Walk the Line (2005)

Recommended

USA/Germany

Feature Film

Director: James Mangold

Writers: Gill Dennis, James Mangold, Johnny Cash

Cinematographer: Phedon Papamichael

Composer: T-Bone Burnett

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick, Shelby Lynne, Dallas Roberts, Dan John Miller, Larry Bagby

Beautifully paced, exquisitely photographed, and featuring a pair of convincing and affecting performances, Mangold’s handsome film charts the rise and fall and rise again of Johnny Cash, from childhood tragedy through musical success, marital breakdown, and drug-abuse problems, to (but not including) health, happiness, and a long life with fellow singer June Carter. Iain.Stott

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Beeswax (2009)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Andrew Bujalski

Cinematographer: Matthias Grunsky

Cast: Tilly Hatcher, Maggie Hatcher, Alex Karpovsky, Anne Dodge, Katy O'Connor, Christy Moore, Janet Pierson, D.J. Taitelbaum, Bob Byington

Bujalski’s beautifully observed third feature – more mature, but less charming than his previous efforts – paints a portrait of the lives of a pair of twin sisters, over a period of several days, fascinatingly examining the ups and downs of their everyday lives, as they confront problems both at work and home. Iain.Stott

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CFB's Greatest Movies by Country, Chapter 25: Israel / Palestine

1. Walk on Water (2004)
2. Paradise Now (2005)
3. Late Marriage (2001)
4. Waltz with Bashir (2008)
5. Blaumilch Canal (1969)
6. Sallah (1964)
7. Jellyfish (2007)
8. Lemon Tree (2008)
9. Beyond the Walls (1984)
10. Sacred (1999)
11. Divine Intervention (2002)
12. The Band's Visit (2007)
13. Summer of Aviya (1988)
14. James' Journey to Jerusalem (2003)
15. Operation Thunderbolt (1977)
16. $9.99 (2008)
17. For My Father (2008)
18. Eyes Wide Open (2009)
19. Holy Guests (2004)
20. Beaufort (2007)

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My Father My Lord (2007)

Recommended

Israel

Feature Film

Original Title: חופשת קיץ‎

Writer/ Director: David Volach

Cinematographer: Boaz Yehonatan Yaacov

Composers: Michael Hope, Martin Tillman

Cast: Assi Dayan, Ilan Griff, Sharon Hacohen-Bar

Volach’s affecting, sensual, and very promising debut contrasts the innate curiosity and pragmatism of a nine-year-old boy with the irrational, unnatural religious piety of his father, a contrast that eventually leads to tragedy, in this low budget film, set amongst the ultra-orthodox Haredi community of Jerusalem. Iain.Stott

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Delta (2008)

Recommended

Hungary/Germany

Feature Film

Director: Mundruczó Kornél

Writers: Bíró Yvette, Mundruczó Kornél

Cinematographer: Erdély Mátyás

Composer: Lajkó Félix

Cast: Lajkó Félix, Tóth Orsolya, Monori Lili, Gáspár Sándor

Mundruczó’s intensely sensual and often quite beautiful yet decidedly abstruse film follows the progress of Mihail, a bearded young man with an adolescent like face-covering hairstyle, as he returns to his family home after a long time away, and begins to build a house for him and his sister (literally on the Danube), much to the displeasure of the locals. Iain.Stott

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Extract (2009)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Mike Judge

Cinematographer: Tim Suhrstedt

Composer: George S. Clinton

Cast: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons, Clifton Collins Jr., Dustin Milligan, David Koechner, Beth Grant, T.J. Miller, Javier Gutiérrez, Lidia Porto, Gene Simmons

Whilst looking to sell his food extract business, which is being sued by one of its employees, who lost a testicle in a workplace accident, Joel (whose marriage has gone stale) takes a liking to a beautiful young grifter, who appears to be flirting with him, and, in order to assuage his guilt about pursuing her, sets up his wife (unbeknownst to her) with a handsome but decidedly dumb gigolo – things, of course, don’t end well, in Judge’s beautifully observed and thoroughly entertaining if rather sour workplace comedy, which is perhaps a little less ambitious than his previous efforts. Iain.Stott

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Katyń (2007)

Recommended

Poland

Feature Film

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Writers: Przemyslaw Nowakowski, Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Mularczyk

