Return to Oz (1985)

Recommended

USA/UK

Feature Film

Director: Walter Murch

Writers: Gill Dennis, Walter Murch, L. Frank Baum

Cinematographer: David Watkin

Composer: David Shire

Cast: Fairuza Balk, Nicol Williamson, Jean Marsh, Piper Laurie, Matt Clark, Sean Barrett, Denise Bryer, Brian Henson, Lyle Conway, Emma Ridley

Based on Baum’s novels The Land of Oz (1904) and Ozma of Oz (1907), which follow on from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), which was loosely adapted as The Wizard of Oz (1939), this well-crafted, creepy, and downbeat film follows Dorothy’s unhappy return to Oz, which in her absense has been taken over by Princess Mombi and The Nome King, with all of her old friends now turned to stone. Iain.Stott

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I Am Slave (2010)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Television Film

Director: Gabriel Range

Writer: Jeremy Brock

Cinematographer: Robbie Ryan

Composers: Harry Escott, Molly Nyman

Cast: Wunmi Mosaku, Isaach De Bankolé, Lubna Azabal, Igal Naor, Natalie Mgmoi, Hiam Abbass

A Sudanese princess, abducted from her small village during the civil war, spends six years living as a slave in North Africa, before being sent to London, where her misery continues; all the while, her devoted father searches tirelessly for her, in this strikingly photographed and well-acted though rather sketchy look at modern day slavery. Iain.Stott

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Dead Man (1995)

Highly Recommended

USA/Germany/Japan

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Jim Jarmusch

Cinematographer: Robby Müller

Composer: Neil Young

Cast: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Eugene Byrd, Robert Mitchum, John Hurt, Mili Avital

An unassuming accountant from Cleveland kills a man in self-defence, and goes on the run, accompanied by a poetry loving Indian named Nobody, when he is accused of murder by the deceased's powerful industrialist father, who puts up a large reward for his capture, in Jarmusch’s unhurried, stylish, and frequently hilarious existential comedy-western. Iain.Stott

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Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)

Highly Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Boudu sauvé des eaux

Director: Jean Renoir

Writer: Jean Renoir, Albert Valentin, René Fauchois

Cinematographers: Georges Asselin, Marcel Lucien

Cast: Michel Simon, Charles Granval, Marcelle Hainia, Sévérine Lerczinska, Jean Gehret, Max Dalban, Jean Dasté

After losing his dog, Boudu, an innocent vagrant, jumps suicidally into the Seine, but is saved by a well-meaning bookseller, who, feeling responsible for his life, takes him into his home and becomes his benefactor… chaos subsequently ensues, in Renoir’s hilarious adaptation of Fauchois’s play, filled with excellent comic performances and delicious social commentary. Iain.Stott

René Fauchois's 1919 play was subsequently adapted as Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986).

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King of the Hill (2007)

Not Recommended

Spain

Feature Film

Original Title: El rey de la montaña

Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego

Writers: Javier Gullón, Gonzalo López-Gallego

Cinematographer: José David Montero

Composer: David Crespo

Cast: Leonardo Sbaraglia, María Valverde, Thomas Riordan, Andrés Juste, Pablo Menasanch, Francisco Olmo, Manuel Sánchez Ramos

A man and a woman, who have just met at a country a petrol station, find themselves running for their lives through a leafy wilderness, when a trio of video game enthusiasts start taking pot-shots at them, in López-Gallego’s genuinely unpredictable but generally implausible and illogical thriller. Iain.Stott

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Love + Hate (2005)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Dominic Savage

Cinematographer: Barry Ackroyd

Composer: Rupert Gregson-Williams

Cast: Samina Awan, Tom Hudson, Nichola Burley, Was Zakir, Dean Andrews, Aliya Bhatti, Peter O'Connor, Ryan Leslie

Despite being overly reliant on coincidence, and containing one or two rather trite musical choices, television director Savage’s handsomely photographed big screen debut – a tale of illicit teenaged romance, set against a backdrop of racism and sexism, in a drab northern English town – is surprisingly affecting, mainly due to the assured performances of its attractive young cast. Iain.Stott

