Clean (2004)

Not Recommended

France/Canada/UK
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Olivier Assayas
Cinematographer: Eric Gautier
Composers: Brian Eno, David Roback, Tricky
Cast: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Béatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, Don McKellar, Martha Henry, James Johnston, James Dennis

A heroin addicted woman struggles to kick her habit and regain custody of her son, after her rock star husband fatally overdoses in a hotel room, in this curiously uninvolving, unemotional, and often rather cold exploration of subject matter that is usually delivered with much more of a visceral punch. Iain.Stott

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Not Here to Be Loved (2005)

Recommended

France
Feature Film
Original Title: Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé
Director: Stéphane Brizé
Writers: Stéphane Brizé, Juliette Sales
Cinematographer: Claude Garnier
Composers: Eduardo Makaroff, Christoph H. Müller
Cast: Patrick Chesnais, Anne Consigny, Georges Wilson, Lionel Abelanski, Cyril Couton, Geneviève Mnich, Hélène Alexandridis

A 50-year-old sad-sack of a bailiff meets a thirty something, soon-to-be-married school counsellor at tango lessons, and the two embark on a tentative affair in Brizé’s moving and insightful exploration of middle-age and middle-class malaise. Iain.Stott

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Guy X (2005)

Cautiously Recommended

UK/Canada/Iceland
Feature Film
Director: Saul Metzstein
Writers: Steve Attridge, John Paul Chapple, John Griesemer
Cinematographer: François Dagenais
Composers: Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Charlie Mole
Cast: Jason Biggs, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Northam, Michael Ironside, Sean Tucker, Hilmir Snær Gudnason, Harry Standjofski, Rob deLeeuw, Donny Falsetti

Metzstein’s follow-up to the promising Late Night Shopping (2001) - chronicling a young soldier’s attempts to escape his accidental posting to Greenland, to seduce the general’s girlfriend, and to uncover a mysterious conspiracy involving brain-dead Vietnam veterans - is at times a riotously funny film, and during its first half, it meanders pleasantly towards nowhere in particular, but once the plot kicks in, it rapidly becomes rather tedious. Iain.Stott

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The Low Down (2000)

Highly Recommended

UK
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Jamie Thraves
Cinematographer: Igor Jadue-Lillo
Composers: Nick Currie, Fred Thomas
Cast: Aidan Gillen, Kate Ashfield, Dean Lennox Kelly, Tobias Menzies, Rupert Procter, Samantha Power

Thraves’s elegantly inelegant feature debut - a gentle, meandering look at the often awkward encounters between an insecure, young artisan and his friends and new girlfriend as they drift through the world - is a film that is every bit as ugly, beautiful, sensual, troubling, unstable, and unpredictable as its maladroit, twentysomething protagonists. Iain.Stott

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Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

Cautiously Recommended

Japan
Animated Feature Film
Original Title: 魔女の宅急便
Director: Miyazaki Hayao

Writers: Miyazaki Hayao, Kadono Eiko

Animators: Kondō Katsuya, Kondo Yoshifumi, Otsuka Shinji

Cinematographer: Sugimura Shigeo

Composers: Sydney Forest, Hisaishi Jō

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartman, Janeane Garofolo, Matthew Lawrence, Debbie Reynolds, Tress MacNeille, Edie McClurg, Kath Soucie

In this mildly diverting Studio Ghibli production, which promotes the more attractive of human traits, a 13-year-old witch, as tradition dictates, sets out into the world to make it on her own, deciding to settle in an idyllic seaside city, where she meets a kindly baker, who offers her a place to stay and work as a delivery girl, and gets into various scrapes. Iain.Stott

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The Death of Mister Lazarescu (2005)

Essential Viewing

Romania
Feature Film
Original Title: Moartea domnului Lazarescu
Director: Cristi Puiu
Writers: Cristi Puiu, Razvan Radulescu
Cinematographers: Andrei Butica, Oleg Mutu
Composer: Andreea Paduraru
Cast: Ion Fiscuteanu, Luminta Gheorghiu, Gabriel Spahiu, Doru Ana, Dana Dogaru, Serban Pavlu, Florin Zamfirescu, Clara Voda, Adrian Titieni, Mihai Bratila, Monica Barladeanu

Combining unflinching, handheld camerawork, the blackest of wits, and a corrosively allegorical eye, Puiu’s multi award winning muckraker – a terribly depressing yet addictively compelling look at the final (?) hours of our dishevelled, eponymous hero, as he is shipped from hospital to hospital, and uncaring doctor to uncaring doctor – is an often difficult film to watch, but a genuinely rewarding one, none the less. Iain.Stott

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The Dreamers (2003)

Not Recommended

France/Italy/UK
Feature Film
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Writer: Gilbert Adair
Cinematographer: Fabio Cianchetti
Cast: Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Anna Chancellor, Robin Renucci

Set against a backdrop of the 1968 riots and strikes in Paris, this allegorical tale from Bertolucci, depicting a young American cinephile’s strange, incestuous (in all senses of the word) friendship with a pair of Parisian siblings, starts well as an ode to cinephilia, but soon gets bogged down with alienatingly obtuse metaphors, whilst ignoring logic - but the brave performances keep it watchable. Iain.Stott

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