Cinematographer: Pawel Edelman

Composer: Krzysztof Penderecki

Cast: Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski, Danuta Stenka, Jan Englert, Magdalena Cielecka, Agnieszka Glinska, Pawel Malaszynski, Maja Komorowska, Wladyslaw Kowalski, Antoni Pawlicki, Agnieszka Kawiorska, Sergey Garmash

Wajda’s unsparing, upsetting, and rightfully angry film examines, by way of a number of contrasting human experiences, the Katyń massacre of 1940 (and its subsequent cover-up), when Soviet forces systematically executed (with a bullet to the back of the head) Polish prisoners-of-war. Iain.Stott

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Wonder Boys (2000)

Recommended

USA/Germany/Japan/UK

Feature Film

Director: Curtis Hanson

Writers: Steve Kloves, Michael Chabon

Cinematographer: Dante Spinotti

Composer: Christopher Young

Cast: Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr., Katie Holmes, Rip Torn, Richard Knox, Jane Adams, Michael Cavadias, Richard Thomas

After his wife leaves him, Grady Tripp, a perma-stoned middle-aged English professor, learns that his married girlfriend is pregnant, becomes an accessory after the fact to a dog shooting and a theft, introduces a troubled but brilliant student to drugs, and loses the only copy of his two and half thousand page novel, in Hanson’s unpredictable and thoroughly entertaining coming of (middle-)age movie. Iain.Stott

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Baarìa (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

Italy/France

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Cinematographer: Enrico Lucidi

Composer: Ennio Morricone

Cast: Francesco Scianna, Margareth Madè, Nicole Grimaudo, Ángela Molina, Lina Sastri, Salvatore Ficarra, Valentino Picone, Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido

Though generally well-made and reasonably diverting, Tornatore’s epic account of a Sicilian boy’s life, from his impoverished childhood in Mussolini’s fascist Italy through his rise through the ranks of the local branch of the Communist party to his raising of his own family, is a rather sketchy, sentimental, and rushed-feeling film, which may have worked better as a several part mini-series, as there is enough incident and history to fill ten hours of screen time. Iain.Stott

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Bleeder (1999)

Highly Recommended

Denmark

Feature Film

Writer/ Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Cinematographer: Morten Søborg

Composer: Peter Peter

Cast: Kim Bodnia, Mads Mikkelsen, Zlatko Buric, Liv Corfixen, Levino Jensen, Rikke Louise Andersson

Refn’s painfully visceral yet thought-provoking and well observed examination of male insecurities and anxieties – taking in violence, racism, cinephilia, and familial responsibility – vividly paints a portrait of the intertwining lives of six working class Copenhagen residents over a period of a couple of eventful (and uneventful) days. Iain.Stott

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Slither (2006)

Recommended

USA/Canada

Feature Film

Writer/Director: James Gunn

Cinematographer: Gregory Middleton

Composer: Tyler Bates

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Tania Saulnier, Jenna Fischer, Brenda James, Don Thompson, Patrick McAreavy

When a group of parasitic extra-terrestrial slugs invade a small town, turning its residents into a pack of flesh eating zombies, the town’s chief of police, an attractive high school teacher, the decidedly foul-mouthed mayor, and a teenaged girl band together in the hope of saving the day, in Gunn’s inventive, irreverent, and ickily funny horror-comedy. Iain.Stott

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Frozen River (2008)

Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Courtney Hunt
Cinematographer: Reed Dawson Morano
Composers: Peter Golub, Shahzad Ali Ismaily
Cast: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe, Mark Boone Junior, James Reilly, Jay Klaitz

When her husband disappears with the money to pay for their new double width trailer, Ray, a long suffering mother of two, desperate to provide for her children as Christmas rapidly approaches, stumbles into a people smuggling operation with a local Mohawk woman, who she meets fortuitously, and who is also desperate to provide for her child, giving her brief cause for optimism, in Hunt’s affecting and well acted if occasionally nonsensical feature debut. Iain.Stott

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Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

Recommended
USA
Feature Documentary
Writer/Director: Werner Herzog
Cinematographer: Peter Zeitlinger
Composers: Henry Kaiser, David Lindley

