Chinatown (1974)

Highly Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Roman Polanski
Writer: Robert Towne
Cinematographer: John A. Alonzo
Composer: Jerry Goldsmith
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, Roy Jenson, James Hong

Coming across like the baleful lovechild of Raymond Chandler and Karl Marx, Polanski’s majestic, doleful portrait of an enigmatic private detective in 1930s drought ridden Los Angeles, chronicling his various misadventures after he stumbles upon a multi-million dollar conspiracy, is as depressingly relevant today as it ever was. Iain.Stott

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926)

Cautiously Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Harry Edwards
Writers: Frank Capra, Hal Conklin, Gerald C. Duffy, J. Frank Holliday, Harry Langdon, Arthur Ripley, Murray Roth, Tim Whelan
Cast: Harry Langdon, Joan Crawford, Edwards Davis, Tom Murray, Alec B. Francis, Brooks Benedict, Carlton Griffin

There’s a cracking two-reeler hidden within this painfully stretched feature film, in which Langdon’s love-struck imbecile stumbles into a cross-country walking race, as two or three scenes are quite wonderful, but unfortunately there’s also a lot of soporific dross in between. Iain.Stott

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Not Recommended
USA/Germany
Feature Film
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Writer: Catherine Johnson
Cinematographer: Haris Zambarloukos
Composer: Benny Andersson
Cast: Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski, Dominic Cooper

With a cast (more annoyingly perky than a room full of children’s TV presenters on amphetamines) running around singing ABBA songs against the backdrop of a sun-drenched Greek island, Lloyd’s Mamma Mia! is a typical feel-good film, i.e. totally depressing - for genuine ABBA infused feel-goodery, see Lukas Moodysson's Together (2000). Iain.Stott

City of God (2002)

Brazil/France
Feature Film
Original Title: Cidade de Deus
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Writers: Bráulio Mantovani, Paulo Lins
Cinematographer: César Charlone
Composers: Ed Cortês, Antonio Pinto
Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Phellipe Haagensen, Douglas Silva, Jonathan Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge, Jefechander Suplino, Alice Braga

Meirelles’s ‘70s-set, fact-based portrait of a vicious gang war in the hope-starved favelas of Rio de Janeiro, episodically recreating the lives of the fresh-faced inhabitants of the titular slum, contains several scenes of breathtaking power, but unfortunately there is also much in the way of flashy, soulless ephemera. Iain.Stott

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Anthony Minghella
Writers: Anthony Minghella, Patricia Highsmith
Cinematographer: John Seale
Composer: Gabriel Yared
Cast: Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack Davenport, James Rebhorn, Sergio Rubini, Philip Baker Hall

More layered than René Clément’s 1960 adaptation of Highsmith’s novel, Minghella’s sexy, sun drenched effort, chronicling Damon’s mild mannered, titular character’s gradual descent into sociopathy, is also a thoroughly entertaining one, with fine performances from a well assemble cast and a nicely eclectic soundtrack. Iain.Stott

Sight & Sound's Films of 2003

  1. Adaptation (2002)
  2. The Son (2002)
  3. Le Souffle (2001)
  4. The Five Obstructions (2003)
  5. Être et Avoir (2002)
  6. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
  7. Drunk on Women and Poetry (2002)
  8. Spirited Away (2001)
  9. Young Adam (2003)
  10. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Sight & Sound's Films of 2001

  1. Amores Perros (2000)
  2. Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)
    The Others (2001)
  3. Code Unknown (2000)
    Faithless (2000)
  4. A One and a Two... (2000)
  5. The Circle (2000)
    Eloge de l'Amour (2001)
  6. À Ma Soeur (2001)
    Together (2000)

The New World (2005)

Highly Recommended
USA/UK
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Terrence Malick
Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki
Composer: James Horner
Cast: Colin Farrell, Q'orianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer, August Schellenberg, Wes Studi, David Thewlis, Yorick van Wageningen, Raoul Trujillo

Malick’s typically lyrical depiction of the setting up of the Jamestown settlement by British settlers on the shores of the titular lands in the early 17th century, and their troubled interactions with the Powhatan locals, is a pleasingly unromantic work, which is as brutal as it is beautiful. Iain.Stott

The Band's Visit (2007)

Israel/France/USA
Feature Film
Original Title: ביקור התזמורת
Writer/Director: Eran Kolirin
Cinematographer: Shai Goldman
Composer: Habib Shadah
Cast: Sasson Gabai, Ronit Elkabetz, Saleh Bakri, Khalifa Natour, Imad Jabarin, Tarak Kopty, Hisham Khoury, Francois Kheel, Eyad Sheety, Shlomi Avraham, Rubi Moscovich, Hila Surjon Fischer, Uri Gabriel, Ahouva Keren

