Movie Lists: 397 Ways to Pick a DVD

By Paul Simpson

Action, African greats, alcohol, Robert Aldrich, aliens, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Robert Altman, animated, anime, apocalypses, Argentina, art, Asia minor, avant garde...

And that's just A for you. A taste of this fabulously quirky and enjoyable book which is both a celebration of movies - and movie trivia - and a handy, entertaining guide to films that we know you will enjoy. It is fantastically functional. The lists are well conceived and easy to understand - mostly assembled by genre, actor, director, theme or country of origin - and the reviews are witty and informative. Oddly enough, most movie guides are not full of recommendations. But Movie Lists is, in spades, leaving readers in no doubt that the films reviewed are the business.

Oh - and you don't have to watch them all before you die. There is no premise of death in this book. You just need to get down to the local Blockbusters or flick your remote to Movies on Demand. Only the popcorn is not supplied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Release date: May 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781847653550

Paul Simpson

Paul Simpson is the editor of Champions, the official magazine of the UEFA Champions League. He was the launch editor of Four Two Four magazine.

Book preview

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Action

Surging testosterone, squealing car brakes, sneering baddies, and wisecracking heroes define – thanks to the likes of Spielberg, Scott and Donner – the action movie. Not to mention that old cinema slogan: You can’t beat a good film…

Raiders Of The Lost Ark

Dir Steven Spielberg, 1981, 115m

Indiana Jones is a truly great action hero, a strong, brave, intelligent, blundering – I’m making this up as I go along – archaeologist who was at his most compelling foiling the Nazis. The sight of Alfred Molina covered in tarantulas, Spielberg’s flair and a witty script mean this is still a must-see. Best of the sequels is Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989) in which Ford spars beautifully with Sean Connery.

The Bourne Identity

Dir Doug Liman, 2002, 118m

Neither star Matt Damon nor director Liman were obvious choices to tackle Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne novels. Yet Damon and Liman’s action hero feels like he belongs to the 21st century. A young amnesiac looking for his true identity, Bourne has only a bag of money, a knack for martial arts and a girl in a decrepit Mini to help him. A slick, quick, big, stylish chase movie that may well affect your levels of adrenaline and yielded two half-decent sequels: The Bourne Ultimatum (2004) and The Bourne Supremacy (2007).

Lethal Weapon

Dir Richard Donner, 1987, 110m

The mixture as before – car chases, explosions and the partner/ buddy combo of loose cannon (Mel Gibson) and by-the-book (Danny Glover) – but faster, with no pause for breath. In less than two hours Gibson and Glover meet, become friends, survive torture, rescue Glover’s daughter, chase cars and kill folks. Shane Black’s wisecracking script suits the frenetic pace. Zeffirelli was so enamoured by Gibson’s suicide scene he cast him as Hamlet.

Beau Geste

Dir William Wellman, 1939, 120m, b/w

Boys Own-style adventure of three brothers who join the Foreign Legion. Savaged by Graham Greene as uncritical daydreaming about brutality, this rousing adaptation of the P.C. Wren bestseller – drawing closely on Herbert Brenon’s silent 1926 version – keeps our interest thanks to Coop’s laconic charisma, Brian Donlevy’s memorably sadistic sergeant and some lavish set pieces.

Fight Club

Dir David Fincher, 1999, 139m

Chuck Palahniuk had the idea for his novel when he was beaten up on a campsite after asking someone to turn their radio down. Fincher made the book into a deliciously OTT cult classic. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are superb as The Narrator and Tyler Durden, the soap-maker who changes the Narrator’s life. With no corset in sight, Helena Bonham-Carter shines as a hellcat while Meatloaf almost steals the show as a Fight Club member with man-breasts.

All-action heroine Franka Polente (Lola) shows an impressive turn of speed in Tom Tykower’s existential thriller. But can she outrun fate?

Run Lola Run

Dir Tom Tykwer, 1998, 81m

Lola (Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to find a large sum of money, which technically belongs to a local gangster, but has been lost by her useless boyfriend. But Fate enters the equation, with three scenarios played out, each leading to a different conclusion for the hapless boyfriend. Split screen and video footage ensure the hyperkinetic action sequences never flag.

Top Gun

Dir Tony Scott, 1986, 110m

After being fired and rehired, Scott perfected the high-concept action movie, with high-octane fight scenes, visual bombast, photogenic stars and a hypnotic theme. Tom Cruise is arrogant enough to be believable, yet likeable, as a hot-shot pilot. Val Kilmer is perfect as his rival, while Kelly McGillis is just very sexy indeed.

Die Hard

Dir John McTiernan, 1988, 131m

If Richard Gere or even Burt Reynolds (!) had agreed to say John McClane’s catchphrase: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, Bruce Willis might never have become a star. His sardonic arrogance comes to the fore as a disgruntled New York cop indulging in some nifty banter with terrorist head honcho Alan Rickman. A slew of one-man-against-the-odds imitators couldn’t top this for surprise or suspense.

Predator

Dir John McTiernan, 1987, 102m

So rich in testosterone, Predator makes Rambo seem about as macho as a Hugh Grant rom com. Arnie strips to the waist in this alien-hunting extravaganza, covering himself with mud and taking on the Predator with a bow made of branches and twine. It’s the kind of film in which Jesse Ventura, after getting shot, says: I ain’t got time to bleed. McTiernan handles this shrewdly, turning a B-movie concept into a compelling Oscarnominated action film.

First Blood

Dir Ted Kotcheff, 1982, 96m

Luckily for Sly Stallone, who has built much of his career out of this franchise, test audiences rejected First Blood’s original suicide ending – so tormented, paranoid Vietnam veteran John Rambo lived to fight in three more movies. Ignore the politics and the kitsch closing oratory: Sly gave Rambo a manic, physical edge, doing many stunts and breaking three ribs in the cliff-top jump.

Africa

Comedy, tragedy, politics, myth, landscape and the battle of the sexes: African film has all this and more. Here’s where to start.

Xala

Dir Ousmane Sembene, 1974, 123m

In this Senegalese satire, El Hadj Kader Beye’s efforts to reverse the curse causing his impotence (just after his marriage to a third wife) backfire, taking proceedings into darker territory with telling contrasts between ordinary African life and his nouveau-riche western pretensions.

Tsotsi

Dir Gavin Hood, 2005, 94m

A crossover success about a South African township gangster who becomes the unwitting surrogate parent to a small baby. Tsotsi takes stylistic cues from City of God while aiming squarely at the emotions in traditional big-screen style with strong performances and a punchy script.

Yeelen

Dir Souleymane Cissé, 1987, 105m

This magical Malian film substitutes myth, fable and imagery for conventional storytelling, creating a dreamlike Oedipal tale of a man fighting a life and death struggle against his shaman father. The eerie soundscape is courtesy of singer Salif Keita.

Beau Travail

Dir Claire Denis, 1999, 93m

French director Denis spent her formative years in colonial Africa, and her film’s mesmerising imagery of Djibouti and slow, typically African pace mean it is not out of place in this list. Her spellbinding film transfers Billy Budd, Herman Melville’s tale of suppressed homoeroticism and disciplinary cruelty, to the French Foreign Legion.