In this idiosyncratic documentary, Werner Herzog travels to Antarctica to photograph the strange creatures that live there – not the least of which being the scientists, adventurers, and dreamers who make a home of such an inhospitable environment – combining analytical voiceover, interview footage, and dreamy, beautifully scored nature photography (the underwater footage is particularly arresting). Iain.Stott

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Johnny Mad Dog (2008)

Recommended
France
Feature Film
Director: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire
Writers: Jacques Fieschi, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, Emmanuel Dongala
Cinematographer: Marc Koninckx
Composer: Jackson Tennesse Fourgeaud
Cast: Christopher Minie, Daisy Victoria Vandy, Dagbeh Tweh, Barry Chernoh, Mohammed Sesay, Joseph Duo

Sauvaire’s disturbing and distinctly upsetting look at the use of child soldiers in an unnamed African civil war (implicitly Liberia) follows the bloody progress of two teenagers, with very different but equally horrible existences – one a 15-year-old soldier, shooting his way across the country, and the other a displaced young girl, desperate to keep her family together – highlighting the emotional and physical toll of such conflicts. Iain.Stott

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Our Friends in the North (1996)

Highly Recommended

UK
Television Mini-Series
Directors: Simon Cellan Jones, Pedr James, Stuart Urban
Writer: Peter Flannery
Cinematographers: John Daly, John Kenway, Simon Kossoff
Composer: Colin Towns
Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Gina McKee, Mark Strong, Daniel Craig, Peter Vaughan, David Bradley, Freda Dowie, Alun Armstrong, Malcolm McDowell

Set over a period of 31 years, Peter Flannery’s masterful, almost unbearably moving mini-series charts the progress of four north-eastern friends from early adulthood until early middle age, taking in great chunks of mid-century British history along the way (countless elections, the three day week, the miners' strike, the stock market crash, Labour’s slow but decided journey to the right, etc.) as it depicts their various personal ups and downs. Iain.Stott

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Behind the Sun (2001)

Recommended
Brazil/France
Feature Film
Original Title: Abril Despedaçado
Director: Walter Salles
Writers: Karim Ainouz, Sérgio Machado, Walter Salles, João Moreira Salles, Daniela Thomas, Ismail Kadare
Cinematographer: Walter Carvalho
Composers: Ed Cortês, Antonio Pinto, Beto Villares
Cast: Rodrigo Santoro, Ravi Ramos Lacerda, José Dumont, Rita Assemany, Flavia Marco Antonio, Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Everaldo De Souza Pontes, Caio Junqueira, Servílio de Holanda

In Salles’s beautifully crafted, symbolically rich 1910-set Brazilian (anti-) revenge western, a 20-year-old sugarcane farmer – who has just killed the son of a neighbouring farmer in revenge for the killing of his own brother, and who is now under a sentence of death himself (as family honour states that blood must be met with blood) – falls for a travelling circus performer, and experiences love for the first time. Iain.Stott

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A Way of Life (2004)

Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Amma Asante
Cinematographer: Ian Wilson
Composer: David Gray
Cast: Stephanie James, Gary Sheppeard, Nathan Jones, Dean Wong, Sara Gregory, Oliver Haden, Brenda Blethyn

A single, teenaged mother, who lives alone with her unhealthy baby, struggling to get by on insufficient benefits, becomes paranoid about her Turkish neighbour, when she witnesses several conversations between him and her social worker, eventually leading to a horrific, violent confrontation, which will cause the downfall of her family, in child actress turned film-maker Asante’s disturbing, compassionate, and unflinching look at racism and its causes. Iain.Stott

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King Kong (2005)

Best Avoided
USA/Germany/New Zealand
Feature Film
Director: Peter Jackson
Writers: Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Merian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace
Cinematographer: Andrew Lesnie
Composer: James Newton Howard
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Colin Hanks, Andy Serkis, Evan Parke, Jamie Bell

Occasional exhilarating sequences punctuate many more interminably long and dull ones, in Jackson’s bloated, action heavy remake of Cooper and Schoedsack's 1933 film, which has the feel of a video game peppered with intermittent bursts of cheesy dialogue, along the lines of “it was beauty killed the beast.” Iain.Stott

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Blackboards (2000)

