Joe Maddison's War (2010)

Recommended

UK

Television Film

Director: Patrick Collerton

Writer: Alan Plater

Cinematographer: Chris Seager

Composer: Kevin Sargent

Cast: Kevin Whately, Robson Green, Melanie Hill, Sammy Dobson, James Atherton, Angela Lonsdale, James Baxter, Trevor Fox, Derek Jacobi

When his wife leaves him (suddenly and without warning), middle-aged Tyneside ship builder Joe Maddison, a veteran of The First World War, joins The Home Guard, finds love anew, doesn’t become disillusioned with socialism, kicks religion into touch, and generally learns to live again, in Alan Plater’s gentle, funny, and unfortunately final teleplay. Iain.Stott

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Excluded (2010)

Recommended

UK

Short Television Film

Director: Misha Manson-Smith

Writers: Ben Bickerton, Brian Fillis

Cinematographer: Ashley Rowe

Cast: Bryan Dick, George Whitehead, Craig Parkinson, Monica Dolan, Nicholas Sidi, Juliet Cowan, Perry Benson, Karl Collins, Brendan Mackey

Having just given up a well paid but unfulfilling job, Ian Bateley, an idealistic, newly qualified teacher, starts work teaching maths at an inner-city comprehensive school, which the principal is busily trying to bump up to academy status, where he comes up against an unruly pupil, who he eventually manages to tame, an achievement seemingly beyond his peers, as the boy is soon threatened with exclusion (expulsion), in this compelling, well acted, and thoroughly credible feeling BBC drama. Iain.Stott

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This Is England '86 (2010)

Recommended

UK

Television Mini-Series

Directors: Tom Harper, Shane Meadows

Writers: Shane Meadows, Jack Thorne

Cinematographer: Danny Cohen

Composer: Ludovico Einaudi

Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Vicky McClure, Joseph Gilgun, Andrew Shim, Rosamund Hanson, Chanel Cresswell, Danielle Watson, Andrew Ellis, Michael Socha, Perry Benson, George Newton, Stephen Graham, Katherine Dow Blyton, Kriss Dosanjh, Hannah Walters

Though the humour is sometimes perhaps a little too broad, particularly in the first couple of parts, Meadows’s follow-up to This Is England (2006) – set three years later, with Shaun leaving school for an uncertain future – is never less than thoroughly entertaining, and, by its tumultuous, painfully visceral final part, it is also decidedly devastating. Iain.Stott

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This Is England (2006)

Highly Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Shane Meadows

Cinematographer: Danny Cohen

Composer: Ludovico Einaudi

Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Jo Hartley, Andrew Shim, Vicky McClure, Joe Gilgun, Rosamund Hanson, Andrew Ellis, Perry Benson

A lonely, bullied twelve-year-old boy, whose father had recently died in the Falklands war, joins a friendly gang of skinheads, which is torn apart when a former member is released from prison, freshly indoctrinated with militant racist views, in Meadows’s funny, touching, and devastatingly powerful semi-autobiographical film, which boasts an astounding performance from a never better Stephen Graham. Iain.Stott

Followed by This Is England '86 (2010).

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First Light (2010)

Recommended

UK

Television Docudrama

Director: Matthew Whiteman

Writer: Caleb Ranson, Geoffrey Wellum

Cinematographer: Mark Wolf

Composer: Gabriel Currington

Narrator: Geoffrey Wellum

Cast: Sam Heughan, Gary Lewis, Ben Aldridge, Alex Robertson, Paul Kynman, Paul Tinto, Jordan Bernarde, Alex Waldmann, Tuppence Middleton, Richard Walsh

This affecting, lovingly crafted BBC docudrama, adapted from Geoffrey Wellum’s memoirs, who also narrates proceedings, details his experiences as an 18-year-old Spitfire pilot fighting in the Battle of Britain in 1940, depicting his transformation from wide-eyed innocent to world-weary emotional wreck in a matter of mere months. Iain.Stott

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Me and Orson Welles (2008)

Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Film

Director: Richard Linklater

Writers: Holly Gent Palmo, Vincent Palmo Jr., Robert Kaplow

Cinematographer: Dick Pope

Composer: Michael J. McEvoy

Cast: Zac Efron, Claire Danes, Christian McKay, Ben Chaplin, Zoe Kazan, Eddie Marsan, Kelly Reilly, James Tupper, Leo Bill

