Film 4's 50 Films You Must See Before You Die

I'm not really a huge fan of Mike Leigh but I did like this one. It's about a young black woman who'd been adopted and who seeks out her natural mother. The mother turns out to be white. As usual with Mike Leigh, it's the minutiae of the characters' lives that make this film. Their faults and weaknesses are revealed as the surface civility is worn away. In the end what's revealed though is the imperfection but basic decency of these people. There's a classic scene where the mother (Brenda Blethyn) says she can't be her mother because she's sure she'd remember having been with a black man. She looks away and a memory rises to the surface....

I'm not really a fan of Werner Herzog either and haven't seen this. It's loosely inspired by Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel Heart Of Darkness. It's a kind of Apocalypse Now set in the Spanish conquistadores era.

Set in a dark dystopian future, this comedy is about as dark as they get. It stars Jonathan Price as a normal guy in a dead-end job who has recurring dreams about a beautiful woman.  An administrative error leads to him encountering someone who looks like his dream woman and as a result of his reckless and relentless pursuit of herm he gets tangled up in political intrigue and ends up being tortured to death by, in an inspired piece of casting, Michael Palin. Also appearing as a balaclava-wearing plumber cum terrorist in a cameo is Robert de Niro. This film is visually stunning and inventive as is most of Gilliam's work and does merit repeated watching. Given the paranoia and increasing feeling of state control eroding our basic rights in this era of the so-called war on terror, the themes in this film are more relevant today than ever.  But why is it called Brazil?

This is one of the best late-1950s / early-1960s British kitchen sink dramas when British film makers began to tackle real working-class lives in their work. I'm not very fond of films with a sporting theme generally but I really liked this. Richard Harris was an excellent actor whose alcohol-induced escapades later in life chipped away at his talent. Also excellent in this film is Rachel Roberts, who plays the object of Harris' affection. Themes of class and social status are present and correct, as you would expect in a British film, but this is a love story too between two people who can never quite express themselves.

I absolutely love the music in this film and the concert sequences are magnificent. Joel Grey, as the MC is outstanding. Away from the cabaret itself though, it's fairly routine stuff although it does get across the increasing tension and paranoia of pre-war Berlin as the Nazis took power. Worth watching for the cabaret sequences alone though.

This is a very quirky early film from a Coen Brother whose work I am a huge fan of. Part crime caper, part satire on contemporary America, it's the tale of an unlikely pairing of a policewoman (Holly Hunter) and a petty criminal (Nicholas Cage) who, on hearing they cannot have children, decide to steal one belonging to a millionnaire. Throw on some comedy villains, some hapless cops and the result is a very satisfying comedy.

I know very little about Japanese animé and haven't seen this. The very few films in this genre that I have seen, such as Akira and Ghost In The Shell, have been very interesting so I have no doubt this one would be worth catching up with.

For years, this was one of my favourite films of all time. I first saw it at the cinema in 1978 and was absolutely bowled over by the then unheard of gore and the fact that the zombies are attacking a place as everyday as a shopping mall. But most of all, I thought it was tremendously funny. In a morbid and gross way perhaps but I just loved it. Perhaps it would no longer make my all time top 10 (although its sequel, Day Of The Dead, might) but it's still one of the best zombie films there has been.

This was the first cinematic appearance of charismatic cannibal about town Hannibal Lector, played here by Brian Cox. Based on Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon, this film was a flop on its first release but subsequently gained status after the huge success of Silence Of The Lambs. I really loved this film because it got inside the minds of both the serial killer and his pursuer and at times there was little distance between them. It's a genuinely tense and gripping thriller with Lector's sheer malevolence excellently portrayed by Cox. You really felt anxious as the blind girl befriends the killer, not realising she's intended to be his next victim.

Featuring comedian Jerry Lewis in a straight acting role, albeit playing a comedian turned chatshow host, and Robert De Niro as his reality-challenged wannabe co-host, this is a satire on fame and celebrity. Ironically, for me Lewis is far more believable in his role than De Niro. I found De Niro's Stanley Putkis to be frankly unbelievable. This isn't a bad film and maybe the script is the problem but I didn't like it.

This is the flip side to the glamorous world of James Bond. Spy Harry Palmer's world is one of seedy flats, long hours, low pay and disdain from his boss. There's little glamour, let alone casinos and martinis in this spy's life. Michael Caine was born to play Harry Palmer and I really love this film and its first sequel, Funeral In Berlin. In his way, Palmer is every bit as much the hero as Bond. One suspects that this is far closer to reality too. The theme music is unforgettable too. No matter how many times I've seen this I always get a thrill when I hear the first twangs at the start of the film. The ending is genuinely tense too. You don't know who the villain is, nor whether Palmer is going to be able to beat his conditioning and shoot the right person. A great film.

