Films

Pan's Labyrinth Guillermo del Toro
The moral planes of Pan's Labyrinth slide between ambiguity and nihilism. We are not given the usual visual signals of Good and Evil that a genre fantasy film would hand us - there is no Gandalf the White. Pan himself is a terrifying bestial vision, a faun very far from Mister Tumnus.
Iona Firouzabadi

Deep Water Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell
The BBC began by charting a very British story - a man the press had characterised as a 'mystery', the maverick, the eccentric, the wildcard, the underdog. But what the producer ended up documenting was something quite different.
Iona Firouzabadi

Big Nothing Jean-Baptiste Andrea
This is by no means a bad film, but it's no comedy classic, and drifts happily from the mind as you struggle to put your hands through your coat sleeves in the darkness wondering if you've missed the last tube.
Lily Einhorn

Essential Films, Chapter Thirteen: Dream of a Rarebit Fiend Edwin S Porter
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend fits as no other production of the period into what one might define as dream cinema, meaning that it is both the actors in the frame and the spectators outside it who have the illusion of the world running from under their feet.
Ion Martea

Requiem Hans-Christian Schmid
Michaela is a young woman with strict and old-fashioned parents, growing up in a provincial town. This is a film about youth and the journey from childhood to adulthood, as much as it is about mental collapse and the opacity of doctrinal belief.
Iona Firouzabadi

Almost Adult / Ghosts Yousaf Ali Khan / Nick Broomfield
By casting a 'real' person as the lead, both films radiate a discomforting level of credibility. They are not necessarily truer or more affecting than a more fictional work, but they do walk a step closer to us and fuzz the boundary between the screen and the audience.
Iona Firouzabadi

Death and the author Infamous Douglas McGrath, Running Stumbled John Maringouin, Stranger Than Fiction Marc Forster, at the London Film Festival 2006
Despite the abundance of death in film history, the intellectualisation of the concept of death and its cathartic power necessary to the creation of art is still essentially virgin territory for the medium. The London Film Festival showed that there are now serious attempts to make up for this.
Ion Martea

The New Scandinavian Cinema of the Absurd The Boss of It All (Direktøren for det hele) Lars von Trier, The Bothersome Man (Den brysomme mannen) Jens Lien, Reprise Joachim Trier, Container Lukas Moodysson
A Dane, two Norwegians and a Swede show that Cinema of the Absurd is not only possible, but has proved capable of producing some of the strongest, most thought-provoking works at the London Film Festival.
Ion Martea

Winky's Horse (Het Paard van Sinterklaas) Mischa Kamp
The adventures portrayed are warm and hilarious, with scenes rich in Christmas spirit. Watching Winky's Horse reminds one of the lack of good family films in recent years, and it's a relief to find out that the winter holiday is still a theme bursting with surprises.
Ion Martea

Ten Canoes Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr
It is a story told in the traditions of Aboriginal culture, with no attempt to slake the Western thirst for meaning, action, suspense, romance, sex, and entertainment.
Ion Martea

The Devil Wears Prada David Frankel
Like I say, I'm a bit edgy. I don't care about my appearance at all, I really like frumpy jumpers and sensible shoes. My jumper is vermillion, you know, not blue ( I learnt that at Runway). I didn't even straighten my hair the morning of my interview, and I ate an onion bagel. Get me.
Lily Einhorn

Essential Films, Chapter Twelve: Histoire d'un crime Ferdinand Zecca
Story of a Crime is one film that defies expectations. Ferdinand Zecca, one-time club entertainer turned film director, managed to secure himself the title of the first dramatic director in history, with a production that deals with crime and its sociological implications.
Ion Martea

Essential Films, Chapter Eleven: Explosion of Motor Car Cecil M Hepworth
One by one, the limbs of the deceased start falling to the ground like a delayed torrential rain. A leg, a torso, another leg, conspicuously no heads. The policeman notes this down, with no apparent horror or disgust. He simply investigates the accident; it's part of his job.
Ion Martea

Right At Your Door Chris Gorak
Lexi and Brad are torn by the flaws in their relationship and by a Darwinian instinct for survival. This is a very real portrait of a couple in extremis. In many ways the film is an exploration of their long and painful valediction, but it is also an examination of a failing state.
Iona Firouzabadi

Keane Lodge Kerrigan
This is a film with no majestic shots of New York, no skyscrapers or other icons; this is a city in down and dirty close-up. The bigger picture is not relevant to these characters, just as they are not relevant to it.
Iona Firouzabadi