Recommended
Iran/Italy/Japan
Feature Film
Original Title: تخته سیاه
Director: Samira Makhmalbaf
Writers: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf
Cinematographer: Ebrahim Ghafori
Composer: Mohammad Reza Darvishi
Cast: Said Mohamadi, Behnaz Jafari, Bahman Ghobadi, Mohamad Karim Rahmati, Rafat Moradi, Mayas Rostami

In Makhmalbaf’s gripping, gently funny parable, a pair of teachers, with blackboards strapped to their backs, whose school has just been bombed out, wander into the mountains near to the Iraq border in search of pupils to teach, but find instead only poverty-stricken, displaced, wandering Kurds, who are more concerned with their own day-to-day survival than with the frivolities of education. Iain.Stott

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Before Sunset (2004)

Highly Recommended
USA
Feature Film
Director: Richard Linklater
Writers: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan
Cinematographer: Lee Daniel
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

In this affecting, beautifully observed sequel, the romantic, optimistic young protagonists of Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) meet up again after nine years – thinner and more pragmatic, cynical, and political – and discuss their fears, regrets, and few remaining hopes, as they wander the streets of Paris, wary of the imminence of their re-separation. Iain.Stott

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Before Sunrise (1995)

Highly Recommended
USA/Austria
Feature Film
Director: Richard Linklater
Writers: Kim Krizan, Richard Linklater
Cinematographer: Lee Daniel
Composer: Fred Frith
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

On his last day in Europe, an American in his early twenties meets a beautiful French girl on a train, and convinces her to spend the night wandering the streets of Vienna with him before his early morning flight home, talking about everything and nothing, in Linklater’s vibrantly talky, swooningly romantic, and utterly irresistible little film. Iain.Stott

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V for Vendetta (2005)

Not Recommended
USA/UK/Germany
Feature Film
Director: James McTeigue
Writers: The Wachowski Brothers, David Lloyd
Cinematographer: Adrian Biddle
Composer: Dario Marianelli
Cast: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Rupert Graves, Roger Allam, Ben Miles

Living in a fascistic, repressive Britain of the near future, a lone vigilante with a Guy Fawkes fetish attempts to spark a revolution using bombs, murder, and illicit television broadcasts, in McTeigue’s big, loud, and decideldy unsubtle if generally well acted and diverting film, which is more likely to appeal to fans of Malcolm X and Che Guevara than Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Iain.Stott

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Karlovy Vary, 2010

Grand Prix – Crystal Globe
The Mosquito Net (2010)

Special Jury Prize
Kooky (2010)

Best Director
Rajko Grlić, Just Between Us (2010)

Best Actress
Anaïs Demoustier, Sweet Evil (2009)

Best Actor
Mateusz Kościukiewicz & Filip Garbacz, Mother Teresa of Cats (2010)

Special Mention
Another Sky (2010)
There Are Things You Don’t Know (2010)

In Competition

• Another Sky (2010)
• Brother & Sister (2009)
• Diago (2010)
• Hitler in Hollywood (2010)
• Just Between Us (2010)
• Kooky (2010)
• The Mosquito Net (2010)
• Mother Teresa of Cats (2010)
• Mourning for Anna (2010)
• Sweet Evil (2009)
• There Are Things You Don't Know (2010)
• 3 Seasons in Hell (2009)

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Shanghai Dreams (2005)

Recommended
China
Feature Film
Original Title: 青红
Writer/Director: Wang Xiaoshuai
Cinematographer: Wu Di
Cast: Gao Yuanyuan, Yao Anlian, Tang Yang, Li Bin, Wang Xueyang, Dai Wenyan, Lin Yuan, Qin Hao, Wang Xiaofen, You Fangming

Qinghong, the teenaged daughter of a Guizhou factory worker, who dreams of one day returning to his native Shanghai, struggles to find her own identity under the watch of her domineering father, in Wang’s heartfelt, understated, and painfully, beautifully human tribute to his parents’ “Third Front” generation of Chinese migrants. Iain.Stott

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Winter in Wartime (2008)

Cautiously Recommended
The Netherlands/Belgium
Feature Film
Original Title: Oorlogswinter
Director: Martin Koolhoven
Writers: Mieke de Jong, Martin Koolhoven, Paul Jan Nelissen, Jan Terlouw
Cinematographer: Guido van Gennep
Composer: Pino Donaggio
Cast: Martijn Lakemeier, Yorick van Wageningen, Jamie Campbell Bower, Raymond Thiry, Melody Klaver