David Lynch is one of my favourite directors but I haven't actually seen this. I have liked (and in some cases, loved) most of his work so I have no reason to suspect I won't like this one too.

I'll admit upfront that I really don't like Westerns much as a rule and I like John Wayne even less. The Searchers, though, is a good film made by an accomplished director. It's very dark in places and reveals an unpleasant side to the American psyche, apparently endorsed by Wayne himself, when it is suggested that the kidnapped girl would be better off dead that to have consorted with non-whites. In the end the film rejects this view but nevertheless, it's a distasteful one. But then, like I said, Westerns and John Wayne are decidedly not me. If I had to pick a Western with Wayne in it I'd go for John Ford's 1939 film Stagecoach which was pretty much Wayne's first starring role

I first saw this in a film studies class and thought I was going to absolutely hate it. I imagined it to be full of macho posturing of the worst kind. However, to my surprise, I really liked it. The macho stuff is there for a purpose and the film has such an unexpected plot twist part way through that I was quite wrapped up in it. What and who is real or imagined are by no means clear and it is a clever and stylish take on living in a corporate industrial society. Very impressive, worth repeated viewing.

One of the best Ealing comedies with a cast that includes Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom, this is a darkly comic tale of how a group of bankrobbers plan and execute a heist whilst pretending to be musicians rehearsing in the spare room of a little old lady. Inevitably the little old lady gets wind of it so the gang decide they have to murder her. Guinness in particular is fantastically malevolent in his role. How the gang only succeed in killing each other and all end up dead in the same coal train is a masterpiece of comic plotting. I laughed out loud as the final gang member contrived to accidentally dispatch himself.

This is a comedy drama starring Gene Hackman, an actor I very much admire, and Anjelica Huston. It's about the internal strife and struggles of a dysfunctional American family. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind when I watched it but I wasn't particularly impressed.

This was the first of a trilogy of films each corresponding to one of the colours of the French flag. The three parts are also loosely based around the three-word mantra of the French revolution, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. This first one, freedom, is about love (a loss of freedom perhaps). It's a sombre story of a woman who's badly injured in a car crash. All three films are neatly tied up at the end of Rouge and I would recommend watching all three closely together.

Separating this film from the frankly unpleasant character of Arnold Schwarzenegger is a difficult task. I remember very much looking forward to seeing this when it first came out having loved the original. I wasn't disapponted. The special effects were a revalation and I'm a complete sucker for time travel stories anyway. Admittedly, I felt it did drag a little in the middle but overall, it's fast paced, thrilling, has great effects, good performances and a plot to die for. Shame that Arnie turned out to be such a dick.

This stars Al Pacino as a Cuban immigrant who, through mostly violent means, rises to become the most powerful drug baron in Miami. It is famous for having a, for the time, extraordinarily high swear word count. There were many near-clones of this type of gangster film to follow but very few were as good.

One of screen legend and unrepentant smoker extraordinaire Bette Davis' finest performances as a faded, jaded actress who's elclipsed by her protégé. There's always someone younger and sexier waiting in the wings to steal your crown. This is a genuine classic of Hollywood's golden age. It's literate and intelligent and exposes some of the less attractive aspects of human nature beautifully. Ironically the young upstart finds herself eclipsed by a newer model at the end.

I haven't seen this film and I'm not particularly a fan of Waters'. However, if it's anything like his other works, I imagine it features lots of obesity, cross-dressing and bodily functions.

This is the story of a woman who is widowed and then marries a bishop. It is seen through the eyes of her son, Alexander. The contrast between the warm, loving family life of their previous existence contrasts markedly with the austere, almost brutal reality of their new life in the bishop's palace. This was originally conceived as a five hours plus TV mini series and cut down to a mere three hour cinama film. I would definitely recommend the longer version to get a full appreciation of its many layers and characterisations. It's one of the finest works from one of the world's all-time greatest film directors. Anyone with an interest in film should see this and a few of his other works to appreciate that film can indeed be an art form in its own right.

A film about some unruly ill-behaved kids doing detention doesn't sound very promising I'll admit but /i actually quite liked this film. The performances are top rate and the script is very good. You find yourself really drawn into these teenagers' world and become interested in their problems. (And I really, really fancied Molly Ringwld. Yum.)

An historical epic from China. I haven't seen it.

Choose life. The opening monologue over Iggy Pop's Lust For Life is a fantastic start to a great film. In places harrowing, in others extremely funny, this is a tale of heroin addiction in Glasgow. It launched the career of Ewan MacGregor I really loved this film. It leaves behind so many memorable images, most of them admittedly not for the squeamish but then the subject matter is hardly U-certificate stuff is it?

I haven't seen this film, mostly, I think, because I don't like Julia Roberts.

