Blade Runner

#110 at time of writing.

Blade Runner is thirty years old if you can believe it - and it still looks fantastic. At least as good as, say, The Fifth Element. It could almost have been made yesterday.

This cyberpunk vision is the best kind of science fiction film. A rich world, layered characters, and a story that makes you stop and think.

A police assassin called Deckard is pulled out of retirement to hunt down and kill four rogue replicants - robots almost indistinguishable from humans. The ensuing story successfully explores the dehumanization of people through a society shaped by technological and capitalist excess, the roles of creator and creation, personal identity and self-awareness and other such complex issues.

The sets are wonderfully detailed. Amusingly, some of the buildings in the meticulously built model city are pieces of spaceships from earlier science fiction films, including a model of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, a model of the Dark Star, and piece of the spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

There are a bewildering number of versions of the film, to the point where I'm not even sure which one(s) I've seen. The original print was thought lost until it was rediscovered in 1989 by sound preservationist Michael Arick while he was hunting through the Warner Bros attic for footage from Gypsy. It was one of the first ever films to be re-released in a "Director's Cut", in 1992. And there are five other versions too.

This is easily the best Philip K Dick adaptation, although Total Recall will always hold a special place in my heart (omigod it's being remade!).

Avatar

Unranked at time of writing.

James Cameron (or at least his marketeers) claimed that Avatar will change cinema forever. Having watched the preview in front row seats at IMAX last night, I finally understand what he means.

Avatar is a stunningly beautiful, comprehensively realised vision that absolutely must be experienced in a cinema. That’s the kicker – I doubt this film would have anywhere near the same impact on a TV screen. Two dimensions would not do this movie justice.

So if Avatar changes cinema it will be by making it more like going to the theatre – you have to see it live. More likely, I think, is that this movie - which is James Cameron’s first outing since 1997’s record-smashing Titanic - will precipitate the advent of 3D in our living rooms (for one thing, they might have to sell a lot of DVDs to break even – the production is rumoured to have cost $300m and as much again is being spent on marketing).

3D films often feel fairly flat, apart from the occasional thing jumping out at you, but the 3D in Avatar has an incredible depth of field. The landscapes of the planet Pandora seem to stretch away for miles. Another bar raised is the CGI. The attention to detail is breathtaking.

Yes, the story uses every trick in the Hollywood book to hook you in, but – wow! – Mr Cameron is a master of those tricks. The pace and interest don’t flag for a moment in the 162 minutes running time. It’s truly epic; it feels like the three Lord of the Rings films rolled into one.

You might argue that the characters and the plotting are a little close to formula, but as an aesthetic and dramatic experience, Avatar is – without exaggeration – the film of the decade. Truly hypnotising.

A Serious Man

Unranked at time of writing.

The Coen Brothers have a unique style, and this film is a prime example. It is confident, surreal, knowing, and darkly funny.

Joel and Ethan Coen love to break all the rules, and it doesn’t always work. Yes, they’ve made some truly excellent films, like The Big Lebowski and Fargo; but sometimes the overblown characterisations and quirky storytelling just don’t work – like O Brother Where Art Thou? and Burn After Reading.

Well, somehow, A Serious Man hangs together. Despite an opening sequence that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film, and an ending that resolves exactly nothing, I enjoyed it. I left the cinema feeling satisfied.

It’s a hard movie to pin down, but it helps to know that it’s based on the biblical book of Job (in which a lot of bad things happen to a good God-fearing man without much explanation), transposed to 1960s suburban America.

If you like the Coen Brothers, you’ll love this. If you don’t know their style, be prepared for a weird experience.

Oh, and the Jefferson Airplane soundtrack rocks.

Zombieland

#185 at time of writing.

This film is heaps of fun, but Shaun of the Dead did it better. The first half of Zombieland feels like a sit-com, and only in its second half does it get into its stride - gently teasing and subverting the zombie genre conventions. Indeed, the script started off as a TV pilot, and I'm sure it would have made a cracking series.

Having said that, this film delivers more laughs per minute than most, so I'm all for it.

You can guess the story: There's been a zombie apocalypse, and a few remaining survivors coalesce and go on a quest to find some purpose in this broken world. And - ahhh - they find each other. Meanwhile, in the background, lots of dead people are walking around spewing black blood and threatening to eat them.

Of course, the characters do all the things we all know we shouldn't do in horror movies, like go into dark buildings, leave your car to dash up the open road, and other such tropes. But the result of such acts generally defies the expectations of the genre, with comic effect.

Probably short-term Top 250 fodder.

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.

Moon

Unranked at time of writing.

It's a conspiracy! This film has been voted for by enough people, who have rated it high enough, yet it's not on IMDb's Top 250!

It easily deserves to be. It's a quiet, creepy and wonderful character-based science fiction yarn. No alien invasions nor CGI explosions, just a lonely man working out his time on a lunar mining base.

Directed by Duncan Jones, aka Zowie Bowie, and featuring a tour-de-force performance by Sam Rockwell, this wonderful story manages to pay homage to a golden age of celluloid sci-fi (think 2001, Silent Running, Alien, Outland...), and yet still be totally original. It brings the old tropes right up to date.

Moon was screened at NASA's Space Center Houston at the request of a professor there, as part of a lecture series. Softcore punk porn site SuicideGirls interviewed Duncan Jones about it:

"He'd been reading online that we'd done this film about Helium-3 mining and that's something that people at NASA are working on," said Jones. "We did a Q&A afterward. They asked me why the base looked so sturdy, like a bunker, and not like the kind of stuff they are designing that they are going to transport with them. I said 'Well, in the future I assume you won't want to continue carrying everything with you, you'll want to use the resources on the moon to build things' and a woman in the audience raised her hand and said, 'I'm actually working on something called Mooncrete, which is concrete that mixes lunar regolith and ice water from the moon's polar caps.'"

Lawrence of Arabia

#41 at time of writing.

Some films belong to the director - it is the director's vision that makes them great. Some belong to the writer - the script is solid gold. This film belongs to the cinematographer. Director of Photography Freddie Young won the first of three Oscars in a row working with David Lean with this masterpiece of desolate beauty.

The music and acting style seems a little florid by modern standards, but the overall experience is too grand to be let down by such petty things. This is a true epic. Not only is it a very (and perhaps unnecessarily) long film telling a sweeping tale of flawed heroism in a wonderfully majestic setting, but the story behind the film is equally impressive.