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Peppermint Candy (1999)

Recommended

South Korean

Feature Film

Original Title: 박하사탕

Writer/Director: Lee Chang-dong

Cinematographer: Kim Hyeong-Ku

Composer: Lee Jae-Jin

Cast: Sol Kyung-Koo, Kim Yeo-jin, Mun So-Ri, Jung Suh, Park Ji-yeon, Park Se-beom, Lee Dae-yeon, Kim Kyoung-ik

Lee’s visceral, highly affecting little gem, told in reverse order, follows a broken-down, failed businessman (Sol, outstanding) from his booze-sodden, rail track suicide, back through twenty years of pain and suffering filled personal and national history, to his romantic, optimistic (and short-lived) youth. Iain.Stott

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Chéri (2009)

Not Recommended

UK/Cayman Islands/France/Germany

Feature Film

Director/Narrator: Stephen Frears

Writers: Christopher Hampton, Colette

Cinematographer: Darius Khondji

Composer: Alexandre Desplat

Cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Friend, Kathy Bates, Felicity Jones

In Frears’s mildly diverting (in a continental lager advert sort of way) though half-baked and curiously undramatic film, a very wealthy middle-aged prostitute struggles to come to terms with the loss of her young lover, Chéri, the 25-year-old son of a work colleague and friend, who has recently been married off to a beautiful 18-year-old girl. Iain.Stott

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Spiral (2007)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Directors: Adam Green, Joel David Moore

Writers: Jeremy Danial Boreing, Joel David Moore

Cinematographer: Will Barratt

Composers: Todd Caldwell, Michael 'Fish' Herring

Cast: Joel David Moore, Amber Tamblyn, Zachary Levi

After disposing of his current muse (possibly messily), Mason, a shy telesalesman with a passion for jazz and painting, strikes up an unlikely friendship with the bubbly new girl at work, who agrees to be his new model; but his increasingly irrational behaviour ensures that things will end anything but well, in Green and Moore’s painfully convincingly acted and deceptively unpredictable psychological drama-cum-thriller (the incongruous use of Alex Lloyd’s Sometimes on the otherwise jazz filled soundtrack is a curious misstep, though). Iain.Stott

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The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Director: J Blakeson

Cinematographer: Philipp Blaubach

Composer: Marc Canham

Cast: Gemma Arterton, Martin Compston, Eddie Marsan

A pair of n’er-do-wells kidnap the daughter of a multi-millionaire, and keep her strapped to a bed in a soundproofed flat, whilst they wait for her father to pay the two million pound ransom; but, as hidden motivations are revealed, things begin to go horribly wrong, in Blakeson’s predictably unpredictable and well-acted if vaguely illogical feature debut. Iain.Stott

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Convict 99 (1938)

Highly Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Marcel Varnel

Writers: Jack Davis Jr., Ralph Smart, Marriott Edgar, Val Guest, Cyril Campion

Cinematographer: Arthur Crabtree

Cast: Will Hay, Moore Marriott, Graham Moffatt, Googie Withers, Peter Gawthorne, Basil Radford, Dennis Wyndham, Wilfred Walter, Alf Goddard, Basil McGrail

Click for review.

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Champagne Charlie (1944)

Not Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Alberto Cavalcanti

Writers: John Dighton, Angus MacPhail, Austin Melford

Cinematographer: Wilkie Cooper

Composers: Una Bart, T.E.B. Clarke, Frank Eyton, Noel Gay, Ernest Irving, Billy Mayerl, Lord Berners

Cast: Tommy Trinder, Stanley Holloway, Betty Warren, Jean Kent, Austin Trevor, Peter De Greef, Leslie Clarke, Eddie Phillips

This beautifully crafted if generally lacklustre Ealing musical-comedy provides a highly fictionalised portrait of the mid-Victorian music halls performer, George Leybourne – who is perhaps best remembered for his writing of the popular song, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze – which, though containing a few amusing comic moments, is little more than an excuse to film several old musical numbers of varying appeal and quality. Iain.Stott

