10,000 BC (2008) And lo, back in the Mesolithic era dreadlocked cavemen (or hutmen, to be precise) were tussling with sabre-toothed tigers, hunting woolly mammoths and speaking English. All very historically accurate, then. Independent Day's Roland Emmerich directed and co-wrote this pile of tosh which takes itself too seriously to serve up anything as bewitching as Raquel Welch in a fur bikini. Instead, we get Leading Man (pretty much indistinguishable from all the other guys) tracking the "four-legged demons" (ie horsemen) who have kidnapped blue-eyed Camilla Belle and plan to set her to work building the pyramids. But not before everyone has been attacked by killer-ostriches. There are a few passable action sequences, masses of CGI spectacle and a terrific mammoth stampede, but the stuff in between is humdrum.
100 FEET (2008) Eric Red has form as screenwriter of cult horror movies The Hitcher and Near Dark, but this low-budget supernatural twist on Disturbia, which he wrote and directed, is his first film in over a decade. After doing time for the manslaughter of her violent husband, Famke Janssen is placed under house arrest in her Brooklyn brownstone. Alas, hubby was a cop and his chums have it in for her. Even worse, his ghost has no intention of leaving her in peace. Janssen's a resourceful heroine and Red's B-movie brio almost papers over the holes in the story, which is spooky when it sticks to noises and shadows, less effective when it shifts into CGI. Gossip Girl fans will be happy to see Ed Westwick as a cute delivery boy, though maybe less happy when they see what the poltergeist has in store for him.
10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (1999) One of the more unlikely trends of the past decade has been that of American high school movies inspired by the plays of Shakespeare. This example's a delightful transposition of The Taming of the Shrew to contemporary Seattle, with a couple of smashing central performances by then up-and-coming stars Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger. An obstetrician anxious about teen pregnancy decrees that his younger daughter, Bianca, can't go on a date until her elder sister Kat (Stiles) starts going out with boys. Since she's a snippy feminist whose nose is invariably buried in The Bell Jar, prospects don't look rosy until Bianca's would-be beau bribes a broody Jim Morrison lookalike (Ledger) to take her on. An unexpected treat which in one respect - the dodgy sexual politics - actually manages to improve on Shakespeare.
102 DALMATIANS (2000) Cruella De Vil emerges from prison therapy as a puppy-loving do-gooder - but not for long! The chimes of Big Ben change her back into to the bitch goddess we all love to hate, and it's back to dognapping spotty dogs in a quest for the ultimate in politically incorrect designer wear. The human romantic subplot is as dreary as you'd expect, but the pups are delightful and there's a terrific spotty hallucination sequence on Westminster Bridge. Gérard Depardieu looks slightly uncomfortable (as well he might) in tight leopardskin shorts, but it's Glenn Close's larger than life Cruella, clad in Anthony Powell's extraordinary costumes, who rules.
12 ANGRY MEN (1957, b/w) Here's proof that 12 blokes talking in a room can be more gripping than any amount of flashy pyrotechnics, provided it's directed by Sidney Lumet and features an ace ensemble cast (Henry Fonda, Lee J Cobb, EG Marshall and co) as jurors debating the case of an 18-year old accused of stabbing his father to death. Though personally I can't watch it without thinking of the Tony Hancock version. "Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?"
12:01 (1993, tvm) This made-for-TV movie is a lively little variation on Groundhog Day, though ultimately the attempt to provide a quasi-rational explanation for the bizarre events makes it seem less profound, more conventional sci-fi fare. Jonathan Silverman plays an office worker who finds himself trapped in a "time bounce", in which he's the only person aware that the same day is repeating itself. Most of it's played for laughs, but no matter how hard our hero tries, he's unable to prevent the repeated murder of the woman he loves.