The film is based on the real T E Lawrence's arguably exaggerated autobiography "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", covering his involvement in the Arab Revolt against the Turks during World War I. At the time he was seen as a dramatic paladin, largely thanks to the theatrical efforts of photo-journalist Lowell Thomas (on whom the Jackson Bentley character is based), but this film depicts Lawrence as a strange and conflicted character - vain and modest, moral and immoral, heroic and cowardly.

Fascinatingly, this production left an unexpected legacy. King Hussein of Jordan lent an entire brigade of his Arab Legion as extras for the film, so most of the "soldiers" are played by real soldiers. Hussein frequently visited the sets and became enamored of a young British secretary, Antoinette Gardiner, who became his second wife in 1962. Their oldest son, Abdullah II King of Jordan, ascended to throne in 1999.

Lawrence himself left an unexpected legacy - when he was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident in May 1935 (age 46), one of the doctors attending to him was a young neurosurgeon, Hugh Cairns. He was so moved by the tragedy that he began a lifelong and ultimately successful campaign to make crash helmets compulsory for motorcycle riders, which has saved countless lives.

Trivia: Although nearly four hours long, this film has no women in speaking roles. I can't think of another film that features no women, can you?

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.

Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi

#10 and #112 at time of writing.

I watched these two in quick succession today. The Empire Strikes Back is too... unfinished to watch on its own. It starts off slowly - the whole ice planet sequence is disappointingly reminiscent of the interminable desert planet scenes from the original Star Wars. But it picks up. A few buckles are swashed, sure enough.

It received mixed reviews upon release. Inevitable, I suppose, after the impact of the first in the trilogy - expectations were impossibly high. But since then it has come to be considered as the best Star Wars film.

Certainly, the emotional resonance of these two films is much more effective than the first film. They're packed with action, Henson muppets and glorious, glorious incest.

Return of the Jedi is the best of the three, in my opinion.

The epic backstory is implied with such pizazz that there would be no need to actually make the prequels...

I wonder if episodes VII-IX will ever get made? Actually, I'm sure they will, even if it's over George Lucas's dead body.

During the 2001 Census there was a viral email campaign encouraging people to record their religion as Jedi. You can't be prosecuted for lying about your religion on the Census, so I thought I'd register as a Jedi myself. I wasn't alone. In England and Wales 390,127 people (almost 0.8 percent) stated their religion as Jedi on their Census forms, surpassing Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

#19 at time of writing.



This is a near-perfect film, from back when George Lucas still had new ideas. Actually, it is perfect. A script full of wit, cracking characters, wonderfully tongue-in-cheek hokum, truly creepy bad guys...

It's the king of B movies, with a depth of attention to detail that surpasses even the best high-budget flicks. This movie has it all: action, romance, comedy, and suspense. From beginning to end you are hooked. Critic Bernard Weinraub said it best: "Deliriously funny, ingenious, and stylish." Harrison Ford is at his best as Dr. Jones. Can you imagine Tom Selleck as Indy, as was originally intended? Hm...

It starts with one of the most memorable opening sequences of all time, lifted from old Scrooge McDuck comics. Then it sprints from set-piece to brilliant set-piece, packed with iconic moments from the red line travelling across the map to the warehouse full of boxes.

Matt Groening has said that the secret of designing characters is to make them immediately recognizable in silhouette. Indy's fedora and whip ensures that he fulfills that criteria. The original kangaroo-hide bullwhip was sold in December, 1999 at Christie's auction house in London for $43,000, and again in 2008 for $57,500.



The infamous scene in which Indy shoots a flamboyant swordsman was not in the original script. Harrison Ford was supposed to use his whip to get the swords out of his attacker's hands, but the food poisoning he and the rest of the crew were suffering from made him too sick to perform the stunt. After several unsuccessful tries, someone made the off-handed remark, "Why doesn't he just shoot him?" Steven Spielberg immediately took up the idea. (But, someone tell me please, hadn't this already been done in a Bond film? You Only Live Twice or something?) Another great ad-lib was Indy's line to Marion when they are on the ship - "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

The music is fantastic - as good as Star Wars. But, unlike Star Wars, there are some scenes that dispense with music altogether (like the brawl in Marion's bar) and the tension is compelling on its own merit. The editing is ten times pacier than Star Wars. The cheesiness is a few Hobo Power units more tolerable.

Forget Star Wars. This is it.

Star Wars

#12 at time of writing.

Star Wars. You had to be there.

I don't doubt that for teenagers in 1977, it was an absolutely mind-blowing experience. It's ambitious, and peppered with iconic (and very parody-able) moments. The universe is thoroughly imagined. But, well, it's not actually very good is it?

I avoided seeing Star Wars until I was at University in 2000, and predictably it didn't live up to the hype. It starts off promisingly enough, but then there's an interminable series of arid scenes on the desert planet and it doesn't get much better from there.

The acting is horrible, the story is unoriginal, it has plot holes big enough to drive the Millennium Falcon through, and the dialogue is beyond silly. That's not to say it wasn't an important film. Most know that Industrial Light and Magic was formed to do the special effects for Star Wars, thereby ushering in the age of the special effect driven movie.

The special effects were mind-blowing at the time, and so was the marketing. George Lucas may be a hack director, but he is a master of marketing. Star Wars was the first film to successfully create a line of merchandise and toys. And they sold like gangbusters, even though the first action figures were an empty box with an IOU inside!

I'm sure I'm being unfair. But there are certainly more than 11 better films. For one, Raiders of the Lost Ark was twice as good. Mind you, Empire Strikes Back was a vast improvement, and Temple of Doom was rubbish.

Having said all that, I remember enjoying Flash Gordon on Betamax when I was a kid, and that's a fucking awful film.



Believe it or not, several Star Wars characters are derived from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. George Lucas acknowledges this in the first conference room scene on the Death Star. Just as an Imperial Officer is saying the line "...the Rebel's hidden fort..." he is telekinetically strangled by Darth Vader, shutting him up before he can say the full title.

Shame that Carrie Fisher did a Judy Garland and ended up addicted to drugs and wishing that she had turned down the film that made her famous.

For interest, here's a review from 1977. And for fun, here's the Star Wars Kid. This trailer made me laugh as well - why wasn't Fanboys released in the UK?

