The world premiere of Saving Mr Banks, the extraordinary story of how Mary Poppins was brought to the big screen, drew the BFI London Film Festival to a glamorously fitting close.

Sharply funny, yet an unabashed tear-jerker, it pits the prickly PL Travers (a magnificent Emma Thompson) against Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) in a tooth-and-nail combat to prevent the Hollwood mogul from turning her beloved literary creation into a "cavorting and tinkling" cartoon character.

Not only did Hanks (below) close the festival, he also opened it with biopic Captain Phillips. In Paul Greengrass's nail-bitingly tense drama about the 2009 hijacking of a US cargo ship by Somali pirates, he gives one of the best performances of his career.

There was a far more exciting line-up to this 53rd London Film Festival (LFF) compared with last year's, although many of the films had already been showcased at other film festivals or were due for general release during the festival itself - which seems a bit of a cheek.

But it did provide the chance to see what could prove next year's Oscars frontrunner, Steve McQueen's unrelenting 12 Years A Slave. It's a brutal and graphically violent account of the real-life story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was abducted and sold into slavery in the 1800s.

It should earn Chiwetel Ejiofor an Oscar nomination for his remarkable performance as Northup.

Be prepared to laugh, cry and be enraged by Stephen Frears's film Philomena. It's another true story, this time of an Irish Catholic woman (Judi Dench) who decided to find her son more than 50 years after he was taken away from her in a convent.

She enlisted the help of ex-BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith, played superbly by Steve Coogan (above left), with the latter making an odd but inspired pairing with Dench.

Alfonso Cuaron's gripping space thriller Gravity, which stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as stranded astronauts battling for survival, is a breath-taking visual delight, while JC Chandor's virtually dialogue-free All Is Lost features Robert Redford in a leaking boat for over an hour-and-a-half in what must be his most physically gruelling role to date. It is surprisingly compelling - just think Life Of Pi minus the tiger.

Also strangely riveting is Tracks. It's based on the true tale of Robyn Davidson who, in 1977, trekked more than 1,500 miles by foot across the Australian outback accompanied by three camels and her dog. Mia Wasikowska is luminous as the fiercely independent but emotionally fragile Davidson.

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt shows thrilling promise in his directorial debut film Don Jon. He plays a young Catholic lothario who, despite his success with the ladies, is addicted to porn. Left emotionally void and running off to confession every week, his travails make for a film that's smart, edgy and hilarious.

LFF veteran Alexander Payne's latest film Nebraska was one of the festival's highlights. Shot in black and white it chronicles a road trip by a father and son from Montana to Nebraska in search of a non-existent fortune. Starring Bruce Dern, June Squibb and Stacy Keach it is totally sublime.

Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida about faith, Polish Jews and the Holocaust won this year's best film prize while Rob Brown's debut feature Sixteen, an urban thriller whose protagonist is a former child soldier in the Congo, is also well worth looking out for.