A 17-year-old aspiring actor with a passion for the arts manages to finagle a part in Orson Welles's 1937 Mercury Theatre production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in Linklater’s lovingly crafted and gently, nostalgically entertaining film, an adaptation of Kaplow’s fictionalised account of the renowned production. Iain.Stott

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[•REC]² (2009)

Not Recommended

Spain

Feature Film

Directors: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza

Writers: Jaume Balagueró, Manu Díez, Paco Plaza

Cinematographer: Pablo Rosso

Cast: Jonathan Mellor, Oscar Sánchez Zafra, Ariel Casas, Alejandro Casaseca, Pablo Rosso, Pep Molina, Andrea Ros, Àlex Batllori, Pau Poch, Manuela Velasco

With more cameras and a great big unwelcome dollop of supernatural nonsense, this mildly diverting if relatively disappointing follow up to Balagueró and Plaza’s 2007 horror film fatally lacks – as we are thrown straight into the action with no time to get to know the characters – the human core of its predecessor. Iain.Stott

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La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009)

Recommended

France/USA

Feature Documentary

Original Title: La danse: Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris

Director: Frederick Wiseman

Cinematographers: John Davey, Dick Pope

Veteran documentarian Wiseman’s fascinating leisurely-paced observational documentary compellingly paints a portrait of the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris, documenting rehearsals, management meetings, costuming, and even building maintenance, as it slowly builds up a picture of life behind the curtain. Iain.Stott

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Jazz on a Summer's Day (1960)

Essential Viewing

USA/UK

Feature Documentary

Director: Bert Stern

Writers: Albert D'Annibale, Arnold Perl

Cinematographers: Mike Cuesta, Courtney Hafela, Ray Phealon, Jack Schatz, Bert Stern

Featuring: Thelonious Monk, Anita O'Day, Dinah Washington, Chuck Berry, Chico Hamilton, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson

Photographer Bert Stern’s sole directing effort is perhaps the definitive concert film; it chronicles the 1958 Newport Jazz festival, mixing footage of acts as diverse and wonderful as Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, and (bizarrely) Chuck Berry with delightful shots of the appreciative audience and a (presumably) staged house party. Iain.Stott

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Sorry, Thanks (2009)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Dia Sokol

Writers: Dia Sokol, Lauren Veloski

Cinematographer: Matthias Grunsky

Cast: Wiley Wiggins, Kenya Miles, Andrew Bujalski, Donovan Baddley, Ia Hernandez, Jonathon Wallace

Mumblecore producer Sokol’s accomplished and very promising directorial debut follows a pair of San Franciscans, who share a one night stand, over a period of a few days, slowly building up a picture of their lives, affectingly detailing the aftermaths of break-ups and infidelities without all the unrealistic drama and histrionics that we are usually subjected to in similarly themed films. Iain.Stott

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Monsters (2010)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Director/Cinematographer: Gareth Edwards

Composer: Jon Hopkins

Cast: Scoot McNairy, Whitney Able

Six years after a NASA probe carrying samples of extra-terrestrial life back to earth crashed in Mexico, which subsequently took hold, leaving much of the north of the country a no-go area, Andrew, an earthy photographer, and Samantha, his boss’s daughter, set off on foot across the infected zone towards the US border and, whilst avoiding some big multi-tentacled whatsits, slowly fall for each other, in Edwards’s ultra low-budget feature debut, a pleasing mix of biting social commentary and charming character study – it’s likely to leave action hunting genre fans disappointed, though. Iain.Stott

For a slightly longer piece, see 1000 Nights in the Dark.

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Smiley Face (2007)

Cautiously Recommended

USA/Germany

Feature Film

Director: Gregg Araki

Writer: Dylan Haggerty

Cinematographer: Shawn Kim

Composer: David Kitay

Cast: Anna Faris, John Krasinski, Danny Masterson, Adam Brody, John Cho, Danny Trejo, Jane Lynch, Michael Hitchcock, Marion Ross

In Araki’s unevenly entertaining picaresque comedy, a perma-stoned struggling actress, played credibly by Faris, eats her roommate’s cupcakes in a fit of the munchies, not knowing that they were laced with marijuana, and suddenly finds herself more stoned than she’s ever been before – one thing leads to another, and before you know it she is sat atop a Ferris wheel, furnitureless, phoneless, and holding a very valuable and very stolen manuscript. Iain.Stott

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Dick (1999)

