Generation Kill (2008)

Recommended

USA/UK

Television Mini-Series

Directors: Simon Cellan Jones, Susanna White

Writers: Ed Burns, David Simon, Evan Wright

Cinematographer: Ivan Strasburg

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, James Ransone, Lee Tergesen, Jon Huertas, Stark Sands, Billy Lush, Jonah Lotan, Wilson Bethel, Pawel Szajda, Marc Menchaca, Rey Valentin, Kellan Lutz, Mike Figueroa, Rudy Reyes, Rich McDonald, Eric Ladin, Chance Kelly, Eric Nenninger, Brian Wade, Neal Jones, Michael Kelly

Ed Burns and David Simon’s eye-opening, thoroughly compelling, and strangely humorous if never entirely (viscerally) convincing mini-series, adapted from Rolling Stone writer Evan Wright’s factual book of the same title, which was based on his time with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the US Marine Corps during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, effectively captures the first few weeks the strangest of wars. Iain.Stott

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The Rite (1969)

Recommended

Sweden

Television Film

Original Title: Riten

Writer/Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cinematographer: Sven Nykvist

Cast: Ingrid Thulin, Anders Ek, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erik Hell

Emotionally draining and often painful to watch, Bergman’s unrelentingly bleak psychological inquiry claustrophobically depicts the gradual mental deterioration of a middle-aged judge as he interviews three performers – a man, his wife, and her lover – about some alleged incidence of indecency, bringing to the fore the anxieties, phobias, and insecurities of each of the four desperate characters. Iain.Stott

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Breaking Bad: Season 1 (2008)

USA

Television Series

Creator: Vince Gilligan

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, RJ Mitte, Betsy Brandt, Raymond Cruz, Maximino Arciniega

After learning that he has inoperable stage 3A lung cancer, Walter White, a fifty-year-old high school chemistry teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico, decides to manufacture crystal methamphetamine in his spare time in order to leave a little nest egg for his family, in the first season of Vince Gilligan’s blackly comic, emotionally involving, and thoroughly unpredictable television series. Iain.Stott

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House (1977)

Highly Recommended

Japan

Feature Film

Original Title: ハウス

Director: Obayashi Nobuhiko

Writers: Obayashi Chigumi, Katsura Chiho

Cinematographer: Sakamoto Yoshitaka

Composers: Kobayashi Asei, Yoshino Micky

Cast: Ikegami Kimiko, Ohba Kumiko, Minamida Yōko, Matsubara Ai, Jinbo Miki, Miyako Masayo, Satoh Mieko, Tanaka Eriko, Dan Fumi

Angel – with six of her school friends (Fantasy, Prof, Kung-fu, Sweetie, Mac, and Melody) – decides to spend the summer holidays with her spinster aunt in the countryside, but all is not as perfect as it first seems, and before long things begin to go bump in the night, with each of the girls one by one coming to a sticky end, in Obayashi’s outlandish, highly stylised, hugely entertaining, and decidedly original horror-comedy extravaganza. Iain.Stott

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The Marquise of O (1976)

Recommended

West Germany/France

Feature Film

Original Title: Die Marquise von O...

Director: Eric Rohmer

Writers: Eric Rohmer, Heinrich von Kleist

Cinematographer: Néstor Almendros

Cast: Edith Clever, Bruno Ganz, Edda Seippel, Peter Lühr, Otto Sander, Eduard Linkers, Ruth Drexel

Based on Heinrich von Kleist’s 1808 novella, Rohmer’s elegant, cool, and thoroughly captivating period film follows the eponymous widow’s quest – after mysteriously falling pregnant, despite being chaste since her husband’s passing – to find (and possibly marry) her unborn child’s rapist father, much to the chagrin of her disbelieving, position-conscious family. Iain.Stott

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Shin Heike Monogatari (1955)

Recommended

Japan

Feature Film

Original Title: 新・平家物語

Director: Mizoguchi Kenji

Writers: Narusawa Masashige, Tsuji Kyūchi, Yoda Yoshikata, Yoshikawa Eiji

Cinematographers: Miyagawa Kazuo, Sugiyama Kōhei

Composers: Hayasaka Fumio, Satō Masaru

Cast: Hayashi Narutoshi, Ichikawa Raizō, Ishiguro Tatsuya, Kogure Michiyo, Kōno Akitake, Kuga Yoshiko, Nakamura Tamao, Natsume Shunji

Set in 12th century Kyoto, Mizoguchi’s colour photographed, rousingly scored historical epic depicts the rising tensions between the three dominant societal forces – the samurai of The Taira Clan, the monks of The Hiei Monastery, and the government of the Emperor – centring upon a young samurai Kiyomori, whose questionable parentage puts a human face on any potential conflict. Iain.Stott

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Gumshoe (1971)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Stephen Frears

Writer: Neville Smith

Cinematographer: Chris Menges

Composer: Andrew Lloyd Webber

Cast: Albert Finney, Billie Whitelaw, Frank Finlay, Janice Rule, Carolyn Seymour, Fulton Mackay, George Innes, George Silver, Bill Dean, Wendy Richard, Maureen Lipman, Neville Smith, Oscar James

A fast talking Liverpudlian comedian, who wishes that he had written The Maltese Falcon and recorded Blue Suede Shoes, begins – in between visits to the dole office and his psychiatrist’s office – to moonlight as a private detective; a career move that soon has him chatting-up femmes-fatale, fleeing “spades” and “jocks,” and generally getting up to mischief, in Frears’s thoroughly entertaining theatrical debut. Iain.Stott

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