An Egyptian police band, invited to perform at the Arab culture centre in Petah Tiqva, end up stranded in the tiny, little backwater of Beit Hatikva, and tentatively begin to interact with the local populace, in Kolirin’s gently droll, deeply affecting, and really rather beautiful exploration of the bitter-sweet universalities of human experience. Iain.Stott

Don't Look Now (1973)

Essential Viewing
UK/Italy
Feature Film
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Writers: Chris Bryant, Allan Scott, Daphne Du Maurier
Cinematographer: Anthony Richmond
Composer: Pino Donnagio
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Massimo Serato, Renato Scarpa, Adelina Poerio

By turns frightening, unsettling, beautiful, and painfully moving, Roeg’s incomparable masterpiece – part supernatural horror film, part unblinking portrait of grief – is a bravely acted, distinctively shot, disquietingly scored, and quite brilliant masterwork. Iain.Stott

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Cautiously Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Director: Terence Fisher
Writers: Peter Bryan, Arthur Conan Doyle
Cinematographer: Jack Asher
Composer: James Bernard
Cast: Peter Cushing, André Morell, Christopher Lee, Marla Landi, David Oxley, Francis de Wolff, Miles Malleson, Ewen Solon

Perhaps the most acclaimed of all Doyle adaptations, this stylish Hammer effort with Cushing as Sherlock Holmes - investigating the death of the venerable Lord Baskerville, against the backdrop of fantastic legends of ancient curses and haunted moors - is an entertaining if perhaps easily forgotten film. Iain.Stott

The Way I Killed My Father (2001)

Cautiously Recommended
France/Spain
Feature Film
Original Title: Comment j'ai tué mon père
Director: Anne Fontaine
Writers: Jacques Fieschi, Anne Fontaine
Cinematographer: Jean-Marc Fabre
Composer: Jocelyn Pook
Cast: Michel Bouquet, Charles Berling, Natacha Régnier, Amira Casar, Stéphane Guillon, Hubert Koundé, Karole Rocher

A successful doctor, with a beautiful wife, a sexy mistress, and a penchant for surgically enhanced prostitutes, finds his comfortable existence under threat when the arrival of his long absent father forces him to reappraise his life in Fontaine’s interesting if rather cold and slightly familiar study of masculine inadequacies and anxieties. Iain.Stott

Nuts in May (1976)

UK
Television Film
Series Title: Play for Today (1970-1984)
Writer/Director: Mike Leigh
Cinematography: Michael Williams
Cast: Roger Sloman, Alison Steadman, Anthony O'Donnell, Sheila Kelley, Stephen Bill

This cringe-inducing social satire, ripe for allegorical readings, following a faddishly earthy bourgeois couple into the countryside for a camping holiday, where they struggle to cope amidst the Great Unwashed, is an often riotously entertaining film, and quite possibly Leigh’s funniest. Iain.Stott

Let's Get Lost (1988)

Recommended
USA
Feature Documentary
Director: Bruce Weber
Cinematographer: Jeff Preiss
Featuring: Chet Baker

Weber paints an even handed portrait every bit as bitter-sweet as its dilapidated protagonist’s often wonderful music (which underscores the majority of the film), presenting Chet Baker as a once beautiful figure, ravaged by years of drug use, but one that could still seemingly hold a tune. Iain.Stott

Naked (1993)

Essential Viewing
UK
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Mike Leigh
Cinematographer: Dick Pope
Composer: Andrew Dickson
Cast: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge, Greg Cruttwell, Claire Skinner, Peter Wight, Ewen Bremner, Susan Vidler, Deborah MacLaren, Gina McKee

Thewlis’s brilliant, disquieting performance as a violent and misanthropic yet viciously intelligent Mancunian drifter, who absconds to London, verbally provoking anyone that comes across his path, forms the coruscating centre of Leigh’s stunning, scabrously funny, and grimly moving exploration of desperate lives. Iain.Stott

Funny Ha Ha (2002)

Highly Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Andrew Bujalski
Cinematographer: Matthias Grunsky
Cast: Kate Dollenmayer, Christian Rudder, Jennifer L. Schaper, Lissa Patton Rudder, Andrew Bujalski, Marshall Lewy

Painfully honest and full of awkward encounters and inarticulate conversations, Bujalski’s soul-strokingly beautiful slice-of-life drama – a portrait of a life in transition – depicts the ups and downs of a 24-year-old-woman (the entrancing Dollenmayer) as she tentatively attempts to step into the adult world. Iain.Stott