Recommended

USA/France

Feature Film

Director: Andrew Fleming

Writers: Andrew Fleming, Sheryl Longin

Cinematographer: Alexander Gruszynski

Composer: John Debney

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Michelle Williams, Dan Hedaya, Will Ferrell, Bruce McCulloch, Teri Garr, Dave Foley, Jim Breuer, Ana Gasteyer, Harry Shearer, Saul Rubinek

A pair of ditzy 15-year-old girls (one of whom lives in The Watergate) inadvertently bring down Richard ‘Dick’ Nixon, when their scatterbrained actions lead to the arrest of the Watergate burglars and the subsequent implication of a number of high ranking White House officials, in Fleming’s frequently hilarious and pleasingly silly speculation about the then unknown identity of Woodward and Bernstein’s Deep Throat. Iain.Stott

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Le Bonheur (1965)

Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Le bonheur

Writer/Director: Agnès Varda

Cinematographers: Claude Beausoleil, Jean Rabier

Composer: Jean-Michel Defaye

Cast: Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Marie-France Boyer

In Varda’s unsettlingly jaunty, irony drenched film, François, a handsome, happily married young joiner with two small children, attempts to have his cake and eat it too, when he begins an affair with a pretty young post office worker, as he continues his lifelong quest for more and more happiness – but does the happiness of others ever cross his mind? Iain.Stott

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The Ghost (2010)

Not Recommended

France/Germany/UK

Feature Film

Original Title: The Ghost Writer

Director: Roman Polanski

Writers: Robert Harris, Roman Polanski

Cinematographer: Pawel Edelman

Composer: Alexandre Desplat

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Robert Pugh, Timothy Hutton, Jon Bernthal

A ghost writer takes a last minute job, re-writing the former Prime Minister Adam Lang’s memoirs, and soon finds himself stumbling into a world of life-threatening international conspiracies, in Polanski’s reasonably gripping though by and large unconvincing and often quite silly thriller, which lacks credibility in both its minutiae and general plotting. Iain.Stott

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7th Heaven (1927)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Frank Borzage

Writers: Benjamin Glazer, H.H. Caldwell, Katherine Hilliker, Austin Strong

Cinematographers: Ernest Palmer, Joseph A. Valentine

Cast: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Ben Bard, Albert Gran, David Butler, Marie Mosquini, Emile Chautard

Chico, a cocky sewer worker who aspires to be a street cleaner, against his better judgement, takes pity on an abused waif, taking her into his home, and – again against his better judgement – gradually falls in love with her, but thoughts of living happily ever after must be put on hold when war rears its ugly head, in Borzage’s well crafted though unconvincingly plotted romance, which benefits greatly from Gaynor’s very affecting performance. Iain.Stott

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The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: La chute de la maison Usher

Director: Jean Epstein

Writers: Jean Epstein, Luis Buñuel, Edgar Allan Poe

Cinematographers: Georges Lucas, Jean Lucas

Cast: Jean Debucourt, Marguerite Gance, Charles Lamy, Fournez-Goffard

Roderick, the last in the line of Ushers, obsessively works on a painting of his ailing wife, who becomes ever weaker the more vibrant her portrait becomes, until she finally dies, at which point he goes a little mad(der), in Epstein’s unsettling, impressionistic horror film, which is enhanced considerably by Rolande de Candé’s discomforting 1960 musical arrangement. Iain.Stott

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Modern Romance (1981)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Albert Brooks

Writers: Albert Brooks, Monica Mcgowan Johnson

Cinematographer: Eric Saarinen

Cast: Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno Kirby, James L. Brooks, George Kennedy

Robert, a neurotic, narcissistic Hollywood film editor, breaks up with his long-term girlfriend, Mary, despite still being in love with her, and spends the next 24 hours trying to forget her (aided by drugs, jogging equipment, and a blind date), before realising his mistake and pursuing her anew, in Brooks’s hilariously perceptive and brilliantly performed relationship comedy. Iain.Stott

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A City of Sadness (1989)

Highly Recommended

Taiwan/Hong Kong

Feature Film

Original Title: 悲情城市

Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien

Writers: Chu T'ien-wen, Wu Nien-Jen

Cinematographer: Chen Huai-en

Composers: S.E.N.S.

