And it's exactly right that we still don't know what he whispered to her at the end.Read Empire's review of Lost In TranslationBuy the film now, Director Rob Reiner and writer William Goldman's affectionate pastiche of romantic fairy-tale stories that also works as an adventure on its own. When Steven Spielberg brought them back on Isla Nublar, we felt for the first time they could be real, breathing animals (as opposed to monsters). So it’s jarring when, in its final moments, the film descends suddenly and steeply into the abyss, with a shockingly violent and nihilistic coda. Time appeals to our most fundamental desires: for love, affection, community – and it makes a more powerful case for the abolition of prisons than any polemical statement might.” (Devika Girish), Read our review: Time is a powerful distillation of lives divided, + “I wanted it to feel like a river, like memory”: Garrett Bradley on Time. It is a horror movie which reduces its central fear to the most fundamental form of existential dread.” (Anton Bitel), Read our review: She Dies Tomorrow sends Kate Lyn Sheil’s death drive viral. And he tempers any potential schmaltz, too, with a sense of underlying world-weariness — one that he no doubt brought back from the conflict in Europe.Read Empire's review of It's A Wonderful LifeBuy the film here, 1962If you only ever see one David Lean movie… Well, don't. Well, with Inception he kind of already has. While also ensuring his female characters are the film's strongest; Charlize Theron's Furiosa and Immortan Joe's ex-brides are inheriting a world "killed" by men…Read Empire's review of Mad Max: Fury RoadBuy the film here, 1982Any argument about whether or not modern remakes can ever be better than the 'classic' originals should be ended pretty quickly by mentioning this movie. We said: “About Endlessness continues in the style that Andersson has pursued since his return in 2000. Hammer-wielding violence? Paul Walter Hauser portrays the security guard who discovered the Atlanta Olympics bomb only to find himself accused of planting it, in Eastwood’s all-American tale of apostasy. WolfWalkers is more of an action-adventure than Moore’s other films, especially in its extended climax. We said: “Nanau refuses to regard the uncovering of wrongdoing as an achievement in itself; he constructs his film from interwoven strands which offer a broader perspective on the administrative toil involved in effecting lasting change, and the crucial contributions of both individual moral choices and wider democratic movements in enabling such a process.” (Trevor Johnston, S&S, December), Read our review: Collective takes a scalpel to the contagion of corruption, + interview: “Incompetence was killing the victims”: Alexander Nanau on his health-service exposé Collective, Where to see it: On various digital platforms. Everyone here's at the top of their game: Scorsese, Schrader, De Niro, 14-year-old Jodie Foster and composer Bernard Herrmann. It also manages to wring every last drip of funny out of executing spot-on bombastic, Bayhem-style action in a sleepy English small-town setting.Read Empire's review of Hot FuzzBuy the film here, 1994It's the highest-ranking animated movie on this list, beating even Toy Story. The hero’s lonely nocturnal scooter rides make a mesmerising visual thread, and his quest for the ideal in a commercial world makes the film as much a statement about cinema as about music.” (Jonathan Romney, S&S online), Read our review: The Disciple: Chaitanya Tamhane considers the limits of musical control. Bacurau is a small impoverished town in the arid north-eastern hinterlands of Brazil; but it’s also a utopia of sorts, with its tight-knit community who stand firm against exterior threats. Never florid, rarely contrived, sometimes painful, always true, Hittman’s film is far more than the abortion story it so single-mindedly follows. It was very dreamy and somewhat nightmarish, which appealed to me, but it was also very contained – it was basically four characters, and it takes place in a car and in a farmhouse. It demands that we pay attention to those who are brave enough to take a stand; that it is up to all of us to amplify individual voices that would otherwise go unheard.” (Nikki Baughan), Read our interview: Kitty Green on The Assistant: “We all know what happens behind that closed door”. Trova film che non sapevi neanche che stavi cercando. In which case, you're missing out.Read Empire's review of Schindler's ListBuy the film here, 1995Ninety-five's other super-twisted, über-cool crime thriller starring Kevin Spacey (next to Seven — see entry 30). The real-life horrors of Relic, Where to see it: On BFI Player and other digital platforms. It is a fresh, dynamic approach that may seem spun from modern feminist thought, but actually makes explicit ideas that Alcott vocally espoused. Something happened in that room, and we happened to have a camera there to record it. Scopri i migliori film d'azione scorrendo la top 50 degli action movies da non perdere tra inseguimenti in auto, arti