The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes (2005)

Not Recommended

UK/France/Germany

Feature Film

Directors: Quay Brothers

Writers: Alan Passes, Quay Brothers

Cinematographer: Nic Knowland

Composer: Christopher Slaski

Cast: César Sarachu, Amira Casar, Gottfried John, Assumpta Serna

This bizarre tale of an evil doctor’s obsession for a beautiful opera singer (the second feature film by the Quay brothers) is a work that will prove too obtuse for most; although it does contain numerous pleasures – mostly in the form of its distinctive, painterly visuals – but one must conclude, in the end, that there is little going on beneath its admittedly attractive surface. Iain.Stott

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The Small Back Room (1949)

Highly Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Writers: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Nigel Balchin

Cinematographer: Christopher Challis

Composer: Brian Easdale

Cast: David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins, Leslie Banks, Michael Gough, Cyril Cusack, Milton Rosmer, Sid James

This remarkable production from Powell and Pressburger – booze-soaked, fatalistic, and filled with unforgettable, expressive, monochrome imagery – sees a munitions expert (engaged in a search for a way to disarm a new type of booby-trapped German bomb) battling against his own personal demons: alcoholism, pain management, relationship issues, and general self-destructiveness. Iain.Stott

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All or Nothing (2002)

Highly Recommended

UK/France

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Mike Leigh

Cinematographer: Dick Pope

Composer: Andrew Dickson

Cast: Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Alison Garland, James Corden, Ruth Sheen, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Sam Kelly, Kathryn Hunter, Sally Hawkins, Helen Coker, Daniel Mays, Ben Crompton

Click for review.

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The Elephants' Graveyard (1976)

Highly Recommended

UK

Short Television Film

Series Title: Play for Today (1970-1984)

Director: John Mackenzie

Writer: Peter McDougall

Cinematographer: Phil Meheux

Composer: Carl Davis

Cast: Jon Morrison, Billy Connolly

Distinctive, funny, and moving, this brief entry in the BBC’s Play for Today series sees a young man, fresh from a shotgun wedding, spending his days wandering the hills above Greenock (whilst his wife thinks that he is working as a postman), unable or unwilling to become a part of the system that will see his life follow a painfully predictable path; although he doesn’t really comprehend this, at least, not until a mysterious older man with a similar problem helps him to realise it. Iain.Stott

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The African Queen (1951)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: John Huston

Writers: James Agee, John Huston, C.S. Forester

Cinematographer: Jack Cardiff

Composer: Allan Gray

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley, Peter Bull

Huston’s light-hearted take on Forester’s novel – following a rough-arsed sailor and a prim-and-proper missionary’s attempts to traverse a dangerous river in German East Africa following the outbreak of the First World War, alternately endeavouring to avoid or confront the German forces – is really rather silly and never vaguely believable, but Bogart and Hepburn’s full-blooded performances just about make up for the film’s numerous faults (not the least of which being Gray’s horribly incongruous score). Iain.Stott

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Chicken Ranch: A Legal Brothel in Nevada (1983)

Recommended

UK/USA

Feature Documentary

Director: Nick Broomfield

Cinematographer: Sandi Sissel

Chicken Ranch is an entertaining and enlightening look at life inside of the world famous Nevada brothel, Chicken Ranch – where the women work for three weeks at a time, unable to leave their rather unnatural confines – examining the personal and professional relationships of those within. Iain.Stott

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Five-Minute Films (1975)

Recommended

UK

Television Series

Writer/Director: Mike Leigh

Cinematographer: Brian Tufano

Cast: Antony Carrick, David Casey, Billy Colvill, Rachel Davies, Alan Gaunt, Richard Griffiths, Margaret Heery, Richard Ireson, Pauline Moran, Julie North, Herbert Norville, Lally Percy, Robert Putt, Celia Quicke, Tim Stern, Theresa Watson

Five-Minute Films is a series of shorts, primarily exploring the way that people exist in their own little worlds, unaware of the thoughts and feelings of those around them.

The Birth of the Goalie of the 2001 F.A. Cup Final is an amusing look at the differing attitudes towards parenting between the sexes.

Old Chums sees a chance encounter between two old friends, which results in a painfully one-sided conversation.

A young man convicted of various minor offences visits his probation officer in Probation.

The best of the bunch, A Light Snack, contains two parallel narratives that look at the way that people react to socially oblivious individuals who impose themselves onto them.