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Micmacs (2009)

Not Recommended

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Mic macs à tire-larigot

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Writers: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillaume Laurant

Cinematographer: Nagata Tetsuo

Composer: Raphaël Beau

Cast: Dany Boon, André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Yolande Moreau, Julie Ferrier, Omar Sy, Dominique Pinon

A man with a bullet lodged in his brain, with the help of his band of misfit, oddball friends, attempts to gain vengeance upon two unscrupulous arms dealers, who have forever altered his life, in Jeunet’s blandly exuberant, wafer-thin romp, which, but for its delicious final act, would be quite forgettable. Iain.Stott

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Life During Wartime (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Todd Solondz

Cinematographer: Edward Lachman

Cast: Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Renée Taylor, Ciarán Hinds, Michael Kenneth Williams, Dylan Riley Snyder, Paul Reubens, Michael Lerner, Rich Pecci

Solondz’s diverting but relatively disappointing film reacquaints us with the Jordans and Maplewoods from Happiness (1999) and the Wieners from Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), as he weaves together another ensemble comedy-drama of the deeply discontented, this time set in a Jewish, Floridian wasteland of entropy and paranoia. Iain.Stott

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Happiness (1998)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Todd Solondz

Cinematographer: Maryse Alberti

Composer: Robbie Kondor

Cast: Jane Adams, Cynthia Stevenson, Lara Flynn Boyle, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Louise Lasser, Ben Gazzara, Camryn Manheim, Jared Harris, Rufus Read

With its deliciously ironically romantic score, brave, wholehearted performances, and pitch-black, razor-sharp script, Solondz’s pathos-dripping portrait of three middle-class New Jerseyan sisters is a remarkable work, which is simultaneously hilarious, repellent, and bizarrely moving, and which even manages to imbue the vilest of child molesters (amongst other various pervs & sickos) with a number of qualities with which we can empathise. Iain.Stott

Followed by Life During Wartime (2009)

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The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Woody Allen

Cinematographer: Gordon Willis

Composer: Dick Hyman

Cast: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello, Irving Metzman, Edward Herrmann, Dianne Wiest, Alexander Cohen

When a supporting character in a Hollywood film steps down off the screen, declaring his love for a sad-eyed patron, and stating his intention to not return, in the process terrifying his studio and the actor who played him, the object of his affection, Cecilia, a deeply unhappily married waitress, finds herself having to make the most unlikely of choices, in Allen’s charming and thoughtful depression era doomed romance. Iain.Stott

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The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Cautiously Recommended

UK/Canada/USA

Feature Film

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Writers: John Curran, Michael Winterbottom, Jim Thompson

Cinematographer: Marcel Zyskind

Composer: Melissa Parmenter

Cast: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Ned Beatty, Elias Koteas, Tom Bower, Simon Baker, Bill Pullman, Brent Briscoe, Matthew Maher, Liam Aiken, Jay R. Ferguson

Those not familiar with Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel may well find themselves struggling to understand the motivation of the central character in Winterbottom’s (rightly) sickeningly violent portrait of a meek small town deputy sheriff who commits a series of brutal murders, which, though generally well crafted, really struggles to get beneath the skin of its killer. Iain.Stott

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CFB's Top 30 Obscure Films of 1939 (2010)

1. Ask a Policeman (1939)
2. Union Pacific (1939)
3. Peace on Earth (1939)
4. Ugly Duckling (1939)
5. The Cat and the Canary (1939)
6. You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939)
7. The Rains Came (1939)
8. Juarez (1939)
9. Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
10. On Borrowed Time (1939)
11. The Spy in Black (1939)
12. Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
13. They Made Me a Criminal (1939)
14. Miracles For Sale (1939)
15. It’s a Wonderful World (1939)
16. The Man in the Iron Mask (1939)
17. Magokoro (1939)
18. Pieges (1939)
    Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)
19. The Frozen Limits (1939)
20. In Name Only (1939)
21. The End of the Day (1939)
    Spook Sport (1939)
    Nine Bachelors (1939)
22. Fric – Frac (1939)
23. Gjest Baardsen (1939)
24. Buck Rogers (1939)
    Tower of London (1939)
25. Babes in Arms (1939)
26. 5th Ave. Girl (1939)