Cast: Li Tianlu, Chen Sung Young, Gao Chieh, Tony Leung, Wu I-fang, Xin Shufen, Chen Shu-fang, Ko Su-yun, Lin Li-ching, Ho, Ai-yun, Kenny Cheung, Yang Chang-chieng

Hou’s leisurely paced, Golden Lion winning film takes a sprawling and epic yet intimate look at the liberation of Taiwan from Japan in 1945 and the subsequent unrest caused by the Chinese Civil War, looking at it through the eyes of one particular family and its four disparate brothers, beautifully taking in scenes of great tenderness and brutal violence. Iain.Stott

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Le Plaisir (1952)

Cautiously Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Le plaisir

Director: Max Ophüls

Writers: Jacques Natanson, Max Ophüls, Guy de Maupassant

Cinematographers: Philippe Agostini, Christian Matras

Composer: Joe Hajos

Cast: Claude Dauphin, Gaby Morlay, Jean Galland, Madeleine Renaud, Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, Jean Servais, Daniel Gélin, Simone Simon

Ophüls’s evocatively photographed and stylishly if occasionally flashily directed film consists of three short tales, adapted from Guy de Maupassant stories, revolving around sex, love, and passion, which provide good, solid entertainment for an adult audience (but not, unfortunately, much more than that). Iain.Stott

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Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

Essential Viewing

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Terence Davies

Cinematographers: William Diver, Patrick Duval

Cast: Freda Dowie, Pete Postlethwaite, Angela Walsh, Dean Williams, Lorraine Ashbourne, Debi Jones, Michael Starke, Vincent Maguire, Antonia Mallen

Davies’s sensual, impressionistic magnum opus presents a visually ravishing, gently funny, and decidedly heartbreaking yet surprisingly warm look at the upbringing of his elder siblings in a working class district of Liverpool in the late '40s and early ‘50s, detailing the highs and lows of growing up in a house ruled over by a violently abusive father and a loving if passive mother. Iain.Stott

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Love Streams (1984)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: John Cassavetes

Writers: Ted Allan, John Cassavetes

Cinematographer: Al Ruban

Composer: Bo Harwood

Cast: Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Diahnne Abbott, Seymour Cassel, Margaret Abbott, Jakob Shaw, Risa Blewitt

Adapted from Ted Allan’s play, Cassavetes’s visceral, plotless, bravely acted character study follows the misfortunes of a pair of mentally unbalanced, middle-aged siblings, who fill their empty, loveless lives with casual sex, joyless holidays, inappropriate pets, and a copious amount of booze. Iain.Stott

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The Tarnished Angels (1957)

Cautiously Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Douglas Sirk

Writers: George Zuckerman, William Faulkner

Cinematographer: Irving Glassberg

Composer: Frank Skinner

Cast: Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Jack Carson, Robert Middleton, Alan Reed, Alexander Lockwood, Chris Olsen

During the New Orleans Mardi Gras of 1932, an oft drunk newspaperman falls in with a single-minded daredevil pilot, his beautiful wife, his long-suffering engineer, and his loving son, hoping to sniff out a human story, much to the chagrin of his facts-loving, conservative editor, in Sirk’s strikingly shot though only mildly entertaining melodrama, which is hamstrung somewhat by hammy dialogue, uneven performances, and a horribly insistent score. Iain.Stott

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Bouquet of Barbed Wire (2010)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Television Mini-Series

Director: Ashley Pearce

Writers: Guy Andrews, Andrea Newman

Cinematographer: Mike Spragg

Composer: Ruth Barrett

Cast: Trevor Eve, Hermione Norris, Imogen Poots, Tom Riley, Jemima Rooper, Pierro Niel-Mee, Nicholas Farrell

A haute bourgeois family is slowly torn apart when its teenaged daughter falls pregnant to and marries her English teacher, who is ten years her senior, which gradually brings to light long buried secrets and lies, in this wonderfully acted and enjoyably trashy three part mini-series, which is let down considerably by its final episode, which lacks the relaxed pacing and black humour of its first two. Iain.Stott

Andrea Newman's novel was previously filmed as Bouquet of Barbed Wire (1976).

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The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

Not Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Writers: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Dennis Arundell, Jules Barbier

Cinematographer: Christopher Challis

Cast: Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, Robert Rounseville, Pamela Brown, Ludmilla Tchérina, Ann Ayars

Although it features resplendent production design, lustrous photography, and some spellbindingly beautiful dancing from Moira Shearer, this adaptation from Powell and Pressburger of Jacques Offenbach's opera – comprising of three grand tales of love and loss, plus prologue and epilogue – is surprisingly bland and uninvolving in all of its opulence and grandeur (at least, that is, when Shearer is absent from the screen). Iain.Stott

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Martin Scorsese's 15 Most Influential Gangster Films

"Here are 15 gangster pictures that had a profound effect on me and the way I thought about crime and how to portray it on film. They excited me, provoked me, and in one way or another, they had the ring of truth.

