***
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Drowning By Numbers. Peter Greenaway. Screened at my university, back in the day. I watch Greenaway for the same reason I watch Takashi Miike films: in 110 minutes, there is 90-95 minutes of dross, and 10-15 minutes of transcendental genius. Drowning is higher on the genius level than most; or maybe just Greenaway’s obsessions with counting and with games match my own obsessions. Worth it for The Game of Sheep And Tides alone. Well, that and Michael Nyman's music.
Prospero’s Books. Peter Greenaway. John Gielgud as Prospero; Michael Nyman on music. I'm obsessed by The Tempest and all its codas: this, The Waste Land, The Sea and The Mirror, etc.
Survive Style 5+, Sekiguchi Gen. Mental, absurd, beautiful, and life-affirming. Enough good ideas in this one film to keep a second-rate director in business for years. If you like this, and don't mind digging up obscure J-Film, try to find Monday (Dir: Sabu) and The Complete Japanese Showa-Songbook (Dir: Tetsuo Shinohara).
Orphée, Jean Cocteau. The greatest film ever made about the creative process. Plus, Maria Casares as Death in a black Duesenberg, with motorcycle outriders. Helps if you speak French as the greatest line in the film (Heurtebise to Euridice about death as bees in the mirror) is not in the subtitles.
Jean-Pierre Melville. Cercle Rouge is possibly the most perfect film ever made. Also divine are Le Samourai and Bob Le Flambeur (one of my favourite DVD cover designs, ever). Melville is king.
The Return. Andrei Zvyagintsev. Such a simple premise, so utterly gripping. The greatest Russian tale of fathers and sons since Turgenev. Cinematography has all the beauty of Tarkovsky but none of the ponderousness.
Kontroll. Dark comedy about the people who live and work in the Budapest subway. Makes the underground city look like a bizarre kingdom of artificially-lit beauty. Also, great soundtrack. I love this film so much.
Tony Takitani. Adapted from a Murakami short story. Delicate, minimal, beautiful tale of an artist and his wife.
The Conformist. Bernardo Bertolucci. A history lesson on Italy during and after Il Duce, and how far people will go to create normality in their lives. Excellent cinematography; the death scene in the forest is unbelievable. Try to see the proper, subtitled version at a screening - don’t buy the dubbed video.
The Leopard. Luchino Visconti. I still like the book better, but this is a film of such huge budget yet immense subtlety that it exists as one of the great white elephants of cinema. I doubt it could be made today. One of the most perfect endings in all of film.
Milano Calibro 9, Fernando di Leo. His greatest film, and light years ahead of his other work. Milan gangster revenge story, stylish and tight as a drum. With a 1970s Eurofunk soundtrack that picks you up from the first moment of the film and doesn't let go until it ends. Currently unavailable on video or DVD.
The Long Good Friday. John MacKenzie. Like watching a slow-motion car crash. If this had been made in Hollywood with pretty people instead of Bob 'Oskins and Helen Mirren, it would have been bigger than The Godfather. It's certainly a better film. I love train-wreck films; if you like Scarface (another film I adore), you need to see The Long Good Friday and also Night And The City (Dir: Jules Dassin) for how the same sort of traincrash crime noir looks when filmed in London.
Angel Face. Otto Preminger. Nothing beats Mitchum's ice cool demeanour and the bare, subtext-laden dialogue of Angel Face. Filmed in 18 days, as a way for Howard Hughes to punish Gene Simmons for escaping her contract with him. Also not available on DVD or video.
Laura. Otto Preminger. More stylised, minimalist noir, from one of its greatest directors.
Anatomy of A Murder. Otto Preminger. Two hours of Jimmy Stewart and George C Scott squaring off in the courtroom. Ignore the cheesy DVD cover (dreadful, when compared to the original poster); this is one of the best and most morally ambiguous courtroom dramas ever filmed. Also, four magic words: "Soundtrack By Duke Ellington".