marziali, vampiri e zombie. This stylistically dazzling adaptation of Jack London’s autobiographical novel – about a working-class writer who climbs the ranks of society – transposes the story from the US to Naples and mixes drama with archive footage to create a unique fable. “The savvy decision to allow the actors to play their younger selves in flashback sequences reinforces the film’s central thesis that past and present are intertwined. The voyeurlike camerawork – lingering on every nook and cranny, insisting on empty spaces – gives the film a distinctive thrill, and the pacing is characterised by slow build-ups over racing emotions. Asili’s debut weaves together the histories of the MOVE Organization, the Black Arts Movement and his time in a Black Marxist collective. 2016The third "solo" Cap outing managed to be both intensely crowd-pleasing (with that whole airport battle, and the introduction of Tom Holland's Spider-Man) and also daringly intelligent, placing its superheroes in a believable geopolitical context that raised a valid moral issue: who should be responsible for the deployment of such great power?Read Empire's review of Captain America: Civil WarBuy the film here, 2003Chan-wook Park's revenge drama does extremity with a capital Eeek. Quartet'. Blank’s achievement makes a convincing case for a new list category: ‘40 in their 40s’.” (Violet Lucca), Read our review: In The Forty-Year-Old Version, Radha Blank hoists her own star. Lawrence's (Peter O'Toole) Arab-uniting efforts against the German-allied Turks during World War I. Larraín’s latest unleashes Mariana Di Girólamo as a peroxide pyromaniac dancer involved in a wild plot to reclaim her adopted son. Bone Tomahawk. "Read Empire's review of GoodfellasBuy the film here, 1994If Reservoir Dogs was a blood-spattered calling card, Pulp Fiction saw Quentin Tarantino kick our front door off its hinges — and then get applauded for doing it with such goddamn panache. It's also perfectly cast: DiCaprio and Damon as the facing-off moles, Nicholson as the Whitey Bulger-esque Mob boss and (arguably best of all), Mark Wahlberg as America's sweariest cop.Read Empire's review of The DepartedBuy the film here, 1980Stanley Kubrick's elegant adaptation of Stephen King's haunted-hotel story — starring a wonderfully deranged Jack Nicholson — is often cited as The Scariest Horror Movie Ever Made (perhaps tied with The Exorcist), but it's also the Least Suitable Movie To Watch On Father's Day Ever. Except, instead of a British secret agent, we get a freelance corporate dream-thief. Alfred Hitchcock really knew how to take a corker of a premise and spin it into a peerless thriller (that's why they called him The Master Of Suspense), but Rear Window also deserves praise for an astonishing set build: that entire Greenwich Village courtyard was constructed at Paramount Studios, complete with a drainage system that could handle all the rain.Read Empire's review of Rear WindowBuy the film here, 2007Wright, Pegg and Frost's tribute to big American cop movies isn't just a great fish-out-of-water comedy, sending high-achieving London policeman Nick Angel (Pegg) to the most boring place in the UK (or so it seems). He's bored to tears, so he starts spying on his neighbours. In its deliberate pacing and rigorous focus, Tsai’s deeply compassionate portrait generates the most acute investment in his characters.” (Giovanni Marchini Camia), Read our review: Days: Tsai Ming-liang makes his peace with sexual release, Where to see it: Still awaiting UK distribution. Maintaining a gentle rhythm and almost wholly eschewing dialogue, for its first hour Days oscillates between depicting Anong’s daily life and following Lee as he travels to Bangkok to seek acupuncture treatment. But the reason it chills so deeply is the way it sustains and builds its disquieting atmosphere so craftily and consistently throughout.Read Empire's review of The ExorcistBuy the film now, 1987A pumped-up men-on-a-mission movie with an ingenious science-fiction tweak. Alfre Woodard puts in a phenomenal performance, expressing Bernadine’s churning inner turmoil through her resigned expression, downcast eyes and hunched shoulders.” (Nikki Baughan, S&S, September), Read our review: In Clemency, death row walls in Alfre Woodard’s warden, Where to see it: available to buy or stream on BFI Player, iTunes, Amazon Prime and other platforms. The film will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and digital platforms, including Amazon Prime, in early 2021. But there's no flaws to be found in his harrowing, (mostly) monochromatic depiction of Nazi persecution of the Jewish community in Kraków. Johnson’s superbly inventive movie confronts the trauma of her father’s imminent death with multiple advance stagings of it. Russell Crowe's big Hollywood breakthrough. ” (Giovanni Marchini Camia), Where to see it: Lockdown postponed its planned November UK release to 2021. Moore and Stewart’s playful and stirring animation conjures an interregnum Ireland of 1650, caught between pagan spirits and the boot of