I stopped before the ‘70s because we’re talking about influence here, and I was looking at movies in a different way after I started making my own pictures. There are many gangster films I’ve admired in the last 40 years—Performance, the Godfather saga, Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, The Long Good Friday, Sexy Beast, John Woo’s Hong Kong films.

The films below I saw when I was young, open, impressionable."

• The Public Enemy (1931)
• Scarface (1932)
• Blood Money (1933)
• The Roaring Twenties (1939)
• Force of Evil (1948)
• White Heat (1949)
• Night and the City (1950)
• Touchez pas au Grisbi (1954)
• The Phenix City Story (1955)
• Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955)
• Murder by Contract (1958)
• Al Capone (1959)
• Le Doulos (1962)
• Mafioso (1962)
• Point Blank (1967)

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Shallow Grave (1994)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Danny Boyle

Writer: John Hodge

Cinematographer: Brian Tufano

Composer: Simon Boswell

Cast: Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, Ewan McGregor, Ken Stott, Keith Allen, Colin McCredie, Peter Mullan

When their suave new flatmate dies, presumably from a drug overdose, leaving behind a suitcase full of money, Juliet, Alex, and David, three vaguely obnoxious yuppie types, decide to dispose of the body and keep the money for themselves; unfortunately for them, some rather unsavoury characters are busily seeking the recently deceased and his bag of swag, in Boyle’s stylish, inventive, and thoroughly entertaining if vaguely implausible thriller. Iain.Stott

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Two Years Later (2002)

Recommended

France

Feature Documentary

Original Title: Deux ans après (2002)

Writer/Director/Narrator: Agnès Varda

Cinematographers: Stéphane Krausz, Agnès Varda

Composers: Joanna Bruzdowicz, Isabelle Olivier, François Wertheimer

Two years after The Gleaners & I (2000), veteran film-maker Varda examines its aftermath, revisiting some of the people we encountered in the earlier film, most notably the homeless volunteer French teacher with a masters degree, Alain, who we see here running a marathon (his tenth), as well as examining the public’s enthusiastic response to the film. Iain.Stott

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The Gleaners & I (2000)

Highly Recommended

France

Feature Documentary

Original Title: Les glaneurs et la glaneuse

Writer/Director/Narrator: Agnès Varda

Cinematographers: Didier Doussin, Stéphane Krausz, Didier Rouget, Pascal Sautelet, Agnès Varda

Composers: Joanna Bruzdowicz, Isabelle Olivier

Varda’s eye-opening and thoughtful yet (pleasingly) whimsical and personal documentary examines the hidden world of modern day gleaning, taking in both the traditional post-harvest rural kind and the newer phenomenon of urban gleaning, meeting numerous interesting people along the way – both the ethically minded anti-consumerists and those who are merely down on their luck. Iain.Stott

Followed by Two Years Later (2002).

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I Capture the Castle (2003)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Tim Fywell

Writers: Heidi Thomas, Dodie Smith

Cinematographer: Richard Greatrex

Composer: Dario Marianelli

Cast: Romola Garai, Rose Byrne, Marc Blucas, Henry Thomas, Bill Nighy, Tara Fitzgerald, Henry Cavill, Joe Sowerbutts, Sinead Cusack

A 17-year-old aspiring writer, who lives with her eccentric family in a derelict castle in rural 1930s England, struggles to understand the nature of love, which she believes should be of the true kind even though she only encounters the unrequited kind, as she and everyone around her proceeds to fall for everyone that they shouldn’t, in this gentle and mildly entertaining if generally forgettable period piece, which is most notable for Garai’s assured performance. Iain.Stott

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Pleasantville (1998)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Gary Ross

Cinematographer: John Lindley

Composer: Randy Newman

Cast: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, J.T. Walsh, Don Knotts, Marley Shelton, Giuseppe Andrews

A nerdy teenaged boy and his sex-mad twin sister find themselves magically transported into the black and white world of the 1950s sitcom Pleasantville, and with them they bring a certain hint of colour, which soon begins to spread through the town, livening up its inhabitants' “pleasant” lives, much to the chagrin of the town’s conservative elders, in Gary Ross’s thoroughly entertaining, relatively thoughtful, and visually arresting allegorical tale, which runs out of steam towards the end when everything gets tidied up that little bit too neatly. Iain.Stott

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The Red and the White (1967)