The Hangover

#130 at time of writing.

This is a very funny film.

It's a wonderfully obvious idea for a film, like it should always have existed. You know exactly what's going to happen, but the joy is in finding out how it happens - just like sharing morning-after tales with a group of buddies.

Pure entertainment, but I predict that it won't last on the Top 250. We're supposed to care about the protagonist's marriage, but he's missing for most of the film so we never truly engage with him. Thus, the heart is missing. Laugh-out-loud comedy works best when it surprises you with an emotional punch while your defenses are down. Superbad did it better. Juno did it better still. Why aren't they in the Top 250?

On a side note, the character played by Ed Helms had a missing tooth that was remarkably convincing. I couldn't see how it could have been done with effects or prosthetics. It turns out Ed Helms never had an adult incisor grow, so he just had to take out his fake one. What an odd casting call that would have been.

Star Trek

#82 at time of writing.

Batman Begins did it. The Pink Panther did it. The Incredible Hulk did it. And now, Star Trek has rebooted too. This is not a straightforward prequel to the franchise, but a resetting of the entire story world. The rules have been rewritten, and now anything can happen.

And, wow, director J.J. Abrams has set the bar high.

This is the fourth film in the series to use time travel as a plot device. An extremely disgruntled Romulan is accidentally cast 150 years into the past, determined to avenge the destruction of his home planet (which hasn’t, of course, happened yet), coincidentally arriving at the moment of James T. Kirk’s birth. Thus, an alternative timeline begins.

Now, I’m a Next Generation guy. Shatner was too smug for me, and DS9 was trying too hard. But this? This I can get on board with.

After watching this, I watched a bunch of old Star Trek on You Tube. Tribbles rock.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

#228 at time of writing.

The Time Machine got the treatment. So did The War of the Worlds. And the latest golden age sci-fi epic to be remade Noughties-style is The Day The Earth Stood Still.

I saw the remake last year, and I left the cinema feeling kind of empty. It should have been a great film - indeed it started excellently (as far as I can remember, the start is the only bit that's similar to the original, which tells you something) - but it ended up being special effects over substance.

(To be fair, the remake did have one or two good moments. I liked the "You came to save the Earth... from us" twist, even if it was awfully delivered. Oh stop whining at me for giving away the twist, just watch the original instead.)

So I was excited about seeing the original. Did it, as I hoped, better fulfil the potential of the idea?

Yes. Much better. And much simpler. The story focusses on the characters, with few special effects. The background of paranoia creates ample tension, injected as it is with the 1950s Cold War mentality. The extra-terrestrial visitor has moments of convincing alien-ness despite appearing to be human.

After being poisoned by the remake, I was expecting a climactic ending, but the original ends abruptly. I felt like I wanted more - but on reflection, I am thoroughly satisfied.

In an echo of Warner Bros' attitude to Casablanca (as previously blogged), actress Patricia Neal has admitted in interviews that she was completely unaware during filming that the film would be considered a great science-fiction classic. She assumed it would be just another one of the then-current and rather trashy flying saucer films that were popular at the time, and she found it difficult to keep a straight face while saying her lines.

As an aside, this is the 1950s version of special effects: To give the appearance of seamlessness to the space ship, the crack around the door was filled with putty, then painted over. When the door opened the putty was torn apart, making the door seem to simply appear.

The Lives of Others

#52 at time of writing.

I saw this film for the second time today, and I think I appreciated it even more than before. It portrays a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia, corruption and injustice, with perfectly judged subtlety. An absolute triumph for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's directorial debut. Bittersweet and moving.

The story is set in East Germany in (appropriately) 1984. Captain Wiesler, an agent of the secret police, conducts surveillance on a writer and his lover and gradually finds himself becoming absorbed by their lives.

The actor playing Captain Wiesler, Ulrich Mühe (who sadly died shortly after the film was released), was once the subject of Stasi surveillance himself, and his story mirrors that of the film to an eerie degree. While the film itself is fictional, it is real enough to make you think.

I watched it today with my Film Club at work, and one of my colleagues was particularly affected by it. She lived in Iran before the 1978 revolution, and she remembers the feeling of constantly being watched and judged. She remembers having to whisper in her own home if she wanted to say something that might be interpreted as subversive. She remembers finding forbidden material (a book in English, a countrywide rail map) that someone must have dropped because they thought they were being followed - or perhaps an unfriendly neighbour left it there to frame her family?

I wonder what I would do if I found myself trapped in a society in which I could get arrested merely for owning a book.

Much more worryingly, I wonder if I already live in that society?

Since the various Terrorism Acts in the UK, it is now illegal for me to photograph a policeman. I can be detained for 28 days without charge - indefinitely if I was a foreigner (which, with dual nationality, arguably I am).

And I'm constantly being tracked by five million CCTV cameras, credit card transactions, my Oyster card, NHS patient records, mobile phone triangulation, licence plate recognition cameras, shop RFID tags, Internet cookies, Google, Facebook, and no doubt lots else. (Wow, looking up all those references has made me even more paranoid.)

Yes. Makes you think.

Let the Right One In

#192 at time of writing.

I'm not big on vampire movies. But this is a little vampire movie. Not a little movie, you understand, but a little vampire.

On the face of it, the story is simple: Bullied pre-teen boy falls for outcast pre-teen girl - but she ain't no ordinary girl.

The atmosphere and the actors, particularly the child actors, elevate this film into something both tender and horrifying. It's a love story, a coming-of-age story, and a frighteningly bare horror story.

It's satisfying to see a film once in a while that Hollywood couldn't possibly have made. Grubby, sexualised children? Not since The Exorcist. Ooh, me Hays Code is itchin'...

Makes me want to see more Swedish films. What else is on the list? Seventh Seal no doubt... hold on a sec while I have a look... aha, Wild Strawberries as well. Both of those are from the 50s. Well, Swedish cinema, welcome back.

Gran Torino

#77 at time of writing.

Violence begets violence. And casual racism makes you a hero.

I have a feeling I'm not going to be entirely fair on this film.

Don't get me wrong, it's good, I liked it. But it's too flawed to be so high on the Top 250. It's as subtle as a breeze block wrapped in silk. The acting is occasionally shaky (although not from Clint Eastwood). It's stuck between parable and realism in a way that niggles at my suspension of disbelief.