Daratt

Dir Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 2006, 95m

The aftermath of a civil war (and subsequent amnesty) in Chad leaves a teenager with a revenge mission against his father’s killer. Haroun’s follow-up to his beautifully shot Abouna (2002) unfolds the story gradually as vengeance vies with reconciliation.

Touki Bouki

Dir Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973, 85m

You could, slightly misleadingly, dub this riot of colour and exuberance the African Easy Rider. Mory and Anta dream of leaving Senegal for Paris and ride around on a motorcycle adorned with the skull of a cow in a modernist, experimental film full of unforgettable imagery if a tad light on plot.

Moolaadé

Dir Ousmane Sembene, 2004, 124m

The great Senegalese director’s final feature evokes the colours and texture of village life in a powerful, disturbing tale of women determined to evade genital circumcision in Burkina Faso and those determined to uphold the custom. Full of light touches which support the urgent message.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Dir Jamie Uys, 1980, 109m

One of the unlikeliest comedy hits ever, The Gods Must Be Crazy is the story of bushman N!xau whose San tribe loses its harmony when a Coke bottle falls from the sky. He decides to throw it off the end of the world – and ends up helping his new white friends save a school from a renegade militia plotting a coup. Funny, slapstick, sometimes gauche and very 1980s, it led to three Hong Kong sequels.

La Vie Est Belle

Dir Benoit Lamy, Mweze Ngangura, 1986, 80m

Congolese world music icon Papa Wemba stars in an amusing comedy of African manners as an impoverished musician who catches the eye of a rich man’s new young wife. The real heart of this amiable film is the big shot’s first wife and her irreverent mates.

Bamako

Dir Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006, 115m

Bamako might be the only film in which the World Bank is put on trial (in a Malian courtyard) and this is not the only measure of the film’s originality. There’s music, passionate polemic, some great acting and a spaghetti western parody featuring Danny Glover amid fine cinematic imagery.

Alcohol

Filmmakers’ continuing love affair with alcohol is almost as passionate, productive and enduring on screen as off.

Days Of Wine And Roses

Dir Blake Edwards, 1962, 117m, b/w

You’ll never look at your own reflection in the same way after seeing this classic treatment of a couple’s decline into alcoholism. Edwards quit drinking soon after, while stars Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick both had wrestles with drink problems later. The love story is so powerful it’s still used in rehab programmes.

Sideways

Dir Alexander Payne, 2004, 126m

The best wine movie ever, Sideways follows two old college friends on a road trip through California wine country. What Miles sees as a luxury send-off into marriage for his buddy, Jack sees as a chance to sow his last wild oats. Payne has a happy knack of finding plots that develop his characters, not restrict them and here he has created a film that, in its own way, is as endearing as Fargo.

Whisky Galore!

Dir Alexander Mackendrick, 1949, 82m, b/w

Strangely for such an alcohol-soaked movie, the first word that comes to mind with this comedy is dry. A ship carrying 50,000 cases of whisky runs aground in the Outer Hebrides and the islanders face a dilemma: get as much of it as you can, regardless of the law or the Sabbath, or … sorry, what was the dilemma again?

Sixteen Years Of Alcohol

Dir Richard Jobson, 2003, 102m

More Lynch than kitchen sink, and owing something to Wong Kar Wai, the director of Chungking Express, this directorial debut for former Skids frontman Jobson is a poetic portrayal of Frankie Mac’s life as a violence-loving skinhead, alcohol-soaked lover and a recovering addict fighting his demons.

Lachende Erben (The Merry Heirs)

Dir Max Ophüls, 1933, 76m, b/w

A romantic comedy banned by the Nazis because it might encourage drinking, satirised the temperance movement and – just possibly – because Ophüls was Jewish. The film revolves around Peter Frank, a carefree young man in love with Gina, drinking more than is wise, who inherits his uncle’s champagne business ahead of his teetotal cousin.

Lemonade Joe

Dir Oldrich Lipsky, 1964, 99m, b/w

This Gene Autry-inspired, Czech cowboy musical parodies silent westerns … and capitalism. A clean-living drinker of Kolaloka lemonade, sharpshooter Joe takes on a town of whisky-drinking bad guys in the name of temperance and good business until good and evil are magically reconciled.

Hangover Square

Dir John Brahm, 1945, 77m, b/w

A dark, late-Victorian drama about an alcoholic pianist prone to murderous blackouts who has sold his talent for the love of a popular singer. Torn between his love and his engagement to an aristocrat, his blackouts culminate in him disposing of the recently murdered singer’s body on a bonfire.

Robert Aldrich

Commercial, iconoclastic, as subtle as a small nuclear explosion – Robert Aldrich took on too many commissions for his own good but, at his best, was stunning.

Kiss Me Deadly

Dir Robert Aldrich, 1955, 106m, b/w

Aldrich and scriptwriter A.I. Bezzerides subverted Mickey Spillane’s fiction, using sub-texts of Cold War paranoia that horrified the novelist. Ralph Meeker plays Mike Hammer, private eye and narcissistic bully who roughs up a recalcitrant crooner while trying to find out who tortured an attractive hitchhiker to death. Spillane hated this but the French loved it – Truffaut was a particular fan of Aldrich’s for a while – and the film helped set the tone for the moral nihilism of the French new-wave.

Vera Cruz

Dir Robert Aldrich, 1954, 94m

Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster play off each other as double-crossing adventurers caught in the Mexican revolution. Setting new cynical standards for the American western – and sowing the seed for countless spaghetti Westerns to follow – Vera Cruz rattles along and whenever things threaten to get dull, someone slaps countess Denise Darcel.

Ulzana’s Raid

Dir Robert Aldrich, 1972, 103m

Even the landscape looks brutal in this Vietnam western. Burt Lancaster is the scout who reluctantly helps troops track renegade Apache leader Ulzana. Alan Sharp’s clever script left many wondering how the allegory works. Are homesteaders, tormented by the Apache, the Vietnamese? Moral superiority isn’t an issue here, as both sides have plenty of offences to take into consideration.

Autumn Leaves

Dir Robert Aldrich, 1956, 107m, b/w

Joan Crawford really should know better than to marry deranged toy-boy Cliff Robertson. Aldrich delivers misogyny, murderous impulses and misanthropy in a dark melodrama characterised by an interesting disparity in acting styles. Crawford acts like a diva and makes it her movie – not Aldrich’s. Robertson is more naturalistic. The contrast shouldn’t work but somehow it does.

The Dirty Dozen

Dir Robert Aldrich, 1967, 145m

An action-packed, amoral, skillfully made, stellar male ensemble piece. Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Charles Bronson, and gridiron great Jim Brown make their mark in this violent tale of a bunch of prisoners released to perform a suicide mission against the Nazis.

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?

Crawford, Joan

The Killing Of Sister George

Dir Robert Aldrich, 1968, 138m

About as subtle as Bette Davis’s make-up in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Aldrich’s flawed, sadistic take on Frank Marcus’s touching play on lesbianism and ageism feels like an emotionally hysterical black comedy. Beryl Reid, as the ageing actress who turns to drink after her TV character is killed off, and Susannah York, as her fickle young lover, are both superb. Coral Browne chews scenery as the boss who fires Reid. Aldrich seldom bores but he can exhaust.