Essential Films, Chapter Ten: King Lear Gerolamo Lo Savio
The grand soliloquies, the vibrant language, so dear to the theatrical world, were immediately abandoned in the process of silent filmmaking. Yet, these productions show that Shakespeare is still appealing even without the rich linguistic tapestry.
Ion Martea

Ex Memoria Josh Appignanesi
This film looks at its audience, and the audience's own history, the audience's own relationship with family elders, the audience's relationship with strangers. It is moments like the last shots of Ex Memoria that elevate any film beyond didacticism. These are rare instances in any artform.
Ion Martea

The Notorious Bettie Page Mary Harron
Without darkness, there ain't no light. 'Is sex dirty?' Woody Allen once remarked: 'only if it's done right'. I suspect even he would have made a more interesting product out of this material, and that is a pretty damning indictment.
Guy Rundle

Essential Films, Chapter Nine: The Great Train Robbery Edwin S Porter
The gang members are not honourable individuals, yet we empathise with them because of their skill and commitment to what they do. Porter demonstrated that film audiences do not root necessarily for good causes, but for charismatic characters, irrespective of their moral status.
Ion Martea

Twelve and Holding Michael Cuesta
It is ultimately adulthood that is disrobed in this piece. And found wanting. Adults are no more able to deal with events than their offspring, and consequently fail as role models. The children appear as ready-made cynics old before their time and pitying their parents for their ineptness.
David Clements

Essential Films, Chapter Eight: Demolishing and Building Up the Star Theatre Frederick S Armitage
The film acts as a stunning requiem to art and its destruction. The force with which the Star Theatre is brought down, expressed through the speed of the edited sequence, is shocking, particularly as the building has aesthetic qualities of its own (established in the opening shot).
Ion Martea

Tell Them Who You Are Mark Wexler
'If you don't know where the fuck we are right now, just look around. You're making a goddamn documentary. So you don't have to have me say in front of the camera where we are.'
Nathalie Rothschild

Harsh Times David Ayer
The film looks more like a rough stone that turns out to be a diamond only on closer inspection. But, a diamond it is. Beyond the ideology, Ayer has a harsh aestheticism that both wins him fans, and provokes heavy criticism of irrelevant and unnecessary violence. Ultimately, this is not everyone's cup of tea.
Ion Martea

The Fallen Idol (1948) Carol Reed
The portrayal of childhood, and the enormous gap between children and adults is almost alien to contemporary eyes, and one has to cast one's imagination back to a time when children were neither especially revered nor the subjects of much anxiety.
Tara McCormack

Preview: Snakes on a Plane David R Ellis
What makes Snakes on a Plane important is the unique way New Line Cinema has reacted to its fans. The producers were shrewd enough to let go of the creative reins when they saw that the 'blogosphere' had taken it over and was telling the story differently.
James Pursaill

Television: The Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence BBC1
Far from bettering our understanding of the case or offering much that is new, investigative reporter Mark Daly mainly reiterates existing prejudice and plumbs the depths of contemporary disdain for habeas corpus, the right to silence, and the presumption of innocence.
Lee Jones

Essential Films, Chapter Seven: Leaving the Lumière Factory Louis Lumière
Each of us can gain something quite meaningful while watching Leaving the Lumière Factory, be that entertainment, historical evidence, an emotional engagement with our own lives and social status, nostalgia for times gone - all of that is taken from the story that lives within the film image.
Ion Martea

Lagos / Koolhaas Bregtje van der Haak
Koolhaas is repeating a familiar theme: the notion of planning is an illusion, and Lagos is a case in a point. Of course what Koolhaas is in reality articulating is the contemporary failure of imagination and ideas that dominates among architects and urbanists.
Karl Sharro

Superman Returns Bryan Singer
This is New York's new image of itself, having got rid of crime and crack, it has been reborn out of the ashes of 9/11. As such Superman is its perfect hero, free from the self-doubt and ambivalence of Batman. He is not one of us, metamorphosed, he is just visiting - he is a messianic hero.
Iona Firouzabadi

Volver Pedro Almodóvar
Raimunda can't attend her aunt's funeral because she has just found her husband Paco dead on her kitchen floor, killed by their daughter after he made sexual advances. Sole reluctantly goes to the funeral, and brings the village mentality back with her to Madrid - along with her dead mother.
Trude Diesen