The Four Feathers (1939)

Not Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Director: Zoltan Korda
Writers: R.C. Sherriff, Lajos Biro, Arthur Wimperis, A.E.W. Mason
Cinematographers: Osmond Borradaile, Georges Périnal
Composer: Miklos Rozsa
Cast: John Clements, Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith, June Duprez, Allan Jeayes, Jack Allen, Donald Gray, Frederick Culley

At times unintentionally funny, and blighted with soporific action sequences, the Korda brothers’ production of Mason’s much filmed novel, a tale of derring-do set against the backdrop of the British lead massacre of Mahdist freedom fighters at Omdurman, filled with characters afflicted with nobility, selflessness, and other such inhumanly disagreeable characteristics, is a just about watchable if depressingly colonialistic, adventure film. Iain.Stott

Hillsborough (1996)

UK
Television Film
Director: Charles McDougall
Writer: Jimmy McGovern
Cinematographer: Barry Ackroyd
Composer: Robert Lane
Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Sarah Graham, Mark Womack, Tracey Wilkinson, Ricky Tomlinson, Rachel Davies, Scot Williams, Maurice Roëves

Painting a damning portrait of the former Chief Superintendent of South Yorkshire Police, David Duckenfield, as well as of The Sun newspaper, but also a beautifully human one of the relatives of the victims, McGovern’s sensitive, impassioned, and justifiably angry portrait of the Hillsborough disaster and its ugly aftermath is often painfully hard to watch. Iain.Stott

Honeydripper (2007)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Writer/Director: John Sayles
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Composer: Mason Daring
Cast: Danny Glover, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Yaya DaCosta, Charles S. Dutton, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Gary Clark Jr., Mable John, Nagee Clay, Absalom Adams, Arthur Lee Williams, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Davenia McFadden, Daryl Edwards, Sean Patrick Thomas, Eric L. Abrams, Kel Mitchell, Keb' Mo'

In this 1950s-set rural drama, Sayles paints a vibrantly subtle portrait of an American south filled with casual, institutionalised racism, where black people are inducted into slavery under the guise of vagrancy control, and black business is made nigh impossible by seemingly white-only credit, but there’s always the music… Iain.Stott

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Highly Recommended
Italy/USA
Feature Film
Original Title: C'era una volta il West
Director: Sergio Leone
Writers: Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci, Mickey Knox
Cinematographer: Tonino Delli Colli
Composer: Ennio Morricone
Cast: Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Gabriele Ferzetti

Quite possibly the film with the best claim to the title of the ultimate Western, Leone’s beautifully phlegmatic, Bolognese-dipped portrait of an enigmatic stranger’s effect on the lives of some vicious outlaws, a corrupt businessman, and a former-tart-with-a-heart, is a stunningly acted, beautifully photographed, and distinctively soundtracked minor masterpiece. Iain.Stott

Cottage to Let (1941)

UK
Feature Film
Director: Anthony Asquith
Writers: Anatole de Grunwald, J.O.C. Orton, Geoffrey Kerr
Cinematographer: Jack Cox
Composer: Charles Williams
Cast: Leslie Banks, Alastair Sim, John Mills, Jeanne De Casalis, Carla Lehmann, George Cole, Michael Wilding, Frank Cellier, Muriel Aked, Wally Patch

Quite who did what to whom and why is often hard to ascertain in Asquith’s convoluted wartime espionage comedy, but a wonderfully assembled cast, the hammiest death scene ever committed to celluloid, and a scene-stealing mini-George Cole ensure that it is never anything less than entertaining. Iain.Stott

Little Children (2006)

USA
Feature Film
Director: Todd Field
Writers: Todd Field, Tom Perrotta
Cinematographer: Antonio Calvache
Composer: Thomas Newman
Cast: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Gregg Edelman, Noah Emmerich, Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis Somerville

Field’s formally playful picture - a coruscating adaptation of Perrotta’s novel, painting a damning portrait of suburbia, filled with children big and small, selfishly and prejudicially blundering their way towards instant gratification and assumed moral superiority - is a bravely acted, beautifully made, and frighteningly believable film. Iain.Stott

Molière (2007)

Recommended
France
Feature Film
Director: Laurent Tirard
Writers: Laurent Tirard, Grégoire Vigneron
Cinematographer: Gilles Henry
Composer: Frédéric Talgorn
Cast: Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, Laura Morante, Edouard Baer, Ludivine Sagnier, Fanny Valette, Gonzague Montuel, Gilian Petrovski

… or Molière in Love; Tirard’s sumptuous speculation on the events that lead to Molière’s writing of Tartuffe, chronicling the eponymous playwright’s brief, farcical dalliance with the very edges of high society, is, with its accomplished performances, excellent production values, and Talgorn’s delightful score, thoroughly entertaining. Iain.Stott

