Director - Michael Haneke
The film that put Haneke on the map. Two young men take a family hostage in their summer home. Really uncomfortable to watch despite the fact that almost none of the violence happens on screen. By far and away the best film to deal with one of Haneke’s major obsessions - the depiction of violence in films and how the audience reacts to it. Haneke doesn’t make bad films. Essential viewing.
Director - Spencer Susser
Mum dies in a car crash, dad finds it hard to leave the sofa and TJ (Devin Brochu) their teen son is getting into all sorts of post-traumatic trouble. So far so American indie drama. Then Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns up as the title character. It's almost as if he’s stepped out of a totally different movie. Hesher is a potty-mouthed delinquent. You know this as he has long hair and looks perma-stoned. The whole thing never really gels. Levitt tries his best to act like he imagines those sort of people are, but comes across as a total caricature. Could have been good, Brochu is a real find, but the film just doesn’t work. Best avoided.
Director - Sidney Lumet
Gritty British cop drama staring Sean Connery as a cop that kills a suspect during an interrogation. Not quite up there with Lumet’s greatest films (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men), but for a taught itchy '70s drama you could do far worse.
Director - Lasse Hallström
Wonderful Swedish film about a boy who goes to live with his weird uncle in rural Sweden once his mother becomes ill. Odd, dark, very dramatic and best of all surprisingly funny. Sadly Hallström wouldn’t make many more films as well balanced as this once he crossed the pond. Perfect rainy Sunday afternoon viewing.
Directors - Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
Fairly run-of-the-mill poker film that starts off well enough despite lifting it's opening first third from Robert Altman's superior California Split, then quickly pisses away any promise by the time the end credits role. A chance meeting between Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) and Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) results in the two of them hitting the road for a high stakes poker game in New Orleans. The characters never really come to life and the direction is fairly flat. Reynolds doesn't stand a chance next to an on form Mendelsohn as the grubby low-life. Disappointing.
Director - Philip Haas
Underrated to the point of being forgotten adaptation of one of Paul Auster’s best novels. Jack (James Spader) is an aces poker player off to play a high stakes game against a couple of excentric millionaires. The only thing is he doesn’t have the stake money, enter Jim (Mandy Patinkin aka Saul from Homeland), who just happens to have a few grand floating around. Things don’t go as planned and that’s when it all gets a bit weird. Well worth hunting down, Spader is on top form and this even has a Auster cameo where he proves in a few seconds of screen time that he can’t act anywhere near as good as he writes.
Director - Krzysztof Kieslowski
When Witek’s father dies he quits medical school and we witness three versions of his life play out, one after the other. Kieslowski’s masterpiece about possible futures, fate and chance was suppressed by the Polish government and didn’t receive a cinematic release until 1987, and even then it was heavily edited. Extremely good, highly recommended especially for anyone who liked the concept of Sliding Doors but not the actual film.
Director - Ulrich Seidl
A total oh-my-God-watch-did-I-just-watch film. Various messed up Austrian’s lives overlap at various points like a kind of queasy Altman film. Not for everyone, but worth sticking with if you have a strong stomach. Black humour throughout, but whatever you do don’t watch it with your mum.
Director - The Dardenne Brothers
Marion Cotillard has the titular time to try and convince her co-workers not to take a bonus that will result in her being laid off from work. The Dardenne brothers have a knack of extracting amazing performances from their actors which they allow to drive their films. Their directorial style is unflashy but fully thought through with their use of long takes drawing the viewer into the story. Simply put this is one of the best drama films of recent years.
Director - Quentin Lawrence
Peter Cushing stars as a bank manager duped into helping a villain rob his bank. Worth watching just to see Cushing sweating his way through the brief running time (80 minutes). Very good.
Director - Val Guest
Hammer always churned out more than just horror films and this twisty psychodrama is one of their better '60s efforts. Famous racing driver has a road accent and needs to unlock what happened with the help of a weird French psychoanalyst. Overlong, but worth sticking with as the last half hour is the business.
Directed - Robert J. Flaherty
Hailed as the first real documentary then later booed for being scripted and faked. Flaherty’s most famous film is this documentary about a family of Eskimos. Made long before there were rules for documentaries this deserves applause for Flaherty having the balls to take his camera out of the studio and onto the tundra. If you don’t like seeing animals killed on screen (which I don’t) then this might not be your cup of tea.
Director - Edward Dmytryk
One of a group of soldiers has committed a murder, but which one of them is it? Great post WWII American noir about bigotry. In typical ‘40s style the message is heavy handed, but a couple of great acting turns from Robert’s Mitchum (laid-back to the point of almost nodding off) and Ryan (at his most horrid) make this a bit of a must see.
Director - David Fincher
How the social media phenomenon of the noughties came to be. Despite the subject matter being about as exciting as the that time your dad got into an dispute with his neighbour about the shared driveway, this actually works. It helps that Aaron Sorkin was on script duties, and Fincher has seems to have dropped his flashier visuals of yore and adopted a more mature visual style. Perfect Sunday afternoon drama.
Director - Stuart Cooper
One of those ‘adapted from the stage’ films that struggles to get away from its theatre roots. John Hurt is on fire as perma-angry Malcolm, who having been thrown out of art school is determined to get back at his teacher by kidnapping him. Suffers from the usual stage adaptation problem of being very talky and trundling along quite slowly. Despite some great actors (Hurt and David Warner are both up to their usual standard), you can’t help but think they they were already way to old to be playing angry teens. The humour feels ever so dated too, the analogy between Malcolm not being able to get an erection and not being much of a political leader quickly becomes tiresome. All a bit ho-hum really, only worth a watch if you really want to see John Hurt acting his young socks off.
Director - Maurice Pialat
Pialat turns his eye on a group of bored teens in a tiny French town. We follow them as they mooch about town, meet up in the one café where they hang out, watch them form relationships that fall apart in the time it takes to smoke an incredibly strong French cigarette. They all dream of escaping to Paris, but will any of them actually get it together to do it? On paper it sounds dull, on screen it’s anything but. Hypnotic.
Director - Errol Morris
Morris’ breakthrough documentary about a murdered policeman and the trial that followed is chock full of OH-MY-FUCKING-GOD moments. If you like documentaries, and modern documentaries in particular then this is a must see. Essential viewing.
Director - Louis Malle
Bonkers Louis Malle film set in a not so distant future where the war of the sexes (literally) is in full swing. Lily (an Alice in Wonderland type) stumbles across a farm (Malle’s own county pile in fact), and ends up being drawn into the weird goings on inside. Malle made the film up as he went along and it shows, there’s almost no dialogue and what little there is emanates from the mouth of the various animals rather than the humans. Best approached as the sort of film you'll probably only ever watch the one time. But if you're a fan of Malle then it at least deserves that one viewing.
Director - Michael Mann
Mann’s debut big screen feature still manages to pack a neon-reflected-in-rain-soaked-streets-to-a-throbbing-electronic-soundtrack punch. Mann takes the downbeat '70s crime guy and drags him kicking and screaming into the '80s. James Cann stars as the diamond thief out to do one last heist, and is perfect in the role. Themes that are touched on in this film show up again and again in most of Mann’s future films, with Heat being the ultimate culmination of that. W O N D E R F U L.
Director - Michael Winterbottom
Michael Nyman scored, Altmanesque London set drama in which we follow various people over the course of a weekend, through highs and lows, drama and comedy all filmed in a spectacularly low-budget but beautifully grainy way. A British cast to die for (Gina McKee, Shirley Henderson, Ian Hart, John Simm) all act their socks off as things fall apart around them. We’re all alone. A must see.
