The One-Line Review: March 2010

Who's Who (1979)

Television Film

Series Title: Play for Today (1970-1984)

Writer/Director: Mike Leigh

Cinematographer: John Else

Cast: Richard Kane, Adam Norton, Simon Chandler, Catherine Hall, Felicity Dean, Graham Seed, Jeffrey Wickham, David Neville, Richenda Carey, Phil Davis, Joolia Cappleman, Sam Kelly, Geraldine James

Leigh’s ramshackle, gently satirical, and thoroughly entertaining slice-of-life drama, made as part of the BBC’s Play for Today series, loosely knits together a number of interconnected social gatherings, casual conversations, and formal meetings featuring the employees of a small stockbrokerage, humorously – with a keen eye for class difference – painting a portrait of late '70s British society. Iain.Stott

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968)

Recommended

West Germany/Italy

Feature Film

Original Title: Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach

Directors: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub

Writers: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, Anna Magdalena Bach

Cinematographer: Ugo Piccone

Cast: Gustav Leonhardt, Christiane Lang

Huillet and Straub’s excellent Johann Sebastian Bach biopic, based on the diaries of his second wife Anna Magdalena Bach, captures – in a series of static, extended musical sequences – the power and wonder of his compositions, whilst also gently putting his works into the context of a time when even the lives of the wealthiest of people were painfully fragile. Iain.Stott

True Blood: Season 1 (2008)

USA

Television Series

Creator: Alan Ball

Cast: Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Sam Trammell, Ryan Kwanten, Rutina Wesley, Chris Bauer, Nelsan Ellis, William Sanderson, Jim Parrack, Carrie Preston, Alexander Skarsgård, Todd Lowe, Adina Porter, Michael Raymond-James, Michael McMillian, Lois Smith, Lizzy Caplan, Lynn Collins

Part vampire thriller, part cross-cultural romance, part serial killer murder mystery, Alan Ball’s small town Louisiana set series, although lacking the gravitas and refinement of his masterful Six Feet Under – in its own cartoony, slightly camp way – is generally thoroughly entertaining and rather addictive. Iain.Stott

From the Life of the Marionettes (1980)

Recommended

West Germany/Austria/UK

Television Film

Original Title: Aus dem Leben der Marionetten

Writer/Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cinematographer: Sven Nykvist

Composer: Rolf Wilhelm

Cast: Robert Atzorn, Christine Buchegger, Rita Russek, Martin Benrath, Heinz Bennent, Lola Müthel, Walter Schmidinger

After murdering a prostitute, a man, his wife, his doctor, his mother, and his wife’s homosexual friend attempt to paint a picture of his fragile mental state in the weeks leading up to the grisly event, in Bergman’s bleak and probing psychological enquiry, made during his self-imposed exile in West Germany. Iain.Stott

The Singer (2006)

Cautiously Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Quand j'étais chanteur

Writer/Director: Xavier Giannoli

Cinematographer: Yorick Le Saux

Composer: Alexandre Desplat

Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Cécile De France, Mathieu Amalric, Christine Citti

A middle-aged, overweight night club singer with an eye for attractive divorcées falls for an enigmatic, statuesque young blonde, and precedes to pursue her, using her role of estate agent as an excuse to get close to her, in Giannoli’s well acted and generally diverting if never entirely convincing bitter-sweet (almost) romance. Iain.Stott

Mad Men: Season 2 (2008)

USA

Television Series

Creator: Matthew Weiner

Cast: Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, Vincent Kartheiser, Christina Hendricks, January Jones, Aaron Staton, Michael Gladis, Rich Sommer, John Slattery, Robert Morse, Bryan Batt, Alison Brie, Mark Moses, Joel Murray, Peyton List

Set against The Cuban Missile Crisis and the death of Marilyn Monroe, the second season of Matthew Weiner’s immaculately crafted early ‘60s set drama is decidedly more conventional than its predecessor, with less mystery and intrigue than before, as it continues to tell the stories of a group of chauvinistic, booze sodden ad men in a slowly changing Manhattan. Iain.Stott