13 GOING ON 30 (2004) Jennifer Garner takes a break from modelling all those crazy Alias wigs in this distaff (but inferior) version of Big in which a 13-year-old's fervent wish to be grown-up comes true. Shazzam! She's suddenly living the dream life as a magazine editor with cool clothes, swanky Manhattan apartment and a fully developed bosom. Alas, she's also a Grade-A bitch, and must learn to reconnect with her inner adolescent and lead communal dance-alongs to Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Negligable fluff, but obligatory viewing for those of us who could happily spend all day gazing at Garner's cheekbones, plus it doesn't hurt that her love interest is played by the scrummy Mark Ruffalo.
13TH WARRIOR, THE (1999) Here's one for those of us who like watching men in pelts hacking at each other with broadswords. It's also the only Hollywood movie in recent memory in which the hero is an Arab, albeit a 10th century one played by Spanish heartthrob Antonio Banderas. Ahmed Irn-Bru (or whatever his name is) falls in with a band of unwashed Norsemen who take him back with them to the frozen north, there to wage studly combat 'gainst a rampaging tribe of cannibals. What promises to be a delirious hybrid of Beowulf and Seven Samurai peters out into a series of lacklustre battle scenes, but hey, you don't get movies set in the Dark Ages every day, so Brownie Points for trying.
1408 (2007) It's one man versus a haunted hotel room in this creepy adaptation of a short story by Stephen King. Despite Samuel L. Jackson's presence as the hotel manager, it's virtually a tour de force one-hander from John Cusack as a writer whose speciality is debunking the supernatural. After refusing to heed Jackson's warnings about the room, where 56 people have perished in 95 years, he duly gets trapped in a huis clos with ghosts of past hotel guests, his dead daughter and his own paranoid imagination. Like all such yarns, the more the special effects kick in, the less scary it becomes, but there are a few choice frissons, including an unnerving attempt to communicate with a bloke in the building across the street, and - horror of horrors - a radio that keeps playing "We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters, a song that can also be heard to similar horror-comic effect in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness.
1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE (1992) Gérard Depardieu is a splendid actor when accompanied by subtitles, but not so hot when he spik Ingleesh, as he tries to do as the baggy-shirted hero of Ridley Scott's epic. The screenplay runs aground on an insurmountable problem – how do you get your audience rooting for an expansionist gold-digger whose discovery of the New World will spell doom for two continents of Native Americans? – and ends up fudging the issue. But there's solace a-plenty in all those glorious blood-red sunsets, a super-grisly auto-da-fe and – especially – perennial bad guy Michael Wincott as a long-haired Spanish aristocrat who struts around in leather trousers and refuses to be nice to the natives. By the way, am I the only person who used to think an auto-da-fé was a Spanish motorway?
15 MINUTES (2001)Two Eastern European immigrants arrive in the Big Apple and embark on a murder spree, recording it with a video camera in a heavy-handed parable about media, fame and criminality that nevertheless packs one huge narrative surprise. Up against them are Robert De Niro as a cop whose appearances on reality TV shows have made him a celebrity, and Edward Burns (an actor whose oh-so-earnest mannerisms never fail to get on my nerves) as a fame-shy arson investigator. Kelsey Grammer rounds out the topliners as a ratings-hungry TV presenter.
16 BLOCKS (2006) I've said this before, and I'll probably say it again: Bruce Willis is ageing well. Instead of bounding around like a superannuated swinger, snogging actresses young enough to be his daughter (hello there Nicolas Cage in Next) he's taking the Clint Eastwood route of not being afraid to play a worn-out has-been who gets out of puff just climbing the stairs. In this basic but efficient Richard Donner action-thriller (with a set-up not dissimilar to that of Clint's The Gauntlet) Bruce is an alcoholic New York cop who gets that last proverbial shot at redemption when required to escort a witness 16 city blocks to court. Naturally there are gazillions of corrupt cops, led by the estimable David Morse, trying to ensure they don't make it. The witness is played by hip-hopper-turned-actor Mos Def, whose whiny retarded-sounded monologues are fantastically annoying, though he does make an effective odd-couple contrast with the taciturn Bruce, who sighs, "Life is too long, and guys like you make it even longer."