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CFB's Top 30 Films of 1939 (2010)

1. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
2. Gone with the Wind (1939)
3. Stagecoach (1939)
4. La Règle du Jeu (1939)
5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
6. Only Angles Have Wings (1939)
   Wuthering Heights (1939)
7. Ninotchka (1939)
8. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
9. Midnight (1939)
10. Destry Rides Again (1939)
11. Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
12. The Roaring Twenties (1939)
13. Le Jour se Lève (1939)
14. The Women (1939)
15. Beau Geste (1939)
16. The Four Feathers (1939)
17. Gunga Din (1939)
18. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
19. Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
20. Love Affair (1939)
21. Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
22. Of Mice and Men (1939)
23. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939)
24. Dark Victory (1939)
25. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
26. Five Came Back (1939)
27. Son of Frankenstein (1939)

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White Lightnin' (2009)

Recommended

UK/Croatia

Feature Film

Director: Dominic Murphy

Writers: Eddy Moretti, Shane Smith

Cinematographer: Tim Maurice-Jones

Cast: Edward Hogg, Carrie Fisher, Owen Campbell, Muse Watson

Murphy’s exhaustingly wholehearted feature debut provides a highly fictionalised account of the life of The Outlaw Dancer Jesco White, detailing his upbringing in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, where, between spells of imprisonment and commitment, he indulged in a life of booze, drugs, petrol fumes, violence, and the odd spot of dancing. Iain.Stott

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Rage (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Sally Potter

Cinematographer: Steven Fierberg

Composers: Fred Frith, Sally Potter

Cast: Simon Abkarian, Patrick J. Adams, Riz Ahmed, Bob Balaban, Adriana Barraza, Steve Buscemi, Jakob Cedergren, Lily Cole, Judi Dench, Eddie Izzard, Jude Law, John Leguizamo, David Oyelowo, Dianne Wiest

Presented as a series of monologues filmed against an ever changing brightly coloured backdrop, Potter’s typically adventurous and innovative if only partly successful experimental satire documents, in the words of its various participants, a particularly disastrous New York fashion show which is beset by tragedy. Iain.Stott

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Nightwatching (2007)

Recommended

UK/Canada/The Netherlands/Poland

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Peter Greenaway

Cinematographer: Reinier van Brummelen

Composer: Wlodzimierz Pawlik

Cast: Martin Freeman, Emily Holmes, Eva Birthistle, Jodhi May, Natalie Press

As much an examination of a painting and its creation as it is a portrait of its creator (Dutch master Rembrandt, a surprisingly excellent Freeman) and the women in his life (Holmes, Birthistle, May, and Press), Greenaway’s belatedly released (sort-of) biopic proves to be both a delightfully accomplished work of art & art history and an affecting piece of human drama. Iain.Stott

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No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

Iran

Feature Film

Original Title: کسی از گربه های ایرانی خبر نداره

Director: Bahman Ghobadi

Writers: Bahman Ghobadi, Hossein Mortezaeiyan, Roxana Saberi

Cinematographer: Turaj Mansuri

Composers: Mahdyar Aghajani, Ash Koosha

Cast: Negar Shaghaghi, Ashkan Koshanejad, Hamed Behdad, Take It Easy Hospital, Rana Farhan, Hichkas, The Yellow Dogs Band

A pair of underground indie rock musicians, who have been booked to play a gig in London, trawl the streets of Tehran with an effervescent wheeler-dealer in search of musicians, exit visas, and passports, so that they can follow their illicit dream, in Ghobadi’s charming and eye-opening though dramatically lacking and perhaps a tad flashy look at this little glimpsed facet of Iranian society. Iain.Stott

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Next Stop Wonderland (1998)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Brad Anderson