Shattered Glass (2003)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Billy Ray
Writers: Billy Ray, H.G. Bissinger
Cinematographer: Mandy Walker
Composer: Mychael Danna
Cast: Hayden Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Zahn, Hank Azaria, Melanie Lynskey, Rosario Dawson

This pleasingly low-key production, filled with attractively subtle performances and agreeable surface detail, chronicling the fib-telling, infamous, former journalist Stephen Glass’s undoing, despite its obvious entertaining qualities, never really gets under the skin of its ethically dubious protagonist. Iain.Stott

Springtime in a Small Town (2002)

China/France/The Netherlands
Feature Film
Original Title: 小城之春
Director: Tian Zhuangzhuang
Writers: Ah Cheng, Li Tianji
Cinematographer: Mark Li Ping-bing
Composer: Xu Jianping
Cast: Hu Jingfan, Wu Jun, Xin Baiqing, Ye Xiaokeng, Lu Si Si

Adapted from the same source story as Fei Mu’s much acclaimed Spring in a Small Town (1948), Tian’s beautifully nuanced film, coming after an enforced ten-year hiatus, exquisitely exploring an emotionally complicated ménage-a-trois, is a visually sumptuous and really rather moving work of great delicacy. Iain.Stott

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Larry Charles
Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Peter Baynham, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazer, Todd Phillips
Cinematographers: Luke Geissbuhler, Anthony Hardwick
Composer: Erran Baron Cohen
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Luenell
Sacha Baron Cohen travels across America in the guise of his Borat character, lampooning small mindedness and bigotry along the way, in this intelligent yet sophomoric and perhaps a little cruel though undeniably funny and very entertaining ragbag of a movie. Iain.Stott

13 Tzameti (2005)

Cautiously Recommended
France
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Géla Babluani
Cinematographer: Tariel Meliava
Cast: George Babluani, Pascal Bongard, Aurélien Recoing, Fred Ulysse, Nicolas Pignon, Vania Vilers, Olga Legrand, Christophe Vandevelde

A young Georgian immigrant chances upon a set of mysterious instructions that promise the possibility of instant riches, and, with him recently losing out on a big payday, he follows them and stumbles into a dangerous world of underground gambling in Babluani’s sub-Bressonian curio that fails as both thriller and allegory, but, with some starkly attractive photography and a lovely sense of pacing, just about manages to hold the attention. Iain.Stott

A Cock and Bull Story (2005)

Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Writers: Frank Cottrell Boyce, Laurence Sterne
Cinematographer: Marcel Zyskind
Composer: Edward Nogria
Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Jeremy Northam, Kelly Macdonald, Naomie Harris, Ian Hart, Gillian Anderson

Falling Somewhere between Kiarostami and Entourage (HBO), Winterbottom’s post-modern ragbag of delicious old nonsense – depicting a film-crew’s filming of Sterne’s unfilmmable novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767), with most actors playing several parts (including themselves) – is an insightful, very funny, and wonderfully acted look at the artistic process (Brydon, in particular, is excellent). Iain.Stott

A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Essential Viewing
UK
Feature Film
Writer/Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cinematographer: Erwin Hillier
Composer: Allan Gray
Cast: Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, Sergt. John Sweet, U.S. Army

Powell and Pressburger’s ethereally beautiful film, quite possibly their greatest work, and one that no description could ever do justice to, is a rambling chronicle of the pilgrimage of three people to Canterbury, taking in such delights as feisty land girls, enigmatically sticky magistrates, and a sleeping, Moore Marriotless Graham Moffatt. Iain.Stott

Ghost World (2001)

Recommended
USA/UK/Germany
Feature Film
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Writers: Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwigoff
Cinematographer: Affonso Beato
Composer: David Kitay
Cast: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas, Bob Balaban, Stacey Travis

Although the plot doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, Zwigoff’s entertaining comic book adaptation – chronicling the first tentative steps taken by two lifelong friends into the adult world – is a heartbreakingly beautiful portrait of lives growing in different directions, and a sad statement about the impossibility of individuality in today’s society. Iain.Stott

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Cautiously Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Frank Darabont
Writers: Frank Darabont, Stephen King
Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
Composer: Thomas Newman
Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, Mark Rolston, James Whitmore

Although hamstrung somewhat by the speechifyingly unrealistic dialogue and a general lack of credibility when it comes to prison life, Darabont’s sprawling portrait of a mild mannered banker, wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his wife and her lover, is, never the less, by the time that it gets to its thoroughly satisfying conclusion, an entertainingly rewarding experience. Iain.Stott