17 AGAIN (2009) Podgy Matthew Perry's life is going to pot at the start of this surprisingly diverting comedy in the ever popular body-swap vein (see also Big, Freaky Friday et al). The best days of his life are behind him, his wife (Leslie Mann) has kicked him out and his teenage children couldn't care less. But an encounter with a twinkly old janitor magically changes him back into his 17-year-old self, played by teen heart-throb Zac Efron. Soon he's re-enrolling in high school, where he was a basketball hero, to find out where he went wrong, get to know his own unwitting kids and generally learn how to be a better husband and dad. The message is the usual Hollywood guff, but put across with a modicum of wit, helped by Efron's effortless likeability and a droll turn from Thomas Lennon as his best buddy.
187 (1997) If your idea of delinquency is drawn from The Blackboard Jungle, you're behind the times; weapons of choice for today's schoolkids are Uzis and lawsuits. Samuel L Jackson gives an atypically low-key performance as a science teacher who finds the eponymous number (penal code for murder) scrawled in a textbook shortly before a sociopathic pupil tries to stab him to death. Up until the point when the film goes of the rails trying to do for the teaching profession what Taxi Driver did for cabbies, this is a genuinely frightening look at violence in American schools.
1941 (1979) Call me perverse, but I think Steven Spielberg’s first big flop is awesome. It kicks off with an inspired Jaws send-up when a skinny-dipper encounters a stray Japanese submarine off the Los Angeles coast. Cue for slapstick mayhem, a jitterbug contest that turns into a brilliantly staged brawl and lots of famous actors bellowing their lungs out as paranoia grips Hollywood. John Belushi plays a loony pilot called "Wild Bill Kelso", Nancy Allen’s a secretary with a bomber fetish and Robert Stack bags the film’s most touching moment as a General who sheds a quiet tear over Dumbo. None of this is actually funny, mind you – but hey, you can’t have everything.
2 DAYS IN PARIS (2007) Julie Delpy, best known as the smart French chick from Before Sunrise, channels the spirit of Manhattan-era Woody Allen to consistently droll effect in this witty rom-com with English and French dialogue, filmed with mostly handheld camera to freewheeeling rather than distracting effect. Delpy, who both wrote and directed, plays a photographer stopping over in the French capital with her amusingly neurotic American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) en route back to New York from Venice. Their already shaky relationship is put under further strain by her intrusive parents (played by Delpy's real mum and dad), boho Parisian chums and ex-boyfriends in a charming divertissement which pokes sly fun at French archetypes and Americans abroad without resorting to the cheap xenophobic gags of Lost in Translation.
2 FAST 2 FURIOUS (2003) This sequel to sleeper hit The Fast and the Furious doesn't take itself nearly as seriously as its progenitor, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Paul Walker (a pretty blond actor who looks about as "street" as I do) returns as Brian, an ex-LAPD cop-turned-hotrodder, who's co-opted by US Customs to help take down a Miami drug baron. But the plot - which apart from one nasty torture-by-rat sequence resembles a particularly duff episode of Miami Vice - is hardly the thing. What we're here for are turbo-charged scenes of candy-coloured nitrous-oxide-powered cars zooming through strangely deserted streets or weaving in and out of unusually stately traffic while their drivers yell things like, "Bend over, bitch!" at each other.