Writers: Brad Anderson, Lyn Vaus

Cinematographer: Uta Briesewitz

Composer: Claudio Ragazzi

Cast: Hope Davis, Alan Gelfant, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Callie Thorne, Sam Seder, Cara Buono, Ken Cheeseman, Holland Taylor, Robert Klein

In Anderson’s small and whimsical yet beautifully human look at the capricious nature of love and coupling, which is as delightful and romantic as its Bossa Nova soundtrack, a pair of well-drawn Bostonians, seemingly destined to be together, almost but not quite (until the end, at least) meet as they go about their daily, lovelorn lives. Iain.Stott

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Truly Human (2001)

Highly Recommended

Denmark/Finland

Feature Film

Original Title: Et rigtigt menneske

Series Title: Dogme #18

Writer/Writer: Åke Sandgren

Cinematographer: Dirk Brüel

Cast: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Peter Mygind, Susan A Olsen, Troels II Munk, Line Kruse, Søren Hauch-Fausbøll, Clara Nepper Winther

Sandgren’s laugh-out-loud funny, pathos drenched social satire-cum-urban fantasy-cum-humanist fable depicts the misadventures of a doomed innocent, conjured up out the walls of a dead 7-year-old’s bedroom walls, and unleashed onto the world, where, as he is abused and misunderstood, he holds up a mirror to all of our corrupted lives. Iain.Stott

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Welcome (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

France/Belgium/UK

Feature Film

Director: Philippe Lioret

Writers: Philippe Lioret, Olivier Adam, Emmanuel Courcol, Serge Frydman

Cinematographer: Laurent Dailland

Composer: Nicola Piovani

Cast: Vincent Lindon, Firat Ayverdi, Audrey Dana, Derya Ayverdi, Thierry Godard, Selim Akgül, Firat Celik, Murat Subasi

In Lioret’s compelling and moving though vaguely implausible film, a middle-aged swimming instructor, in the midst of an amicable divorce, befriends (in the hopes of impressing his compassionate soon-to-be ex) a 17-year-old Iraqi-Kurd illegal immigrant, who foolhardily but romantically wishes to learn how to swim in order to cross the Channel to be with his soon-to-be-married-to-her-cousin girlfriend in London. Iain.Stott

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The Market: A Tale of Trade (2008)

Recommended

Turkey/Germany/Kazakhstan/UK

Feature Film

Original Title: Pazar: Bir ticaret masali

Writer/ Director: Ben Hopkins

Cinematographer: Konstantin Kröning

Composer: Cihan Sezer

Cast: Tayanç Ayaydin, Genco Erkal, Senay Aydin, Hakan Sahin, Rojîn Ulker

A struggling market trader with gambling and alcohol problems, who deals in items that have fallen off the back of lorries, aspires to corning the emerging mobile phone market in his small provincial town; but, in order to raise the necessary start-up capital, he finally abandons his few remaining morals, in Hopkins’s blackly comic allegorical 1994-set comedy-drama. Iain.Stott

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Krapp's Last Tape (2000)

Essential Viewing

Ireland/UK

Television Film

Series Title: Beckett on Film (2000-2001)

Director: Atom Egoyan

Writer: Samuel Beckett

Cinematographers: Paul Sarossy

Cast: John Hurt

On his 69th birthday, in preparation for the recording of his annual self-address, the wizened, banana chomping Krapp listens to the tape he recorded on his 39th, and comes to regard it with a mixture of embarrassment, regret, and sentiment, in Egoyan’s strikingly photographed and terribly moving adaptation of Beckett’s play, which features an outstanding performance from a never better Hurt. Iain.Stott

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O'Horten (2007)

Highly Recommended

Norway/Denmark/France/Germany

Feature Film

Original Title: O' Horten

Writer/Director: Bent Hamer

Cinematographer: John Christian Rosenlund

Composer: John Erik Kaada

Cast: Bård Owe, Espen Skjønberg, Ghita Nørby, Henny Moan, Bjørn Floberg, Kai Remlov, Per Jansen, Bjarte Hjelmeland