In Koolhoven’s well crafted and generally affecting though vaguely sentimental coming of age drama cum Boy’s Own Adventure cum Hollywood-like action film, Michiel, a 14-year-old resident of a small Nazi-occupied Dutch town, finds that the life of a stranded RAF pilot rests in his hands when, after the arrest of his neighbour, he stumbles into the resistance movement. Iain.Stott

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Tony (2009)

Recommended
UK
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Gerard Johnson
Cinematographer: David Higgs
Composers: The The
Cast: Peter Ferdinando

Gerard Johnson presents a strangely compassionate, gently blackly comic, and utterly convincing portrait of Tony, a London tower block dwelling perma-unemployed man with a bowl cut hairstyle, large glasses, and a ‘70s ‘tache, who spends his time watching rubbish ‘80s action films, haggling with eastern European prostitutes, frequenting gay bars, and hacking up into little pieces anyone who is unfortunate enough to step foot into his squalid little flat. Iain.Stott

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XXY (2007)

Recommended
Argentina/France/Spain
Feature Film
Director: Lucía Puenzo
Writers: Lucía Puenzo, Sergio Bizzio
Cinematographer: Natasha Braier
Composers: Andrés Goldstein, Daniel Tarrab
Cast: Inés Efron, Martín Piroyansky, Ricardo Darín, Valeria Bertuccelli, Germán Palacios, Carolina Pelleritti, Luciano Nóbile

Whilst her parents discuss her future with an Argentinian surgeon, Alex, an intersex fifteen-year-old from rural Uruguay, raised as a girl, who has recently stopped taking her hormone replacement drugs, begins to tentatively explore her sexuality, whilst also struggling to take charge of her own life, in Puenzo’s affectingly acted and strikingly shot if never entirely convincingly scripted first feature. Iain.Stott

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Lion's Den (2008)

Highly Recommended
Argentina/Brazil/Spain/South Korea
Feature Film
Original Title: Leonera
Director: Pablo Trapero
Writers: Alejandro Fadel, Martín Mauregui, Santiago Mitre, Pablo Trapero
Cinematographer: Guillermo Nieto
Cast: Martina Gusman, Elli Medeiros, Rodrigo Santoro, Laura García, Tomás Plotinsky, Leonardo Sauma

Trapero’s beautifully human and righteously (though subtly) angry film gently paints a portrait of a twenty-something student, accused of murdering her boyfriend and attempting to murder his male lover, as she attempts to raise her newly born son in her prison cell, whilst waiting endlessly for her trial. Iain.Stott

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Birth (2004)

Highly Recommended
USA/UK/Canada
Feature Film
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Writers: Milo Addica, Jean-Claude Carrière, Jonathan Glazer
Cinematographer: Harris Savides
Composer: Alexandre Desplat
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, Alison Elliott, Arliss Howard, Michael Desautels, Anne Heche, Peter Stormare, Ted Levine, Cara Seymour

In Glazer’s stylish, thought provoking, and beautifully acted psychological thriller-cum-existential drama, a ten-year-old boy claiming to be the ten-years dead husband of a wealthy Manhattanite attempts to retake his place in her life, much to the chagrin of his parents and the fiancé and family of his (possible) former wife. Iain.Stott

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American Movie (1999)

Recommended
USA
Feature Documentary
Director: Chris Smith
Cinematographers: Chris Smith, Sarah Price
Composer: Mike Schank
Featuring: Mark Borchardt, Mike Schank, Monica Borchardt, Bill Borchardt

Following him for a period of three years, Smith provides a fascinating, non-judgmental portrait of a Milwaukee based independent film-maker, detailing his attempts to find funding and willing participants for two of his productions, Coven and Northwestern, and in so doing unearths a committed and vaguely talented director hidden behind a pair of large glasses and a mullet. Iain.Stott

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Cherrybomb (2009)

Not Recommended
UK/Ireland
Feature Film
Directors: Lisa Barros D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn
Writer: Daragh Carville
Cinematographer: Damien Elliott
Composer: Stephen Hilton
Cast: Rupert Grint, Robert Sheehan, Kimberley Nixon, James Nesbitt, Lalor Roddy