English invaders. Scopri la programmazione. To take you on that journey where it gets to a point where it transcends, even beyond the people in the room. For one thing, Herman’s main credit competitor remains Orson Welles, the furthest thing imaginable from an idiot. By and large Lee succeeds, even if along the way the story hits some cul-de-sacs with cursory plotting involving Jean Reno’s evil trafficker, the work of landmine removal, and a pot of gold taken straight out of John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). In comments that didn’t make it into that feature, Kaufman told Romney: “I’d been looking over the years for something to adapt and I came across this novel. Among the cultural specificity is a coming-of-age universality in young hero Chihiro, forced to fend for herself when her parents are turned into pigs, using her resourcefulness and her friendship with boy-dragon-spirit Haku to earn her freedom from the spirit world. The post-#MeToo drama stars a superb Julia Garner as an employee whose film producer boss uses his position to abuse women. You could also make the case that Avengers Assemble is a version, too. Da 5 Bloods is quite some undertaking. Saint Maud is a compelling and impactful film, a remarkable debut, and one of the most human and empathetic horrors of recent times. As an artist, you wish to be invited, and that’s what happened. A dread-filled horror of the human condition, starring Emily Mortimer as one of three generations of women affected by grandmother Edna’s dementia. Lee’s bravura, breakneck war drama, about a group of Black Vietnam veterans returning to the country decades after the war to recover the body of a fallen comrade, follows the blood line of America’s racial wrongs, from the civil rights era to Black Lives Matter. Though, of course, you could always argue that Fletcher's methods certainly got great results out of Miles Teller's battered but triumphant Andrew…Read Empire's review of WhiplashBuy the film here, 1992Quentin Tarantino's terrific twist on the heist-gone-wrong thriller, which ricochets the zing and fizz of its dialogue around a gloriously intense single setting (for the most part) and centres the majority of its action around one long and incredibly bloody death scene. “Moss, tasked both with portraying a well-known and visually distinctive real-life person and with playing multiple scenes that may or may not be occurring only in the realm of fantasy, has the harder job. Or just because it's genuinely unsurpassable.Read Empire's review of JawsBuy the film here, 1981In '81, it must have sounded like the ultimate pitch: the creator of Star Wars teams up with the director of Jaws to make a rip-roaring, Bond-style adventure starring the guy who played Han Solo, in which the bad guys are the evillest ever (the Nazis) and the MacGuffin is a big, gold box which unleashes the power of God. All four leads are excellent, but Florence Pugh quietly steals the show as Amy.” (Nikki Baughan), Read our review: Little Women emancipates Louisa May Alcott’s spirited sisters. Stripping the chase movie down to its raw essentials (the plot is basically: run away… then run back again! Movies. There's an earthy, primal feel to his fairy-world here, alien and threatening rather than gasp-inducing and 'magical' — thanks in no small part to the truly cheese-dream nightmarish demon-things Del Toro conjures up, sans CGI, with the assistance of performer Doug Jones.Read Empire's review of Pan's LabyrinthBuy the film here, 1958If Psycho (see next entry) was Hitchcock's big shocker, then Vertigo is the one that gets properly under your skin. Hittman’s previous films, It Felt like Love (2013) and Beach Rats (2017), were both coming-of-age stories. (Laughs)”, Read our review: I’m Thinking of Ending Things: Charlie Kaufman’s new nightmare surpasses all expectations, + “I don’t know how anyone could feel secure in the world as it is right now”: an interview with Charlie Kaufman. Nobody stepped aside – we all stepped up.’ It’s a point Gavron says she agrees with entirely. Then he witnesses a murder. Di classifiche riguardanti i migliori film dell’anno, del decennio o di sempre è pieno il mondo. With the help of SFX genius Rob Bottin, John Carpenter took the bones of Howard Hawks' 1951 The Thing From Another World and crafted an intense, frosty sci-fi thriller featuring Hollywood's ultimate movie monster: one that could be any of us at any time, before contorting into a genuine biological nightmare.Read Empire's review of The ThingBuy the film here, 2006And any argument about whether or not American remakes can ever be better than the foreign-language originals should be ended pretty quickly by mentioning this movie. Each has children drawn into natural wonderlands of myth and magic, into adventures about protecting and healing rather than fighting. Far more than a ‘terminal illness’ movie or even a typical coming-of-age story, Murphy’s debut captures the humanity of suffering while resisting the need for sentiment or mawkish pandering.” (David Opie, S&S online), Read