Mad Men: Season 1 (2007)

USA

Television Series

Creator: Matthew Weiner

With a strange sense of quiet desperation and melancholia barely kept beneath the surface, Matthew Weiner’s booze soaked, nicotine stained, and quite brilliant series follows the exploits of the workers of an advertising agency in Manhattan in 1960, centring on the enigmatic Don Draper (an excellent Jon Hamm), as they try to sell the wares of such tough sell clients as Israel, Lucky Strike, and Richard Nixon, whilst also attempting to bed as many secretaries as possible. Iain.Stott

CFB's Top 25 Obscure Films of 1940 (2010)

Our Town (1940)
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)
A Wild Hare (1940)
Strange Cargo (1940)
Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940)
Dots (1940)
A Night in June (1940)
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1940)
A Plumbing We Will Go (1940)
Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
Black Friday (1940)
From Mayerling to Sarajevo (1940)
The Stars Look Down (1939)
The Return of Frank James (1940)
Contraband (1940)
Murder Over New York (1940)
Seven Sinners (1940)
Tin Pan Alley (1940)
Flowing Gold (1940)
City For Conquest (1940)
Torrid Zone (1940)
The Man with Nine Lives (1940)
Edison, the Man (1940)
Johnny Apollo (1940)

CFB's Top 25 Films of 1940 (2010)

Rebecca (1940)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Pinocchio (1940)
The Shop around the Corner (1940)
His Girl Friday (1940)
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Fantasia (1940)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
The Letter (1940)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Christmas in July (1940)
The Sea Hawk (1940)
The Bank Dick (1940)
The Mortal Storm (1940)
Waterloo Bridge (1940)
They Drive By Night (1940)
The Westerner (1940)
Remember the Night (1940)
Gaslight (1940)
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
My Favorite Wife (1940)
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
The Great McGinty (1940)

Tropical Malady (2004)

Essential Viewing

Thailand/France/Italy/Germany

Feature Film

Original Title: สัตว์ประหลาด

Writer/Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Cinematographers: Jarin Pengpanitch, Vichit Tanapanitch, Jean-Louis Vialard

Cast: Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Huai Dessom, Sirivech Jareonchon, Udom Promma

Weerasethakul’s intensely sensual and very unconventional film joyfully depicts an ever so tentative romance between a young soldier and an illiterate farmhand that gently and enigmatically morphs into a strangely and hypnotically beautiful supernatural (sort of) horror story. Iain.Stott

Chocolat (1988)

Highly Recommended

France/West Germany

Feature Film

Director: Claire Denis

Writers: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau

Cinematographer: Robert Alazraki

Composer: Abdullah Ibrahim

Cast: Isaach De Bankolé, Giulia Boschi, François Cluzet, Cécile Ducasse, Jean-Claude Adelin, Kenneth Cranham, Mireille Perrier, Emmet Judson Williamson

Memories from her childhood living on a remote northern estate in colonial Cameroon come flooding back to her when a young white woman accepts a ride from a kindly stranger and his young son, whose playful relationship reminds her of one from her own past, in Claire Denis’s gentle, sensual, and subtextful directorial debut. Iain.Stott

The Queen of Spades (1949)

Cautiously Recommended

Feature Film

Director: Thorold Dickinson

Writers: Rodney Ackland, Arthur Boys, Alexander Pushkin

Cinematographer: Otto Heller

Composer: Georges Auric

Cast: Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans, Yvonne Mitchell, Ronald Howard, Mary Jerrold, Anthony Dawson, Miles Malleson, Michael Medwin, Athene Seyler, Ivor Barnard

An army captain, who believes that he could do great things if only he had money, begins to woo the granddaughter of an aged countess, who sold her soul to the devil in exchange for the secret to winning at cards, in order to discover the secret for himself, in Dickinson’s handsomely photographed and consummately constructed if somewhat emotionally uninvolving supernatural tale. Iain.Stott

The Other Side of the Underneath (1972)