Night of the Demon (1957)

Cautiously Recommended
UK/USA
Feature Film
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Writers: Charles Bennett, Hal E. Chester, Cy Endfield, M.R. James
Cinematographer: Ted Scaife
Composer: Clifton Parker
Cast: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham, Athene Seyler

An American psychologist who specialises in debunking witchcraft travels to England, where he becomes dangerously intertwined with a nefarious cult, in Tourneur’s (surprisingly direct) horror film, which, despite some rather camp moments and a slightly weak central performance, proves to be an atmospherically entertaining little film. Iain.Stott

Afghan Star (2009)

Recommended
UK
Feature Documentary
Director: Havana Marking
Cinematographer: Phil Stebbing

Marking’s fascinating Afghanistan-set documentary, chronicling the progress of a number of contestant’s on a reality-TV tinged musical talent show (one that retains all of the qualities that make its western equivalents so distasteful), paints an eye-opening portrait of a country in the process of monumental change. Iain.Stott

Victim (1961)

Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Director: Basil Dearden
Writers: Janet Green, John McCormick
Cinematographer: Otto Heller
Composer: Philip Green
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Syms, Dennis Price, Nigel Stock, Peter McEnery, Donald Churchill, Anthony Nicholls, Hilton Edwards

Although at times logic is in danger of being lost to polemic, Dearden’s beautifully paced film, chronicling a married, non-practicing homosexual lawyer’s attempts to track down a blackmailer targeting the local gay community (homosexuality was still illegal at this point), is a brave, stylish, and important exploration of a, then, taboo subject. Iain.Stott

Michael Clayton (2007)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Tony Gilroy
Cinematographer: Robert Elswit
Composer: James Newton Howard
Cast: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Merritt Wever, Michael O'Keefe

Screenwriter Gilroy’s directorial debut - a tale of corporate skulduggery, legal manipulation, and moral awakening, chronicling Clooney’s world-weary, indebted, gambling addicted lawyer’s quest for truth and redemption - is an intelligent, well-made, and surprisingly humanistic journey through a cynical and dangerous world. Iain.Stott

The Innocents (1961)

Highly Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Jack Clayton
Writers: William Archibald, Truman Capote, John Mortimer, Henry James
Cinematographer: Freddie Francis
Composer: Georges Auric
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Megs Jenkins, Martin Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Peter Wyngarde

Clayton’s stunning film, an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), chronicling a new governess’s gradual realisation that her charges have been possessed by malevolent spirits (although her theories don’t receive much support), is, with its sumptuous yet unsettling imagery, frighteningly good child performances, and disquieting soundtrack, one of Cinema’s most memorable and affecting ghost stories. Iain.Stott

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Michael Curtiz
Writers: Ranald MacDougall, James M. Cain
Cinematographer: Ernest Haller
Composer: Max Steiner
Cast: Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Bruce Bennett, Eve Arden, Jo Ann Marlowe, Moroni Olsen

With its alternately playful and unsettling mise en scène and universally convincing performances, Curtiz’s jolting noir-cum-melodrama, an adaptation of Cain’s novel about a mother who gives up just about everything for her ungrateful, snobby, materialistic, and desperately-in-need-of-a-good-slapping eldest daughter, is a parenting cautionary tale quiet unlike any other. Iain.Stott

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Writer: Michael Arndt
Cinematographer: Tim Suhrstedt
Composers: Mychael Danna
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin

Dayton and Faris’s feature debut – boasting some brilliant comic performances, chronicling one extended, dysfunctional family’s road trip from Alburkerke to California to a attend a rather disturbing child beauty pageant – is a moving, insightful, and often laugh-out-loud funny examination of the things and dreams that we fill our lives with in order to stave off thoughts about the pointlessness of existence. Iain.Stott

My Voyage to Italy (1999)

Highly Recommended
Italy/USA
Feature Documentary
Original Title: Il mio viaggio in Italia
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Raffaele Donato, Kent Jones, Martin Scorsese
Presenter: Martin Scorsese

Scorsese guides us on a delightfully personal and subjective journey through classic Italian cinema, shining a delicate, thoughtful light on Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni, in this more focused companion piece to the equally excellent A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995). Iain.Stott

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (2009)

UK
Television Series Special
Director: Doug Naylor
Writer: Rob Grant
Cinematographer: Andy Martin
Cast: Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewellyn

The crew of the Red Dwarf, following a squid attack, somehow end up back on Earth in 2009, and discover that they are just fictional characters in a TV show in this curious return to our screens, after a ten year hiatus, that at times threatens to disappear up its own backside, but some nice topical gags and a few recycled plot ideas just about make it a welcome return. Iain.Stott