But the characters are cool, the dialogue is witty, the story is simple and compelling. So maybe I'm being unfair, but this gets a solid seven out of ten for me - and no film would get into my personal Top 250 without at least a high eight.

Entertaining? Yes. Makes you think? A little. All-time great? Nah.

Frost/Nixon

#243 at time of writing.

Ron Howard's competent film adaptation of Peter Morgan's play dramatises the famous interviews between David Frost and recently-resigned Richard Nixon from 1977.

The story remains reasonably faithful to the facts; the occasional edit or flourish adds to the drama without undermining the truth (cf Pearl Harbour and the like). You might say the film captures what the collective consciousness remembers of the Frost/Nixon interviews, rather than exactly what happened.

Frank Langella plays Nixon brilliantly, as a fallen man desperate for an act of contrition but still in too deep with his old trickery and slick ways. The film leaves us feeling satisfied that America got its confession from the dastardly Nixon, but it also leaves us feeling sympathy for the man.

Fascinating, but not really a must-watch film. It'll be off the Top 250 in a week.

Memento

#27 at time of writing.

After watching Memento at the cinema I left with my head spinning... I love films that do that. If you like twists, this is the twistiest.

Leonard (Guy Pearce) is determined to find his wife’s killer. However, the attack left him suffering from a type of amnesia whereby he can no longer store new memories. He can remember events before the attack, but not what happened fifteen minutes ago. Therefore, he relies on a system of notes, photos and tattoos on his body to record information about himself and others. This unique thriller unfolds in two separate narratives, one in chronological order and one in reverse, so the audience experiences the same disorientation as Leonard.

I have heard it argued that this backwards storytelling is a gimmick that could have been applied to any film (and indeed there are other films that use reverse chronology - see Betrayal and Irréversible). Certainly, this kind of storytelling could come easily to a director who is used to filming things out of sequence. Perhaps that's true, but Memento transcends gimmickry. The story could not have been told better any other way.

With this and the Batman films under his belt, director Chris Nolan is shaping up to be an all-time great, even if he does look uncannily like Harry Enfield.

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.

The Thing

#174 at time of writing.

John Carpenter’s sci-fi horror movie about a shape-shifting alien is as chilling now as it was when I first saw it almost a decade ago, inducing an unshakeable sense of paranoia.

This remake of 1951 film The Thing from Another World somehow manages to make the lonely ice sheets of the Antarctic feel breathtakingly claustrophobic. Much of it was filmed high in the mountains near Stewart in British Columbia.

In August 2003 a couple of hard-core fans, Todd Cameron and Steve Crawford, ventured to the remote filming location and, after 21 years, found remains of the Outpost #31 set and the Norwegian helicopter. The rotor blade from the chopper now belongs to Todd and rests in his collection of memorabilia from the film.

The special effects - which have dated somewhat, but are still unsettlingly creepy - were considered a new high-water mark at the time this film was released, all the more impressive when you discover that effects designer Rob Bottin was only 22 when he started the project.

Comically, There is a character name "Mac" and another named "Windows"; since the film was made in 1982, this is purely coincidental.

Letters from Iwo Jima

#187 at time of writing.

It could have been seen as a gimmick when Clint Eastwood decided to film the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from both the American perspective (Flags of Our Fathers) and the Japanese perspective (Letters from Iwo Jima). But it is not a gimmick.

This film is remarkably brave, honest and non-Hollywood. It portrays the Japanese soldiers as ordinary people forced by circumstance to battle for a lost cause, abandoned by the mainland and doomed by an insane cultural fear of losing face. It's visceral in scope and personal in tone, and there's always an assured hand in dealing with the performances and characters.

There are some desperately moving scenes as the soldiers and General Kuribayashi gradually realise the hopelessness of their situation. One of the most affecting aspects of the film is the tension between those soldiers that think it treasonous not to commit suicide in the face of failure, and those soldiers - the General included - who doubt the wisdom of such sacrifice.

As you watch the events unfold, you feel fear, loss, anger, and a mixture of sadness and admiration for the courage and persistent humanity of these ill-fated people.

This film is a significant, fascinating achievement.

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”)?

Man on Wire

Unranked at time of writing.

A couple of months ago I went to the cinema, and I was treated to one of the most inspirational films I’ve ever seen. It’s a British film about the Twin Towers; it swept the board of awards for documentary films; yet I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t even heard of it. (Why doesn't IMDb include documentary films in its Top 250?)

The film follows the story of a charismatic and headstrong young circus artist. His name is Philippe Petit, a Frenchman with a particular fondness for tightrope walking. His signature act? Breaking into world landmarks, illegally rigging a highwire, and dancing his way across. In 1974, he turned his attention to Manhattan’s newly built World Trade Center.



The story is told by Phillippe Petit himself, now 59 years old. We see his motivation, his meticulous planning, and his friendships that were sacrificed to achieve the “artistic crime of the century”. It has all the tension of a Hollywood heist story, enriched by breathtaking photography, and an yet it has an underlying poignancy. The film itself never mentions the sad fate of the Twin Towers, but it is somehow deeply moving to know that Phillippe Petit and his friends managed to break into the beloved towers not to destroy them, but to celebrate them.

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.

Slumdog Millionaire

#34 at time of writing.

A blaze of colour, great music, endearing characters, and compelling themes - this explodes onto the screen. Its jagged mix of Bollywood schmaltz, gameshow capitalism, and Danny Boyle grit is like nothing you've seen before.

An impoverished Indian teen becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and is arrested on suspicion of cheating. The police interrogation reveals that the tragic events of his life provided the answers, as if it was fated.

It falls just shy of a 10/10 for me, at least on the first viewing. Why? I think it's because you know exactly how the film is going to play out after the first five minutes. Which, I guess, is appropriate in a film about destiny. But it didn't stop me from feeling a little... impatient for the first half-hour or so.

Still, undeniably, a masterpiece.

Some fun trivia:

The production company has arranged for a rickshaw driver to take the three child actors (who, by the way, are flawless in this film) to school every day until they are 16 years old.

And Chris Tarrant, host of the original Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, featured in Danny Boyle's debut film Shallow Grave as the host of another TV quiz show 'Lose A Million'.

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.

Little Miss Sunshine

#221 at time of writing.

Meh. This film is entertaining, I suppose. But top 250? Big meh.