In Hamer’s gently moving, deadpan gem, a 67-year-old retiring train driver, in the days leading up to and following his final day, somehow manages to get himself into some bizarre moonlit adventures, involving inadvertent breaking and entering, illicit midnight swims, blind-folded city driving, and 90-year-old mother pleasing ski jumps. Iain.Stott

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Locarno, 2010

Golden Leopard
Winter Vacation (2010)

Special Jury Prize
Morgen (2010)

Best Director
Denis Côté, Curling (2010)

Leopard for Best Actress
Jasna Duricic, White White World (2010)

Leopard for Best Actor
Emmanuel Bilodeau, Curling (2010)

In Competition

• At Ellen’s Age (2010)
• Bas-fonds (2010)
• Beyond the Steppes (2010)
• Cold Weather (2010)
• Curling (2010)
• Hair (2010)
• Karamay (2010)
• L.A. Zombie (2010)
• Light in Darkness: The Return of Red Light Bandit (2010)
• Man at Bath (2010)
• Morgen (2010)
• Periferic (2010)
• La Petite Chambre (2010)
• Pietro (2010)
• Songs of Love and Hate (2010)
• White White World (2010)
• Winter Vacation (2010)
• Womb (2010)

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My Last Five Girlfriends (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Julian Kemp

Writers: Julian Kemp, Alain de Botton

Cinematographer: Dave Miller

Composers: Andy Blythe, Marten Joustra

Cast: Brendan Patricks, Naomie Harris, Kelly Adams, Cécile Cassel, Jane March, Edith Bukovics, Daniel Hoffmann-Gill

A neurotic and (sort-of) suicidal young man (Patricks) recalls his last five relationships, from their meet-cute beginnings through their inevitable declines to their acrimonious terminations, with extra emphasis on his last girlfriend (Harris, charming as ever), as he struggles (and fails) to understand what love is, in Kemp’s witty and inventive if occasionally overly whimsical and not particularly emotionally involving Annie Hall like rom-com. Iain.Stott

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Top Hat (1935)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Mark Sandrich

Writers: Allan Scott, Dwight Taylor

Cinematographer: David Abel

Composer: Max Steiner

Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore, Helen Broderick

A musical star appearing in a show in London falls for the woman staying in the swanky hotel room below his, but, because she mistakenly believes him to be the new husband of a friend of hers, her seemingly strange reactions to his advances confuse him greatly (though certainly don’t deter his interest), in this delightful, exuberant romantic musical farce. Iain.Stott

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Salt (2010)

Cautiously Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Phillip Noyce

Writer: Kurt Wimmer

Cinematographer: Robert Elswit

Composer: James Newton Howard

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Daniel Pearce, Hunt Block, Andre Braugher, Olek Krupa

In Noyce’s fast-paced, action-packed, and (pleasingly) rather silly thriller – which makes good use of cartoon logic in its attempt at a Bourne-Alias-like hybrid – a CIA agent goes on the run, when a Russian walk-in accuses her of being a Russian spy who is about to assassinate the president of Russia at the US vice president’s funeral, leading everyone to assume that the accusation is true: but what other explanation could there be? Iain.Stott

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Awaydays (2009)

Best Avoided

UK

Feature Film

Director: Pat Holden

Writer: Kevin Sampson

Cinematographer: Tony Mitchell

Composer: David A. Hughes

Cast: Nicky Bell, Liam Boyle, Holly Grainger, Stephen Graham, Oliver Lee, Ian Puleston-Davies, Sacha Parkinson, Rebecca Atkinson

In Holden’s painfully unconvincing and rather risible coming-of-age movie, an angry young man from a lower middle class family, who dreams of being accepted by a gang of Birkenheadian football hooligans, who spend their Saturday afternoons knocking seven shades of shite out of complete strangers, makes friends with one of their number, a troubled young man who dreams of escaping his miserable existence. Iain.Stott

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Florence Nightingale (2008)

Not Recommended

UK

Short Television Film

Writer/Director: Norman Stone

Cinematographer: Mike Fox

Composer: Jeremy Soule

Cast: Laura Fraser, Michael Pennington, Andrew Harrison, Barbara Marten, Ian Bartholomew, Catherine Tyldesley, Roy Hudd