Aliens

Are the aliens good guys or bad guys? And will they enlighten us or eat us? Filmmakers still haven’t made their minds up.

Alien

Dir Ridley Scott, 1979, 117m

Alien and its sequels set the benchmark for scary space movies. This first instalment is still easily the best, treading a fine line between sci-fi and horror as Sigourney Weaver’s iconic Ripley discovers that answering an SOS was the worst idea she ever had. The build-up of tension is paid off in full by the extraordinary design of the alien. No disappointing man in a rubber suit here. Despite spoofs galore, the alien bursting from John Hurt’s chest still shocks.

Contact

Dir Robert Zemeckis, 1997, 153m

Aliens have been trying to contact us since they received Earth’s first amplified TV broadcasts – to complain presumably – and young Jodie Foster, obsessed by extra-terrestrials, picks up their signal. Carl Sagan’s prescient story about what will happen when we prove there is life out there is slick and enjoyable, as much for its sly digs at government meddling as for its impeccable sci-fi credentials.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

Dir Don Siegel, 1956, 80m, b/w

Your friends and neighbours have become aliens. They look normal but are out to get you. It’s a great premise (hence the many remakes), and though it is easy to dismiss as a simplistic expression of 1950s McCarthyite paranoia, there are enough chilling moments – notably the isolated hero shouting: You’re next at oblivious motorists – to transcend the subtext.

Mars Attacks!

Dir Tim Burton, 1996, 106m

Martians make it to Earth and turn out to be vicious killers. No one is safe – not you, your chihuahua or Tom Jones. One of the silliest alien extravaganzas ever, this anarchic parody skewers the hypocrisy of governments and Hollywood clichés, while suggesting that Slim Whitman can save the planet.

Men In Black

Dir Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997, 98m

Aliens are among us again, but this time they are regulated by secret servicemen. When a galactic terrorist (Vincent D’Onofrio in scene-stealing form) arrives on earth, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are sent after him. A rare alien movie with humour that works, thanks to Smith and Jones, Sonnenfeld’s pacing and a smart script based on Lowell Cunningham’s comic book. Avoid the sequel.

Quatermass And The Pit

Dir Roy Ward Baker, 1967, 97m

A great, overlooked Hammer movie. Work on a subway in London is halted when humanoid skeletons and a dead locustlike creature inside a mysterious capsule are found. Professor Quatermass identifies the capsule as Martian and finds the creature has influenced humanity’s evolution and, in particular, capacity for evil. Dated effects, hammy acting – but still spooky and disturbing.

Starman

Dir John Carpenter, 1984, 115m

Carpenter must have taken happy pills when he made this sci-fi road movie about an alien who takes the form of a young widow’s dead husband so she’ll help him return across country to his spaceship. Benign alien (Jeff Bridges) builds a rather sweet and offbeat love story with Karen Allen.

The Man Who Fell To Earth

Dir Nicolas Roeg, 1976, 138m

David Bowie in the part he was born to play as the lone alien coming to Earth for water to save his planet. If you can be patient with a multi-stranded story, overwhelming imagery and the slime, this imaginative and provocative film touches on human nature, isolation and the corruptive power of capitalism. Not entirely successful, but mesmerising.

War Of The Worlds

Dir Steven Spielberg, 2005, 116m

Surely Spielberg’s 9/11 film. He uses images familiar from the days after the Twin Towers collapsed: shocked faces covered in pale dust and fluttering photos of lost loved ones pinned to fences. For once, the effects are often in the distance, as Spielberg rediscovers the power of stories, and we see only what the characters see as they run from danger. And, for once, Tom Cruise does not save the world.

Pitch Black

Dir David Twohy, 2000, 110m

A simultaneous total eclipse of all three suns on a planet where daylight is the only defence against enormous, flesh-eating, bat-like creatures creates a stylish sci-fi thriller with a supercool anti-hero and a dollop of gross-out violence. Vin Diesel impresses as the psycho who saves the day.

Woody Allen

The most prolific auteur in American film, Allen makes the pictures he wants, immune to critical or commercial reception, or the constant assertion that we all liked his early, funnier films.

Annie Hall

Dir Woody Allen, 1977, 94m

Known as Anhedonia until three weeks before its public screening, this fond memoir of Allen’s relationship with Diane Keaton is, beneath the funny, intelligent romance, a scathing attack on Californian culture. Hollywood appreciated the jokes at its expense and rewarded the film with four Oscars.

Crimes And Misdemeanours

Dir Woody Allen, 1989, 104m

Allen develops a Bergmanesque assertion that the rich and powerful behave badly because they don’t believe God is watching. Martin Landau and Alan Alda contribute adroit displays of, respectively, cowardice and arrogance. Allen’s sour reinterpretation of his trademark, self-pitying neurotic is his best screen performance.

Sleeper

Dir Woody Allen, 1973, 88m

Originally conceived as the second part of a four-hour picture, this slapstick story of a nebbish New Yorker pitched into a battle with Big Brother after 200 years of cryogenic suspension borrows heavily from Wells, Huxley, Gogol, Godard, Lang, Kubrick and David Butler’s sci-fi musical Just Imagine (1930). With its jazz score, minimalist Norman Gorbaty title credits and preoccupation with sex and death, it’s considered the first true Woody Allen film.

Hannah And Her Sisters

Dir Woody Allen, 1986, 106m

Though it echoes Tolstoy and Chekhov, Allen’s screenplay was based on his observations of Mia Farrow and her siblings, but used some autobiographical elements (he had endured a brain tumour scare while making Manhattan). Dianne Wiest and Michael Caine won Oscars, although for Caine the earnest attitude on set felt a bit like working in church.

Manhattan

Dir Woody Allen, 1979, 96m, b/w

When Allen saw a rough-cut of this New York variation on La Dolce Vita, he told United Artists to destroy every frame. Editor Susan Morse saved Allen’s most personal and most beautiful film. The Panavision Technicolor footage shot by Gordon Willis was printed in a lustrous monochrome made all the more atmospheric by the sublime George Gershwin score.

The Purple Rose Of Cairo

Dir Woody Allen, 1985, 82m

Reworking the idea behind his New Yorker story The Kugelmass Episode Allen considers this tale of a screen character becoming involved with a member of the audience his most perfectly realised project. Jeff Daniels brought a touch of Gary Cooper and James Stewart to his dual role. But the film belongs to Mia Farrow, whose rapture while watching Top Hat makes up for the contempt Allen showed movie fans in Stardust Memories (1980).

Radio Days

Dir Woody Allen, 1987, 85 m

This rose-tinted memoir of Woody’s Brooklyn childhood owes much to Renoir’s compassionate humanism. Allen’s complex picture packs 150 characters into the storylines, flashbacks, reveries and anecdotes that are held together by Allen’s knowing narration and a soundtrack packed with novelty songs and fond pastiches of the shows that fed America’s appetite for celebrity and undemanding escapism.

Husbands And Wives

Dir Woody Allen, 1992, 107m

Released as the scandal broke around Allen’s relationship with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, this excruciating study of marital recrimination has never been given its due. Shot by Carlo Di Palma in abrasive vérité documentary style, the relentless, fragmented action viscerally conveys worlds coming apart at the seams. Judy Davis impresses as the wife whose complacent psychobabble masks the furiously raw vulnerability of betrayal.