Two 16-year-old friends vie for the attentions of a beautiful girl, who has just returned from her mother’s London home to live her lecherous father, by out bad-boying each other with drug-fuelled acts of violence, vandalism, and general laddishness, in this well crafted but generally unpleasant film, which feels like a pair of below average Skins episodes. Iain.Stott

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Shutter Island (2010)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writers: Laeta Kalogridis, Dennis Lehane

Cinematographer: Robert Richardson

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, Ted Levine, John Carroll Lynch, Elias Koteas

DiCaprio is painfully convincing in the central role of a U.S. Marshall sent to Shutter Island – a maximum security prison hospital, housing the nation’s most dangerous criminally insane offenders – ostensibly to investigate the disappearance of a female inmate (though stomach-churning conspiracies occupy his mind), which serves only to lead him into a Kafkaesque nightmare of twists and turns, in Scorsese’s powerful, genre-inflected examination of violence and perception. Iain.Stott

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The Silence (2010)

Recommended

UK

Television Mini-Series

Director: Dearbhla Walsh

Writer: Fiona Seres

Cinematographer: Owen McPolin

Composer: John Lunn

Cast: Genevieve Barr, Douglas Henshall, Dervla Kirwan, Harry Ferrier, Gina McKee, Hugh Bonneville, Rod Hallett, Mark Stobbart, Richie Campbell, Rebecca Oldfield, Del Synnott, Nick Nevern, Tom Kane, David Westhead

An eighteen-year-old girl, who has recently had a cochlear implant, witnesses the murder of a police officer whilst staying with her homicide detective uncle and his family, and in so doing uncovers a raft of police corruption, putting hers and her family's lives in danger, in this brave, gripping thriller-cum-well observed family drama. Iain.Stott

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The Counterfeiters (2007)

Recommended

Austria/Germany

Feature Film

Original Title: Die Fälscher

Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky

Writers: Stefan Ruzowitzky, Adolf Burger

Cinematographer: Benedict Neuenfels

Composer: Marius Ruhland

Cast: Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Martin Brambach, August Zirner, Veit Stübner, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Andreas Schmidt, Tilo Prückner

Ruzowitzky’s painfully human adaptation of Adolf Burger’s autobiographical book, featuring an affectingly nuanced central performance, paints a vivid portrait of Salomon Sorowitsch, a Germany-based Russian Jewish counterfeiter, who survives the holocaust by working as part of Operation Bernhard in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, which saw a group of Jewish printers and artists working towards producing huge quantities of pounds and dollars, in the hopes of collapsing the British and American economies. Iain.Stott

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Is Anybody There? (2008)

Cautiously Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Film

Director: John Crowley

Writer: Peter Harness

Cinematographer: Rob Hardy

Composer: Joby Talbot

Cast: Michael Caine, Bill Milner, Anne-Marie Duff, David Morrissey, Linzey Cocker

A friendless soon-to-be-eleven-year-old boy with an obsessive interest in the supernatural forms an unlikely friendship with a suicidal retired magician, who lives in his parents’ nursing home, in this mildly diverting '80s-set film, which boasts an affecting performance from Caine, but makes little use of its supporting cast of veteran actors (the underuse of Peter Vaughan is particularly criminal). Iain.Stott

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Chuck & Buck (2000)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Miguel Arteta

Writer: Mike White

Cinematographer: Chuy Chávez

Composers: Smokey Hormel, Tony Maxwell, Joey Waronker

Cast: Mike White, Chris Weitz, Lupe Ontiveros, Beth Colt, Paul Weitz, Maya Rudolph

After his mother dies, leaving him all alone, Buck, a child-like twenty-something from the sticks, moves to Los Angeles and begins to stalk his childhood best friend – now a successful music executive – and, when his advances are rebuffed, he puts on a play to prove his love, in Arteta’s awkwardly funny and vaguely unpleasant yet painfully compelling oddity. Iain.Stott

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Coraline (2009)

Recommended

USA

Animated Feature Film

Director: Henry Selick

Writers: Henry Selick, Neil Gaiman

Cinematographer: Pete Kozachik

Composer: Bruno Coulais

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Keith David, John Hodgman, Robert Bailey Jr., Ian McShane