I didn't engage with the characters, who were quirky for the sake of it. The set-pieces were terribly contrived. I felt like I was being unexpertly manipulated towards a squeeze of sentimentality. There was a devastating lack of originality (that beauty pageant scene was right out of Donnie Darko - now that's got originality! - and where have I seen the body-in-the-trunk gag before?).

Unmemorable. I'm disappointed that it's still on the top 250 so long after its release. Normally, when popular opinion so vehemently approves of a film that I didn't like, I'm tempted to give it a second chance. But in this case, I'm not sure I can be bothered.

An interesting aside - I always wondered what actors snort when they're supposed to be snorting cocaine on-screen. In this movie, Alan Arkin (playing Grandpa) snorted crushed up B-vitamins. Ew.

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.

Sin City

#68 at time of writing.

This film received very mixed reviews when it was released, so I didn't bother watching it at the cinema. Later, I was surprised to see it in a lofty position on IMDb's Top 250 list. Well, that piqued my curiosity, so I rented it out.

It's the most extreme example of style over substance that I've ever seen in a film. It looks awesome, it feels pitch dark, and it's absolutely rubbish.

I've always struggled with graphic novels. I love the idea of them, I love how much work and imagination obviously goes into the best of them, but I've always found them too disconnected - they don't flow. Too many interruptions and loose ends. This film felt exactly the same. So I understand why graphic novel fans might laud it, but it totally didn't work for me.

As if to emphasise the disconnects, some of the cast members did not even meet each other until after the film was made - for example in the scenes between Marv (Mickey Rourke), Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer) and Kevin (Elijah Wood), Hauer and Wood were added in post-production - they weren't even cast when Rourke shot his scenes.

Dial M for Murder

#243 at time of writing.

This film was like an Agatha Christie novel - very clever, and quite satisfying, but not particularly deep, and populated with fairly stereotypical characters.

Hitchcock manages to keep the suspense and intrigue going throughout, as is his wont, but I disgree with all the people that say he is a master of the medium. He doesn't use the versatility of film to its full extent at all - he produces films that feel like stage plays (at least the ones I've seen).

That style doesn't sit easily with me, it makes me restless. So although this is a perfectly good film, with some surprising twists, I wouldn't rank it among my favourites.

Bizarrely, this was originally filmed in 3D, which explains the prevalence of low-angle shots with lamps and other objects in the foreground. There was only a brief original release in 3D, followed by a conventional "flat" release; the 3D version was reissued in 1980.

Rashomon

#67 at time of writing.

By all accounts, this represented a revolution in filmmaking at the time of its release. In fact, it is often credited as the reason the Academy created the "Best Foreign Film" category.

It certainly has a lot of unusual elements to its structure - a non-linear story with unreliable narrators, and a thoroughly ambiguous conclusion. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I think you definitely have to be in the right mood to watch it.

It's slow and artful, which I think are typical features of Kurosawa films. The overblown, grubby Japanese characters make for amusing viewing. And the concept of re-telling the same story from different perspectives keeps the suspense poised.

It didn't blow me away, but I would definitely give it a second chance.

Full Metal Jacket

#94 at time of writing.

The opening sequence of this film shoves its fist so far down your throat it's tickling your balls. The whole first half rides an exhilarating torrent of comically over-the-top verbal abuse and brutal dehumanisation, teases you with the promise of a shred of compassion, then smacks you in the skull for a finalé.

And this is definitely a film of two halves. The first time I watched it I was so revved up by the first part that I think the second part washed over me a little, but on repeat viewings I appreciate that the second part is just as worthy.

Kubrick blends the darkest of black humour with a none-too-subtle message of the madness of war to produce the most rollercoaster Vietnam War movie out there. You will enjoy it, laugh at it, and then be shocked and disgusted by it in equal measure.

"These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting."

Hotel Rwanda

#59 at time of writing.

This film has all the impact of Schindler's List, yet without the trademark Spielberg sentimentality.

The Rwandan genocide is told through the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a heroic hotel manager who risked everything to prevent Tutsi refugees from being wiped out by the Hutu militia.

This film left me ashamed. Ashamed because there was so much I didn't know (and should have known) about such a recent and horrific conflict. Ashamed that I and my government ignored this genocide at the time and let it happen. Ashamed by the human instinct to discriminate and persecute. And a little ashamed that I actually enjoyed watching the film! The fact that this works so well as a thriller makes the truth - when it finally hits you - land much harder.

One throwaway scene haunted my memory for a long time afterwards. Before the militia mobilise, two girls chatting in café are asked by a journalist if they are Hutu or Tutsi. One is Hutu, one is Tutsi, and it seems to bother them not one bit. I don't think we ever see the girls again, but the scene echoed in my mind as an almost metaphorical illustration of how pointless the whole conflict was and how tragically so many friendships and families were divided.

The Wizard of Oz

#94 at time of writing.

This film is 68 years old. That's twelve years older than the first colour television broadcast. My grandfather probably saw this film at the cinema as a child. Yet it has stood the test of time fantastically well.

I was brought up with this film on Betamax and VHS, and I'm still happy to watch it now on the spectacularly digitally remastered DVD. It's such a perfect fantasy, replete with catchy songs (including "Over the Rainbow") and indulgently vibrant colour.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, considering it was made at a time where colour was relatively rare on film, The Wizard of Oz revels in colour at every opportunity. The Yellow Brick Road, Emerald City, ruby slippers, even the "horse of a different colour."

But behind the scenes, the production of this film was not such a fairytale. The Tin Man's toxic make-up nearly killed Buddy Ebsen (he was replaced by Jack Haley), the Wicked Witch of the West and her body double were both severely burned in the process of disappearing in a puff of smoke, and Judy Garland was constantly hepped up on goofballs (the studio fed her amphetamines and barbiturates to help her cope with the hectic schedule). The turbulent production also got through a fair number of directors, including two of the directors of Gone With the Wind, another Hollywood golden age classic from 1939.

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!

Seven Samurai

#10 at time of writing.

The trouble with watching classic films is that they were often so influential that you feel like you've seen it all before. So when I sat down to watch this three-hour epic I expected to see a predictable story about brave, powerful and noble samurai warriors conquering all.

Wrong.

I was very surprised to see the samurai portrayed as poor, cowardly, desperate mercenaries. There are no heroes in this film.