Play It Again Sam

Rom com

Take The Money And Run

Heist

Pedro Almodóvar

The most celebrated Spanish filmmaker since Buñuel, Almodóvar has found a darkly comic niche with subversive entertainments that amuse, tug the heartstrings and intrigue.

Dark Habits (Entre Tinieblas)

Dir Pedro Almodóvar, 1983, 114m

This anarchic, deliciously blasphemous early Almodóvar, run through with his characteristic humanistic melancholy, is one of his finest ensemble pieces, with a roll-call of his favourite actresses. Junkie torch-singer Cristina Pascual gets more than she bargained for when she seeks solace at the Convent of Humiliated Redeemers with Keatonesque Chus Lampreave, sweetly clownish Carmen Maura, and majestic Marisa Paredes leading a cast of nuns as crazy and dissolute as any Almodóvar misfits.

What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Dir Pedro Almodóvar, 1984, 101m

In this bleak, surreal family drama, Carmen Maura plays a downtrodden, speed-addicted, ultimately murderous housewife. Wild, farcical and achingly poignant, this superb showcase for Maura’s staggering talent melds outrageous humour with heartfelt melodrama.

High Heels (Tacones Lejanos)

Dir Pedro Almodóvar, 1991, 112m

Exuberant black comedy takes a back seat to raw emotional intensity in this absorbing mother-daughter love/hate story. Victoria Abril is brisk and brittle as the newsreader obsessed by her diva mother (Marisa Paredes), who left her as a child.

All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre)

Dir Pedro Almodóvar, 1999, 101m

The plot twists and turns past transsexual junkies, lesbian thespians and a pregnant nun with AIDS (Penélope Cruz showing a glimmer of what she would achieve with Volver). In this poignant study of grief, bereaved mother (Cecilia Roth) finds herself through unlikely friendships and redemptive love. As ever, the camp and kitsch comes with a huge heart.

Women On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown

Nervous breakdowns

Pedro Almodóvar on set in Barcelona

Talk To Her (Hable Con Ella)

Dir Pedro Almodóvar, 2002, 112m

The emphasis shifts away from strong female protagonists – and men who long to be strong female protagonists – towards male melodrama with this bittersweet tale of two friends – a writer and a male nurse – both in love with women in comas. Melancholy and intelligent, it plays with our hopes for the power of words, with some stunning Pina Bausch dance sequences and a surreal silent film-within-a-film.

Volver

Cruz, Penélope

Bad Education

Dir Pedro Almodóvar, 2004, 106m

Pouting Mexican heartthrob Gael Garcia Bernal gives a deeply felt performance in the director’s semi-autobiographical study of love and abuse in a Catholic boys’ school. The restrained tone was not well received by critics.

Robert Altman

An Altmanesque film has many-stranded storylines, an ensemble cast and eccentric characters presented in an improvisational style. But more than that, Altman embodied the free spirit that many directors like to think they have when they do not even come close.

M*A*S*H

Dir Robert Altman, 1970, 116m

The schmaltzy brilliance of the spin-off TV series has overshadowed Altman’s masterpiece about mayhem and misbehaviour in an army field hospital. It’s a shame, as the film is politically astute and very entertaining. It is set in the Korean War, but Altman removed all scripted references to Korea, intending it as a critique of America in Vietnam. The improvised, overlapping dialogue was revolutionary, and a cast full of emerging talent like Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall created the desired authenticity.

McCabe And Mrs Miller

Dir Robert Altman, 1971, 120m

John McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives in a frontier town ready to open a saloon and brothel. He is targeted by Mrs Miller (Julie Christie), a professional madam who quickly realises that McCabe knows little about business and less about women. Together they prosper until a big firm moves in to exploit mining. Often pigeonholed as an anti-Western, this offers a terrific look at what the Old West could really have been like: filthy, freezing and full of chancers and fraudsters.

Short Cuts

Dir Robert Altman, 1993, 187m

Altman at his best. This sprawling, inconclusive collection of Raymond Carver stories set in the ‘burbs of Los Angeles is made absorbing by Altman’s preoccupation with tiny incidents and the minutiae of his characters’ lives. Is there a better domestic argument on film than Matthew Modine’s quarrel with a half-naked Julianne Moore about her infidelity? What does the casual misogyny of the fishermen say about men? Thought provoking and blackly humorous.

Nashville contains twenty-four unforgettable characters and defined the adjective ‘Altmanesque’

Nashville

Dir Robert Altman, 1975, 159m

Fearlessly skewering two American sacred cows – country music and presidential politics – this delightfully jaded look at American life follows the lives of offbeat C&W characters against the backdrop of a political convention. Altman coaxes superb performances from Lily Tomlin, Julie Christie, and Keith Carradine (who wrote his own songs, winning an Oscar for I’m Easy). As sharp and prescient now as it was then.

3 Women

Dir Robert Altman, 1977, 124 m

An astounding, dreamlike film about consumer culture and its effects, distinguished by Altman’s genius for creating sympathy for monstrous characters. Millie (Shelley Duval), with her 15-minute recipes from McCalls and belief in her own allure, is hilarious yet heartbreaking. Pinky (Sissy Spacek) can’t see any cracks in Millie’s veneer and is full of admiration for an empty dream. Has no real pay off but is a classic meditation on money and status.

Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Dir Robert Altman, 1982, 109 m

Fanatical James Dean fans take stock of the years that have passed. Sandy Dennis, Cher and Karen Black are touching as women dogged by disappointment and secrets. It is a classic Altman ensemble. Having only one location creates a claustrophobia that mirrors the narrow lives of its protagonists. It started out as a play by Ed Graczyk, but the flashbacks and visual dissolves through mirrors and glass make it a classy, filmic piece.

The Player

Hollywood

Kansas City

Dir Robert Altman, 1996, 116m

With his love of improvisation, Altman was bound to make a film about jazz. Kansas City returns to his preoccupation with crime and politics, hypocrisy and romance. A cast of younger actors such as Steve Buscemi and Dermot Mulroney, make this really snap. When Jennifer Jason Leigh finds her husband is being held by hoodlum Harry Belafonte, she hatches a plan to kidnap the wife of a local politician, hoping the pressure will force her husband’s release. But in Altman’s world, life is never that straightforward.

Gosford Park

Costume drama

Vincent & Theo

Art

Animated

The animated feature is no longer the preserve of Disney’s heartwarming pieties. These ten meisterworks can make us laugh, cry, or just feel seriously uncomfortable.

Shrek

Dir Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson, 2001, 90m

The big green ogre with trumpet-shaped ears, a bad temper and a very loud fart is the product of a cooperative of geniuses: author William Steig; DreamWorks animators; scriptwriter Ted Elliott; and Mike Myers who gives Shrek such a distinctive vocal personality. With catty satire that gently subverts the fairytale tradition, the first Shrek benefits from Eddie Murphy’s pain-in-the-ass Donkey and the targeted gags: flatulence for some and quips about Snow White and her dwarfs for connoisseurs of innuendo.