Recommended

Hungary/Soviet Union

Feature Film

Original Title: Csillagosok katonák

Director: Jancsó Miklós

Writers: Hernádi Gyula, Jancsó Miklós, Karall Luca, Valeri Karen, Giorgi Mdivani

Cinematographer: Somló Tamás

Cast: Madaras József, Molnár Tibor, Kozák András, Juhász Jácint, Anatoli Yabbarov, Sergey Nikonenko, Mikhail Kozakov, Bolot Bejshenaliyev, Tatiana Koniukova, Krystyna Mikolajewska

After the Marxist revolution of 1917, Russian and Hungarian communists (the Reds) battle against the remnants of the defeated Tsarists (the Whites) in a series of ramshackle skirmishes, which invariably result in the capture and execution of opposition soldiers and perceived collaborators, in Jancsó’s cold and distanced yet thoughtful and compelling examination of the futility and arbitrariness of war. Iain.Stott

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The Road to Coronation Street (2010)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Television Film

Director: Charles Sturridge

Writer: Daran Little

Cinematographer: Tim Palmer

Composer: Adrian Johnston

Cast: David Dawson, Christian McKay, Shaun Dooley, Jane Horrocks, Sophia Di Martino, Steven Berkoff, Michelle Holmes, Jessie Wallace, Celia Imrie, Lynda Baron, James Roach, John Thomson

Tony Warren, a cocky, precocious young writer, and Harry Elton, a Canadian producer, fight against Granada executives to get Florizel Street (soon to be Coronation Street), a show about ordinary working class Mancunians, commissioned and produced, in this well acted, lovingly crafted, and generally entertaining television film, which is let down somewhat by some occasionally rather artificial sounding dialogue. Iain.Stott

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When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)

Essential Viewing

Japan

Feature Film

Original Title: 女が階段を上る時

Director: Naruse Mikio

Writer: Kikushima Ryūzō

Cinematographer: Tamai Masao

Composer: Mayuzumi Toshirō

Cast: Takamine Hideko, Mori Masayuki, Dan Reiko, Nakadai Tatsuya, Katō Daisuke, Nakamura Ganjiro, Ozawa Eitarō, Awaji Keiko

Keiko (Takamine, exquisite), a popular yet principled bar hostess who has reached a certain age, finds that she must decide whether to open a bar of her own, move into alternative employment (not really an option), or get married – a decision complicated by the duplicitous actions of the men that surround her, in Naruse’s expertly crafted, beautifully acted, and quietly devastating character study. Iain.Stott

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The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Cautiously Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Clint Eastwood

Writers: Richard LaGravenese, Robert James Waller

Cinematographer: Jack N. Green

Composer: Lennie Niehaus

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Annie Corley, Victor Slezak

When their mother dies, Carolyn and Michael discover that she wasn’t merely the quiet little housewife that they had thought, uncovering a tender but all too brief affair that she had had with a travelling photographer in 1965, in Eastwood’s for the most part well made film, which is let down somewhat by the jarring contemporary framing story and the increasingly sentimental and obtrusive score. Iain.Stott

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I Am Love (2009)

Essential Viewing

Italy

Feature Film

Original Title: Io sono l'amore

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Writers: Barbara Alberti, Ivan Cotroneo, Walter Fasano, Luca Guadagnino

Cinematographer: Yorick Le Saux

Composer: John Adams

Cast: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Delbono, Diane Fleri, Maria Paiato

With adventurous mise en scène and an uncommonly bold use of music, Guadagnino’s affectingly acted film follows the progress of an illicit romance conducted between a middle-aged Russian woman, who married into a wealthy Italian family, and her son’s best friend, a talented chef with whom he is about to go into business, which, of course, cannot possibly end well. Iain.Stott

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A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Film

Director: Richard Lester

Writer: Alun Owen

Cinematographer: Gilbert Taylor

Cast: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, John Junkin, Victor Spinetti

John, Paul, George, and Ringo travel down to London with Paul’s grandfather, a very clean but decidedly mischievous old man, to appear on a television show, and get into various scrapes along the way, in Richard Lester’s thoroughly entertaining look at a day in the life of The Beatles, filled with a wealth of memorable visual and verbal gags and, of course, songs. Iain.Stott

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Sexy Beast (2000)

Recommended

UK/Spain

Feature Film

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Writers: Louis Mellis, David Scinto

Cinematographer: Ivan Bird

Composer: Roque Baños

Cast: Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman, James Fox, Cavan Kendall, Julianne White, Álvaro Monje

