Ah, revenge. Why does something so bad sometimes feel so necessary? Particularly in its most bloodthirsty form, it's a concept well explored onscreen, from almost every western and martial arts film to the final act of so many horrors – and the entirety of the spectacularly absurd TV series currently showing on E4, which is so obsessed with the idea it couldn't be called anything other than Revenge. But what do those determined to get their own back truly hope to achieve, and where does an eye for an eye actually end?

After reinvigorating the actioner in 2011 with The Raid and its furious flurry of feet and fists, what next for the obscenely talented Welsh writer-director Gareth Evans? More of the same? Well, not quite. The sequel widens its net and extends its running-time, taking the action from a Jakarta tower block to the city's streets and dividing its time between the gangs competing for control of the city. Returning are Evans' martial arts muse Iko Uwais (with whom this marks his third collaboration) and the almost embarrassingly exciting ultra-violence.

300: Rise of an Empire is the follow-up to perhaps the most homoerotic film of all time, 300 - a film whose obsession with the well-lubricated muscularity of the male form was matched only by its unabashed exaltation of ultra-violence (rendered endlessly and often tediously in slow-mo). It was hardly high art or sound history, but it had aesthetic bravado and a certain logic, with the strangely sexy battles effectively evoking the Spartan idea of a glorious death.

At some point during Non-Stop - a mostly serviceable though increasingly nuts peril-on-a-plane movie - I began to doubt that Liam Neeson had ever had a credible career. Recently we've seen him starring in assorted nonsense such as Battleship and Wrath of the Titans and if you go back a few years you'll recall him looking bored in The Phantom Menace. But what we've gotten particularly used to is Neeson as the middle-aged action man, the skull cruncher from the pretty hideous Taken movies.

With the end of 2013 nearly upon us it's time for a last look back before we step forward into the unknown. Yesterday our rundown of the year's finest films took you from a radiant romance to a bristling biopic, but the nature of such lists means that the best is yet to come and those that remain could hardly be more different. And so - our final five.

5 Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino)

No definitive answers to what was "the best" of 2013 of course, and I daresay opinions will differ wildly. For instance, despite the plaudits showered on it elsewhere, I felt that Broadchurch stretched itself too thin after showing initial promise. An increasingly acute allergy to serial killer dramas meant I couldn't get too involved with Tony Grisoni's Southcliffe, let alone The Fall, with its extended, voyeuristic murder scenes.

Among the multiple achievements of American Psycho, any one of which might be enough to make Rupert Goold's long-awaited Almeida season-opener the banner musical of a notably busy year for the form, a particular paradox deserves mention up front. Here's a piece steeped in material (the Bret Easton Ellis novel from 1991 and its film version nine years later) that fetishises surfaces and wallows in emptiness and that - a grand hurrah! - turns out itself to have a lot to say.

Reactions to Only God Forgives are going to be defined by expectations. Its star, Ryan Gosling, is an all-purpose arts polymath equally at home with music and film, who has directed and written as well as acted. Its director, the Danish-born Nicolas Winding Refn, has no problems with pushing genres beyond their limits despite working within America’s film industry. Gosling was in Refn’s 2011 film Drive, and their follow-up might have been expected to develop that film’s approach by once again hyper-stylising the familiar.

How many reviews of War Requiem do you want to read in Britten centenary year? This is theartsdesk’s fourth, and my second – simply because though I reckon one live performance every five years is enough, Rattle’s much-anticipated Berlin Philharmonic interpretation fell almost entirely flat, and I wanted to hear at least one good enough to move me to tears.

In a deranged world where Charlie Sheen is President of the United States, Hollywood gets a much-deserved and highly amusing roasting. Robert Rodriguez’s sequel to Machete goes straight for the jugular by mocking Hollywood's golden child, that "galaxy far, far away" film franchise - which doggedly refuses to sling its hook. Rodriguez not only flips his middle finger at reboots and outworn action clichés, he also takes jabs at US foreign policy and the controversy surrounding the Mexican border fence.

In keeping with the absurd humour of the previous film, POTUS demands that Machete (played once again by Danny Trejo) head to Mexico to solve the drug cartel problem in exchange for American citizenship. This impossible mission plays out like a Bond film but has more in common with the Austin Powers franchise. Violence and comedy go hand in hand here, with one joke after another massacring the logic of the Hollywood machine and its minimal and reductive roles for anyone outside a certain demographic. In his fight for justice and a green card, Machete comes up against evil mastermind Voz, played by the-no-longer-ubiquitous-for reasons-everyone-knows Mel Gibson, who inhabits a secret lair loaded with movie history weaponry – which sets up some of the funniest moments in the film.

Female roles are thankfully varied: Michelle Rodriguez (who, while we’re on the subject of a lack of decent roles for women in Hollywood, would be brilliant as Wonder Woman in the Justice League film when that happens) reappears in the role of Luz, who has moved from her taco truck to a warehouse as head of an underground resistance, now using technology to fight their battle. Sofia Vergara (pictured above centre) pops up as a gun-toting whorehouse madam, Amber Heard as a spy with a Miss San Antonio guise, Lady Gaga as a bad-ass bounty hunter and Vanessa Hudgens (still shedding her Disney tag) as the daughter of the head of the drug cartel.

The furiously fast-paced postmodern humour subverts the sexualisation of women in film by using and pushing it to its limits in a very cheeky way. In no way is the genre of grindhouse off limits either, with the outdated attitudes to women in many of those films taking a beating - the women get to cock their breastplated guns and deliver comical take-downs as recompense.

Considering the character of Machete first sprang to life in a manufactured trailer in Planet Terror (Rodriguez’s entry in the double feature Grindhouse, made with Quentin Tarantino), his longevity is surprising. And this stoned-faced, almost silent character isn’t quite over the hill yet - here we see him mocking Twitter (“Machete don’t tweet” he quips). Perhaps he aims at too many targets, but Rodriguez knows how important it is to laugh at himself and the inconsistencies of an industry that isn’t always representative of its viewers.

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Machete Kills