Lady And The Tramp

Dir Glyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, 1955, 76m

No novel died in the making of this picture, cheered The Onion, hailing this classic as one of Disney’s most original, and gorgeously illustrated, masterpieces. The romance between pampered Lady and devil-may-care Tramp has a mellow charm, and Peggy Lee’s bluesy He’s A Tramp is one of the most memorable musical interludes in Disney.

My Neighbour Totoro

Miyazaki

The Iron Giant

Dir Brad Bird, 1999, 86m

With the emotional wallop of ET, some digs at Cold War propaganda, and an environmental sub-text years before Al Gore discovered his inconvenient truth, this gentle reworking of Ted Hughes’ novella is a neglected gem, a heartfelt story of a boy who befriends an alien robot and tries to hide him from government agents.

Animal Farm

Dir Joy Batchelor, John Halas, 1954, 72m

A compelling British animation of George Orwell’s political fable which makes the brutality and absurdity of Stalinist Russia as vivid as the book itself. All the animal voices are by versatile Maurice Denham.

Moznosti Dialogu

Dir Jan Svankmajer, 1982, 12m

Imagine Nick Park, Terry Gilliam and Robert Crumb egging each other on and you get some idea of the brilliant oddness of these three pieces on various forms of communication. The first – in which fruit, kitchen utensils and writing implements devour and regurgitate each other repeatedly – sets the tone perfectly.

The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh

Dir Wolfgang Reitherman, John Lounsbery, 1966, 1968, 1974, 75m

Disney’s three early stabs at A.A. Milne’s delightful bear – Winnie The Pooh And The Honey Tree, Winnie The Pooh And The Blustery Day, Winnie The Pooh And Tigger Too – are collected together on this DVD. These early stories have a subtle, unhurried charm while the scary dream of heffalumps and woozles in Blustery Day is like a bad acid trip. The voicing and songs are little short of perfection.

Clean energy? Pixar’s superbly voiced and animated monsters terrify children to generate power

Monsters Inc

Dir Pete Docter, David Silverman, Lee Unkrich, 2001, 92m

We scare because we care is a great tagline, and Pixar’s Oscar-winning tale of monsters who terrify children to generate power lives up to it. The short on the DVD, in which Mike (Billy Crystal) shows off his new car, prompted sustained, hysterical laughter the world over. The film isn’t just about technical virtuosity. Crystal, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi are as accomplished vocally as the animators are visually. It’s paced brilliantly, too.

La Vieille Dame Et Les Pigeons

Dir Sylvain Chomet, 1998, 25m

An appetiser if you don’t want to tuck right in to Chomet’s mystifying epic Les triplettes de Belleville (2003), this short has a charming premise: a starving gendarme sees a tourist feeding a pigeon and dresses up as a bird to get food. It’s nicely animated, oddly redolent of Paris and has amusing jokes about fat American tourists.

The Castle of Cagliostro

Miyazak, Hayaoi

Anime

Anime – Japanese animation – has given us Pokemon, apocalyptic scenarios, violent fantasies, romance and humour.

Akira

Dir Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988, 124m

Neo-Tokyo is in danger. A biker gang member has gone psycho after being involved in a secret military project. Can anyone stop him? Well, two kids have a chance… welcome to the birth of anime. Meticulously hand-drawn, this nightmarish vision of an alternate Tokyo (or society), started the whole thing.

The Grave Of Fireflies

Dir Isao Takahata, 1988, 159m

This movie was regarded as so distressing that it was released in Japan with a cheerful antidote, Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro. Teenage boy Seita and his little sister Setsuko must fend for themselves in war-torn Japan after their mother is killed by a firebomb. Takahata doesn’t shy away from the story’s tragic logic but his refusal to vilify the distracted adults who let the children down intensifies his message.

Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind

Dir Hayao Miyazaki, 1984, 117m

Nausicaä is the spunky princess of a tranquil rural valley disturbed by warriors trying to reclaim an ancient weapon. Miyazaki’s first feature has his characteristic blend of sweet optimism and harsh lessons. The visuals have dated but this charming precursor to Princess Mononoke is still brilliant.

Ghost In The Shell

Dir Mamoru Oshii, 1996, 92m

A futuristic sci-fi mystery which ends by quoting the First Letter to the Corinthians, Oshii’s film has a lot of violence, nudity and sex. The heroine, a cyborg cross between the Terminator and a Playboy cover star, must find The Puppet Master, the most dreaded cyber-criminal of all time. The story is too complex but full of fine visuals and intriguing ideas.

Barefoot Gen

Dir Mori Masaki, 1992, 83m

This powerful anti-war tale uses visuals associated with the golden age of anime in the 1980s – buckets of tears, grossly running noses – to explore the effects of Hiroshima. Based on a semi-autobiographical strip by Keiji Nakazawa, this is full of memorably horrific scenes, torn from history.

Princess Mononoke

Miyazak, Hayaoi

Perfect Blue

Dir Satoshi Kon, 1997, 75m

This ambitious, intelligent psycho-thriller uses anime to create the subjective reality of a young actress, Mima, haunted by her past as a squeaky-clean pop idol. Adapting Yoshikazu Takeuchi’s novel, Kon creates a schizophrenic world in which Mima is stalked by an accusing alter ego and TV blends into real life.

Tokyo Godfathers

Dir Satoshi Kon, Shogo Furuya, 2003, 92m

This strange reworking of Three Godfathers in which coincidences are so common they feel like divine intervention, has many funny, touching moments. The godfathers who find a baby are an irascible alcoholic, a female runaway and a gay transvestite. Best not to worry about logic as the tale unfolds.

Transformers: The Movie

Dir Nelson Shin, 1986, 86m

With a passing debt to extreme anime and David Cronenberg, Transformers: The Movie fetishises metal with a joy that seems perfectly appropriate for an entertainment that started out as a TV series to sell toys but became a bona fide cult. This version calls on the vocal talents of Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, Casey Kasem and Eric Idle and, even though the animation isn’t top notch, has an appeal that extends beyond mere nostalgia.

Ninja Scroll

Directors Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kevin Seymour, 1996, 94m

A ninja-for-hire must confront an old nemesis who can call on an array of demons with special powers. That’s simplifying the intricate plot somewhat but the pace is such you won’t notice the lacunae. Kawajiri’s name is almost like a seal of quality and this bloody, violent saga, which still finds room and time for sweet romance, doesn’t disappoint.

Apocalypses

As the world becomes a more complex, technologically sophisticated place, moviemakers have taken great delight in imagining how it might end.

The Day The Earth Caught Fire

Dir Val Guest, 1961, 98m, b/w

In this seriously underrated classic sci-fi disaster movie, the world is tilted on its axis because the Russians and the Americans have thoughtlessly exploded their hydrogen bombs at the same time. The progressive stages of the disaster – most memorably London shrouded in fog and heat – are strikingly imagined. Look out for Michael Caine as a policeman diverting traffic.

The Sacrifice

Dir Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986, 149m

Humourless, hectoring, self-important, yet poetic and, at times, visually remarkable, Tarkovsky’s final movie imagines an imminent apocalypse while paying homage to Ingmar Bergman. Erland Josephson, one of Bergman’s stock players, is the retired actor and author who promises God that he will destroy everything he holds dear – himself and his family included – if the apocalypse is postponed. But how altruistic is his offer?

