Eric Rohmer's 1981 movie stars Béatrice Romand as Sabine, a twentysomething Parisienne who, fleeing an unhappy affair, resolves to find and wed Mr Right. Meeting Edmond, a young lawyer, she promptly decides she's got her man, and is soon obsessed with the idea of their getting married—little realising that Edmond fails to second that emotion. Meticulously assembled and exquisitely performed, it's a tart, gently mocking but poignant parable.
Director Claire Denis rediscovers her personal vision after the debacle that was Trouble Every Day. With echoes of Godard's Weekend, it's an erotic tone poem in which a woman stuck in a rainy Paris traffic jam picks up a man for a mutually satisfying one-night stand. That's the entire plot, but the auteur's intensity makes every moment telling and tactile.
Kang Woo-Seo's admittedly stylish regurgitation of every Hollywood serial-killer/renegade-cop thriller cliché follows recalcitrant and psychotically violent detective Kang on the hunt for a mac-wearing knife-wielding slasher. Kang is a surly Kitano-esque bully, the killer is a narcissistic investment banker, and the whole movie is completely charmless.
A silent classic from the halcyon days of German expressionism, Der Letze Mann is FW Murnau's dreamlike melodrama of hubris—a big-budget 1924 masterpiece of light, shadow and set design. Restored to a crispness that's worthy of '40s film noir, it stars Emil Jannings as a shambling, walruslike doorman who's demoted to the hotel lavatories. Slow and emotionally laboured but fluid and spectacular to watch.
Slow-burning, eventually gripping Canadian study of gambling addiction starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. His bank clerk commits massive fraud to fund high-roller trips to Vegas and Atlantic City, while girlfriend Minnie Driver's left in the dark. As comeuppance looms nearer, Hoffman's a junkie for one more roll of the dice. Well worth a flutter.
This storm-tossed 1937 gem was the first flowering of Michael Powell's nearmystical vision of the British landscape. It tells of the death of one tiny, remote Scottish island, as young folk abandon old ways for the mainland, but Powell's cinematic treatment of the scudding light and shade of nature—part raw, heroic documentary, part mythic poem—raises the stakes to infinity and beyond. Magic realism, indeed.
That rarest of things: a film about a racehorse that'll run and run. In the mid-'30s, Seabiscuit was an unlikely loser turned winner, trained by a too-tall jockey (Tobey Maguire), a distressed millionaire (Jeff Bridges) and a jaded cowboy (Chris Cooper). Gary (Pleasantville) Ross, who also wrote, directs the three actors (and the horses) without excessive mushiness.
Oh dear. This blue-chip Stephen King adaptation (written by William Goldman, directed by Lawrence Kasdan) starts well but then transforms into an unwatchable mess. One of those terrible movies you just have to see to figure out where it went wrong. Highlights: fine ensemble work from Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee and Timothy Olyphant. Lowlight: Morgan Freeman's worst ever screen performance.
As most high-minded critics were correct to point out on its cinema release, Bad Boys 2 is crude, noisy, relentlessly violent and often in the worst possible taste. Did they also mention that it's ridiculously entertaining, with hilarious turns from Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and that when it comes to putting on this kind of show, director Michael Bay displays an unstinting genius for widescreen mayhem? Probably not.