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954) "That is brisket of blow-fish in sea-squid dressing, basted in barnacles!" Spiffing version of Jules Verne's ripping yarn, featuring Kirk Douglas at his friskiest as heroic but none-too-bright harpoonist Ned Land, but chiefly anchored by a brilliantly melancholy turn from James Mason as proto-environmentalist anti-hero Captain Nemo, playing "host" to the survivors (wonderful Peter Lorre among them) whose steamship has been sunk by his fearsome Nautilus submarine. And don't forget the battle against the giant squid! Disney live-action at its best, way too good to waste on kids.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) I seem to be the only person in the world who thinks Stanley Kubrick's bloated sci-fi epic is vastly overrated. Admittedly it has its moments: Kubrick is a wizard at unearthing great snippets of music to set his images to (I bet you he'd have made a sensational pop video director); the talking computer is a scream (not to mention more human than any of the so-called humans); erstwhile hippies still rave about the psychedelic stargate, but the bit everyone seems to like best is when the ape throws the bone into the air and it turns into... a spaceship. Well, gosh.
21 (2008) Kevin Spacey's at his sarkiest as a manipulative MIT professor with a lucrative sideline: leading a secret team of hand-picked students to Las Vegas to count cards at the blackjack tables. Brit-born Jim Sturgess, love interest in Across the Universe, plays a poor but brilliant maths genius who realises this could be a nifty way of paying for his Harvard tuition; Kate Bosworth's the brainy babe whose presence on the team gives him another reason to sign up; Laurence Fishburne's the casino security guy who sets out to nab them. It slips down painlessly enough, but one suspects the real-life story on which it was based was rather more interesting than the run-of-the-mill morality tale presented here, with our hero learning it's not kosher to spurn your uncool geek pals for a glitzy Vegas lifestyle.
21 GRAMS (2003) Alejandro González Iñárritu's follow-up to the brilliant Amores Perros is another overwrought drama chopped into three loosely connected narratives, with chronology juggled around to make it all seem more profound than it really is. It's also an example of that emerging subgenre, the car crash movie, this time set in an American city and one of a number of films (hello there, Mystic River) that seem to think grim automatically equals profound. The best performance comes from Benicio Del Toro as an ex-con who carelessly runs over Naomi Watts' entire family. Sean Penn is his usual mannered self as an ailing maths prof who ends up with the dead husband's heart and embarks on an affair with his widow. Admittedly the jitterbugging back and forth in time stops the film from ever being boring, though one can't help suspecting that if all the fragments were unscrambled and fitted back together in chronological order, we'd be left with miserabilist soap opera.
24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE (2002) When Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, hanged himself in 1980, it inspired an entire generation of pretentious young men to mope around in long raincoats, listening to gloomy music. Ah yes, I remember it well. And those of you who remember what you were doing when you heard the news should make a date Michael Winterbottom's exhilarating portrait of the Manchester music scene between a seminal if sparsely attended Sex Pistols gig in 1976 and the demise of the Hacienda club in 1992. Presiding over a punkish assembly of archive footage, celebrity cameos (Magazine's Howard Devoto as a lavatory attendant) and insane flights of fantasy (UFOs, conversations with God) is Steve Coogan, delivering a ceaseless stream of witty straight-to-camera patter as Tony Wilson, the self-mythologizing TV presenter (not a million miles from Alan Partridge) who founded Factory Records. As an evocation of an era it hits the nail on the head, though obviously it helps if you're au fait with bands like New Order and the Happy Mondays. The story loses its grip a little after Curtis' suicide, but it's mostly great fun.
27 DRESSES (2008) Only in Hollywood could someone as hot as Katherine Heigl be cast as a girl-geek who has been a bridesmaid 27 times but, naturally, yearns to walk down the aisle herself. Unfortunately, the object of her secret affection is her boss (charmless Edward Burns) who's more interested in Heigl's flashier sister (Watchmen's Malin Akerman). Meanwhile, cynical journalist James Marsden prepares to write a snide feature taking the mickey out of our heroine's case history. Guess what happens. This rose-tinted rom-com is about as emotionally honest as a snake-oil salesman, but it scrapes by thanks to Judy Greer as the obligatory gal pal (a bridesmaid role if ever there was one), the appeal of its leading lady and the inevitable but amusing montage of her wearing all 27 of those ghastly frocks.