Gal, a retired criminal finds his idyllic Spanish retirement threatened when an old colleague, Don Logan (Kingsley, hilarious), an unbalanced little man with a fearsome reputation, comes to visit him with an unwanted business proposal – unfortunately he won’t take no for an answer, in Jonathan Glazer’s distinctive feature debut, a funny and unpredictable crime comedy with a difference. Iain.Stott

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Threads (1984)

Highly Recommended

UK

Television Film

Director: Mick Jackson

Writer: Barry Hines

Cinematographers: Andrew Dunn, Paul Morris

Narrator: Paul Vaughan

Cast: Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierley, Rita May, Nicholas Lane, Jane Hazlegrove, Henry Moxon, June Broughton, Sylvia Stoker, Harry Beety

Barry “Kes” Hines’s remarkable, authoritative, and upsettingly believable docu-drama follows the progress of two Sheffield families and the city’s chief executive at the outbreak of nuclear war, detailing the build-up to the conflict and the short, medium, and long term effects of its aftermath. Iain.Stott

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Albert's Memorial (2009)

Not Recommended

UK

Television Film

Director: David Richards

Writer: Thomas Ellice

Cinematographer: Tony Coldwell

Composer: Hal Lindes

Cast: David Jason, David Warner, Judith Hoersch, Michael Jaston, Nick Bennett, Scott Harrison, Adam Flynn

On his death bed, Albert, due to be cremated by his wife, makes two old army chums promise to steal his body and take it to Germany, the scene of some momentous wartime incident that they don’t talk about, and bury it, which they set out to do in this mildly diverting though fatally predictable road movie. Iain.Stott

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The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Noah Baumbach

Cinematographer: Robert D. Yeoman

Composers: Britta Phillips, Dean Wareham

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Owen Kline, Anna Paquin, Halley Feiffer, William Baldwin

A teenaged boy slowly comes to realise what a pretentious, superior nitwit his writer father is, whom he had always worshipped, as he and his younger brother are shipped back and forth between their parents’ homes when they separate in Brooklyn in 1986, in Baumbach’s tender, funny, and beautifully acted autobiographical film. Iain.Stott

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Hancock & Joan (2008)

Highly Recommended

UK

Television Film

Series Title: The Curse of Comedy (2008)

Director: Richard Laxton

Writers: Richard Cottan, Joan Le Mesurier, Edward Joffe

Cinematographer: James Welland

Composer: Ruth Barrett

Cast: Ken Stott, Maxine Peake, Alex Jennings

In the midst of his second divorce, comedy superstar Tony Hancock (Stott, outstanding) falls in love with his best friend John Le Mesurier’s new young wife, and begins a torrid affair with her, which is blighted by his crippling self doubt and chronic alcoholism, in this beautifully crafted and painfully moving look at the final few years of the morose comedian’s life. Iain.Stott

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Moonfleet (1955)

Not Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Fritz Lang

Writers: Margaret Fitts, Jan Lustig, J. Meade Falkner

Cinematographer: Robert Planck

Composer: Miklós Rózsa

Cast: Stewart Granger, Jon Whiteley, George Sanders, Joan Greenwood, Viveca Lindfors, Liliane Montevecchi, Melville Cooper, Sean McClory, Alan Napier, John Hoyt

After the death of his mother, John Mohune, a 10-year-old Scots boy, who is descended from the pirate Redbeard, goes to live in his ancestral home with his mother’s old flame, who has become a gentleman smuggler, and finds himself at the centre of a dangerously thrilling adventure, in Lang’s highly stylish though only mildly diverting film, which is marred by a number of risible action sequences. Iain.Stott

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Seven Chances (1925)

Recommended

USA

Short Feature Film

Director: Buster Keaton

Writers: Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, Joseph Mitchell, Roi Cooper Megrue, David Belasco

Cinematographers: Byron Houck, Elgin Lessley

Composer: Robert Israel (1995)

Cast: Buster Keaton, T. Roy Barnes, Snitz Edwards, Ruth Dwyer, Frankie Raymond, Erwin Connelly, Jules Cowles

With his business in severe financial trouble, the news of a seven million dollar inheritance couldn’t come at a better time for Jimmie, unfortunately a clause put in the will by his grandfather means that he must be married by seven p.m. on his twenty seventh birthday or forfeit the money, which just so happens to be today – cue a mad search for a willing bride, in Keaton’s for the most part only moderately entertaining comedy, which is enlivened considerably by a wonderful chase sequence towards the end, featuring some of his most thrilling stunt work. Iain.Stott