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Gore Verbinski
The problem is that the movie is constructed more as a multi-player computer game than as a coherent cinematic narrative. Plots are set up and knocked down all over the place in favour of keeping all players in the game and on eternal, multiple quests.
Iona Firouzabadi

Essential Films, Chapter Six: The Execution of Mary Stuart Alfred Clark
The brusqueness of the cut, together with the smoothness of transition (unquestionably effective for the film's contemporary audience), showed that beyond its ability to reproduce movement, film was now a form of entertainment with its own unique possibilities.
Ion Martea

Shooting Dogs (DVD) Michael Caton-Walsh
The film mixes a sense of intense anger with profound despair. As militiamen gather outside the school, chanting and waving machetes, Father Christopher repeatedly asks the UN commander why he won't do anything. It is a futile question, all the commander can say is that he has no mandate to act.
Chris Wilkinson

The Wind That Shakes The Barley Ken Loach
At a post-screening talk, Loach, like Basil Fawlty, couldn't help but mention the war (in Iraq). Loach says all his films follow a clear structure, tracing contradictions in the character's lives and taking them to their resolution. But like Iraq, Ireland it is a conflict that was never really resolved.
David Clements

Heading South Laurent Cantet
The truly seamy side of the film lies not in the tale of sexual exploitation, but in the tourists' breathtaking insouciance and ignorance of the reality of Haiti under 'Baby Doc' Duvalier's dictatorship. 'Welcome to paradise', says Ellen, to newcomer Brenda.
Philip Cunliffe

Let's roll Flight 93 (DVD), Peter Markle; United 93, Paul Greengrass
Of course, there are dangers in myth-making, especially when myth becomes a substitute for history. But myth-making is arguably the most appropriate response to 9/11.
Dolan Cummings

Essential Films, Chapter Five: Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Auguste Lumière, Louis Lumière
The crank to start the projector would have been like a train whistle announcing the vehicle's approach. Audiences were not engaged as passive voyeurs, but were now invited to join in the excitement actively, reacting passionately, experiencing something totally new.
Ion Martea

Essential Films, Chapter Four: Miss Jerry Alexander Black
Essentially, Black is laying the basis of film language, in which the image becomes the primary driving element of narrative. However, the accent is not on image continuity, but rather on causation: instead of flowing together seamlessly, one image leads logically to another.
Ion Martea

Election Johnnie To
In problematising the workings of power in Wo Sing society, To reduces all the 'brothers' to automatons. Emptied of human motivation they become slaves of the Triad machine, with nothing but a rather tired looking wooden baton to explain their actions.
Helen Birtwistle

Brick Rian Johnson
The most striking thing about the film is the atmosphere, accomplished through a combination of sun-bleached Southern California exterior shots that recall the silver screen, and terse, jive-inflected dialogue. This is a very cool movie.
Dolan Cummings

Essential Films, Chapter Three: Dickson Experimental Sound Film William KL Dickson
Dickson wanted to record a sound film, and devised a situation to show off the effectiveness of his apparatus. As the synchronisation failed, he had little use for the film, not because it showed gay characters, but because Dickson Experimental Sound Film lacked sound.
Ion Martea

Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) Jacques Rivette
It as if Rivette's New Wave characters have gate-crashed a stagy, formal, and sweepingly melodramatic stage-set, bringing with them a burst of energy and trying to rescue the soul of cinema from the deathly clutches of decrepit poetic realism.
Irina Janakievska

Essential Films, Chapter Two: Roundhay Garden Scene Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince
The three-lens camera was more suited for Le Prince's idea of what film should be able to capture, primarily because it imitated human vision, creating the illusion of an all-surrounding three-dimensionality.
Ion Martea

Essay review: The Smartest Guys in the Room Alex Gibney
The explosive growth in risk trading was the result of risk aversion rather than, as the documentary suggests, a gung-ho mentality. The primary impetus for the growth of such financial instruments is as a sophisticated form of insurance rather than straightforward gambling.
Daniel Ben-Ami

Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang
Metropolis is a critique of the soul-destroying drudgery of labour, but the clear message is ultimately a conservative one, a plea for moderation, some kind of reasoned social-democracy, if only all sides got together and talked, things could be so much better.
Tara McCormack