our review: Babyteeth bridges teen romance and terminal illness, Where to see it: On DVD, Blu-ray and digital platforms. Like the adult animation of Bill Plympton or the teen-skewed anime of Shinkai Makoto, Moore’s visual style is instantly identifiable. Shot in black-and-white 35mm, The Forty-Year-Old Version paints a loving portrait of parts of New York City that aren’t represented with such care, if at all, in narrative films of this scale. People with families, hobbies, traditions and songs. Con-trick movies, from House of Games (1987) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) to Matchstick Men (2003), usually end with a last-minute switcheroo, and Kajillionaire is no exception. Of course, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) eventually does the right thing, but watching him make both the Resistance and the Nazis squirm right up to the final scene is truly joyous.Read Empire's review of CasablancaBuy the film here, 1966Sergio Leone sets three renegades against each other in a treasure hunt backdropped against the chaos and madness of the American Civil War. It also revealed that Javier Bardem makes an awesome villain; ever since he played No Country's cold-blooded assassin Anton Chigurh, Hollywood can't stop making him the bad guy.Read Empire's review of No Country For Old MenBuy the film now, 2004Before its release, you might have been forgiven for thinking it would be Spaced: The Movie. (Kieron Corless). Menu. “The biggest influence is Cronenberg Sr’s eXistenz (1999), which is similarly concerned with assassins who risk losing themselves in the personae that they adopt as their gaming ‘skins’ – and that film’s lead actress Jennifer Jason Leigh is here cast as Tasya’s handler Girder, a once skilled Possessor now determined to pass down the mantle to the next generation.” (Anton Bitel), Read our review: Possessor sends Andrea Riseborough out of her mind. Nolan’s brainteaser builds a rollercoaster spectacle out of temporal spaghetti. A down-on-her-luck New York playwright, desperate for a breakthrough before she turns 40, reinvents herself as rapper RadhaMUSprime. It’s really constructed to take the audience somewhere.” (S&S, December), Read our review: David Byrne’s American Utopia doesn’t burn down the house, + “If there was a song Spike Lee loved, we’d see him pop up in the aisle”: David Byrne on his concert doc American Utopia, Where to see it: On digital platforms from 14 December and on disc from 11 January 2021. It was aided no end by a toweringly charismatic central performance (with very few lines of dialogue spoken) from Ryan Gosling, who improbably rocked a silver, quilted silk jacket with a gold scorpion on the back. Actually, it is a team of a hundred women who took centre-stage, and it wasn’t given to us or sacrificed for us. The opening salvo, featuring archive footage from America and Vietnam from the late 60s and 70s, including speeches by Muhammad Ali, Kwame Ture and Angela Davis, feels like it could be for a Black Lives Matter rally. Josephine Decker’s adaptation of Susan Scarf Merrell’s teasingly fantasy-refracted portrait of the supernatural horror writer Shirley Jackson, played here by Elisabeth Moss. Oscar.Read Empire's review of The Return Of The KingBuy the film here, 1986The genius of James Cameron's self-penned Alien follow-up was to not try to top the original as one of the greatest ever horror movies. ), starred that schlubby fellah from Parks And Rec, and was directed by the guy who turned Michael Rooker into a giant slug-monster in Slither. Ray Parker Jr was right. We said: “The film reminds us, at a moment when empathy often feels in short supply, that the real boats crossing the North Sea are carrying real people. But that's also a major reason why it connected – Spirited Away is accessible, but nothing about it feels watered down. “Maybe Shirley does not quite come together here because such a large part of what forms her has been left out. (Here, the few encounters with men tend to the fleeting and show them broadly as irritating hurdles for the female protagonists to surmount.) Grounded by nuanced, unhistrionic work from leads Sopé Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku as the married Majur couple, His House shifts focus from exterior threat to the cracks in the marriage, exacerbated by disagreements about assimilation – though at the heart of the horror is a particular, personal crime which must be atoned for. As the movie year winds down, I would like to express my gratitude to Martin Scorsese. Martin Scorsese's Boston-based reinterpretation of Wai-Keung Lau and Alan Mak's Hong Kong-set double-infiltrator crime drama Infernal Affairs is both respectful and unafraid to layer on extra detail. Luis López Carrasco’s film is shot in a bustling workers’ café-bar in the city centre where it gathers the testimonies of people who lived through the period. In a sense we were coming up together on parallel paths, me in music, him in film and somehow I got invited to the premiere of Do the Right Thing… It also features some