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The Matrix (1999)

Not Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Directors: The Wachowski Brothers

Cinematographer: Bill Pope

Composer: Don Davis

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Gloria Foster, Joe Pantoliano, Marcus Chong, Julian Arahanga, Matt Doran

A computer hacker learns that his life and those of everyone around him is a sham, with the world merely a computer simulation, set-up to keep human bodies, which are now little more than living batteries, in working condition, in this popular piece of science-fiction, which is at its best when inventively blowing shit up, but in its more po-faced moments, despite some interesting ideas, is almost laugh-out-loud funny in its camp silliness. Iain.Stott

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Regular Lovers (2005)

Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Les amants réguliers

Director: Philippe Garrel

Writers: Philippe Garrel, Marc Cholodenko, Arlette Langmann

Cinematographer: William Lubtchansky

Composer: Jean-Claude Vannier

Cast: Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme, Julien Lucas, Eric Rulliat, Nicolas Bridet, Mathieu Genet

A young Parisian poet avoids military service, participates in the May ’68 riots, discovers opium, and falls in love with a beautiful sculptress, in Garrel’s well acted and handsomely photographed if occasionally rather esoteric look at a momentous time. Iain.Stott

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Block-Heads (1938)

Highly Recommended

USA

Short Feature Film

Director: John G. Blystone

Writers: Felix Adler, Arnold Belgard, Harry Langdon, James Parrott, Charley Rogers

Cinematographer: Art Lloyd

Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Patricia Ellis, Minna Gombell, Billy Gilbert, James Finlayson

Twenty years after the end of the war, Stanley is still guarding his trench, completely oblivious to the fact that peace has broken out – a fact which surprises no one, least of all his old friend Oliver, whose life he is soon disrupting immeasurably, in this consistently hilarious Laurel & Hardy vehicle, filled with wonderfully inventive visual gags. Iain.Stott

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The Last Minute (2001)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Stephen Norrington

Cinematographer: James Welland

Composer: Paul Rabjohns

Cast: Max Beesley, Emily Corrie, Tom Bell, Ciarán McMenamin, Jason Isaacs, Kate Ashfield

Billy Byrne, the next big thing, London’s most anticipated new artist, hops from one television interview to the next, and one party to another, until the hype bubble bursts and his life spirals dangerously out of control, leaving him living on the streets in the thrall of drugs, in Norrington’s imaginative, ambitious, and thoroughly bonkers social satire. Iain.Stott

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Strange Planet (1999)

Not Recommended

Australia

Feature Film

Director: Emma-Kate Croghan

Writers: Emma-Kate Croghan, Stavros Kazantzidis

Cinematographer: Justin Brickle

Cast: Claudia Karvan, Naomi Watts, Alice Garner, Tom Long, Aaron Jeffery, Felix Williamson, Hugo Weaving

Over the course of a year, three female friends and three male friends, all unlucky in love, strive but fail to find someone to grow old with; that is, until they meet each other, in Croghan’s charmingly acted and generally entertaining if rather predicatable and contrived romantic comedy. Iain.Stott

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Where`s the Money Ronnie! (1996)

Not Recommended

UK

Short Television Film

Publicity Title: Where's the Money, Ronnie?

Series Title: First Cut (1994-2004)

Writer/Director: Shane Meadows

Cinematographer: Jimmy Hynd, Shane Meadows, Debbie Tuck

Cast: Shane Meadows, James Hynd, Mat Hand, Paul Anderson, John Powell, Mick Pritchard, Mark Roper

Meadows’s debut short, a black & white, typographically challenged, dryly-humorous comic tale, told in flashback, examines the aftermath of a number of disastrous criminal escapades, which have all come to a climax on the same Sneinton street corner. Iain.Stott

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Smalltime (1996)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Shane Meadows

Cinematographer: Helene Whitehall

Composer: Gavin Clarke

Cast: Mat Hand, Dena Smiles, Shane Meadows, Gena Kawecka, Jimmy Hynd, Leon Hammond, Tim Cunningham, Dominic Dillon

Wearing garish shell suits and silly wigs, Shane Meadows and pals bugger about for an hour, often hilariously, pretending to be an incompetent gang of small time hoods, who, whilst preparing for a big job – raiding The Rainbow Centre – rob a cartload of dog food, and pilfer unashamedly from a car boot sale. Iain.Stott

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