Directed by Roland Jofféand elegantly scripted by Robert Bolt, with a landmark score by Ennio Morricone, this follows Robert De Niro's ex-mercenary and Jeremy Irons' Jesuit priest during violent 18th-century South American land-grabbing. And still, there's always been something disturbing about the way the movie so eagerly endorses the underlying missionary project.
Dennis Hopper-directed noir-by-numbers from 1990. Don Johnson's ambiguous stranger drifts into a sultry small town to run a con, and gets caught between lust for married Virginia Madsen and troubled teen Jennifer Connelly. Routine; but cherish this movie for the once-in-a-lifetime soundtrack Hopper persuaded Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal to jam.
The James M Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (femme fatale seduces drifter into murdering her husband) has often been revisited: this 1942 Luchino Visconti version, a Scorsese favourite, was considered immoral and subversive on release, yet spawned the Italian neo-realist school. Noir to the core, it's long and fatalistic.
Riffing on early David Mamet or Neil LaBute, writer-director Patrick Stettner's superb three-hander anatomises the airless, amoral culture of top-rank executives. In a faceless airport hotel, high-flyer Stockard Channing plays sadistic sex-and-power games with young business rival Julia Stiles and corporate headhunter Frederick Weller. Sharp, astringent, and proof that complex ideas and strong performances transcend even minimal budgets.
Thirty-one years after its initial US release, Wes Craven's debut retains its power to shock, detailing the worst night in the (short) lives of two teenage girls and the bizarre comeuppance of their tormentors. Dated (and overrated) but worth a look.
With a moody slow-mo intro, followed by a wickedly funny history of methamphetamine and capped by an intriguing roll call of deviant speed-freaks, the first 15 minutes of The Salton Sea promises, and delivers, far more than the rest of the movie can handle. Val Kilmer is the widower hunting his wife's killers among Los Angeles' drug detritus.
Sam (Jonathan Pryce) dreams of love and escape from his clerical job in a monolithic bureaucracy, but finds himself sucked ever deeper into a Kafkaesque nightmare. Michael Palin and Robert De Niro play brilliantly against type, while Terry Gilliam's dystopian vision broke the mould. Dazzling, disturbing, darkly comic and downright essential.
Appallingly violent vigilante satire from Audition's Takashi Miike. The opening scenes, with the film's title spelt out in semen and the head baddie puffing smoke through his slashed-open cheeks, promise OTT entertainment. But as the plot unfolds, only the strongest stomach will handle the scenes of torture, mutilation and rape between the black laughs.