28 DAYS LATER (2002) After the underwhelming The Beach, director Danny Boyle recovered some of his street-cred with this zippy low-budget horror-thriller in which a bike courier called Jim (Cillian Murphy with disturbing facial hair) wakes up from a coma to find London deserted by everyone except the victims of a virus that has turned them into flesh-ripping psychos. Jim heads for the hills with a handful of other survivors who find themselves at the mercy of mad Major Christopher Eccleston and his squaddies. While it's not technically a zombie movie (the flesh-eaters aren't dead) it nicks a lot of its ideas from George Romero's zombie trilogy and adds at least one frightening new twist to the scenario; these zombies don't amble along like the lumbering corpses of yore. They move like lightning. Eeek.
28 WEEKS LATER (2007) Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's sequel to 28 Days Later improves on the original in every way, and offers further proof that, when it comes to horror and fantasy, Spanish directors rule. The UK has been ravaged by a virus that turns people into super-speedy zombies. (Purists balk at the word "zombie" since they're not technically dead, but I say to hell with it.) London is a ghost town; Robert Carlyle, whose guilty secret we see played out in the film's heart-stopping opening, is among survivors holed up in a Docklands conclave policed by an American-led NATO force. Insert Iraq allegory here, as well-intentioned characters repeatedly make brow-slappingly stupid but horribly plausible mistakes, leading to lots of desperate running and rapid-fire flesh-ripping, all shot at 100mph so you don't get time to ponder plot holes. It's the most nerve-shredding gorefest since The Descent, and every bit as merciless.
3:10 TO YUMA (1957, b/w) Just because James Mangold's remake hit the spot doesn't mean we should forget about Delmer Daves' original western of the same name. Van Heflin plays the struggling rancher escorting outlaw Glenn Ford to the train that will take him to jail. All the best bits from the remake are there, minus some of the detours and distractions, and Ford is wonderful as the genial bad guy. Just watch him chatting up the ladies!
3:10 TO YUMA (2007) Russell Crowe's a notorious outlaw, Bale's the crippled rancher who vows to put him on that train to the gallows in James Mangold's lively remake of the 1957 western of the same name, adapted from an early story by Elmore Leonard. On the cross-country ride to the railway station, the villain charms all and sundry, but is still not averse to slashing a sleeping man's throat, while the hero struggles to prove to his tagalong teenage son that he's no smalltime loser but a Real Man. It's half an hour longer than the original, so not as taut, but all the best bits from the original are there, with added colour and action (belligerent Apaches and sadistic miners) plus Ben Foster, as Crowe's devoted but psychotic sidekick, who nearly steals the show out from under the noses of the two stars.
300 (2006) Three hundred shouty Spartans in black leather Speedos block the pass at Thermopylae against the Persian invaders. Could this movie be any gayer? Filming actors against computerised backgrounds, director Zack Snyder makes a fair fist of recreating Frank Miller's heavily stylised graphic novel, though evidently wasn't prepared to go as far as having his Spartans naked, like Miller's. Forget Phantom of the Opera; Gerard Butler gets his breakout role as King Leonidas, who can't open his mouth without yelling, "THIS IS SPAARTAA!" or "TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!" at ear-splitting volume. Lena Headey plays his wife; The Wire's Dominic West plays a slimeball. Iranians will naturally take offence; non-Iranian adults will find it preposterous but technically interesting; adolescents will adore it, and may even be inspired to start swotting up on their ancient history.
36 (2004) Gérard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil, looking broody in leather coats, go head to head in a sort of talky Gallic version of Heat, but instead of it being cop versus robber, it's cop versus cop, both in the running for the same promotion. Whichever catches the crooks responsible for a series of murderous heists will get the job, but each is prepared to break the rules in this polar (not a fleece jacket, but the French term for crime thriller) directed and co-written by former cop Olivier Marchal. The title, by the way, refers to the address of Paris's Scotland Yard, already cited in Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic 1947 procedural, Quai des Orfèvres.