In the Company of Men (1997)

Highly Recommended
USA/Canada
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Neil LaBute
Cinematographer: Tony Hettinger
Composer: Karel Roessingh, Ken Williams
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Stacy Edwards, Matt Malloy

At times, very hard to watch, LaBute’s searing, allegorical (?) portrait of a schadenfreudian businessman, who shows signs of misogyny, misandry, racism, snobbery, homophobia, and general misanthropy, is an uncompromisingly constructed, ultra-low budget work that has much to say about the dark heart of mankind. Iain.Stott

Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Michael Apted
Writers: Tom Rickman, Loretta Lynn, George Vecsey
Cinematographer: Ralf D. Bode
Cast: Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D'Angelo, Levon Helm, Phyllis Boyens, Ernest Tubb

Spacek, doing her own singing, is absolutely fabulous in the titular role of the popular country singer Loretta Lynn, in Apted’s entertaining biopic, chronicling her progress from 13-year-old child bride in the hills of Kentucky to her arrival in Nashville and onto international stardom. Iain.Stott

Millions Like Us (1943)

Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Writer/Directors: Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder
Cinematographers: Jack Cox, Roy Fogwell
Cast: Patricia Roc, Gordon Jackson, Anne Crawford, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Moore Marriott, Eric Portman

Despite an all too brief, superfluous, and surprisingly dull appearance from the oft brilliant duo of Radford and Wayne, Gilliat and Launder’s warmly drawn portrait of life on the home front during the Second World War is, with its mix of funny, dramatic, romantic, and poignant moments, a movingly entertaining little film. Iain.Stott

The Long Memory (1952)

Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Director: Robert Hamer
Writers: Robert Hamer, Frank Harvey, Howard Clewes
Cinematographer: Harry Waxman
Composer: William Alwyn
Cast: John Mills, John McCallum, Elizabeth Sellars, Eva Bergh, Geoffrey Keen, Michael Martin-Harvey, John Chandos, John Chandos, Thora Hird

John Mills’s recently released ex-convict, wrongly accused of murder, ventures back out into the world, single-mindedly intent upon revenging those that connived and contrived to put him behind bars; but humanity (his and others’) ensures that twelve years of pain is not as easy to wipe-out as he had first thought, in Hamer’s stylish, excellently acted, and really quite moving examination of vengeance and loss. Iain.Stott

A History of Violence (2005)

Highly Recommended
USA/Germany
Feature Film
Director: David Cronenberg
Writers: Josh Olson, Vince Locke, John Wagner
Cinematographer: Peter Suschitzky
Composer: Howard Shore
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Ashton Holmes, Peter MacNeill, Stephen McHattie, Greg Bryk, Kyle Schmid

When a pair of psychotic thieves attempt to rob a family-owned diner in a small American town, the quiet, mild-mannered proprietor leaps into action and kills the two of them, and in the process becomes a media hero, but when a group of Philadelphia mobsters arrive in town asking some awkward questions, the family man’s history of violence gradually comes to light, in Cronenberg’s expertly crafted examination of violence and its effects upon the inflictor and those around them. Iain.Stott

Robin and Marian (1976)

Highly Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Richard Lester
Writer: James Goldman
Cinematographer: David Watkin
Composer: John Barry
Cast: Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Nicol Williamson, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris, Kenneth Haigh

Let down only by John Barry’s sentimental score, chronicling Robin Hood’s return to England after twenty years of obediently following King Richard around the world, re-teaming him with his beloved Marion, and putting him back at odds with his mortal enemy, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Lester’s typically myth-busting look at the later life of this bow-wielding legend is a desperately funny and melancholy minor masterpiece. Iain.Stott

Gallivant (1997)

Highly Recommended
UK
Feature Documentary
Director: Andrew Kötting
Cinematographer: Nick Gordon Smith
Composer: David Burnand
Featuring: Andrew Kötting, Eden Kötting, Gladys Morris

Kötting’s remarkable film - chronicling the film-maker’s low-key journey around the entire coastline of Britain accompanied by his 85-year-old grandmother and 7-year-old, Joubert's-syndrome-suffering daughter - is a visually playful, whimsically funny, quietly moving, and obliquely informative minor masterpiece, and a quite unforgettable experience. Iain.Stott

1408 (2007)

Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: Mikael Håfström
Writers: Scott Alexander, Matt Greenberg, Larry Karaszewski, Stephen King
Cinematographer: Benoît Delhomme
Composer: Gabriel Yared
Cast: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack, Jasmine Jessica Anthony


