No Country For Old Men

#110 at time of writing.

This film's antagonist, Anton Chigurh as played by Javier Bardem, is the most uncompromising character ever to grace the silver screen. The story isn't about him - it's about the cop who chases him and the crook who's running away from him - but it's Anton Chigurh and his cattle bolt-gun that linger in the mind after the credits roll. He is the ultimate bad-ass. It must be true, Vanity Fair says so.

I've said before that I find the Coen Brothers variable, but this reasonably faithful Cormac McCarthy adaptation bolts the nail in the head. It's the most heavily Oscared Coen Brothers film, and deservedly so. (In fact, only two Best Director Oscars have ever been split between two directors - this one and West Side Story.)

The story is simple: A hunter in the middle of the Texan desert stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash. He takes the money and runs, with a jaded cop and a motley crew of criminals in pursuit. The result is a wide-open Western-style film - full of deserts and death. It's bleak, violent, tense, blackly funny and meditative, with a creepy sense of fated inevitability. Pure cinema.

There Will Be Blood

#128 at time of writing.

This film aspires to be a sweeping epic about family, greed, religion, and oil, centred around a turn-of-the-century prospector. It was released a week apart from No Country For Old Men (they were even filmed at the same time in the same area of Texas), and both films were seen as behemoths battling it out for Oscar glory. History seems to be favouring No Country For Old Men, and rightly so.

Daniel Day-Lewis turns in the performance of a lifetime as amoral Daniel Plainview (winning his first Best Actor Oscar for 18 years), but the rest of the film just gets swallowed up by him. If Eli the preacher had been cast as someone capable of facing up to Day-Lewis, the result would have been astounding - but Paul Dano fails to cut it. Who the hell is he anyway?



The film progresses slowly, and somehow doesn't quite hold together. The characters do not grow and it's hard to care about any of them. There is nothing in this movie as big as Day-Lewis' performance, and the story remains off balance from start to finish because of it. I'm glad I watched it, it's a great film, but it's a hard film to enjoy.

Looking through director Paul Thomas Anderson's other films (in particular Magnolia and Boogie Nights), I'm beginning to suspect that I just don't like his style...

The fictional character of Daniel Plainview bears some resemblance to a real early 20th-century Californian oil tycoon named Edward L. Doheny. The monologue about milkshake delivered in the film is based on transcripts of congressional hearings concerning the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which Doheny had been accused of bribing a political official. The film's concluding scene was filmed at Greystone Manor, a California estate Doheny built as a present for his only son.

The Dark Knight

#5 at time of writing.

I've seen The Dark Knight twice - once at the UK premiere, and once at the excellent Roxy Bar and Screen on Borough High Street. Both times, I was on the edge of my seat with anxiety for the full two and a half hours. This is no mere superhero movie – it is an epic crime drama of remarkable complexity and substance, tackling sweeping themes of retribution and sacrifice.

Whether this film deserves to be scored as the fifth best film of all time - or even the #1 film as it was for a few weeks on IMDb - is moot, but it's hard to deny that it is an incredibly powerful cinematic experience. (It came out the same week as Wall·E - what a week that was for the silver screen!)



Heath Ledger’s untimely death in January 2008 ensured that the Hollywood hype machine would be in overdrive, but incredibly his performance - and the whole film - lives up to even the most excessive expectations.

Heath Ledger's apocalyptic performance is certainly Oscar-worthy. Compare the Joker to Ennis Del Mar from Brokeback Mountain and it's very hard to believe that they are the same person.

It’s not flawless. It's long, Bale’s Batman voice is sometimes over-the-top, and, well, it’s not Batman Begins. But the scale, tension and sheer dark depths of the characters will leave you in awe.

(A far cry from my opinion of Batman & Robin...)

Wall·E

#39 at time of writing.

The teasers for Wall·E had me salivating for more since Ratatouille graced our screens. With that much anticipation, it’s almost impossible not to be let down. But the truth is even more unlikely: My colossal expectations were not only met, but exceeded – with room to spare.

This fairytale of a robot who falls in love boasts a host of superlatives. It's the highest rated animated feature on IMDb. It's the most expensive animation ever made (it cost more than Waterworld). And it's the probably the movie with the least dialogue to ever be nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay.

Director Andrew Stanton and the Pixar team watched one Charlie Chaplin and one Buster Keaton film every day for almost a year, to give them confidence in how a full range of emotions could be portrayed silently.

All that research paid off in spades. Sumptuous animation, endearing characters, the most romantic robots you've ever seen - this tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale is an instant classic.

Surely it can’t be THAT wonderful, I hear you say. Well, it's a bit preachy, linear, and has a couple of cheesy lines. But everyone knows there are only two kinds of Pixar films: great ones and perfect ones – and Wall·E is Pixar on top form.

Casablanca

#11 at time of writing.

I don’t know how it’s possible after so many years of being addicted to films, but – believe it or not – until yesterday I had never seen Casablanca. I think I am instinctively wary of canonical old films; perhaps I have been disappointed a few times in the past by a purported classic that felt dated, wooden, slow, contrived...
And, well, Casablanca might be guilty of some of those faults too, but it easily transcends its faults with pace, witty characterisation and sheer cleverness. Yes, I loved it.

Also, watching it for the first time 66 years after its release allows me to enjoy it on an unusual level: Thanks to its immense influence on popular culture (and thanks to dozens of parodies) I already know what to expect; and it is gratifying to see that the source is deserving. Like reading 1984 for the first time in 2004.

