Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film
Writer/Director: Preston Sturges
Cinematographer: Victor Milner
Cast: Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Kurt Kreuger, Rudy Vallee, Barbara Lawrence, Lionel Stander, Edgar Kennedy

Rex Harrison’s famous conductor, led to believe that his young wife, played by the beautiful Linda Darnell, has been unfaithful to him with his secretary, fantasises about how he might deal with the adulterous pair, but unfortunately putting these theories into practice proves more difficult than he'd imagined, in Sturges’s brilliant black comedy, which has much to say about the relationships between thought, belief, assumption, truth, and reality. Iain.Stott

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The Host (2006)

Recommended

South Korea
Feature Film
Original Title: 괴물
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Writers: Baek Chul-hyun, Bong Joon-ho, Ha Jun-won
Cinematographer: Kim Hyung-ku
Composer: Lee Byung-woo
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Byeon Hie-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Du-na, Ko Ah-sung

Bong’s socially conscious creature feature, a very funny, thrilling, and superior piece of entertainment, chronicles the attempts of one family to recover their beloved youngest member, following the emergence of a chemically mutated monster from the Han river. Iain.Stott

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Green for Danger (1946)

Cautiously Recommended

UK
Feature Film
Director: Sidney Gilliat
Writers: Sidney Gilliat, Claud Gurney, Christianna Brand
Cinematographer: Wilkie Cooper
Composer: William Alwyn
Cast: Alastair Sim, Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Rosamund John, Leo Genn, Judy Campbell, Megs Jenkins, Moore Marriott

The incomparable, mercurial Sim enlivens an otherwise rather silly whodunit with a raft of wonderful facial expressions, plus there are some nice comic moments, but the central mystery, revolving around a couple of murders in a rural hospital towards the end of the Second World War, is never even vaguely believable, and as for the horrible underuse of the brilliant Marriott - unforgivable. Iain.Stott

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Summer Interlude (1951)

Recommended

Sweden
Feature Film
Original Title: Sommarlek
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Writers: Ingmar Bergman, Herbert Grevenius
Cinematographer: Gunnar Fischer
Composer: Erik Nordgren
Cast: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Alf Kjellin, Georg Funkquist, Renée Björling

An embittered 28-year-old ballerina mysteriously receives her first love’s diary in the post, and becomes haunted by memories of an idyllic summer romance that unfortunately ended in tragedy, in this playful and moving early Bergman effort, which contains many of the themes that he would later develop on, but perhaps not quite the uncompromising eye of his best work. Iain.Stott

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Open Hearts (2002)

Recommended

Denmark
Feature Film
Original Title: Elsker dig for evigt
Series Title: Dogme #28

Director: Susanne Bier
Writer: Anders Thomas Jensen
Cinematographer: Morten Søborg
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Sonja Richter, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Paprika Steen, Stine Bjerregaard, Birthe Neumann

Released under the ‘Dogme 95’ banner, though it breaks a number of its rules, Bier’s harrowing drama of infidelity and loss, chronicling the tortured emotional lives of a number of Copenhagen residents following a tragic traffic accident, is comparatively straightforward and accessible, but, unsurprising giving its wonderfully assembled cast, the viscerally charged performances are quite excellent. Iain.Stott

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Early Summer (1951)

Essential Viewing

Japan

Feature Film

Original Title: 麦秋
Director: Ozu Yasujirō

Writers: Noda Kōgo, Ozu Yasujirō

Cinematographer: Atsuta Yuuharu

Composer: Itō Senji

Cast: Hara Setsuko, Ryū Chishū, Awashima Chikage, Miyake Kuniko, Sugai Ichirō, Higashiyama Chieko, Sugimura Haruko, Ikawa Kuniko, Nihonyanagi Kan, Shirosawa Isao, Murase Zen

Members of a happy Tokyo family begin to worry about the marital status of its eldest daughter, 28-year-old Noriko (the always wonderful Hara), who has so far she has laughed off suggestions of marriage; and so, when a possible suitor is identified, she announces ideas of her own, which are not immediately welcomed, in Ozu’s warm, poignant, gently humorous, and soul-caressingly beautiful ode to family life. Iain.Stott

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The Machinist (2004)

Best Avoided

Spain
Feature Film
Original Title: El maquinista
Director: Brad Anderson
Writer: Scott Kosar
Cinematographer: Xavi Giménez
Composer: Roque Baños
Cast: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, John Sharian, Michael Ironside, Larry Gilliard

The sight of Bale’s skeletal form is one the most distasteful things to ever appear on our cinema screens, but other than that, Anderson’s rather familiar Kafkaesque tale, following Bale’s machine operator through a waking dream of paranoia, déjà vu, and guilt, is really quite anodyne and forgettable. Iain.Stott

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