Armageddon

Dir Michael Bay, 1998, 150m

Watching a Michael Bay movie is, as the critic Anthony Lane noted, rather like being hit on the head with a large rock, so it comes as no surprise that he delivers this with conviction, aplomb and heroic disregard for scientific accuracy. Bruce Willis has the right can-do spirit as the self-sacrificing head of a crew of deep-core drillers who save the world by planting nuclear weapons in an asteroid that is heading to the planet Earth.

On The Beach

Dir Stanley Kramer, 1959, 134m b/w

Bleak, moving, and occasionally melodramatic, this is a decent adaptation of Nevil Shute’s classic novel in which nuclear war has destroyed all life in the northern hemisphere and the rest of the planet must kill time until the fatal clouds finish them off. A strong cast – Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins and Ava Gardner – keep this working even when Kramer’s direction sags.

Last Night

Dir Don McKellar, 1998, 95m

Challenged to make a movie about the imminent millennium, Canadian Don McKellar directed, wrote and starred in this sly, dryly fatalistic apocalypse in which the world ends at midnight. The radio is playing down the top 500 songs of all-time while gas company employee David Cronenberg is making calls to thank his customers. McKellar doesn’t quite deliver on a promising set-up, but this is still fun.

The Bed Sitting Room

Dir Richard Lester, 1969, 90m

Lester’s take on Spike Milligan’s savage post-nuclear satire almost destroyed his career. Pre-Monty Python, the film was just too grim and surreal for its day – the soundtrack of maniacal music hall tunes didn’t help – and hardly even opened in the US. Pity, really, as Arthur Lowe is superb as a man who fears he may turn into a bedsit, as are Rita Tushingham (as a pregnant young girl whose baby dies), busybody Ralph Richardson, and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, detectives working from a car suspended from a hot-air balloon.

Deep Impact

Dir Mimi Leder, 1998, 121m

Hollywood was in full-blown pre-millennial angst in the late 1990s but moviegoers were more enthralled by Armageddon’s John Wayne heroics than by this thoughtful, scientifically reasonably sensible take on what might happen when a comet hurls towards Earth. The seventh cavalry – in this case, the crew of the Messiah led by Robert Duvall – do save the day but not before a mega tsunami devastates much of the world.

Argentina

Movie makers have shed almost as much light on Argentina’s dirty secrets as historians. And perhaps because of those troubles, the nation’s film-makers have shown a fine appreciation for the contrariness of fate.

La Historia Oficial (The Official Version)

Dir Luis Puenzo, 1985, 110m

Of the 30,000 people who disappeared during the military dictatorship of the late 1970s, several were pregnant women whose babies were given to rich families. As the regime falters, Alicia, an adoptive mother, starts asking her husband, a successful lawyer, about her five-year-old daughter. This thought-provoking movie, an allegory of a nation living in fear of its own past, was filmed largely in secret after Puenzo got anonymous threats.

Esperando La Carroza

Dir Alejandro Doria, 1985, 87m

One of the best Argentine comedies ever, this is the comic tale of an extended family with one fixation: avoiding taking care of a grandmother who speaks, eats and farts too much. But when granny vanishes, the family has to unite in a desperate quest to find her.

Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens)

Dir Fabián Bielinsky, 2000, 114m

Two swindlers wander around Buenos Aires looking for victims and find the perfect target: a Spanish collector desperate for the Nine Queens, rare stamps worth millions. Everything is about a percentage of the big scam about to go down. But who’s conning who? Only the viewers feel safe in this brilliant film.

La Guerra Gaucha (The Gaucho War)

Dir Lucas Demare, 1942, 90m

This war of independence movie has it all: poorly armed gauchos using guerrilla tactics against the rich, a priest backing the cause – and an injured, high-ranking enemy who becomes convinced he should change sides and defend the locals from the Spanish.

El Hijo De La Novia (Son Of The Bride)

Dir Juan José Campanella, 2001, 123m

Mid-life crisis strikes Rafael Belvedere, a divorced 40-year-old man who doesn’t want to sell the family restaurant; is accused of ignoring his daughter by his ex-wife; can’t commit to his girlfriend; and feels guilty for not spending more time with her sick mother. Norma Aleandro and Hector Alterio, the leads in La Historia Oficial, are reunited in this extraordinary emotional drama.

Un Lugar En El Mundo (A Place In The World)

Dir Adolfo Aristarain, 1991, 120m

A family escaping the military regime goes into exile in a tiny town in the remote valley of San Luis. But a Spanish geologist, prospecting for oil, destroys the calm. One of the most beautiful, emotional and intense Argentine movies, this sheds a revealing light on a nation finally beginning to heal itself.

Felicidades (Merry Christmas)

Dir Lucho Bender, 2000, 100m

This wondrous fresco of a movie captures a melancholy Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires as various interconnected characters are about to hit rock bottom. Though there are touches of comedy and drama, this atypical Christmas tale reeks of misery, loneliness, kindness and hope.

No Habrá Más Penas Ni Olvido (Funny Dirty Little War)

Dir Héctor Olivera, 1983, 80m

A magical blend of farce and sarcasm, this adaptation of Soriano’s novel is set in a small town where two factions of the Peronist party battle for power.

Art

If a picture paints a thousand words, why can’t movies say more about art and artists? Here are a few exceptions to the general mediocrity.

Andrei Rublev

Dir Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969, 183m

Restored to its full glory in 2004, this beautiful, mysterious masterpiece is a slow-burning, intense epic in which a 15th-century icon painter is tested by anguish, disillusion and tyranny but is ambiguously redeemed when he and a journeyman miraculously create a giant bell.

Vincent & Theo

Dir Robert Altman, 1990, 138m

With the eye and troubled spirit of an artist, Altman gives us a haunting portrait of Vincent van Gogh (Tim Roth) and his brother Theo (Paul Rhys). Roth is convincing as a man in deep pain, and in the opening scene (Sunflowers going for millions at auction) he makes Christie’s look like a trafficker in human misery. One of Altman’s lesser-known gems.

Pollock

Dir Ed Harris, 2000, 122m

Most movies about artists bore and fail to convince when they show the creator at work. Yet the scenes of Jackson Pollock (Harris) with brush or stick are the most effective parts of this dogged, intelligent march through a life cut short, possibly by suicide, at 44.

Rembrandt

Dir Alexander Korda, 1936, 85m, b/w

The visual style is more Vermeer than Rembrandt, but Charles Laughton does his manful best in this magnificent, slow, depressing biopic, with an almost ham-free performance that should be better known.

Basquiat

Dir Julian Schnabel, 1956, 122m

In his debut film, Schnabel traces the journey of tortured, self-doubting graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (superbly played by Jeffrey Wright) from obscurity to fame, notoriety and death. David Bowie has an intriguing cameo as Warhol.

Frida

Dir Julia Taymor, 2002, 123m

Salma Hayek is suitably fierce as tempestuous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. In a fine cast – including Alfred Molina, Roger Rees, Geoffrey Rush, Antonio Banderas and Edward Norton – Hayek gives a stellar performance that should have revived her career.

