Tony Richardson's 1961 take on Shelagh Delaney's kitchen-sink drama of schoolgirl pregnancy is a travesty. Delaney wrote her play at 18, but its sweet sadness—heroine Jo's taste of honey is brief indeed—is obliterated by the director's clumping Brit-new-wave clichés. Fairground anyone? Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin remain facially memorable, but acting honours go to Dora Bryan.
Remembered now as Michael Caine's debut, playing a posh officer opposite Stanley Baker, Cy Endfield's epic recreates the massacre of the Welsh redcoats by the Zulus at Rorke's Drift. Jack Hawkins runs the gamut from demented missionary to drunk, and the battle scenes are terrific.
Four magnificent hours of documentary narrated by Kris Kristofferson which trace the history of indigenous American music throughout the 20th century. Thrilling ancient footage of Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, BB King, Woody Guthrie and dozens of others drawn from the ranks of the true pioneers of blues, gospel, cajun, folk and country makes this an essential purchase for anyone with a passion for America's musical heritage.
Highly absorbing film about respectable family man Vincent (Aurelien Recoing) who, after losing his job as a consultant, invents a prestigious new career and betrays close friends with fictitious investment deals. Juggling fact with fiction creates ever-spiralling tensions until Vincent's double life closes in around him. A deceptively profound drama.
One of the great Sidney Lumet's thoroughly hypnotic New York movies, where you can smell the sweat of the tension and the barely-repressed panic in the streets. An Oscar-nominated Al Pacino is in hell-for-leather form. Made in '73 and based on Peter Maas' book of the trials faced by real-life cop Frank Serpico, who ended an 11-year career by blowing the whistle on his colleagues, it follows Pacino as the committed crusader exposing corruption in the force. He's abused, ostracised, and ultimately has to flee the country.
The quintessential '90s indie band take a creditable tilt at posterity on this two-disc set. Thirteen delightfully silly videos and two live sets provide the bulk, but the real gem is a detailed and affectionate documentary (reminiscent of Fugazi's Instrument) tracing Pavement from shambolic beginnings to nominally slicker stardom, of a kind. For connoisseurs: plenty of lunatic first drummer Gary Young and Stephen Malkmus interviewed in a sauna.
Multiple Oscar-winner (beating out Scorsese's Raging Bull) from 1980, directed calmly (and, for some, soporifically) by Robert Redford. It's a sombre, actorly affair in which wealthy Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore grieve for their son's death; his brother Timothy Hutton blames and shames. An early, earnest look at the dysfunctional family: American Beauty without the laughs.
Reissued as part of the Superbit series, Barry Sonnenfeld's witty and energetic spoof fields a wonderful tearning in sassy Will Smith and sardonic Tommy Lee Jones. "Searching for a handle on the moment?" asks the latter when the rookie alien investigator is first confronted with the tentacled weirdos from outer space. Fave moment: Noisy Cricket.
In 2054 murder is obsolete thanks to Precrime, whose precognitive psychics enable police to arrest killers before they can kill. Then Precrime detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is himself accused of planning a murder, and only the psychic Agatha (Samantha Morton) can clear him. Spielberg's masterful sci-fi suspense turns Philip K Dick's short story into something Hitchcockian and technologically dazzling.