In sixteenth century Japan a villager overhears a notorious gang of bandits plotting to ransack the village and steal all their grain. The village elder decides that they must try to hire samurai to defend themselves, but they have no money. It turns out that most of the samurai are so pathetic and desperate that they will work for three square meals a day - although the villagers can barely even afford that.

All this gives rise to personal battles of hope and pride and guilt, not to mention many wonderfully comic exchanges, while the villagers and the samurai prepare for the final showdown.

Many of Akira Kurosawa's films were remade into classic Westerns - in this case, The Magnificent Seven. I don't much like Westerns as a rule, but I liked this.

Finding Nemo

#112 at time of writing.

A better children's film has never been made. Well, except for maybe Toy Story. And The Incredibles. And, well, you get the idea. Pixar rock.

I have been lucky enough to go scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. It was fantastic, the stuff of dreams. Coral so colourful it could have been designed by Walt Disney. Clams so big you could believe that they'd swallow you whole. The occasional troop of reef sharks minding their own business. Big tubular things straight out of an H. R. Giger nightmare.

Pixar captured it all, and made it larger than life. But that's entirely incidental. The story and the characters are what make this film unforgettable - even to the extent that every now and then my girlfriend still flits around the house singing in Dory's voice, "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim. Ha ha ha ha ho ho..."

And what fun this must have been to research! The production crew were apparently all treated to visits to aquariums, and diving trips to Monterey, Hawaii and Australia.

As you can see, Finding Nemo doesn't just appeal to kids. And it definitely appeals to me.

Mine!

The Prestige

#187 at time of writing.

I was extremely excited when I heard that this movie was coming out. It's about magic. I love magic. It's directed by Chris Nolan. Memento and Batman Begins are two of the best films I've ever seen. And it was getting rave reviews. Surely a winning formula?

When I finally got around to watching it, I was treated to an involving story about rivalry, risk and obsession in the golden age of magic, when a combination of Victorian sensibilities, boundless imagination and showmanship, and new technology that actually seemed magical, led to the most fascinating and inspiring conjuring there has ever been.

My appreciation of this film has grown further since reading Hiding the Elephant, which is a wonderfully told history of modern magic. Nothing to do with the film, but recommended all the same, especially if you have even a passing interest in prestidigitorial trickery.

The one complaint I have about this film is that I was slightly disappointed that the story resorted to a supernatural twist at the end after being so proudly realistic, or at least verisimilar, for most of its length. Having said that, the twist was deliciously dark, and absolutely fitting.

And hey, it's got David Bowie in it. That gets any film extra points.

Walk the Line

#200 at time of writing.

Hmm... maybe I wasn't in the right mood when I watched this - I'm starting to realise that the mood you're in makes a huge difference to your perception of a film - but this film didn't set me alight. It felt somehow derivative. Maybe I've just been spoiled with the spate of formulaic American biopics recently, but this one just didn't seem to have anything that stood it out among the rest.

It's a great story, with great actors, I just felt that the filmmakers knew they had those two things going for them so they didn't bother putting any extra effort into it. I guess I'm measuring this film by a high standard, but I suspect no-one's life was ever changed by making it or watching it.

Mind you, reading into the background of the film a bit more makes me think I might be judging it harshly. It's impressive that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon performed all of the songs themselves, and learned to play their instruments from scratch. It's impressive that Johnny and June Carter Cash themselves picked the actors who played them (although they died before the film was made). Maybe one day I'll give this film a second chance. But I have a few hundred other films to watch first.

Kill Bill (1 & 2)

#90 and #116 at time of writing.

If you think you might have been desensitised to screen violence, Kill Bill will test your boundaries. Some of it makes uncomfortable viewing. But then you can't help getting swept along as the camera worships Uma Thurman's deadly character; her vendetta is so pure that you have to root for her as she racks up the body count.

Unstoppably cool set pieces, dialogue, and over-the-top comic book violence - with splendid gashes of colour and toe-tappingly funky music - propel this revenge epic as it rampages through your brain at a record rate of homages-per-minute towards its tense and satisfying ending.

It's films like this that convince me that Quentin Tarantino and his actor buddies have the best jobs in the world. He offered Uma Thurman the script to Kill Bill, and her role as "The Bride", as a 30th birthday present. How do I get me one of those?

Chinatown

#44 at time of writing.

This late take on the film noir genre is renowned as having one of the best scripts of all time. The story is indeed clever, if a little complicated at first. Even if you do feel a bit lost at the beginning, it is definitely worth sticking it out while the scale of the conspiracy is discovered and the sense of menace grows.

The characters are wonderful, with Jack Nicholson playing private eye Jake Gittes, who manages never to be out of his depth simply because he has so much of it; and Faye Dunaway playing femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray, cloaked in mystery, and eventually tragedy.

Amusingly, the role of Evelyn Mulwray was originally intended for the producer's wife, Ali MacGraw, but she lost the role when she divorced him for Steve McQueen.

This film manages to be an evocative noir despite being in full colour - the only darkness is provided by the characters themselves. And the atmosphere is underpinned beautifully by haunting trumpet solos throughout.

The bitter taste of injustice that you are left with at the end is all the more poignant because the scandals that inspired the story are based on truth.

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.

Duck Soup

#147 at time of writing.

Wow, I've never seen so many cringeworthy jokes reeled off without taking a breath. The whole film is one long stream-of-consciousness comedy routine from the Marx Brothers, particularly Groucho, with a vague bit of film weaved around it. By the time you get around to laughing at one joke, you've already missed five more.

Yes, this is not a serious film. The man has grease paint for a moustache for goodness' sake. The action moves from set piece to set piece without worrying too much about gelling it all together, delivering so many hideous puns and ridiculous slapstick that it is probably illegal in Utah.

There's no reason I can fathom for this film being called "Duck Soup". One rumour has it that Groucho Marx offered the following explanation: "Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup the rest of your life." That rumour fits in perfectly with the film - irreverent, irrelevant and punnier than a punnet of pundits.

Rear Window

#14 at time of writing.

I recently realised that I have read and watched hundreds of Hitchcock snippets, but - shamefully - never have I sat through an entire film. And there are no less than nine of his films in the IMDb top 250 list.

So I allowed myself a minor indulgence and bought a Hitchcock box set. OK, it was more than a minor indulgence - it's a large box set. 34 films.