Recommended

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Jane Arden

Cinematographers: Jack Bond, Aubrey Dewar

Composers: Sally Minford, The Continuum

Cast: Sheila Allen, Susanka Fraey, Liz Danciger, Ann Lynn, Penny Slinger, Jane Arden, Sally Minford, Jenny Moss, Liz Kustow, Rosie Marcham, Elaine Donovan, Bill Deasey

Jane Arden and the rest of The Holocaust Theatre Company’s adaptation of their play The Holocaust (1970) is an incredibly visceral, feminist primal scream of a movie, which – set in an asylum, painfully following the treatment of a group of schizophrenic women – veers unpredictably from an exhilarating to a downright agonising yet never less than vital viewing experience. Iain.Stott

Content (2010)

Recommended

UK/Germany

Feature Documentary

Director: Chris Petit

Writers: Ian Penman, Chris Petit

Cinematographers: Chris Petit, Christopher Roth

Composer: Antye Greie aka AGF

Narrator: Chris Petit

Featuring: Hanns Zischler, Matthew Evans, Mai Iun-Xue, Laurin Berreshein, Agathe Wiesner, Till Bönninhausen, Lizia Schleip, Louis Petit

Petit’s “ambient road movie” – a rather non-specific journey from here to there and back again, wherever they may be – provides a meditation on the passing of time and ageing, progress and decay, describing the death of the tangible and the rise of the virtual, set against his relationship with his son in the wake of his own father’s death. Iain.Stott

Sugarhouse (2007)

Cautiously Recommended

Feature Film

Director: Gary Love

Writer: Dominic Leyton

Cinematographer: Daniel Bronks

Composer: Michael Price

Cast: Steven Mackintosh, Ashley Walters, Andy Serkis, Adam Deacon, Ted Nygh, Tolga Safer, Ade, Tracy Whitwell

A wealthy, besuited gent, distraught over the break-up of his marriage, finds himself in a disused warehouse, bordering a high-rise estate, attempting to buy a gun from a jittery crack-head, D; but when the true owner of the gun, a vicious drug dealer, enters the scene, he is soon left bargaining for his life, in Love’s well made and entertainingly unpredictable if generally overblown feature debut. Iain.Stott

Family Nest (1979)

Highly Recommended

Hungary

Feature Film

Original Title: Családi tüzfészek

Writer/Director: Tarr Béla

Cinematography: Pap Ferenc

Composers: Móricz Mihály, Szörényi Szabolcs, Tolcsvay László

Cast: Horváth Lászlóné, Horváth László, Kun Gábor, Ifj. Kun Gábor, Kún Gáborné, Szekeres Jánosné, Korn József, Irén Rácz, Oláh Jánosné, Horváth Krisztina, Kádár Adrienn

Tarr’s scintillatingly scarifying debut, an impassioned polemic (that never feels polemical), brilliantly captures, in an unrelenting series of handheld close-ups, a family’s implosion, caused by Hungary’s hopelessly bureaucratic housing policies, which led to a situation where three generations of one family were forced to cohabit in a one bedroom flat. Iain.Stott

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

Essential Viewing

UK/France

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Peter Greenaway

Cinematographer: Sacha Vierny

Composer: Michael Nyman

Cast: Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard, Tim Roth, Ciarán Hinds, Gary Olsen, Ewan Stewart, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Ron Cook, Liz Smith

With exquisite colour photography, sumptuously detailed production design, and a quite gorgeous Michael Nyman score, Greenaway’s magnum opus, a controversial but decided masterpiece, follows the course of a vicious gangster’s wife’s affair with a timid bookshop owner, suicidally conducted right under his nose, from its cautious beginnings to its inevitably tragic conclusion. Iain.Stott

For a longer piece, see here.

