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Broth Of The Gods

Alexandre Rockwell's graceful '92 satire about a wannabe new-wave film-maker

Like A Rat Out Of Hell

Crispin Glover scintillates in otherwise unremarkable horror remake

Shaun Of The Dead

Suburban horror comedy from the creators of warped sitcom Spaced. When a mysterious plague strikes London, Shaun (Simon Pegg) has to battle hordes of blood-crazed zombies to rescue his mum and girlfriend. The zombie sequences pastiche the genre, adding genuinely witty slapstick, and the script is as good as Spaced or better. A delight.

What’s New Pussycat?

Definitively 'zany' '60s farce, written by Woody Allen, with Peter O'Toole as a Paris fashion editor inundated with willing, eager ladies. This sends him to mad shrink Peter Sellers, who's jealous. Meanwhile, Allen longs for O'Toole's fiancée. Basically an excuse for thousands of hit-and-miss jokes, strippers, much daft over-acting and Ursula Andress. Fantastic.

The Station Agent

In a New Jersey backwater, Fin (Peter Dinklage), a dwarf fed up with the way the world reacts to him, moves into the derelict train station he's inherited and tries to ignore offers of friendship from a lonely snack-van man (Bobby Cannavale) and a divorced artist (Patricia Clarkson). Tom McCarthy's gem has something like the drift and precision of early Jarmusch—nothing much happens, except life.

The Charge Of The Light Brigade

Tony Richardson's 1968 version of the military disaster mirrors the decade it was made in, with a strong anti-war theme. David Hemmings is a young trooper, Trevor Howard his brutal commanding officer and John Gielgud the high-ranking buffoon who orders the attack. An ambitious mess, but still compelling.

Luis Buñuel Box Set

Three of Buñuel's berserk best, ridiculing bourgeois values and 'normal' sexuality. Diary Of A Chambermaid (1964) sees Jeanne Moreau as the social climber playing on the fantasies of the affluent. The Milky Way (1970) follows two tramps on a pilgrimage who encounter loopy heretics and priests. Belle De Jour (1967), with Catherine Denëuve, is, of course, the strangest, most haunting erotica of its age.

Zatoichi

Takeshi "Beat" Kitano goes blond as well as blind to resurrect the long-running samurai avenger, and has more fun with it than original star Shintarö Katsu ever imagined. Outrageously bloody, it's a kind of syncopated slice-'n'-dice. Sure, Takeshi could have done it with his eyes closed—and does-but it's his most satisfying effort since Hana-bi.

Arizona Dream

Director Emir Kusturica assembled Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis, Faye Dunaway, Lili Taylor and Vincent Gallo in the desert and waited for inspiration. Quite what he was on can only be imagined. The movie has its ups and downs, but does boast two prime pieces of Gallo-ana: a reenactment of Cary Grant's escape from a cropduster, and a classic set-to between De Niro and Pesci with Vinnie playing both parts. Mad.

And God Created Woman

Roger Vadim brazenly raised the bar for unashamed hot nymphette action with his landmark 1956 debut, starring his then wife Brigitte Bardot as a horny St Tropez orphan who drives sophisticated men to violent destruction by rubbing her own breasts, lifting up her skirt and dancing with black men. The Betty Blue of its day.
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