of cinema's best-shot fights; hard to believe that before Scorsese, no director thought to put the camera inside the ring...Read Empire's review of Raging BullBuy the film now, 2001Jean-Pierre Jeunet's beautifully whimsical Parisian rom-com succeeded not only because he found the perfect good-deed performing imp-girl lead in Audrey Tautou, but also because his numerous surreal touches truly gave a sense that there is always magic in the world around us — if we only know how to look for it.Read Empire's review of AmelieBuy the film now, 1997James Cameron doesn't do things by halves. Things are so awful, so who cares where my career is? Loss is reconfigured cleverly as a gain, and two queer women are not so much swindled as left with the blessing of a blank slate, freed from the blueprints for family life that have held them back so far.” (Ryan Gilbey), Read our review: Kajillionaire: Miranda July pulls off a salty family con drama. In the most artful and inventive way.Read Empire's review of VertigoBuy the film here, 1960The movie Universal originally didn't want Hitchcock to make not only turned out to be a hands-down masterpiece but also effectively invented a genre: the psycho-killer slasher movie. The point is this: Akira Kurosawa's epic, 16th century-set drama about a motley gang of warriors uniting to save a village from bandits couldn't be more influential. Koreeda’s naturalistic drama sees Catherine Deneuve play a monstrous movie star and Juliette Binoche the daughter outraged by her euphemistic memoir. The Irishman, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Pain & Glory and Parasite jostle for top spot in our poll of the best movies of 2019 – but the winner is an uncompromised and deeply moving film by a British … What we don’t do is become inured to the idea of his death; conversely, we attach to his living image more, a process that Johnson acknowledges and encourages by keeping us guessing until the final hour about Dick’s actual condition.” (Hannah McGill), Read our review: Dick Johnson Is Dead: resurrections beat the blues. ” (Alex Ramon), Read our review: Mangrove relays Black British struggles of the past, + Mangrove gives voice to Black British Power, + “These are the untold stories that make up our nation”: Steve McQueen on Small Axe, Where to see it: On BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime. Film Cast e Troupe Liste Premi & Festival ... Utilizziamo i cookie per offrirti la migliore … In a narrative masterstroke, it parallels Michael's (Al Pacino) consolidation of power with the ascendance of his Dad, Vito (Robert De Niro); the triumph of one paving the way to the utter corruption of the other.Read Empire's review of The Godfather Part IIBuy the film here, 1985Part science-fiction caper, part generational culture-clash movie, part weirdo family drama (in which the hero has to rescue his own existence after his mother falls in lust with him, eww), Back To The Future still manages to be timeless despite being so rooted in, well, time. (A milkshake-drinking vampire, if you feel like mixing our metaphor with his own.) But her third feature is fully mature: like Ryder’s lovely, clouded, wise-before-her-years gaze, it is informed by an almost ancient weariness at the way we treat young women, and the way the resilience and agency of girlhood is so frequently overlooked or condescended to. During a session at the Based on a True Story (Boats) conference that I co-programme at the University of Missouri, which runs concurrently with the True/False Film Fest in March, Ross brother Turner talked about searching for the perfect bar on the perfect night, a desire to conjure a deeply true feeling that couldn’t be ‘found’ like a news story. Blending autobiographical and observational modes, and interweaving the past and the present, the film offers both an epic and an everyday account of incarceration’s thefts – of time; of intimacy. We said: “First-time director Remi Weekes, working from a story by Felicity Evans and Toby Venables, doesn’t take the comparatively standard approach of establishing a social-realistic context and then letting the supernatural seep in. It would be overpraising Kajillionaire to claim that it is the equal of anything by Aki Kaurismäki but there’s a similar blend here of the bleak and the blithe. We all still want one.Read Empire's review of DriveBuy the film here, 2000Ridley Scott's comeback (after a bad run with 1492, White Squall and G.I. We said: “The film seems to embody Indian cinema in the contemplative tradition of Satyajit Ray or Mani Kaul, but also makes room for the lurid realities of Indian TV talent shows. The brothers evoked Lionel Rogosin’s seminal classic On the Bowery (1955), embraced the collaborative, broke any made-up rules they needed to and used cinema to salvage nonfiction. It centres on a man who inherits his grandmother’s house and turns it into a Black socialist collective. Check. While openly fictionalised portraits owe negotiable fealty to biographical truth, it’s startling for a film concerned with the impact of