Reaper: Season 2 (2008-2009)

USA

Television Series

Creators: Tara Butters, Michele Fazekas

Cast: Bret Harrison, Tyler Labine, Rick Gonzalez, Missy Peregrym, Ray Wise, Jenny Wade, Andrew Airlie, Donavon Stinson, Christine Willes, Ken Marino, Eriko Tamura, Michael Ian Black, Armie Hammer, Sean Patrick Thomas

The second (and final) season of this oft inspired and frequently thoroughly entertaining series is much less formulaic than the first, but it is also generally sillier and more violent, as it follows the misadventures of Sam, son of the Devil, and his fellow middleclass underachievers as they get into and out of numerous scrapes with various demons, escaped souls, and other assorted miscreants. Iain.Stott

Blood (1989)

Highly Recommended

Portugal

Feature Film

Original Title: O Sangue

Writer/Director: Pedro Costa

Cinematographer: Martin Schäfer

Cast: Pedro Hestnes, Nuno Ferreira, Inês Medeiros, Luís Miguel Cintra, Canto e Castro, Isabel de Castro, Henrique Viana, Luís Santos

Exquisitely photographed in stunning high contrast black & white, Costa’s highly stylised and pleasingly enigmatic film noir indelibly paints a portrait of Vicente, who may or may not have killed his debt and cancer ridden father, and who has his younger brother, Nino, taken away from him by a man who may or may not be his uncle, leaving him to face on his own a pair of debt collectors, who may or may not have a legitimate claim against him. Iain.Stott

A Visit from Miss Protheroe (1978)

Recommended

Short Television Film

Series Title: BBC2 Play of the Week (1977-1979)

Director: Stephen Frears

Writer: Alan Bennett

Cinematographer: Clive Thomas

Composer: George Fenton

Cast: Hugh Lloyd, Patricia Routledge, Alan Bennett

This biting, slow burn verbal sparring match of a short film, Bennett’s first collaboration with the incomparable Routledge, depicts a seemingly innocent and friendly visit by a middle-aged secretary cum passive aggressive busybody to her former boss, who is recently retired and not long since widowed, whom she preceded to slowly but surely (and mercilessly) emotionally cripple. Iain.Stott

Sunset Across the Bay (1975)

Highly Recommended

Television Film

Series Title: Play for Today (1970-1984)

Director: Stephen Frears

Writer: Alan Bennett

Cinematographer: Brian Tufano

Composer: William Davies

Cast: Harry Markham, Gabrielle Daye, Bob Peck, Jill Summers

Frears and Bennett’s first film for the BBC’s Play for Today series, a beautifully understated yet thoroughly moving examination of the disappointments of old age, follows a newly retired Leeds couple, whose only son now lives in Australia, as they move to the seaside town of Morecambe in the hope of enjoying their twilight years, but the reality of their situation soon puts paid to their gentle optimism. Iain.Stott

A Day Out (1972)

Essential Viewing

Short Television Film

Director: Stephen Frears

Writer: Alan Bennett

Cinematographer: Ray Henman

Composer: David Fanshawe

Cast: John Normington, James Cossins, Philip Locke, David Waller, Don McKillop, Bernard Wrigley, David Hill, Paul Greenwood, Paul Shane, Brian Glover, Paul Rosebury

Alan Bennett’s warm, sensual, and deeply moving first television film, which proves to be everything that Renoir’s Partie de Campagne (1936) promised to be but generally wasn’t, follows a Halifax men’s cycling club’s excursion to Fountains Abbey in the Yorkshire countryside on an idyllic May Sunday in 1911, depicting a gentle, optimistic time when talk of brotherhood and socialism still seemed possible. Iain.Stott

The Kiss of Death (1977)

Recommended

Television Film

Series Title: Play for Today (1970-1984)

Writer/Director: Mike Leigh

Cinematographer: John Kenway

Composer: Carl Davis

Cast: David Threlfall, John Wheatley, Kay Adshead, Angela Curran, Clifford Kershaw, Pamela Austin, Elizabeth Ann Ogden

Mike Leigh’s third film for the BBC’s Play for Today series provides a funny, unpredictable, and perceptive character study of Trevor, a socially awkward undertaker’s assistant from Oldham with a wry but decidedly infantile sense of humour who, until a gum-chewing shoe shop assistant catches his eye, unashamedly spends his evenings playing the part of third wheel to his best friend Ronnie and his girlfriend Sandra. Iain.Stott