This handsome though strangely uninvolving BBC production, which has an unnecessarily fractured narrative and strange, ungainly musical interludes, paints a portrait of nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale, from her calling to nursing by God, through her involvement in the Crimean war, to her impassioned campaigning for medical and military reform. Iain.Stott

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Colin (2008)

Highly Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/ Director/Cinematographer: Marc Price

Composers: Jack Elphick, Dan Weekes

Cast: Alastair Kirton, Daisy Aitkens, Kate Alderman, Leanne Pammen, Tat Whalley, Kerry Owen, Leigh Crocombe, Justin Mitchell-Davey

Price’s genuinely horrific, surprisingly moving, and decidedly original existential zombie movie – supposedly made for just £45 – depicts a day in life of a new-born monster, Colin (Kirton), from being turned by his undead roommate until his second untimely demise, as the zombie apocalypse rages around him. Iain.Stott

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Lourdes (2009)

Highly Recommended

France/Austria/Germany

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Jessica Hausner

Cinematographer: Martin Gschlacht

Cast: Sylvie Testud, Léa Seydoux, Gilette Barbier, Gerhard Liebmann, Bruno Todeschini, Elina Löwensohn

In Hausner’s beautifully shot, subtly acted, and gently, enigmatically observational film, Christine, a thirty-something French woman paralysed from the neck down by severe multiple sclerosis, makes a pilgrimage (despite an evident lack of faith – she really just wants a trip away, and would have preferred Rome) to Lourdes (remarkably reminiscent of a theme park), and miraculously regains the use of her limbs. Iain.Stott

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Rough Aunties (2008)

Recommended

UK

Feature Documentary

Director/Cinematographer: Kim Longinotto

Though some of the conversations feel a little forced, and in at least one scene the camera (and consequently our presence) feels intrusive, Longinotto’s upsetting yet hearteningly optimistic portrait of the women of Operation Bobbi Bear – a South African charity dedicated to helping victims of child abuse through their traumas and aiding the police in bringing their abusers to trial – is a thoroughly and eye-openingly absorbing documentary. Iain.Stott

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: John Cameron Mitchell

Writers: John Cameron Mitchell, Stephen Trask

Cinematographer: Frank G. DeMarco

Composer: Stephen Trask

Cast: John Cameron Mitchell, Miriam Shor, Michael Pitt, Andrea Martin, Ben Mayer-Goodman, Alberta Watson, Maurice Dean Wint

A bitter transsexual singer from East Berlin tours America’s diners with her own unique brand of narcissistic rock, trailing a much more successful former lover, who has become famous on material that they wrote together, hoping to finally achieve her dream of stardom, in Mitchell’s exuberant, wholehearted adaptation of his popular off-Broadway musical. Iain.Stott

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Sparkle (2007)

Not Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Writer/Directors: Tom Hunsinger, Neil Hunter

Cinematographer: Sean Van Hales

Composer: Adrian Johnston

Cast: Shaun Evans, Amanda Ryan, Stockard Channing, Lesley Manville, Bob Hoskins, Anthony Head, John Shrapnel, Peter Gordon

Evans is excellent in the central role – a well-drawn part amidst several sketchier ones – in this otherwise lacklustre romantic comedy and disappointing follow-up to Hunsinger and Hunter’s promising effort from 2001, The Lawless Heart, which details the complicated love life of a charmingly charmless Liverpudlian chancer, who has just moved to London with his flighty mother in search of a better life. Iain.Stott

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Heist (2008)

Not Recommended

UK

Television Film

Director: Justin Hardy

Writer: Peter Harness

Cinematographer: Douglas Hartington

Cast: Kris Marshall, Geraldine James, Donald Sumpter, Paul Hilton, Tim Plester, Linal Haft, Bennett Warden, Michael Dunning