Two young women are enjoying a boozy afternoon until a newly-wed friend interrupts them in Afternoon. Iain.Stott

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The Permissive Society (1975)

Recommended

UK

Short Television Film

Series Title: Second City Firsts (1973-78)

Writer/Director: Mike Leigh

Cinematographer: Bob Chaplin

Cast: Bob Mason, Rachel Davies, Veronica Roberts

Click for review.

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Hard Labour (1973)

Essential Viewing

UK

Television Film

Series Title: Play for Today (1970-1984)

Writer/Director: Mike Leigh

Cinematographer: Tony Pierce-Roberts

Cast: Liz Smith, Clifford Kershaw, Polly Hemingway, Bernard Hill, Alison Steadman, Vanessa Harris, Ben Kingsley, Louis Raynes, Alan Gerrard, Patrick Durkin, Hal Jeayes

Click for review.

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Dinner at The Sporting Club (1978)

Recommended

UK

Television Film

Series Title: Play for Today (1970-1984)

Director: Brian Gibson

Writer: Leon Griffiths

Cinematographer: Tony Pierce-Roberts

Cast: John Thaw, Billy McColl, Patrick Durkin, Jonathan Lynn, Ken Campbell, Ray Little, Maureen Lipman, Liam Neeson

This thoroughly credible, slightly downbeat portrait of a dolefully optimistic boxing manager/trainer and one of his fighters, a lovable loser from Glasgow, is an often funny and rather moving examination of the role that hope plays in our everyday lives, and, beyond that, it also serves as biting social commentary. Iain.Stott

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Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Recommended

Denmark/Finland/France/Germany/Iceland/Italy/The Netherlands/Norway/Sweden/UK/USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Lars von Trier

Cinematographer: Robby Müller

Composer: Björk

Cast: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Cara Seymour, Jean-Marc Barr, Siobhan Fallon

von Trier’s polarising, excellently acted provocation – a bleak tale of maternal martyrdom with brief, Björky musical interludes, in which the aforementioned mother, a Czech immigrant with rapidly deteriorating eyesight, struggles to cope in small town America, as she strives to save enough money for an operation for her precious son – is a powerful, often painful work, but a rewarding one none the less. Iain.Stott

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Elgar (1962)

Recommended

UK

Short Television Documentary

Series Title: Monitor (1958-1965)

Director: Ken Russell

Writers: Ken Russell, Huw Wheldon

Cinematographer: Kenneth Higgins

Narrator: Huw Wheldon

Cast: Peter Brett, Rowena Gregory, George McGrath

The two Kens, Russell and Higgins, provide us with some beautiful, poetically mounted images that just about make Sir Edward Elgar’s pompous, sentimental compositions palatable, in this informative, entertaining, and really rather moving portrait of the eponymous composer. Iain.Stott

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Coast to Coast (1987)

Recommended

UK

Television Film

Series Title: Screen Two (1985-1994)

Director: Sandy Johnson

Writer: Stan Hey

Cinematographer: Colin Munn

Composer: Alasdair MacNeill

Cast: Lenny Henry, John Shea, Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Vaughan, George Baker, Cherie Lunghi, Paul Bown

Two soul obsessed young men - one from Liverpool, the other an American - who have just started a mobile ‘60s disco, somehow manage to stumble into a dodgy deal involving counterfeit money printing plates, British Rail buffet cars, and a road trip, via the Lake District, to Parkeston, Essex, in this beautifully drawn, wonderfully soundtracked, perfectly cast, blackly comic delight. Iain.Stott

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Gunrush (2009)

Best Avoided

UK

Television Film

Director: Richard Clark

Writer: Richard Cottan

Cinematographer: Balazs Bolygo

Cast: Timothy Spall, Jacob Anderson, Aml Ameen, Frances Ashman, Adam Deacon, Deborah Findlay, Carrie Mullan, Nicholas Beveney, David Harewood, Paul Kaye

Channelling the same sort of conservative, middle-class paranoia that made Reefer Madness (1936) and 8mm (1999) such laughably terrible films, this ITV drama - starring Timothy Spall as the father of a teenage girl senselessly gunned down in a small supermarket, who becomes determined to track down the gun responsible - is a work completely lacking in credibility, deficient in logic, and seemingly ignorant of human nature (and the less said about Paul Kaye’s turn the better.) Iain.Stott

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Donkey Punch (2008)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Oliver Blackburn