Daisies (1966)

Recommended

Czechoslovakia

Feature Film

Original Title: Sedmikrásky

Director: Vera Chytilová

Writers: Vera Chytilová, Pavel Jurácek, Ester Krumbachová

Cinematographer: Jaroslav Kucera

Composers: Jirí Slitr, Jirí Sust

Cast: Jitka Cerhová, Ivana Karbanová

Formally playful, contextually dense, and often quite delightful, Chytilová’s psychedelic avant-garde experiment-cum-socio-political satire follows the exploits of two disaffected young women who, when realising that the world has gone bad, decide to go bad themselves, setting out to break all the rules of polite society, but in so doing they eventually come to question their own existence. Iain.Stott

Reaper: Season 1 (2007-2008)

USA

Television Series

Creators: Tara Butters, Michele Fazekas

Cast: Bret Harrison, Tyler Labine, Rick Gonzalez, Missy Peregrym, Ray Wise, Andrew Airlie, Donavon Stinson, Valarie Rae Miller, Christine Willes, Ken Marino, Michael Ian Black, Allison Hossack, Jessica Stroup, Colby Johannson

On his twenty-first birthday, Sam, a middle-class underachiever who works at a DIY superstore, discovers that his parents sold his soul to the devil before his birth and that he will now have work for him as a bounty hunter, searching for and returning to hell any souls that have escaped their fiery grave, in this first season of Butters and Fazekas’s consistently entertaining and inventive if mildly formulaic television series. Iain.Stott

Sex, the City and Me (2007)

Cautiously Recommended

Television Film

Director: Philippa Lowthorpe

Writers: Simon Bent, Philippa Lowthorpe

Cinematographer: Graham Smith

Composer: Peter Salem

Cast: Sarah Parish, Ben Miles, Daniel Lapaine, Shaun Dingwall, Burn Gorman, Raza Jaffrey, Corey Johnson, Sandra Bee, Sarah Lancashire, Abigail Cruttenden, Camilla Arfwedson

Jess Turner, a rather unpleasant investment banker (is there any other kind?), after falling pregnant, is forced out of her lucrative City job and, as she fights back litigiously, gradually discovers her inner human being, in this diverting television drama, which takes a well aimed shot at sexism in The City, but lets the corrupt institution off lightly with regards to its many other wrongdoings. Iain.Stott

Les Diables (2002)

Cautiously Recommended

France/Spain

Feature Film

Original Title: Les diables

Director: Christophe Ruggia

Writers: Olivier Lorelle, Christophe Ruggia

Cinematographer: Eric Guichard

Composer: Fowzi Guerdjou

Cast: Adele Haenel, Vincent Rottiers, Rochdy Labidi, Jacques Bonnaffé, Aurélia Petit

Joseph, an angry young adolescent, and his severely autistic sister Chloé have grown-up in a series of care homes, from all of which they have escaped in the hope of finding their parents, but when they finally do so and the reality doesn’t match the fantasy that they have built-up they are left with nowhere else to run, but no other choice than to keep doing so, in Ruggia’s affecting and remarkably acted if vaguely indelicate film, which generally lacks in logic. Iain.Stott

Moving to Mars (2009)

Recommended

Feature Documentary

Director: Mat Whitecross

Cinematographer: Annemarie Lean-Vercoe

Composer: Adrian Johnston

Whitecross’s unobtrusive and touchingly human documentary depicts the emigration of two Karen Burmese refugee families from the Mae La Camp in Thailand to Sheffield, capturing their final days of jungle living, their alien journey halfway round the world, and their fumbling attempts to acclimatise to an exciting and confusing new culture, highlighting both the differences and universalities of human experience. Iain.Stott

I Love You, Man (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: John Hamburg