I'm a big fan of the Marx Brothers and this is probably their best film. Before they committed a story to film, they would perform the script on tour so that by the time it came to shoot, their performances would be razor-sharp. They were all accomplished musicians and had performed for manyyears in vaudeville. The reason that Harpo never spoke was because he found on one occasion during their stage act that he got bigger laughs by clowning around silently than he ever did telling jokes. Of his harp-playing, apparently his technique was all wrong but he sure could get a good sound out of it. I have a brief sound clip of Harpo speaking. Sad aren't I? In my opinion their blend of anarchic slapstic has never been equalled and this film is the cream of the crop.

I didn't really like this tale of teenage murderesses. The fantasy sequences where the landscaope morphs into somewhere mystical are great to see but overall, despite having Kate Winslet (whom, yes you've guessed it, I fancy the pants off), it was just boring.

A Soviet film set in the second world war that I haven't seen. It looks good though.

This is a biting satire whose target is the film industry itself. Starring Tim Robbins as a film producer who receives a script about a film producer who murders a scriptwrite to claim his work, the film starts with an extremely long single shot that sweeps through a film studio complex, eavesdropping on the activities as it goes. A large cast includes several stars who appear (unpaid apparently) as themselves in cameo roles. I so wanted Whoopi Goldberg in character, when she's slagging off some film stars, to have a go at herself but she doesn't. Maybe that would've been too cheesey.

I haven't seen this and it doesn't really appeal to me.

This is all religious fervour, repressed sexuality and madness in a remote monastery in the Himalayas. Powell and Pressburger were giants of mid-20th century British cinema. Personally, I would have chosen A Matter Of Life And Death (which is one of my favourite films ever) or a couple of others over this. It's wonderful to look at but it's a little too melodramatic for my tastes.

I'm struggling to get past the scenes of Jenny Agutter naked in this film. They were very impressive to the adolescent me. It's a rights of passage story I guess. A brother and sister are abandoned by their suicidal father in the desert, they meet an aboriginie (yes, I know they're not called that any more) and walk back to civilisation. And that's it. Yet somehow it manages to hold your interest. Again this has spectacular cinematography and the Australian outback makes a beautiful backdrop. But oh, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny.

The word genius is bandied about quite a lot but in Welles' case it's totally justified. He didn't make very many films and suffered greatly from studio interference in his work but everything he made was at least interesting, often memorable and on occasion superb. Touch Of Evil is a film that was re-cut, some would say butchered, by the studio, and it wasn't restored to Welles' original version until 1998. The film opens with a long single take that follows the path of a bomb as it's placed in the boot of a car. This is audacious film making at its best. Welles himself acts in the film along with Charlton Heston. The film is one of the best films he made, even rivalling Citizen Kane. In fact it's one of the best films anyone's ever made.

Tarantino was a movie geek extraordinaire whose brilliant first film, Reservoir Dogs, was surpassed by this, his second. It has a circular narrative structure that would be impossible in reality and is made up of a series of loosely linked tales. The dialogue is superb and uncommonly is not just there to advance the plot. As with all Tarantino films, the music is wonderful. This is one of the best films of the decade and contains so many memorable scenes. Tarantino has not yet bettered it.

I don't like Bollywood films at all and have no desire to see this. However, since Bombay, the centre of the Indian film industry, has now been renamed Mumbai, perhaps this genre should now be called Mollywood.

I'm not usually one for prison movies but this one is excellent. Wrongly convicted prisoner Tim Robbins is befriended by old lag Morgan Freeman. Over the years they experience great hardships and small victories with both eventually escaping to freedom. It's a great script and the leading characters are entirely believable and brought to life by a pair of excellent performances. Despite being nearly three hours long, the time doesn't drag at all and you find yourself smiling with every concession won and grinning like a maniac when they finally get free.

Bill Murray is in uncharacteristically serious mood in this excellent drama. It also stars Scarlett Johansson as the woman he falls for. The sense of culture clash as these two Americans are plunged into Japanese society is depicted brilliantly. The characters are lost not only in their personal lives but also in their failure to cope with Tokyo culture. The ending is unusual too in that it's ambiguous. The pair do not head off into the sunset together but neither do they separate forever. It's very brave of a mainstream film to have such an open ending.

I can't see the part where the alien bursts out of John Hurt's chest without immediately thinking about Mel Brooks' Spaceballs where the alien bursts out of his chest and then does a song and dance routine compete with straw boater and cane. It has been much copied since, of course, but this was a revalation when it first came out. The sense of menace from the acid-blooded creature builds in the claustrophibic gloom of the ship's corridors. The bright well-lit interiors of Star Trek are nowhere to be seen. here. The chest bursting alien, of course, has become a classic but I also remember how struck I was by the revelation that one of the crew was a robot (Lance Henrickson). The fact that the sole survivor (Sigourney Weaver) was a woman was a very welcome and unusual twist. My only slight criticism is that when the alien is finally revealed in its entirety at the end, it does look too much like a man in an alien costume. The sequel, Aliens, was even better, a very rare occurrence.