Patton. Franklin Schaffner. George C Scott is a god. Coppola co-wrote the screenplay. The other great biopics are Lawrence of Arabia, Raging Bull, and Gance's Napoleon.
Fight Club. David Fincher. This is the screaming frustration of my generation.
Buffalo Soldiers. Gregor Jordan. One of the most smartly written and directed "war" films of recent years. Knows its genre, and every time you think you know where it's heading, it turns around and confounds you.
Charade. Stanley Donen. Goofy plot, but supreme dialogue. The two best flirt scenes in cinema are the Stanwyck/MacMurray speed limit conversation in Double Indemnity, and the opening Grant/Hepburn scene here.
Cool Hand Luke. Stuart Rosenberg. The quintessential anti-hero film. Brilliant and tragic. It doesn't hurt that Paul Newman was stunningly handsome, either - he has the sort of magnetism in this film only equalled by Delon in Le Samourai, or O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.
Kelly's Heroes. Brian G Hutton. I can quote unhealthy amounts of this film off by heart.
The Italian Job. Peter Collinson. Noel Coward as Mr Bridger! (On Planet Alex, the Mark Wahlberg remake does not exist.)
The Colditz Story. Controversial: I think it's better than The Great Escape.
The Seventh Seal. Ingmar Bergman. Yes, I am a pretentious artnerd. This is news to you in what way?
Napoleon. Abel Gance. I saw this on a 50-foot wide screen with the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra playing a live score. 1929, silent, about 5 hours long. Gance's cinematography was as innovative as Eisenstein's.
Battleship Potemkin. Sergei Eisenstein. Same as above, but the Pet Shop Boys were playing a live score and it was in Trafalgar Square.
Akira Kurosawa. Rashomon and Ran, among too many others. Be careful about the DVD versions of Ran, a lot of them are terrible.
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Robert Wiene. The first widely-distributed "horror" film, made in 1921. One of the best twists of any film, and the German Expressionist/Entartete Kunst sets are divine.
M. Fritz Lang. Is it wrong to want an electronica/dance remix of Peter Lorre whistling "Hall of the Mountain King"? Is it even more wrong to want it to be called "Totenkinder"? For a film made in 1931, M is still a masterclass in directing, and says more about societies under pressure than Michael Moore will ever manage.
La Rčgle du Jeu. Jean Renoir. Strangely, Renoir himself is the most compelling actor in this.
All About Eve. Joseph Mankeiwicz. There are few things in life quite so much worth doing as watching Bette Davis get her bitch on for two hours.
The Thin Man. Doesn't get going until Scene 5, when William Powell and Myrna Loy show up. They have so much fun there is actually a tangible aura of joy coming off the screen. There is also now a complete Thin Man collection, which I will soon be forced to acquire.
Sam Peckinpah. There is so much space in my world for glorious, Peckinpah-directed slo-mo violence. Cross of Iron is one of the greatest war films ever made, and The Wild Bunch one of the greatest Westerns.
Sergio Leone. The Man With No Name films, Once Upon A Time in the West, and the flawed but still magnificent Once Upon A Time In America. Once/America is a big mess, but redeems itself with little things like the ringing-telephone device; the cupcake scene; and "I slipped". Also, Ennio Morricone soundtracks.
Point Blank. John Boorman. Another contender for "most perfect film ever made".
Double Indemnity. Billy Wilder. Play "spot the bits Raymond Chandler rewrote". All of Stanwyck and MacMurray's early, flirty dialogue is razor-sharp.
The Killers. Both the Don Siegel-directed 1964 version, starring Lee Marvin, and the 1946 version.
The Big Sleep. Howard Hawks. "Do you like orchids, Mr Marlowe?"
The Maltese Falcon. John Huston. "I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."
When Trumpets Fade. John Irvin. Unjustly neglected late-1990s war film. Actively terrifying.
Chinatown. Roman Polanski. "Thuh futuh, Mistah Gittes, thuh futuh."
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