I was fascinated to learn that at the time this film was made, the studio was churning out 50 films a year, and this one was not thought to be special. The lead actors switched around at the last moment, the gaggle of scriptwriters barely kept up with the production (During filming Ingrid Bergman asked them which man she would end up with and they had to admit they didn’t yet know), the release was rushed to coincide with the real-life invasion of Casablanca, and the film had a tepid reception at the box office.

Yet this film stood out, winning three Oscars and growing to be one of the world’s favourite films. Makes you think, might there be other gems among the 50 films per year which have been overlooked? Maybe if fate had twisted slightly differently, instead of “Here’s looking at you, kid” we would be quoting from Gentleman Jim (“Fine way for a gentleman to behave”), or Kings Row (“What's the harm in a little kiss”)?

The Wrestler

#57 at time of writing.

Breathtaking. Desperately sad. Brutal and beautiful. This is Darren Aronofsky's most mature piece yet, full of subtlety.

Mickey Rourke deserves an Oscar for his performance as washed-up wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Nicolas Cage and Sly Stallone were considered for the part, but I doubt the film would have been as memorable with one of them in the lead - Rourke's real-life history as an ageing big-time boxer makes it personal.

This film is full of great set-pieces - from the quiet (Randy playing himself as a Nintendo character) to the hardcore (the match with the razor wire and the staples).

The most effective aspect of Randy's character is that no matter what mistakes he might have made in the past his sense of regret is so strong and genuine that it is impossible not to forgive him. As beaten down and alone as Randy gets, he never loses his fighting spirit.

Don't dismiss this film because of its subject matter. If you're inclined (as I was) to dismiss professional wrestling as laughable fakery, you will come out of this film with a new perspective. These guys are tough nuts. With emphasis on the nuts.

Brief Encounter

#158 at time of writing.

I saw Kneehigh Theatre's adaptation of Brief Encounter at the Haymarket - it was the best piece of theatre I saw in 2008. In fact, I'd rank it in my top three or four favourite shows of all time. (In case you're curious, the others would be Masque of the Red Death, Avenue Q, and The Woman in Black.) They're still touring the show - see it while you can.

After the stage show, I felt like I'd seen the film - like I'd laughed and cried and fallen in love with it. So when I finally did see the film last week it felt warm and familiar, like sitting in front of an open fire at Christmas. The film didn't blow me away (like the play did), but it was quiet, and sad, and beautiful, and nostalgic.

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard's performances are restrained and realistic, far from the stagy melodrama I tend to expect from golden oldies. This film is like a precious museum exhibit, a glimpse into the mores of 1940s life. It seems almost comical now that it was banned by the Irish censorship board on the grounds that it portrayed an adulterer in a sympathetic light.

It’s thoroughly British, with occasional comic touches, and it’s so rooted in the 1940s that a film will never be made like it again. People were brasher then, accents were stronger, and social attitudes to affairs quite different. The period of the film gives it much of its charm.

Brief Encounter is based on a short play by Noel Coward, and it earned director David Lean his first Oscar nomination.

The Departed

#49 at time of writing.

Martin Scorsese's remake of Hong Kong gangster flick Infernal Affairs is epic, powerful, and only occasionally indulgent. There's a terrific cast (although it's tempting to imagine an alternative universe in which Pacino and De Niro 20 years ago starred), and a fantastic set-up: a gangster mole in the police force and an undercover cop in the gang are both trying to find each other out.

The tension is kept sky-high, the plot has more twists than a candy-cane, and the acting is second-to-none. Both the critics and the box-office loved it: It won the Best Picture Oscar (the movie with the most uses of the F-word to do so), and it's the highest-grossing Scorsese film.

A small gripe - I don't normally spot continuity errors, but it is hard not to in this film; there are little bits of sloppiness everywhere.

Requiem for a Dream

#58 at time of writing.

This film made a massive impact on me. It haunted me for days afterwards. It's about four likeable, ambitious people whose addictions eventually get the better of them and ruin their lives. Gradually. Insidiously. Tragically. Brutally.

I was blown away by the pace and style of this film - and left stunned by its forceful message. I find myself craving to watch it again.

Darren Aronofsky's previous film, Pi, was just as menacing and mysterious, but more of a fantasy, a fairytale.

Requiem for a Dream is no fairytale.

Ellen Burstyn in particular deserved an Oscar for her role as elderly telly addict Sara Goldfarb, but unfortunately she lost out to Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich.

During Burstyn's impassioned monologue about how it feels to be old, the cinematographer Matthew Libatique accidentally let the camera drift off-target. When the director called "cut" and confronted him about it, he realized the reason Libatique had let the camera drift was because he had been crying during the take and fogged up the camera's eyepiece. That's how sad and brilliant this film is.

The African Queen

#136 at time of writing.

This film starts off slow, and shows its age, but give it twenty minutes and you're strangely hooked. The bulk of the story is taken up with the witty banter between Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart's characters while they meander down an African river to avoid - and then pursue - German soldiers during World War I.

There are many wonderful exchanges while Rose Sayer, the high-minded missionary, is brought gently down to earth by Charlie Allnut, the gin-swilling water-rat. A fine balance is achieved between comedy, realism and romance. This role deservedly won Humphrey Bogart the only Oscar of his career.

Behind the scenes, to show her disgust with the amount of alcohol that John Huston (the director) and Humphrey Bogart consumed during filming on location in the Congo, Katharine Hepburn drank only water. As a result, she suffered a severe bout of dysentery.