Writers: John Hamburg, Larry Levin

Cinematographer: Lawrence Sher

Composer: Theodore Shapiro

Cast: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, Jaime Pressly, Sarah Burns, Jane Curtin, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons, Jon Favreau, Rob Huebel, Aziz Ansari, Nick Kroll, Mather Zickel, Thomas Lennon, Lou Ferrigno

When he becomes engaged to his girlfriend of eight months, Peter, a mild mannered estate agent, realises that he has no close male friends and certainly none close enough to ask to be his best man; and so, under the advice of his younger brother, he sets off on a series of man dates in the hope of solving his apparent problem, in Hamburg’s generally entertaining and certainly rather original take on the rom-com, which is let down somewhat by some typical final act silliness. Iain.Stott

Lemon Tree (2008)

Recommended

Israel/Germany/France

Feature Film

Original Title: עץ לימו Lemon Tree شجره الليمون

Director: Eran Riklis

Writers: Suha Arraf, Eran Riklis

Cinematographer: Rainer Klausmann

Composer: Habib Shadah

Cast: Hiam Abbass, Doron Tavory, Ali Suliman, Rona Lipaz-Michael, Tarik Kopty, Amos Lavie, Amnon Wolf, Smadar Yaaron, Danny Leshman, Hili Yalon

When the Israeli Defence Minister moves into a new home next door to a middle-aged Palestinian widow, who runs a lemon tree farm, the secret services declares said widow’s land to be a security threat, issuing an order for her orchard to be cleared, but she refuses to take it lying down, taking her case to the supreme court, in Riklis’s involvingly political yet very human film. Iain.Stott

Last White Man Standing (2010)

Recommended

UK/USA/Denmark

Short Television Documentary

Director: Justin Webster

Cinematographer: Kim Hattesen

Composer: Murray Anderson

Narrator: Judy Kibinge

Featuring: Tom Cholmondeley, Eric Shimoli, Peter Gichuhi, Joseph Kamau, Graham Vetch, Lord Delamere, Lady Delamere, Sally Dudmesh, Geoffrey Mwangi, Martha Karua, Fred Ojiambo, Sarah Njoya, Carl “Flash” Tundo, Keriako Tobiko, Lynn Tundo, Fred Tundo, Tabina Cole, Lord Enniskillen, Lady Enniskillen

Webster’s short, non-judgemental, non-sensational documentary follows the three-year-long murder trial of Tom Cholmondeley, a white, land-owning Kenyan, charged with the killing of a poor poacher, Robert Njoya, on his farm in 2006, featuring interviews with the friends and relatives of both the accused and the victim, gently building-up a picture of the country's various financial inequalities. Iain.Stott

Storage (2009)

Recommended

Australia

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Michael Craft

Cinematographer: Tony Luu

Composers: Garry McDonald, Laurie Stone

Cast: Matthew Scully, Damien Garvey, Saskia Burmeister, Robert Mammone

Following the murder of his father, which he helplessly witnessed, Jimmy goes to live and work with his uncle, who owns an underground storage facility, units in which he rents out to some decidedly unsavoury characters, whose nefarious habits dangerously pique the interest of young Jimmy, in Craft’s stylish, genre-bendingly unpredictable thriller. Iain.Stott

Broken Embraces (2009)

Highly Recommended

Spain/USA

Feature Film

Original Title: Los abrazos rotos

Writer/Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto

Composer: Alberto Iglesias

Cast: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo, José Luis Gómez, Rubén Ochandiano, Tamar Novas

After he discovers that Ernesto Martel has died, Harry Caine, a blind film-maker, relays to his writing collaborator, the son of his agent, the story of how he came to know the millionaire 14 years earlier, of how he stole his mistress, and of how he came to lose his sight, in Almodóvar’s exhaustive, sprawling, and thoroughly involving melodrama. Iain.Stott

I've Loved You So Long (2008)

Recommended

France/Germany

Feature Film

Original Title: Il y a longtemps que je t'aime

Writer/Director: Philippe Claudel

Cinematographer: Jérôme Alméras

Composer: Jean-Louis Aubert

Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot, Claire Johnston, Catherine Hosmalin, Jean-Claude Arnaud, Olivier Cruveiller, Lise Ségur

