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

Read More

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

Read More

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

Read More

Monsters, Inc. (2001)

Recommended

USA

Animated Feature FIlm

Director: Pete Docter

Writers: Daniel Gerson, Andrew Stanton, Robert Baird, Rhett Reese, Jonathan Roberts, Jill Culton, Pete Docter, Jeff Pidgeon, Ralph Eggleston

Composer: Randy Newman

Cast: John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Mary Gibbs, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly, Bob Peterson

A scarer and his assistant, who work for Monsters, Inc., a power company in Monstropolis, which captures children’s screams to provide power for the city, find their lives turned upside down when a child follows them back from the human world, and in the process unveils a despicable conspiracy, in this hugely imaginative and thoroughly entertaining Pixar animation, which just about manages to survive its slightly sentimental finale. Iain.Stott

Read More