I'm a big fan of Woody Allen, not only of his early comedies but also of his more serious works. The man himself absolutely loathes this film. I can't think why. It's shot in black and white and the lighting is wonderful. It has such a sense of location and makes New York look beautiful. The music, by George Gershwin, is wonderful. It's, in a sense, typically Woody Allen fare. Angst, psychoanaluysis, introspection and dysfuntional relationships abound. But above all, as the title suggests, it's a tribute to his home town. I doubt if there have ever been more flattering images taken of the Big Apple.

Another coming of age film. But this time, there's a six foot alien rabbit who talks to the eponymous Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal). This rabbit, however, is nothing like James Stewart's Harvey from 50 years earlier. He's metallic, ugly and suggests some very dark things to out hero. Is he real or just a figment of Donnie's imagination? That's never really made clear. The ending is suitably unexpected. All in all, an imaginative and inventive movie.

Jean-Luc Godard (another of my favourite directors) was one of the leading lights of the French nouvelle vague of the late 1950s / early 1960s. Much of Godard's work is film about film and this is a Gallic take on the American gangster movie. It is full of, then revolutionary, hand-held camera work and jarring cuts that make no attempt at smooth transitions from one scene to the next. Godard wants the viewer to be aware this is a movie we're watching which is in stark contrast to the norm where every effort is made to abscure the artifice of the film maker's art. The French New Wave in general and this film in particular were hugely influential throughout the world. Films were never the same after this.

I love Hitchcock too. No one made thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock. He was a master of the suspense thriller genre. This film is one of his very best and stars Cary Grant as the innocent man caught up in a case of mistaken identity. The music (I own the soundtrack album) is by Hitchcock's frequent musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann, a master of film scoring who was responsible for the violin phrasing of the famous music that plays over the shower scene in Psycho. There are a lot of films on this list where music plays a central role in buiding the mood. As usual the man himself can be spotted in a scene. The scenes on Mount Rushmore and the buzzing by the pane in the wheatfields have become iconing film images.

It wasn't until I read the novel by Arthur C. Clarke that I fnally figured out the significance of the apes and the obelisk. This also has music to die for and I own the soundtrack album to this film too. I have to admit that when I first saw this at the age of 18, I really didn't like it very much at all. My friend Pete and I wrote a very scathing report about it for our University Halls of Residence newsletter. (Yay! I'm a published author.) Both the ape start and the surreal ending went on far too long. These days, however, I appreciate it much more and have grown to like it. Having read the complete novel quadrilogy certainly helps.

As a psychotic killer in this film, Ben Kingsley is about as far from Gandhi as it's possible to get. He descends upon Ray Winstone's idyllic like in Spain to wreak havoc. Ray Winstone is, of course, Ray Winstone. He was still Ray Winstone even when he played Henry VIII in a recent television mini-series. Whether that makes him a good or bad actor I'm undecided. (Sean Connery and Michael Caine come from the same school of acting and are they good or bad?) It is quite a good example of the British gangster movie of the turn of the millennium but I prefer Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.

This is a modern film noir classic. The story is fantastic and has so many twists and turns it's hard to keep up with at times. Jack Nicholson turns in one of the best performances of his career. Director Roman Polanski, who's been through some extremely traumatic events in his life, a Polish immigrant, somehow pulls off a vision of 1950s Los Angeles that is both compelling and convincing.

I haven't seen this. Again, it's not something that would really interest me.

Surprisingly, I don't remember having seen this either. I really must get to see it. I'm a big fan of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, however which also starred Jack Lemmon so I'd be very surprised if I didn't like this.

Another film loosely based on Heart Of Darkness, by all accounts this was almost as gruelling to make as the war it depicted. Its star Martin Sheen, a recovering alcoholic at the time, did not have to act too much when filming the opening scene where he's cracking up in a hotel bedroom. When he smashes a mirror with his fist, that was unscripted and the blood on his hand is real. Sheen suffered a heart attack during the shoot. Also memorable, though barely seen in the shadows, is the imposingly large figure of Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz. He's one of my favourite actors, particularly in his 1950s films, and he changed screen acting forever but here, sadly, he's vurtually unrecognisable as he mumbles his way incoherently through his scenes. It's visually stunning, of course, with the napalm attacks, the burning jungle and Kurtz's jungle lair all contributing to a cinematic tour de force. It's a very long film and each successive new version has increased its length with the result that it's now almost as long as the war itself but if ever you wanted to find an example of great art being born from great adversity, this is it.