 films

Contemplating three years' cultural diet. First, the films.

As life took a new direction, I all but disappeared from Googleable terrain three years ago, retreating elsewhere. Now I emerge from that hidden place, blinking into the light, into a very different world.

The hidden place was Yorkshire. As I negotiated my new life, God's Own Country cocooned me in an embrace of Northern matter-of-factness and unspeakably good pork pies. Now it's back to Edinburgh and time to reflect on a three-year interruption of normal service.

Here are thirty of the finest films I saw during the Yorkshire hiatus. Every one of them is recommended with a watch-this-now urgency. Admittedly, that is logistically difficult – but I beg you to make the effort.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Th. Dreyer)

Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)

Footlight Parade (1933, Lloyd Bacon)

Dodsworth (1936, William Wyler)

Midnight (1939, Mitchell Leisen)

Great Expectations (1946, David Lean)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950, John Huston)

Ace in the Hole (1951, Billy Wilder)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, Elia Kazan)

Summertime (1955, David Lean)

Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray)

Punishment Park (1971, Peter Watkins)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

Fanny and Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)

Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam)

Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988, Terence Davies)

Raise the Red Lantern (1991, Zhang Yimou)

Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997, Werner Herzog)

You Can Count on Me (2000, Kenneth Lonergan)

Talk to Her (2002, Pedro Almodóvar)

Tomboy (2011, Céline Sciamma)

Skyfall (2012, Sam Mendes)

Amour (2012, Michael Haneke)

Stories We Tell (2012, Sarah Polley)

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Joel & Ethan Coen)

Her (2013, Spike Jonze)

Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer)

Boyhood (2014, Richard Linklater)

Birdman (2014, Alejandro G. Iñárritu)

Honourable mentions: The Last Laugh (1924); Flesh and the Devil (1926); Love Me Tonight (1932); Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933); a host of Barbara Stanwyck movies; Oliver Twist (1948); Un Chant d'amour (1950); Orphée (1950); A Face in the Crowd (1957); Anatomy of a Murder (1959); The Hustler (1961); Onibaba (1964); The Elephant Man (1980); In the Mood for Love (2000); McCullin (2012); Zero Dark Thirty (2012); Lincoln (2012); 12 Years a Slave (2013); Calvary (2014).

And a final big up to The Lego Movie and the films of Derek Jarman.

Thanks, Yorkshire.