Essential Films, Chapter One: Dickson Greeting William KL Dickson, William Heise
Judging from his body language, Dickson is clearly performing for the camera, aware of the effect this might have over the spectator. It is just then to assume that the greeting into the world of motion pictures was fully intended by the filmmaker.
Ion Martea

V for Vendetta Wachowski brothers
So, at the (very high) risk of taking the Wachowski brothers' claim to political philosophy far too seriously, what is the 'truth' V for Vendetta tries to communicate? There isn't much truth at all, in fact - just a profoundly debased and cynical view of mass politics.
Lee Jones

Transamerica Duncan Tucker
Transamerica deals with themes so universal about parenthood, acceptance, and unquestionable affection, that we cannot but treat it as mainstream, even though these are seen through the prism of a character type generally marginalised in society.
Ion Martea

Tsotsi Gavin Hood
Although its plot is of the fall/redemption type familiar in mainstream cinema, its story adds much that is original and provocative. But ultimately by buying into that genre, it dodges the hard task of encouraging us to sympathise with a basically repugnant character.
Lee Jones

Syriana Stephen Gaghan
Gaghan apparently belongs to the 'there is no truth, but there are statistics' school of thought. I can't help imagining him playing Trivial Pursuit with Naomi Klein and Michael Moore, and trading these statistical gems.
Karl Sharro

Capote Bennett Miller
Incidental imagery is used sparingly yet powerfully: a few scenes of jazz-filled cocktail parties summon up a sophisticated New York that was a distant memory long before 9/11; a couple of glances at the camel-hair coat worn by Capote establish the culture clash between Manhattan and the folksy-fierce Midwest.
Nicky Charlish

The Double Life of Veronique Krzysztof Kieslowski (1991, now on DVD)
Kieslowski captures a spirit that is so faithful to the spectator's emotion, that in Jacob, we will cease to glance at an one-dimensional character, but gaze into the inner depths of our souls.
Ion Martea

Army in the Shadows Jean-Pierre Melville (1969, new print now screening at the NFT, London)
The film looks fresh today because it chooses to regard the resistance not as a movement, but as an army made up of individuals. Great war films do not deal with politics, but with characters.
Ion Martea

Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul Fatih Akin
The documentary is enjoyable, but it ends up taking the melting pot point too far, blending messages and voices into a cluttered narrative. It would have been preferable if the director had let the musicians stick to what they know best - music.
Nathalie Rothschild

The New World Terrence Malick
Impeccably realised shots of verdant forests, deep rivers, waving fields of grass and poignant sunsets, all captured with naturalistic lighting, make this film an astonishing visual experience. It is Malick's tangible feel for the very essence of cinema that lends the film its quixotic beauty.
Dean Nicholas

Good Night, and Good Luck George Clooney
The film is poignant and effective, but it's hardly the risqué or controversial tale that Clooney and others have made it out to be. The narrative is linear and straightforward and the points Clooney is making are as black and white as the film itself.
Nathalie Rothschild

Pavee Lackeen (Traveller Girl) Perry Ogden
At one point Winnie sits on a wall, shivering and eating chips with her sister Rosie, who is all dressed up with nowhere to go. 'Boring, innit?' Rosie says. She is not wrong.
Dolan Cummings

Hidden (Caché) Michael Haneke
Haneke has given us a metaphorical monolith, whose shadow blocks out any rays of psychological nuance and insight. The film is transparently constructed so that the audience feels guilty for identifying with the white middle classes.
Philip Cunliffe

Song of Songs Josh Appignanesi
Aware of the limits of his audience's knowledge of Judaism, the director tries to sell the film as a story of male machismo and female masochism. The Piano Teacher meets The Seventh Seal. Yet Song of Songs is very much a film with its own powerful vision.
Ion Martea

Jarhead Sam Mendes
This is a subtle film, in which the soldiers are sent not to fight a war but as a kind of stage army, a symbolic presence, whilst what little military engagement there is, is conducted by the air force.
Tara McCormack

A Cock and Bull Story Michael Winterbottom
The character who is flagged as the intellectual of the film, the Fassbinder-quoting runner Jennie, leaves us with this bon mot of wisdom: 'the way we all go wrong, the way we turn out is just a matter of chance'. Cheers darling!
Shirley Dent

Brokeback Mountain Ang Lee
Lee has taken advantage of a more liberal sexual climate not so much to 'expose the subtext' of the Western, as to enrich this unique American genre as a whole.
Philip Cunliffe