In Selick’s transporting, visually arresting, and surprisingly scary adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book, a young girl with blue hair, who has just moved into a new country home with her writer parents, who she believes to not pay her enough attention, finds a small door which leads her into a magical other world containing idealised versions of her parents and neighbours (only with buttons for eyes), which she soon learns is too good to be true. Iain.Stott

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Youth in Revolt (2009)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Miguel Arteta

Writers: Gustin Nash, C.D. Payne

Cinematographers: Chuy Chávez

Composer: John Swihart

Cast: Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Zach Galifianakis, Erik Knudsen, Adhir Kalyan, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard, Ari Graynor, Ray Liotta, Justin Long, Rooney Mara, Jade Fusco, M. Emmet Walsh, Mary Kay Place, Jonathan Bradford Wright

Arteta’s thoroughly unpredictable and generally very funny if occasionally overly quirky film follows the exploits of Nick Twisp, a Sinatra and Fellini loving 16-year-old who, whilst on holiday with his mother and her dishevelled lover, falls in love with a beautiful local girl, whom he subsequently goes to great lengths to be with (with the aid of his fearless alter-ego François), hoping to eventually, finally, and joyously lose his virginity. Iain.Stott

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Unmade Beds (2009)

Highly Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Alexis Dos Santos

Writers: Alexis Dos Santos, Marianela Maldonado

Cinematographer: Jakob Ihre

Cast: Déborah François, Fernando Tielve, Michiel Huisman, Iddo Goldberg, Richard Lintern, Katia Winter, Alexis Dos Santos

With its must-have soundtrack, touching performances, and striking photography, Dos Santos’s beautiful, sensual second feature delicately paints a portrait of two twenty-something Europeans living in a boho London squat, both of whom are searching for something or other – one for his long absent father, and the other for some sort of purpose to her life, and both (really) for love. Iain.Stott

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Play (1970)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Short Film

Director: Sally Potter

Composer: Sally Potter (2009)

Capturing a group of children playing in the street, as they run, jump, and hop from one screen to the next, Potter’s playful double screen short film uses two adjacently placed cameras, one loaded with colour film and showing a balanced frame, and the other with black and white, capturing a slightly skew-whiff image. Iain.Stott

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Inland Empire (2006)

Cautiously Recommended

France/Poland/USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: David Lynch

Cinematographer: David Lynch

Cast: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux, Karolina Gruszka, Jan Hencz, Krzysztof Majchrzak, Grace Zabriskie, Harry Dean Stanton

Lynch’s three-hour long shot-on-digital-video curio – an episodic work with scenes and sequences ranging from the bland to the confounding to the downright brilliant (and everything in-between) – details (I think, though it's quite hard to tell) an actress’s participation in the filming of a remake of an unfinished and apparently cursed Polish film, which was halted due to the murder of its two lead actors. Iain.Stott

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Brief Crossing (2001)

Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Brève traversée

Writer/Director: Catherine Breillat

Cinematographer: Eric Gautier

Composer: Marc Filipi

Cast: Sarah Pratt, Gilles Guillain

On an overnight cross-channel ferry ride, a thirtyish English woman and a 16-year-old French boy, both travelling alone, strike up a conversation in the ship’s cafeteria, which leads – as most of her films eventually do – to the bedroom, where the unlikely couple talk at length about (and occasionally have) sex, in Breillat’s talky and playful examination of sexual politics. Iain.Stott

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Charley's (Big-Hearted) Aunt (1940)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Walter Forde

Writers: Marriott Edgar, J.O.C. Orton, Ralph Smart, Brandon Thomas

Cinematographer: Arthur Crabtree

Composer: Louis Levy

Cast: Arthur Askey, Richard (Stinker) Murdoch, Graham Moffatt, Moore Marriott, J.H. Roberts, Felix Aylmer, Wally Patch, Phyllis Calvert, Jeanne de Casalis

Arthur, Stinker, and Albert, facing being sent down from Oxford after a series of drunken crimes and misdemeanours, concoct a plan – involving the cross-dressing impersonation of a rich, benevolent aunt – which they hope, foolishly, will give them a stay of execution, in this pleasingly silly, decidedly lively, and generally irreverently funny farce. Iain.Stott

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Breaking Bad: Season 3 (2010)