39 STEPS, THE (1935, b/w) Alfred Hitchcock's best British film is this dusty but still ripping adaptation of John Buchan's yarn. Dashing Robert Donat plays Richard Hannay, the regular guy who gets mixed up in murder and has to go on the run and crack a spy ring to prove his innocence. Highlights include the crofter's cottage with John Laurie at his most gloriously dour, Madeleine Carroll trying to peel off her stockings while handcuffed to the hero, and the poignant death of Mr Memory, whose brain holds the key to the plot. "Am I right, sir?"
3-IRON (2004) Kim Ki-Duk, one of the exciting new wave of Korean directors, is probably best known for the fishhooks-through-the-genitalia from The Isle, but fear not, this magical realist love story is gentler fare, though there are some wince-making moments involving golf-balls. Jae Hee plays a mysterious loner who installs himself in strangers' apartments while their owners are away, never stealing, but tidying up and fixing broken appliances. One day he stumbles across an abused wife, who joins him in his serial squatting. This almost wordless first half is mesmerising, though in the second half, when Hee is unjustly jailed for murder and teaches himself the ancient art of being invisible, the prioner's continuing wordlessness becomes frustrating.
40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, THE (2005) I used to think Will Ferrell was the funniest man in America, but that was before I discovered Steve Carell. He's the reason the American version of The Office is more than just a pale copy of the British one; he's also the reason this potentially crass comedy with the self-explanatory title is more endearing than you might expect. Carell's character, geeky though he is, is a genuinely likeable fellow, and his workmates, who try to fix him up with dates, never take the mickey out of him in a nasty way. There's the predictable sprinkling of F-words and crass humour (both elements combined in the film's big set-piece, when Carell has his chest waxed) but it's more honest than Knocked Up, and there's an affection towards the female characters (particularly the very lovely Catherine Keener) that's entirely lacking in the adolescent yuckfest that is Superbad.
42ND STREET (1933, b/w) "You're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" Let's hear it for the archtypal "putting on a show" musical, starring Warner Baxter as the Producer, Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel as wisecracking broads and Ruby Keeler as the chorus girl who steps into the limelight after the leading lady breaks her ankle. Busby Berkeley stages the musical numbers (including the naughtily suggestive "Shuffle off to Buffalo" and "Young and Healthy") with his customary flamboyance, but what galvanizes the attention nowadays are the dancers' figures - no Showgirls-type muscular hardbodies here, but chubby thighs a-go-go. Those were the days.
48 HRS (1982) Nick Nolte's the rumpled detective and Eddie Murphy the dapper convict who team up with to catch a police killer in this blueprint for one of the most popular subgenres of the 1980s – the mismatched buddy action pic. Without it, films like Lethal Weapon might never have seen the light of day, but this original (directed by Walter Hill before he went off the boil) is a lot darker and grittier. It also provides many exciting opportunities for actresses to play hookers, human shields, kidnap victims and so on.
49TH PARALLEL (1941, b/w) Picaresque slice of wartime propaganda (from the matchless team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) starring Eric Portman as a Nazi U-boat captain leading his stranded crew across Canada, just north of "the only undefended frontier in the world". Among the folk they encounter are Laurence Olivier in heavy foreign accent mode as a French-Canadian trapper, and Leslie Howard as an English aesthete who goes ballistic when the Germans trash his Picasso.
50 FIRST DATES (2004) Unexpectedly sweet rom-rom starring Adam Sandler as a vet who falls in love with cute Drew Barrymore, only to find she's suffering from short-term memory loss due to a brain injury sustained in a car crash, which means he has to start again from scratch and woo her afresh every day. A set-up which could have played solely for knockabout comedy (though there is that, too) gains added emotional resonance as Barrymore's family keeps her happy by staging the same day over and over again, in a sort of Groundhog Day meets Goodbye Lenin! scenario, while Sandler resorts to increasingly desperate measures to win her over, helped by a cute penguin and a loveable walrus. There's also lots of nice Hawaiian scenery, and the obligatory iffy ethnic impersonation from Rob Schneider, as a one-eyed Hawaiian sidekick.