After serving fifteen years in prison for the murder of her six-year-old son, Juliette (Scott Thomas, excellent) is tentatively welcomed back into the life and home of her sister, in Claudel’s slow burn family drama, which gently and devastatingly teases out the personal histories of these damaged, reconciling sisters. Iain.Stott

On Expenses (2010)

Recommended

Short Television Film

Director: Simon Cellan Jones

Writer: Tony Saint

Cinematographer: Ruairi O'Brien

Composer: Adrian Johnston

Cast: Anna Maxwell Martin, Brian Cox, Alex Jennings, Tim Pigott-Smith, David Calder, Christopher Good, Neil Pearson, Jeremy Swift, Raquel Cassidy, Steve John Shepherd

This witty and playful yet thoroughly credible and wonderfully acted (particularly by Cox and Martin) BBC film depicts the progress of American journalist Heather Brooke’s fight to have the details of MPs’ expenses released to the public under The Freedom of Information Act 2000, juxtaposed against Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons’s fight to keep them under wraps. Iain.Stott

Malice in Wonderland (2009)

Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Film

Director: Simon Fellows

Writer: Jayson Rothwell

Cinematographer: Christopher Ross

Composers: Christian Henson, Joe Henson

Cast: Maggie Grace, Danny Dyer, Matt King, Nathaniel Parker, Gary Beadle, Paul Kaye, Fiona O'Shaughnessy, Amanda Boxer

Whilst en route to find her mother, Alice, the 19-year-old daughter of an American billionaire, gets struck by a taxi and taken on a strange odyssey through the seedy underworld of Southend by its cheeky-chappy cockney driver, in Fellows’s thoroughly entertaining dark fairytale cum gangster film, which feels like Alice in Wonderland (1865) filtered through Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), but it is let down somewhat by its rather rushed-feeling ending. Iain.Stott

Just Like Home (2007)

Cautiously Recommended

Denmark

Feature Film

Original Title: Hjemve

Director: Lone Scherfig

Writers: Niels Hausgaard, Lone Scherfig

Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle

Composer: Kasper Winding

Cast: Lars Kaalund, Bodil Jørgensen, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, Peter Gantzler, Peter Hesse Overgaard, Pernille Vallentin, Mia Lyhne, Ida Dwinger, Stina Ekblad, Steen Stig Lommer, Kristian Ibler, Henrik Lykkegaard

When rumours of a sighting of a streaker spread through the local populace, the day-to-day life of a small provincial town comes to a halt as pointing fingers and distrusting looks take their toll, but a few local citizens, with the aid of a confidential phone line, take it upon themselves to seek a solution, in Scherfig’s curious and mildly diverting if somewhat opaque ensemble drama. Iain.Stott

Murder on the Lake (2010)

Television Documentary

Director: Henry Singer

Featuring: Alan Root, Sarah Higgins, Annabelle Thom, Dr. David M. Harper, Dee Raymer, David Chege, John Ndirangu, Issac Ouma, Andrew Enniskillen, Barry Gaymer, Andrew Omondi, Peter Szapary, John Sutton, Diana Bunny, Adrian Luckhurst, Nicholas Njangi, Julie Erskine, Brian Freeman

Henry Singer’s fascinating and vaguely disquieting documentary, which quite possibly features interviews with one or more of its protagonist’s killers, paints a picture of white African wildlife film-maker turned conservationist Joan Root, depicting her life from early colonial roots to her violent and untimely death, concentrating on her latter years when she dedicated her time and wealth towards preserving the natural beauty of Lake Naivasha, which had become threatened by the emerging flower farming industry. Iain.Stott

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

Highly Recommended

Israel/France/Germany/USA/Belgium/Australia/Switzerland/Finland

Animated Feature Documentary

Original Title: Vals Im Bashir

Writer/Director: Ari Folman

Animators: Gali Edelbaum, Tal Gadon

Composer: Max Richter

Featuring: Ari Folman, Miki Leon, Ori Sivan, Yehezkel Lazarov, Ronny Dayag, Shmuel Frenkel, Zahava Solomon, Ron Ben-Yishai, Dror Harazi