An author who travels from “haunted” hotel to “haunted” motel in search of paranormal experiences – experiences that he has yet to, but would dearly love to, experience – receives an intriguing sort-of invite to stay in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, New York, which he duly takes, and then, of course, things begin to go bump in the night, in Håfström’s smart, chilling, and surprisingly moving ghost story. Iain.Stott

The Family Friend (2006)

Recommended
Italy/France
Feature Film
Original Title: L’amico di famiglia
Writer/Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cinematographer: Luca Bigazzi
Composer: Teho Teardo
Cast: Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti, Gigi Angelillo, Marco Giallini, Barbara Valmorin, Luisa De Santis, Clara Bindi

An ageing, small-time moneylender who lives with his elderly, bed-ridden mother, and is, thanks to his hideous looks and complete lack of charm, prolifically unlucky with members of the opposite sex, manages to manoeuvre his way into the knickers of the beautiful young daughter of an indebted client, in Sorrentino’s stylish and entertaining if mildly disappointing follow-up to the far superior The Consequences of Love (2004). Iain.Stott

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Highly Recommended
USA
Short Feature Film
Director: Buster Keaton
Writers: Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, Joe Mitchell
Cinematographers: Byron Houck, Elgin Lessley
Cast: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton, Erwin Connelly, Ward Crane

An aspiring detective is accused of a crime that he did not commit by the family of his potential fiancée; banished, he returns to his day job as a film projectionist, and dreams of apprehending the real culprit, his dastardly love rival, in Keaton’s thrillingly imaginative short film. Iain.Stott

The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963)

Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Director: Cliff Owen
Writers: Len Heath, John Warren, John Antrobus, Ray Galton, Alan Simpson, Ivor Jay, William Whistance Smith
Cinematographer: Ernest Steward
Composer: Richard Rodney Bennett
Cast: Peter Sellers, Lionel Jeffries, Bernard Cribbins, Davy Kaye, Nanette Newman, Bill Kerr, Ed Devereaux, Reg Lye, John Le Mesurier

When a gang of Aussie rapscallions, dressed as policemen, start hitting London’s ordinary decent criminals, both Scotland Yard and a crooked cooperative join forces in order to restore the mutually beneficial status quo ante, in this deliriously funny satirical farce. Iain.Stott

Bob Roberts (1992)

Cautiously Recommended
USA/UK
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Tim Robbins
Cinematographer: Jean Lépine
Composer; David Robbins
Cast: Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Rickman, Ray Wise, Brian Murray, Gore Vidal, Rebecca Jenkins, Harry Lennix

Existing in some sort of satirical limbo - not quite subtle enough to be biting, but too subtle to be seen as camp fun - Robbins’s faux documentary, chronicling the senatorial election campaign of a popular country singer, manages, never the less, to hold one’s attention throughout. Iain.Stott

Ratcatcher (1999)

Highly Recommended
UK/France
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cinematographer: Alwin Kuchler
Composer: Rachel Portman
Cast: William Eadie, Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews, Michelle Stewart, Lynne Ramsay Jnr., Leanne Mullen, John Miller

Set amongst the mournful Glaswegian tenements of 1973, beset by alcoholism and striking binmen, against a backdrop of filth and squalor, deprivation and loss, Writer-Director Lynne Ramsay paints a lyrical, sensual, and quite beautiful portrait of a 12-year-old boy’s tragic, adventure-laden summer holidays. Iain.Stott

Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)

Highly Recommended
UK/Ireland/France
Television Film
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Writer: Guy Hibbert
Cinematographer: Ruairi O'Brien
Cast: Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt, Mark Davison

A former member of the UVF (Neeson) agrees to meet with the brother (an excellent, anxiety ridden Nesbitt) of a man that he killed 33 years previously, on camera for a television show, in Hirschbiegel’s tense and moving film, which thankfully avoids any easy answers to The Troubles. Iain.Stott

Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Highly Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Preston Sturges
Cinematographer: Victor Milner
Cast: Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Kurt Kreuger, Rudy Vallee, Barbara Lawrence, Lionel Stander, Edgar Kennedy

Rex Harrison’s famous conductor, led to believe that his young wife, played by the beautiful Linda Darnell, has been unfaithful to him with his secretary, fantasises about how he might deal with the adulterous pair, but unfortunately putting these theories into practice proves more difficult than he'd imagined, in Sturges’s brilliant black comedy, which has much to say about the relationships between thought, belief, assumption, truth, and reality. Iain.Stott

The Host (2006)

South Korea
Feature Film
Original Title: 괴물
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Writers: Baek Chul-hyun, Bong Joon-ho, Ha Jun-won
Cinematographer: Kim Hyung-ku
Composer: Lee Byung-woo
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Byeon Hie-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Du-na, Ko Ah-sung