USA

Television Series

Creator: Vince Gilligan

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, RJ Mitte, Betsy Brandt, Bob Odenkirk, Giancarlo Esposito, Steven Michael Quezada, Jonathan Banks

Whilst his cancer may be in remission, Walt, the high school chemistry teacher turned crystal methamphetamine manufacturer, now in business with the decidedly clinical Gus, finds his health threatened by vicious Mexican gangsters intent upon vengeance, who also have eyes for his DEA agent (soon to be ex-) brother-in-law, in this oft hilarious, occasionally disquieting, and generally excellent third season. Iain.Stott

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Talk to Her (2002)

Highly Recommended

Spain

Feature Film

Original Title: Hable con ella

Writer/Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe

Composer: Alberto Iglesias

Cast: Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores, Mariola Fuentes, Geraldine Chaplin, Fele Martínez, Paz Vega

Whilst visiting his comatose bullfighter girlfriend, a decidedly sensitive Argentinian travel writer forms an unlikely friendship with a male nurse, which continues even after it becomes apparent that he has raped and impregnated another comatose patient, a beautiful young ballerina, in Almodóvar’s gently funny, strangely moving, and thoroughly compelling multi-award winning film. Iain.Stott

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Dive (2010)

Highly Recommended

UK

Television Film

Director: Dominic Savage

Writers: Dominic Savage, Simon Stephens

Cinematographer: Danny Cohen

Cast: Aisling Loftus, Jack O'Connell, Gina McKee, Ewen Bremner, Eddie Marsan, Kate Dickie, Joseph Mawle, Chanel Cresswell

Savage’s lyrical, sensual, and deeply affecting two-part drama portrays a budding romance between a pair of 15-year-olds in a perma-grey-skyed Skegness – one an Olympic diving hopeful with big dreams, and the other a future plumber, who’d like nothing better than to live out his years in his seaside home – as their lives become forever altered by an unplanned pregnancy. Iain.Stott

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Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)

Essential Viewing

Japan

Feature Film

Original Title: 雨月物語

Director: Mizoguchi Kenji

Writers: Yoda Yoshikata, Kawaguchi Matsutarō, Tsuji Kyūchi, Ueda Akinari

Cinematographer: Miyagawa Kazuo

Composers: Hayasaka Fumio, Mochizuki Tamekichi, Saitō Ichirō

Cast: Mori Masayuki, Kyō Machiko, Tanaka Kinuyo, Ozawa Sakae, Sawamura Ikio, Mito Mitsuko, Mōri Kikue

In Mizoguchi’s beautifully photographed and disquietingly scored supernatural tale, set in 16th century feudal Japan, two men abandon their wives when they become seduced by, respectively, the glamour and honour of the samurai way of life and the material pleasures of big business, only coming to their senses when tragedy and near tragedy strike their loved ones. Iain.Stott

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Autobus (1991)

Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Aux yeux du monde

Writer/Director: Eric Rochant

Cinematographer: Pierre Novion

Composer: Gérard Torikian

Cast: Yvan Attal, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marc Berman, Charlotte Gainsbourg

In Rochant’s strangely, melancholically charming picaresque tale, an unemployed 22-year-old provincial male, hopelessly in love with an apprentice hairdresser who lives a few hundred miles away, hijacks a bus full of school children and sets off towards his beloved’s home, bizarrely and misguidedly intending it to be a grand gesture of his adoration. Iain.Stott

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CFB's Top 20 Obscure Films of 1994 (2010)

1. Vive l’Amour (1994)
2. Faust (1994)
3. Lamerica (1994)
4. Sátántangó (1994)
5. 71 Fragments of a Chronology Of Chance (1994)
6. End (1994)
7. Jeanne la Pucelle: The Prisons (1994)
8. In the Heat of the Sun (1994)
9. Rampo (1994)
10. Widow’s Peak (1994)
11. Ladybird Ladybird (1994)
12. Jeanne la Pucelle: The Battles (1994)
13. That’s Entertainment! III (1994)
14. The Monk and the Fish (1994)
15. Bandit Queen (1994)
16. The Corridor (1994)
17. Trevor (1994)
18. The Rice People (1994)
19. Baseball (1994)
20. The Most Terrible Time (1994)
21. Le Péril Jeune (1994)

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