The Horse’s Mouth

Dir Ronald Neame, 1958, 97m

Alec Guinness was not the obvious choice as a brilliant, bedraggled artist. He had discarded the Joyce Cary novel this is based on out of sheer boredom. But he gives a devilishly enjoyable performance in his funniest, most personal movie. The paintings in the film are by British artist John Bratby.

Girl With A Pearl Earring

Dir Peter Webber, 2003, 100m

This quiet, intelligent tale of the artist (Colin Firth looking a bit out of kilter), his model (Scarlett Johansson) and exploitation is almost too handsome for its own good. But this feminist take on the traditional art biopic is understated, well-framed and, thanks to Eduardo Serra’s wondrous cinematography, captures the painter’s trademark use of light and shadow.

Love Is the Devil

Dir John Maybury, 1998, 90m

Take off your clothes and come to bed. Then you can have whatever you want. What a way to stop a burglar. Derek Jacobi’s audacious physical portrayal of Francis Bacon is almost uncanny, and in Daniel Craig he finds a reformed thief to his liking. Maybury mirrors Bacon’s style with distorting lenses and split-screen devices but the script seems to hurtle from one epigram to another.

Moulin Rouge

Dir John Huston, 1952, 119m

José Ferrer is believably bitter as Toulouse Lautrec, an artist with such oddly shaped genitalia that Parisian prostitutes called him Teapot. Huston uses colour magically but is let down by the script. There’s little excuse for his mistress leaving him with the words: So long, Toulouse.

Asia Minor

The movie industries in South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam have made a global impact in the last 20 years, but you still can’t, for example, buy Lino Brocka’s Manila In the Claws Of Neon, widely held to be the best Philippine movie ever, on DVD. Here are eight fine, available movies from these emerging cinemas.

Git

Dir Song Il-gon, 2004, 90m

Also known as Feathers In The Wind, this quiet, subtle, sad Korean movie centres on a film-maker plagued by writers’ block who takes a last-minute trip to fulfil a ten-year-old promise to a past love. The title means feather – referring to the decoration in the hair of tango-dancing Lee So-yeon, the girl minding the hotel where the director seeks refuge.

Old Boy

Dir Chan-wook Park, 2003, 120m

Tarantino is a great admirer of this film, possibly because it delivers gut-wrenching violence and exotic horror with such panache while alluding to Kafka, The Ipcress File and The Prisoner. An obnoxious man is imprisoned – fed, clothed and drugged – for 15 years then encouraged to seek retribution on his tormentor, a suave Bond-villain type.

Nang Nak

Dir Nonzee Nimibutr, 1999, 100m

This treatment of a widely believed Thai ghost story was even more popular domestically than Tears Of The Black Tiger. A soldier returns from the war to his wife and child – but she died in childbirth and he has been spellbound by her ghost. Tension mounts as the ghost kills anyone who tries to tell the husband. Nimibutr plays down the gore and misogyny to beautifully evoke time and place.

Tropical Malady

Dir Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004, 118m

This fantasy headtrip leaves you wondering what just happened. It opens with the discovery of a savaged body, segues into a gentle love story between two soldiers and then the screen goes blank for an unnervingly long time, cutting to a new version of the story in which the soldier’s lover is a shapeshifting tiger spirit. You’ll marvel at – or be wearied by –its audacity.

Tears Of the Black Tiger

Dir Wisit Sasanatieng, 2000, 101m

A parodic homage to Westerns and tearjerkers, Fa Talai Jone offers hallucinatory verve, gory shoot-outs and hilarious over-acting. There is a plot – city girl and country boy meet in Bangkok and the boy joins a gang to hunt the bandit who attacked his father – but it’s not that crucial in this bizarre curio.

Himalaya: L’enfance D’un Chef

Dir Eric Valli, 1999, 108m

The action begins and ends with people walking in this classic clash-of-generations tale part-financed by – and set in – Nepal. An ageing chief mourns his dead son and blames the new young village chief for his loss. Good to look at, the film offers authentic insight into a timeless way of life.

The Scent Of Green Papaya

Dir Tran Anh Hung, 1993, 103m

Placid, visually powerful, this psychologically nuanced debut by Tran Anh Hung was the first Vietnamese movie to win a prize at Cannes. Centring on the growth of a young woman (played by the director’s wife Tran Nu Yên-Khé), this drama is a soothing poem for the eyes, faltering only in the last third when the plot develops.

The Cup

Dir Khyentse Norbu, 1999, 93m

This gently humorous debut by Bhutanese film-maker Norbu mysteriously captured the world’s imagination. The novelty of monks playing soccer intrigued many whose knowledge of Tibetan culture ends with the Dalai Lama. Beneath the comedy are serious messages about China’s war of attrition against Tibetan tradition. The monks are recognisably human, not automatons praying or dispensing cryptic wisdom.

Australian gems

There is, thankfully, far more to Australian cinema than Crocodile Dundee’s grin. Here are ten quality movies made by wizards from Oz.

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Dir Peter Weir, 1975, 115m

Three schoolgirls and a teacher disappear on a Valentine’s Day trip to Hanging Rock. Weir bravely refuses to solve the riddle of the missing persons choosing, instead, to use the episode as a symbol of the angst settlers from Europe experienced when confronted with the mysteries of their new, yet ancient, home and the sexual hysteria that lay never far below the surface in Victorian society. Haunting and beautifully shot, this is available in a director’s cut which, unusually, trims the running time by seven minutes.

My Brilliant Career

Dir Gillian Armstrong, 1979, 100m

Armstrong injected a female sensibility into the Australian New Wave of the 1970s. In an assured debut, she brings to the screen Miles Franklin’s semi-autobiographical novel about a rebellious Outback girl (the brilliant Judy Davis, who actively disliked her character) who yearns to be a writer but can’t break free from the system that objectifies her.

The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith

Dir Fred Schepisi, 1978, 120m

In its attempt to relay the Aboriginal experience, this no-holds-barred portrayal of racism caused a storm when it was released, and can still shock today. Set in the late 19th century, on the eve of Australian federation, it plots the shattering of a half-caste boy’s dreams as a process of brutalisation leads him to realise he can turn only to violence.

Strictly Ballroom

Dir Baz Luhrmann, 1992, 94m

Nobody does bighearted camp like Baz Luhrmann, and this delightful fairy tale of redemption in dance and love-conquering-all still does the trick. Satirising and paying warm tribute to the suburban competitive ballroom dancing circuit which the director belonged to as a young man, this is an exhilarating, hilariously sad, and beautifully crafted debut.

The Proposition

Dir John Hillcoate, 2005, 104m

Nick Cave, master of Australian gothic, turned to scriptwriting with this arty Western in which Irish brother is turned against Irish brother to horrific effect. Visceral as a Peckinpah movie and with the humanistic preoccupations of John Ford, it portrays the eye-scorching Outback as a personal and physical hell – and civilisation as even worse. The performances are outstanding, but especially from Guy Pearce, Danny Huston, Emily Watson and Ray Winstone.