Narrated from Hell by Dick Puddlecote (Kris Marshall), this decidedly irreverent but only sporadically entertaining BBC film depicts the events that led to his 1305 execution, detailing how he and numerous accomplices, with a blend of brilliance and incompetence, broke into the King’s vault at Westminster Abbey, stealing an estimated £100,000 worth of gold and gems, before their inevitable capture and comeuppance. Iain.Stott

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Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Recommended

UK/France/USA

Feature Film

Director: Edgar Wright

Writers: Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright

Cinematographer: David M. Dunlap

Composers: Daniel Mudford, Pete Woodhead

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz, Rafe Spall

Having just been dumped by his girlfriend of three years, Shaun, a 29-year-old slacker, uses the impending zombie apocalypse as the perfect opportunity to win her back, in Wright and Pegg’s reference-heavy rom-zom-com, which is full of social comment, fart jokes, and even a few surprisingly tender moments. Iain.Stott

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Public Enemies (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

USA/Japan

Feature Film

Director: Michael Mann

Writers: Ronan Bennett, Ann Biderman, Michael Mann, Bryan Burrough

Cinematographer: Dante Spinotti

Composer: Elliot Goldenthal

Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Stephen Lang, Stephen Graham, Channing Tatum, Jason Clarke, David Wenham, Branka Katic

Mann’s handsome, diverting film does a good job of capturing the surface detail of its biographical tale, but does less well when it comes to delving beneath the surface of its protagonists, as it depicts the FBI’s pursuit of the folk hero, bank robber, vicious thug, and public enemy no. 1 John Dillinger through depression hit 1930s America. Iain.Stott

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Goodbye Solo (2008)

Essential Viewing

USA

Feature Film

Original Title Good Bye Solo

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Writers: Bahareh Azimi, Ramin Bahrani

Cinematographer: Michael Simmonds

Composer: M. Lo

Cast: Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West, Diana Franco Galindo, Lane 'Roc' Williams, Mamadou Lam, Carmen Leyva

Featuring a pair of subtly affecting performances, Bahrani’s compassionate and painfully yet beautifully human film follows a vivacious Senegalese taxi driver’s attempts to befriend a regular customer, a grizzled, cantankerous, chain-smoking old man, who he realises is planning to kill himself, in the hopes of changing his mind. Iain.Stott

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Kisses (2008)

Recommended

Ireland

Feature Film

Writer/Director/Cinematographer: Lance Daly

Composers: GoBlimpsGo

Cast: Kelly O'Neill, Shane Curry, Paul Roe, Neilí Conroy, Cathy Malone, David Bendito

Let down somewhat by an incongruously upbeat score, Daly’s otherwise convincingly acted and strikingly photographed film follows the misadventures of a pair of young runaways, who flee to the mean streets of multi-cultural Dublin to escape their unhappy home-lives, encountering friendly dredgers, buskers, and prostitutes along the way, as well as a few less reputable characters. Iain.Stott

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Bunny and the Bull (2009)

Recommended

UK

Part-Animated Feature Film

Writer/Director: Paul King

Cinematographer: John Sorapure

Composer: Ralfe Band

Cast: Edward Hogg, Simon Farnaby, Verónica Echegui, Noel Fielding, Julian Barratt

Television director King’s visually imaginative and occasionally hilarious if, perhaps, slightly over-long feature debut inventively depicts the internal road trip taken by an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobic young man, as he remembers the fateful European trip he took with his fun-loving but decidedly insensitive best friend a year previously, which resulted in his current anxiety-ridden state. Iain.Stott

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Tricks (2007)

Recommended

Poland

Feature Film

Original Title: Sztuczki

Writer/Director: Andrzej Jakimowski

Cinematographer: Adam Bajerski

Composer: Tomasz Gassowski

Cast: Damian Ul, Ewelina Walendziak, Tomasz Sapryk, Rafal Guzniczak, Iwona Fornalczyk

In Jakimowski’s thoroughly delightful and decidedly original film, a young boy does his best to give fate a helping hand (using his little tricks) and reintroduce a man that he believes to be his estranged father into his and his family’s life, much to the chagrin of his unforgiving big sister, who is preoccupied with trying to gain a position at an Italian company. Iain.Stott

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