This film is the highest rated Hitchcock on IMDb, and often considered his best and most thrilling picture. So I am told.

It strikes me as the ultimate movie for studying in film school. It could be analysed to death. It's a fascinating idea, light-heartedly executed, but many-layered. But it feels like a film for film students. At best, it's intriguing. At worst, it plods.

James Stewart's character is amusing, Grace Kelly's is luminous, and the insurance company nurse is hilarious. The idea is wonderful. The 1950's filmmaking is nostalgic, gentle and naive. I enjoyed it, but I don't think this movie would have made it into my own personal top 250.

Yet IMDb users rate it as the fourteenth best film of all time! I must be missing something...

V for Vendetta

#180 at time of writing.

We went to see this film at the IMAX at Waterloo last week. What a great film for the IMAX screen: a grandiose comic book melodrama of the highest order. Dark and satisfying.

The strength of vision behind this dystopian fantasy of a totalitarian Britain sweeps you along, so that you whole-heartedly believe in the ambiguous hero. His antics are gloriously theatrical, occasionally histrionic, but always entertaining. It's Nineteen Eighty-Four meets Zorro.

This is a welcome return to form for the Wachowski brothers after the woeful Matrix sequels. OK, V for Vendetta didn't blow me away as much as The Matrix on first viewing, but I have a creeping feeling that I will want to watch V again, and again.

It's a shame that the genius author of the graphic novel behind this film did not approve of this adaptation of his masterwork. Mind you, he hasn't yet approved of any adaptations of his comic inventions.

"A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!"

The Incredibles

#80 at time of writing.

Pixar are a phenomenon. They blasted into the box office with Toy Story, redefining what could be done with computer animation. They followed it up with A Bug's Life, which was at least as good as DreamWorks' contemporary computer-animated ant movie (what are the odds?), Antz. Then, against all odds, they outdid the first Toy Story film with its sequel. For an encore, they produced Monsters, Inc. - a triumph of imaginative comedy.

That's when they pulled out the big guns. Finding Nemo was mind-blowing. Beautiful, touching, hilarious, epic... and absolutely impossible to follow.

The trailers for The Incredibles aroused excitement and cynicism in equal measure. Yay! Another Pixar film! But superheroes? Surely they've lost their touch after a lucky run. Surely after their first five near-perfect films they'll slip up, or lose momentum.

Couldn't be more wrong. The Incredibles is just that. Incredible.

The sheer number and variety of characters, scenes and textures raises the bar sky-high for computer animated films. The idea is simple enough: a family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world. But the result is sublime. A supremely comic and stunningly imaginative blend of the mundane and the fantastic. It makes me want to get up from my seat and dance. Or double over laughing. Or shed a gooey sentimental tear.

This summer, Pixar's seventh feature film will be released, Cars. Yay! Another Pixar film! But cars? Surely they've lost their touch after a lucky run...

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

#241 at time of writing.

This film swashes every single buckle out there. You might think you've seen a hundred pirate films before, but when you actually try and recall them you will realize you haven't. Peter Pan pretty much fixed the genre in our heads, and nothing since has really captured the full potential of swashbuckling buccaneers on the high seas.

Right from the off, this film makes you want to use words like "rollicking" and "rip-roaring". Becorseted breasts, roguish heroes and flamboyant villains abound, me hearties. Johnny Depp's wonderfully comic performance and Geoffrey Rush's extravagant gravitas steal the show. You can watch this again and again (indeed, I have) and you'll enjoy it every time.

It has to be the first film ever based on a theme park ride. It captures the atmosphere of the Disneyland ride, and even homages entire segments: the skeletal pirates, the jail scenes with the key-dog, the burning town with the red-headed prostitute (who slaps Captain Jack), and of course the song "(Yo Ho, Yo Ho) A Pirate's Life for Me" - among many others.

It was brought to life by screenwriting duo Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Terry Rossio is a bit of a hero of mine, thanks to the inspirational columns on his website, Wordplay. He admits that this is the first live-action film where everyone involved seemed to believe in what he and his writing partner were doing, right from the start - which was a truly great experience. And all it took was "10 produced features, three #1 films of the summer, $4 billion in overall worldwide sales, and an Academy Award® nomination."

Forgive the cheesy ending, and bring on the sequels! Arrrr...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

#36 at time of writing.

"How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"

Every time I watch this film I fall in love with it more, to the point where I can't help welling up with tears as soon as Beck starts crooning "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" to the opening credits.

This is my kind of film. If I had to choose a personal top 250 films, it would be full of films like this. Except that there aren't any films like this.

Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey are cast completely against type, and they turn in perfect performances. Michel Gondry is a visionary director, who comes up with the densest mosaic of artful scenes that has ever existed in a plot-driven movie.



There's no denying that this film is the combined result of a rare unity of vision between a group of extremely talented people, but the champion for me is Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter.

I deeply admire Kaufman's style - turning genres on their heads by introducing a fantastical element, and then playing out that fantastical concept to breaking point. His collaborations with Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, were genius - the most original and subversive films for years.

Eternal Sunshine shows the same spark, but it has matured. The themes of love and loss are indeed eternal, and this film will certainly last forever.

Some links:

• "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope, where the quote comes from.


• Charlie Kaufman's original script


• The soundtrack

Taxi Driver

#37 at time of writing.

This film is extremely high up IMDb's Top 250 list. I was expecting to be blown away - not by CGI and melodrama, but by being forced to think and to reassess the world I live in - that's what makes a great film for me. But I didn't get what I expected.

Instead I got an understated, slow-burning, sinister film. A good film, but it probably would not have made my personal top 250. Then again, now that I am making more of an effort to watch the so-called classics, maybe I need to rethink my opinion on what makes a good film.

I also recently watched the classic films that made Jack Nicholson an A-lister: Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. They too were slow-burning, cynical, unexpected films that were undeniably very good, but perhaps not to my taste. But, a week or two later, I remember them. I remember the crucial scenes. They have made an impression on me. They linger. So maybe they are making me reassess the world I live in, in a subtler, deeper way. Maybe these nuanced films will blindside me, and by the time I get round to watching them again, I won't understand why I didn't always love them.