Bong’s socially conscious creature feature, a very funny, thrilling, and superior piece of entertainment, chronicles the attempts of one family to recover their beloved youngest member, following the emergence of a chemically mutated monster from the Han river. Iain.Stott

Green for Danger (1946)

UK
Feature Film
Director: Sidney Gilliat
Writers: Sidney Gilliat, Claud Gurney, Christianna Brand
Cinematographer: Wilkie Cooper
Composer: William Alwyn
Cast: Alastair Sim, Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Rosamund John, Leo Genn, Judy Campbell, Megs Jenkins, Moore Marriott

The incomparable, mercurial Sim enlivens an otherwise rather silly whodunit with a raft of wonderful facial expressions, plus there are some nice comic moments, but the central mystery, revolving around a couple of murders in a rural hospital towards the end of the Second World War, is never even vaguely believable, and as for the horrible underuse of the brilliant Marriott - unforgivable. Iain.Stott

Summer Interlude (1951)

Sweden
Feature Film
Original Title: Sommarlek
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Writers: Ingmar Bergman, Herbert Grevenius
Cinematographer: Gunnar Fischer
Composer: Erik Nordgren
Cast: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Alf Kjellin, Georg Funkquist, Renée Björling

An embittered 28-year-old ballerina mysteriously receives her first love’s diary in the post, and becomes haunted by memories of an idyllic summer romance that unfortunately ended in tragedy, in this playful and moving early Bergman effort, which contains many of the themes that he would later develop on, but perhaps not quite the uncompromising eye of his best work. Iain.Stott

Open Hearts (2002)

Recommended
Denmark
Feature Film
Original Title: Elsker dig for evigt
Series Title: Dogme #28
Director: Susanne Bier
Writer: Anders Thomas Jensen
Cinematographer: Morten Søborg
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Sonja Richter, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Paprika Steen, Stine Bjerregaard, Birthe Neumann

Released under the ‘Dogme 95’ banner, though it breaks a number of its rules, Bier’s harrowing drama of infidelity and loss, chronicling the tortured emotional lives of a number of Copenhagen residents following a tragic traffic accident, is comparatively straightforward and accessible, but, unsurprising giving its wonderfully assembled cast, the viscerally charged performances are quite excellent. Iain.Stott

Early Summer (1951)

Essential Viewing
Japan
Feature Film
Original Title: 麦秋
Director: Ozu Yasujirō
Writers: Noda Kōgo, Ozu Yasujirō
Cinematographer: Atsuta Yuuharu
Composer: Itō Senji
Cast: Hara Setsuko, Ryū Chishū, Awashima Chikage, Miyake Kuniko, Sugai Ichirō, Higashiyama Chieko, Sugimura Haruko, Ikawa Kuniko, Nihonyanagi Kan, Shirosawa Isao, Murase Zen

Members of a happy Tokyo family begin to worry about the marital status of its eldest daughter, 28-year-old Noriko (the always wonderful Hara), who has so far she has laughed off suggestions of marriage; and so, when a possible suitor is identified, she announces ideas of her own, which are not immediately welcomed, in Ozu’s warm, poignant, gently humorous, and soul-caressingly beautiful ode to family life. Iain.Stott

The Machinist (2004)

Best Avoided
Spain
Feature Film
Original Title: El maquinista
Director: Brad Anderson
Writer: Scott Kosar
Cinematographer: Xavi Giménez
Composer: Roque Baños
Cast: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, John Sharian, Michael Ironside, Larry Gilliard

The sight of Bale’s skeletal form is one the most distasteful things to ever appear on our cinema screens, but other than that, Anderson’s rather familiar Kafkaesque tale, following Bale’s machine operator through a waking dream of paranoia, déjà vu, and guilt, is really quite anodyne and forgettable. Iain.Stott

Late Spring (1949)

Highly Recommended
Japan
Feature Film
Original Title: 晩春
Director: Ozu Yasujirō
Writers: Hirotsu Kazuo, Noda Kōgo, Ozu Yasujirō
Cinematographer: Atsuta Yuuharu
Composer: Itō Senji
Cast: Ryū Chishū, Hara Setsuko, Tsukioka Yumeji, Sugimura Haruko, Aoki Hohi, Usami Jun

At the risk of his own happiness, and despite her many protestations, an ageing Tokyo gentleman becomes determined to marry off his 27-year-old daughter, in Ozu‘s beautifully nuanced and quietly devastating film, which can boast cinema’s first pairing of the ever wonderful Ryu and Hara. Iain.Stott
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