5000 FINGERS OF DR T, THE (1953) Every so often Hollywood produces a film so jaw-droppingly bizarre that you can’t help wondering what drugs the people who made it were on. So it goes with this demented musical adaptation of a Dr Seuss story about a nine-year-old called Bart who dreams his piano teacher has hypnotised his mom, imprisoned all non-piano-playing musicians in his dungeon and kidnapped 500 little boys, who are being forced to rehearse their captor's concerto on a giant keyboard for all eternity. Oh, and the villain has roller-skating twin henchmen who share the same beard. Just as well I didn’t see it when I was a child; it would have given me nightmares.
54 (1998) There's a great story to be told about the legendary Manhattan nightclub Studio 54, but writer-director Mark Christopher blows it by concentrating on the exploits of the wrong character - Ryan Philippe as a boring blond New Jersey boy who becomes a celebrity barman. Meanwhile, out on the sidelines, there's an absolutely sensational performance by Mike Myers as creepy but fascinating club-owner Steve Rubell, who was busted by the IRS and later died of Aids. If only the film had been about him.
55 DAYS AT PEKING (1963) If you can put up with Dame Flora Robson as the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, this is a colourful adventure from the Samuel Bronston stonking great epic school, with some nifty directorial touches from Nicholas Ray. It's set in 1900 during the Boxer siege of the multi-national legation. Charlton Heston leads the American marines and has a great scene in which he tries to break some bad news to an orphan. As a scandalous Russian baroness, Ava Gardner sports the prettiest double-chin since Arletty in Les enfants du paradis. And David Niven – surely our most underrated film star – gives a thoughtful performance as the British ambassador. Surprisingly intelligent entertainment – provided, of course, that you're not Chinese.
5x2: CINQ FOIS DEUX (2004) Memento, Irreversible…. François Ozon's contribution to the reversed narrative genre is a relatively low-key affair in the form of five scenes from a marriage, from divorce (and one last painful bonk) working backwards to the first inklings of mutual attraction, with Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Stéphane Freiss giving emotionally raw performances. Viewers who prefer their entertainment spoonfed should steer clear - the signs of impending emotional catastrophe are there from the start, but Ozon credits us with enough intelligence to spot them for ourselves.
8 MILE (2002) Eminem, the annoying white rapper with the name that sounds disconcertingly like a brand of confectionary, made an unexpectedly impressive acting debut in this gritty-looking drama directed by Curtis Hanson, a sort of Saturday Night Fever for our times. The Slim Shady one plays a trailer trash manual worker nicknamed Rabbit whose only hope of escape from a dead-end life in inner-city Detroit is to out-rap his black rivals during staged showdowns in which the contestants insult each other in rhyme. But the real joy of the film is listening to Kim Basinger, as our boy's slutty alcoholic mum, drawling lines like "I gotta go to bingo'".
8 FEMMES (2002) François Ozon serves up a deliciously silly jeu d'ésprit starring eight of France's starriest actresses, each performing a musical number in a sub-Agatha Christie murder mystery. Danielle Darrieux, Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuelle Béart are game as anything, but the highlight is a sexy catfight between Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant.
9TH COMPANY (2005) Fyodor Bondarchuk, son of Sergei Bondarchuk (best known in the west for directing the epic battle-movie Waterloo), was already a well-known actor when he made a striking directing debut with this war movie set in 1988, during the last days of the ill-fated Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was a massive hit in Russia, and dimissed by some critics in the west as propaganda, which I reckon is a little harsh since most of the military action is depicted as futile. It's basically like a slightly more sentimental version of Full Metal Jacket. In the first half, young men bond with each other as they undergo a gruelling training regime; in the second, they're dispatched to the front, where (I don't think this is giving much away) most of them get killed. Historically, we're reminded, foreign troops enter Afghanistan at their peril.
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