Writers: Oliver Blackburn, David Bloom

Cinematographer: Nanu Segal

Composer: François-Eudes Chanfrault

Cast: Nichola Burley, Julian Morris, Jaime Winstone, Robert Boulter, Tom Burke, Jay Taylor, Sian Breckin

Blackburn’s debut feature - a morality tale railing against the dangers of casual sex and drug use, in which bravado, machismo, and the aforementioned sex and drugs lead to an escalating nightmare of violence aboard a luxury yacht, off the coast of Ibiza, when a group of holidaying Leeds lasses meet a bunch of middle-class southern lads - proves to be a fairly credible, sun-drenched horror film. Iain.Stott

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Radio Parade of 1935 (1934)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Arthur Woods

Writers: James Bunting, Jack Davies Jr., Paul Perez

Cinematographers: Cyril Bristow, Claude Friese-Greene, Phil Grindrod

Composers: Lawrence Brewis, Bob Busby, Carl Foulke, Benjamin Frankel, Hans May, Jimmy Messini, Arthur Young

Cast: Clifford Mollison, Helen Chandler, Will Hay, The Western Bros., The Three Sailors, Haver and Lee, Clapham and Dwyer, Alberta Hunter

The head of the complaints department at the National Broadcasting Group manages to blag his way into the post of director of programming, hoping to modernise the acts on show and branch out into colour television, in this patchy though nevertheless thoroughly entertaining musical comedy variety show, showcasing various music hall acts – highlights include the wonderfully silly Clapham and Dwyer, and the Marxesque Three Sailors. Iain.Stott

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Lila Says (2004)

Best Avoided

France/UK

Feature Film

Original Title: Lila dit ça

Director: Ziad Doueiri

Writers: Ziad Doueiri, Mark Lawrence, Joelle Touma, Chimo

Cinematographer: John Daly

Composer: Nitin Sawhney

Cast: Mohammed Khouas, Vahina Giocante, Karim Ben Haddou, Lotfi Chakri, Hamid Dkhissi, Edmonde Franchi, Carmen Lebbos

Vahina Giocante’s sexy, credible performance is the only thing of any real value in Doueiri’s adaptation of Chimo’s “autobiographical” novel - a tale of a cross-cultural romance between a provocative blonde and a shy Muslim - that never really convinces, and, with its constant promise of sex, which only leads to rape, it also leaves its viewers with something of an unpleasant aftertaste. Iain.Stott

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Thames Film (1986)

Recommended

UK

Feature Documentary

Director/Cinematographer: William Raban

Narrator: John Hurt

Artist Raban, as he takes us on a journey down the eponymous river, juxtaposes images of decrepit, decaying docklands with archive film footage and readings from T.S. Eliot & Thomas Pennant, to paint a portrait of a nation in terminal, self-actualised decline. Iain.Stott

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Alice (1988)

Highly Recommended

Czechoslovakia/Switzerland/UK/West Germany

Animated Feature Film

Original Title: Neco z Alenky

Director: Jan Švankmajer

Writers: Jan Švankmajer, Lewis Carroll

Cienamtographer: Svatopluk Malý

Cast: Kristýna Kohoutová, Camilla Power (voice - English dub)

Demented Czech Genius Švankmajer’s disturbing (and definitive?) adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s much-adapted Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) - a dreamy tale of a young girl who follows a rabbit down a hole into a magical other world, or in this case, follows a rabbit, stuffed with sawdust, through a magic desk drawer into a world populated by delightfully inventive stop-motion wonders - is a film that will delight, revile, titillate, and scare silly people of all ages. Iain.Stott

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Bronson (2009)

Recommended

UK/Cayman Islands

Feature Film

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Writers: Brock Norman Brock, Nicolas Winding Refn

Cinematographer: Larry Smith

Cast: Tom Hardy, Matt King, James Lance, Juliet Oldfield, Hugh Ross

Refn’s distinctive biopic, exploring the life of the infamous criminal/bare-knuckle boxer/artist Charles Bronson, is a work that attempts to look at the man’s troubled life through his own delusional eyes, providing us with a nightmarish, blackly-comic world inhabited by caricatures, whom only exist to serve Britain’s-Most-Violent-Prisoner’s deluded sense of ego, and in so doing, paints a damning portrait of a system that does very little to protect the sufferers of mental illness and those that come into contact with them. Iain.Stott

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