domestic and reproductive labour on women’s intellectual and creative lives to erase the fact that its protagonist’s real-life embodiment had four children. The sheen of fragmented authenticity, combined with the fraught lockdown context in which it’s been viewed, has led to Host being received as a minor DIY classic – a Blair Witch Project for the Covid era.” (Adam Nayman), Read our review: Host: Zoom-bombing with the astral plane, + “We did a real séance on Zoom”: Rob Savage on video call horror Host. Films Worth Arguing About. The not-too-distant future had never looked cooler than in Ridley Scott's sci-fi gumshoe noir, and we're not sure it ever will.Read Empire's review of Blade RunnerBuy the film here, 1974Often cited as the greatest-ever sequel (though you've voted The Empire Strikes Back into that position here), TGPII, as no-one's ever called it, is more accurately described as a seprequel. He knows. Its spot-on casting hardly hurt: Russell Crowe as conscience-discovering bruiser Bud White; Guy Pearce as ramrod rookie Ed Exley; and Kevin Spacey as the sleazy, sharp-suited "Trash Can" Jack Vincennes.Read Empire's review of LA ConfidentialBuy the film here, 2001Richard Kelly's time-looping, sci-fi-horror-blending high-school movie is the very definition of a cult movie. The brothers have long embraced the elasticity of the form; the ‘realness’ of their second film Tchoupitoulas was questioned in various corners, and their third documentary Western was a genre film with all the constructedness that implies. We said: “The economic realities of the Dynes’ daily routine are shot through with comic originality. I 10 migliori film di Carlo Verdone. Reichardt gives us a deliciously laconic vision of the pioneer American melting pot with this playful, poignant fable of a couple of furtive cakebakers in 1820s Oregon. Not only did he use impressive new film-making techniques that make it feel like a movie far younger than its 76 years, but its power-corrupts story still resonates loudly. Is it really better than the original? This model isn’t a kind of feminist utopia – it’s a necessity.’” (Simran Hans), Read our review: Rocks follows a London girl growing up fast and letting go slowly, + “We gave them too much power”: how Rocks became a gem by giving its young cast license to shine. And yet George Lucas' cocktail of fantasy, sci-fi, Western and World War II movie remains as culturally pervasive as ever. As ever with Hong, and even in the context of one of his more direct and readable works, a pleasurable elusiveness pervades matters. Its use of detail the paraphernalia of pioneer existence – is exquisite. But if you really insist on only seeing one David Lean movie, then make sure it's Lawrence Of Arabia, the movie that put both the "sweeping" and the "epic" into "sweeping epic" with its breath-taking depiction of T.E. Cast: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Jun Kunimura. The initial impression that the film takes place, like the novel, towards the start of the last century is contradicted through subtle anachronisms. Instead, he transplanted the Alien (and, significantly, Ripley) to a different genre, and created one of the greatest ever action movies. July sets aside her usual kooky style with this piquant story of the Dynes, a breadline grifter family. Wells’s classic, emphasising the fear of being watched. So it paid off — especially as this Terminator was just as much a student in human behaviour (with John Connor his teacher) as guardian, with some darkly comical results ("He'll live"). The film is at its most effective and affecting not when it attempts the high drama of unsolved murders (the two women briefly involve themselves in a real-life case presented as influential on Jackson’s 1951 novel Hangsaman), extramarital affairs and suicide attempts, but when it depicts more subtle and intimate forms of betrayal and manipulation. As ever, though, QT's at his best in claustrophobic situations, with the tavern scene ramping up the tension to almost unbearable levels.Read Empire's review of Inglourious BasterdsBuy the film here, 2014If Damien Chazelle's semi-autobiographical drama taught us anything, it's that jazz drumming is more hazardous to learn than base jumping. Alongside McDormand and David Strathairn are a host of non-professionals, including Bob Wells, a guru of contemporary American nomadism. Which is pretty cool, when you think about it.Read Empire's review of Guardians Of The GalaxyBuy the film here, 1993Spielberg's masterpiece, hands down. A radio operator and a presenter discover a menacing sound on the airwaves in this scintillating retro UFO tale. It was an honour to be there. Especially that "Singin' In The Rain" sequence, which remains one cinema's most deeply upsetting.Read Empire's review of A Clockwork OrangeBuy the film here, 1996Joel and Ethan Coen's snowy crime comedy is the best example of the 'crap criminal' subgenre, reminding us that wrongdoers are very rarely slick, professional types, and more usually people who are either inept or just winging it.