Robert De Niro has been rightly lauded for his infinitely sensitive portrayal of Travis Bickle, the insomniac Vietnam vet of limited intelligence whose job as a cabbie hides him from all but the seediest sides of society until it's all he knows. De Niro worked twelve-hour days for a month driving cabs as preparation for the role. And he was clearly under the character's skin - his most famous line from the film was improvised. I had always assumed "You talkin' to me?" would be scary and menacing, but it was dripping with sadness and isolation.

Fight Club

#32 at time of writing.

I think I am in an overly emotional mood.

I've just watched this film again and I'm hysterical. More than once, and especially at the end, I was laughing uncontrollably and even crying. Not in a funny way. In a nihilistic, abandoned, insane way.

This isn't a film, it's a kick up the ass.

Fight Club brings a dirty, aggressive dignity to the dark side of the male soul. The primal side that sometimes feels like biting someone's ear off just because you've had a bad day. The side that feels like life is just too much effort because everyone takes it so damn seriously. The side that fucking hates frilly cushions.

Chuck Palahniuk has created a Dice Man for the jaded Nineties. If you're not careful, it will make you reassess your priorities in life. And David Fincher has created a film that feels more like a manifesto for the revolution.

There's evidence that the actors and crew got into the spirit of the film while making it. According to the (unusually intelligent) DVD commentary, in the short scene when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are drunk and hitting golf balls, they really are drunk, and the golf balls are sailing directly into the side of the catering truck.

Hero

#143 at time of writing.

This is a phenomenally beautiful film. Yimou Zhang's use of colour and scale paints a masterpiece visualisation of Oriental legend. It is an ambitious epic, with all the melodrama, over-the-top chivalry and infinitely meticulous action scenes that you could hope for from the wuxia genre.

It is the most expensive Chinese film ever made, using an impressive 18000 extras and 300 horses, but it is never gratuitous. It uses special effects in innovative and restrained ways, creating strong visual interest from such mundane things as a falling raindrop or a slight breeze.

The fight scenes and set pieces are grand and poetic, more than making up for the occasional borderline cheesiness. And the story wraps up with a tantalisingly ambiguous moral message.

Watch this film on the largest possible screen, and prepare to be awed.

Match Point

Unranked at time of writing.

Woody Allen has a talent for capturing those awkward moments that make up the bulk of real life and real relationships. He understands what makes people hate the people they most love.

And he does not shy away from allowing people to talk over each other, which creates a conversational atmosphere that makes you feel right at home - makes it personal.

This film has some moments of true genius. It is a very simple concept (a love triangle), with simple characters, but it's so artfully put together. At least until about the halfway point.

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the film. But the act of desperation that the protagonist resorts to midway through the film felt so out of character that I was left feeling skeptical. It may have worked if the character's past had been infused with a bit more mystery, or if there had been some other clues, but it fell short.

There was also an unnecessary indulgence towards the end; a violation of point of view that made the final story point seem contrived. I suppose I can forgive that, though, especially for Woody Allen who makes a virtue of breaking the rules.

Opera is used as a theme in this film, and the story excels as opera. However, as a film, I found the unexpected behaviour of the main character irreconcilable.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

#241 at time of writing.

Yes, the CGI is a little too slick for its own good. Yes, there are scenes that make you want to punch the screen and yell "NOOOOOOOO!" But it would be unfair to deny that this film wraps us the Star Wars story fantastically well.

I'm going to be controversial now and say I enjoyed this at least as much as Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, and much more than the original Star Wars (Episode IV). And it goes without saying that it's in a different league to the first two prequels.

Anakin's descent into betrayal is persuasive, the fall of the Jedis is affecting, and the light sabre duels kick ass. My favourite has to be Darth Sidious literally tearing down democracy by throwing bits of the Senate chamber at Yoda.

Trivia for the day: which two actors have appeared in all six Star Wars films?

Batman Begins

#111 at time of writing.

This is what a Batman film should be. In fact, this film outdoes all other serious superhero films, ever.

Christopher Nolan hasn't made a lot of films yet, but he already proved his capacity for genius with Memento, and now he's risen to the challenge of a big-budget blockbuster.

I have to admit I was skeptical after the last two Batman films, particularly Batman & Robin, which easily makes it into my Worst 10 Films of All Time. But this film is something special. Based on the darkest and most grounded of the graphic novels, and infused with a compelling realism, this film gets a ten out of ten from me.

The film rewrites the history of the Dark Knight, giving us glimpses into Bruce Wayne's childhood, and his reasons for becoming Batman, without ever being schmaltzy. The resulting epic makes the possibility of a Batman more believable than ever before. And it makes for a thrilling ride.

And the thing that seals the deal is that every single supporting character could stand alone. A monumental achievement considering the first draft of the script was written in less than two months. And helped along by the all-star line-up cast, of course.

It makes me proud as well that a lot of this film was done with British actors and a British studio. Gotham City is largely a full-size indoor city built in a hangar in Bedford (which was previously used for building Zeppelin-sized airships). And the Batmobile is not CGI, it is a £500,000 monster built by Brits at Shepperton Studios.

Hope is reborn for the Batman franchise.

Almost Famous

#212 at time of writing.

"The only true currency in this bankrupt world... is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."

For me, this film is about what we do and what we say when our defences are down. And this film is about those rare wonderful times when we're surrounded by friends and there's nothing to do but have fun. Those times that you want to last forever - but they don't. However hard you try, real life gets in the way. Jealousy, guilt, responsibility.

Actually, this film isn't really about either of those things, it's about ROCK AND ROLL.

Nobody can fail to fall in love with Penny Lane (pictured, played by Kate Hudson); the scene that did it for me was after William Miller tells her that the band leader sold her for 50 bucks and a crate of beer. She smiles as she cries, and asks "What kind of beer?" Such beautiful vulnerability! Such optimistic willingness to fly in the face of real life! Such sadness!

The film is semi-autobiographical for Cameron Crowe, who started off as a reporter for Rolling Stone. That adds a level of the most genuine kind of sentimentality, in a way that makes you want to have been a teenager in 1973. And the film is littered with in-jokes and nods to bands.

It has a tear-jerkingly uplifting twist at the end, and the whole film is so optimistic and full of great music that you can't help but fall in love with it.

I almost forgot - one brilliant scene deserves a mention: the band leader being cowed by William Miller's mum (mom, I guess, as we're in America) speaking on the phone. I laughed so hard! "Your mom kinda freaked me out."

Oh - and the groupie running into the wall! Yes, this is a great film.