A friend’s recurring dream conjures up an enigmatic image from the night of The Sabra and Shatila Massacre in the mind of film-maker Folman, which inspires him to seek to unlock other seemingly lost memories of his time fighting in the 1982 Lebanon War, which takes him as far a field as The Netherlands in his attempts to make sense of other people’s accounts of the time, in this remarkable and decidedly harrowing animated documentary. Iain.Stott

Don't Worry About Me (2009)

Recommended

Feature Film

Director: David Morrissey

Writers: James Brough, Helen Elizabeth, David Morrissey

Cinematographer: Stuart Nicholas White

Cast: James Brough, Helen Elizabeth

A Jack-the-lad Londoner finds himself alone and penniless in Liverpool after an impulsive post one-night-stand bus journey up north; fortuitously, he meets a kindly bookie’s assistant, whom he convinces to phone-in-sick and give him a guided tour of the city’s sights, in Morrissey’s affecting, bitter-sweet directorial debut, which could be described as Before Sunrise in Liverpool, and which features a remarkable performance from the wonderful Elizabeth. Iain.Stott

Mo (2010)

Cautiously Recommended

Television Film

Director: Philip Martin

Writer: Neil McKay

Cinematographer: Julian Court

Composer: Nick Hooper

Cast: Julie Walters, David Haig, Gary Lewis, Steven Mackintosh, Toby Jones, Adrian Dunbar, John Lynch, Eoin McCarthy

Walters’s outstanding performance enlivens this otherwise rather uneven and unfocused biopic of the gregarious and uninhibited former politician Mo Mowlam, which covers the period of time from her being diagnosed with a brain tumour to her death, concentrating on the part she played in the discussions that led to the signing of The Good Friday Agreement, whilst she held the post of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Iain.Stott

Dead Snow (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

Norway

Feature Film

Original Title: Død snø

Director: Tommy Wirkola

Writers: Stig Frode Henriksen, Tommy Wirkola

Cinematographer: Matthew Bradley Weston

Composer: Christian Wibe

Cast: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Røsten, Jeppe Laursen, Jenny Skavlan, Ane Dahl Torp, Bjørn Sundquist, Ørjan Gamst

A group of medical students travel to a remote cabin in the snow covered mountains of Finnmark to spend the Easter holidays, but instead of fun and relaxation they find themselves fighting for their lives against a platoon of Nazi zombies, in Wirkola’s inconsistently entertaining film, which alternates between inventively bloody and merely clichéd. Iain.Stott

Pontypool (2008)

Recommended

Canada

Feature Film

Director: Bruce McDonald

Writer: Tony Burgess

Cinematographer: Miroslaw Baszak

Composer: Claude Foisy

Cast: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly, Hrant Alianak, Rick Roberts

A ramblingly mischievous radio presenter, who works on the breakfast show of a station in Pontypool, Canada (not Wales), begins to relay reports of increasingly violent and worrying incidences of apparent rioting flaring-up across the town, bringing the sleepy backwater to the attention of the world’s media, in McDonald’s talky, tense, and thoughtful (sort of) zombie film. Iain.Stott

Home (2008)

Recommended

Switzerland/France/Belgium

Feature Film

Director: Ursula Meier

Writers: Antoine Jaccoud, Olivier Lorelle, Ursula Meier, Gilles Taurand, Raphaëlle Valbrune, Alice Winocour

Cinematographer: Agnès Godard

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Gourmet, Adélaïde Leroux, Madeleine Budd, Kacey Mottet Klein

A close-nit and very happy but decidedly insular family, who live rather improbably in an isolated house next to an as yet unused motorway, find their idyllic lifestyle slowly destroyed when said road is finally opened, in Meier’s lovingly crafted allegorical feature debut. Iain.Stott