Muriel’s Wedding

Dir P. J. Hogan, 1994, 106m

A prime example of something Australian cinema does so well: bonding dark dysfunction with bubblegum kitsch to create a work of affecting emotion. Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths shine as the depressive frump and neurotic good-time girl – and the Abba soundtrack works beautifully as a counterpoint to the seamy underside of family life on display.

Rabbit-Proof Fence

Dir Philip Noyce, 2002, 94m

The 1930s. Mixed-race Aborigine children are taken from their families and bundled into detention camps to assimilate them into white society. Three girls, determined to return to their mothers, begin a 1500-mile walk through the desert, following the fence of the title. A heartbreaking tale of the horrors of the Aborigine experience under white rule that hovers this side of mawkishness thanks to the sumptuous cinematography of Christopher Doyle, Kenneth Branagh’s memorable martinet and the unaffected performances from the three non-professional leads.

Jedda

Dir Charles Chauvel, 1955, 101m

Australia’s first colour feature film (and what amazing colour) is a tragic melodrama starring Ngarla Kunuth as an Aborigine girl adopted by a white family in the Northern Territory. Her life is disrupted by the arrival of Marbuck, an Aborigine man who tries to take her back to her roots.

Lantana

Dir Ray Lawrence, 2001, 121m

A magnificently low-key performance from Anthony La Paglia as the world-weary detective is the centre of this slow, richly satisfying piece of Australian noir that exposes the dark side of the suburbs. The plot is driven by the character’s emotions and those expecting clever twists were disappointed. A pity.

Crocodile Dundee

Dir Peter Faiman, 1986, 98m

This tongue-in-cheek hick-in-the-city lark spawned some eminently skippable sequels and global cult status for Paul Hogan, who plays the canny Outback free spirit to perfection. It’s all very non-PC, with Australian brashness, innocence and cheery energy juxtaposed against uptight Big Apple neurosis in some corny, and very funny, set-pieces, notably those featuring knives.

Avant garde

Experimental movies haven’t always made the transition to DVD – it’s hard to find, for example, the works of Harry Smith – but here are eight avant-garde classics you can buy.

Un Chien Andalou

Dir Luis Buñuel, 1929, 17m

One of the most startling artefacts in movie history. Buñuel and Salvador Dali set out to appall – hence the razor slashing a sheep’s eyeball. The fixation with lust, religion, decay, violence and death inspired David Lynch, Peter Greenaway and the makers of The Matrix.

Meshes Of The Afternoon

Dir Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid, 1943,18m, b/w

Playing with dreamlike images to create a twilight zone between fantasy and reality, Deren was one of the leaders of the avant garde and this study, made in collaboration with her second husband Hammid, is her masterpiece, an complex, unforgettable study of a distraught woman having a nervous breakdown.

L’Age d’Or

Buñuel, Luis

Man With A Movie Camera

Dir Dziga Vertov, 1929, 68m, b/w

This hypnotic masterpiece is simply one of the most daring experimental movies ever made. Vertov, a Polish-born Soviet filmmaker, introduces superimposed montages, dissolves, variable camera speeds and split-screen as he dwells, with no apparent rationale, on a working day in Moscow. Years ahead of its time, this didn’t impress Vertov’s Soviet masters who sent him to the Ukraine to shoot newsreels. Today, it seems slightly quaint, yet surprisingly fresh – as if filmmakers have not yet answered all the questions posed by Vertov.

Scorpio Rising

Dir Kenneth Anger, 1964, 28m

This semi-documentary about a gay-Nazi-biker’s gang alludes to James Dean, Jesus, and Brando, draws on the real lives of bikers Anger knew in Coney Island, while reflecting the director’s preoccupation preparation, ritual and destruction. The pioneering use of pop songs on the soundtrack would be taken up, in the 1970s, by Scorsese and Lucas.

Koyaanisqatsi

Dir Godfrey Reggio, 1982, 86m

The first – and best – of Reggio’s qatsi trilogy is an inspiring, expensive, avant-garde essay on the theme of life out of balance (the literal translation of the film’s Hopi title) driven by compelling photography and a score by Philip Glass so good that Reggio re-edited the movie to work beter with it.

Dog Star Man Part 1

Dir Stan Brakhage, 1962

Brakhage’s most famous work is almost mandatory for film students, as he uses every trick in his repertoire to give us this surreal masterpiece of image-driven, fast-cut filmmaking. Aficionados insist you have to watch all five titles in this series but first try this journey through the mind of a woodsman, with an axe and a dog, working his way up a snowy mountainside.

Blow Job

Dir Andy Warhol, 1963, 35m, b/w

A visually static series of close-ups of a young man’s facial expressions as he experiences the titular sexual act, this is as much about boredom as it is about sex.

b

B-movies

Made on slender budgets by wannabes and has-beens, B-movies mutated in the 1950s into sci-fi epics, teen movies and monster fests.

Detour

Dir Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945, 67m, b/w

This creepy shocker works as a straight noir. A weak, self-pitying hero (Tom Neal) is a pawn to scheming temptress (Ann Savage) – unless Neal, the unreliable narrator, is assembling an alibi for his misdeeds. Savage is sublime as the heroine with claws.

Out Of The Past

Dir Jacques Tourneur, 1947, 97m, b/w

Tourneur’s B-noir works on many levels, and Mitchum and Greer shine in a movie in which the doomed hero tells us: Success in life is just a matter of losing more slowly.

D.O.A.

Dir Rudolph Maté, 1950, 83m, b/w

I want to report a murder. Mine. Is there a finer opening line in the canon of Hollywood crime? This cynical, pungent tale, in which Edmond O’Brien tries to untangle the mystery of his own murder, was a high-concept movie before its time.

The Black Scorpion

Dir Edward Ludwig, 1957, 88m, b/w

B-movie regulars Richard Denning and Mara Corday meet angry arachnids in a showdown in Mexico City in an enjoyably schlocky low budget sci-fi, distinguished by special effects from Willis O’Brien – who helped give life to King Kong – and a scene in which two scorpions derail a train.

Kiss Me Deadly

Aldrich, Robert

Dillinger

Dir Max Nosseck, 1945, 70m, b/w

This vigorously nasty biopic of a gangster whose life story was written in blood, bullets and blondes was the template for countless criminal sagas. A strong cast is headed by lean, mean Lawrence Tierney (Reservoir Dogs).

When Worlds Collide

Dir Rudolph Maté, 1951, 83m, b/w

Earth’s collision with a runaway star is brilliantly imagined by visual effects pioneer George Pal. A celluloid milestone anticipating Deep Impact and Armageddon, this is an enjoyable museum piece.

Homicidal

Dir William Castle, 1961, 87m, b/w

Time thought this slasher, starring cult actress Jean Arless, better structured than Psycho. History has tended to disagree. But Arless’s wooden acting, Castle’s ghoulish flair and the obsessive referencing of Hitchcock’s chiller make for a camp classic.

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

Dir Russ Meyer, 1970, 109m

Love it or hate it, you won’t forget this unlikely collaboration between kitsch king Meyer and future movie critic Roger Ebert. The tale of a female rock-trio trapped in drugs and sleaze, it is explicit (for its day) and, with its hip dialogue, oddly square.

Robert Redford in Barry Levinson’s Arthurian baseball saga, The Natural

Terror