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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.

Now that Oasis have been written into British rock history alongside The Beatles, The Sex Pistols and all those other elder statesmen they so publicly admired and absorbed, 1984's Definitely Maybe survives as a revered, although sometimes distant, memory. These days when Oasis play Glastonbury, there are waves of excitement but no huge hullabaloo about their perfunctory parade of greatest hits, and their albums have ceased to generate the expectation, the queues around the block in Oxford Street, that was once the norm.

It wasn't until Frank Tashlin's 1956 screwball comedy, starring Jayne Mansfield at her most buxom, that Hollywood finally exploited the nascent rock'n'roll boom. The result is a Technicolor feast of Gene Vincent, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran in their hip-swivelling prime, rivalled only by Julie London's (literally) haunting shiver through "Cry Me A River". Camp, corny, but classic.

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.

Talk about narrow fucking escapes. Halfway through one of the interviews with Brian De Palma that make up the raft of extras on this special edition of his lavish gangster epic, the director mentions that Paramount's first choice for the central part of Eliot Ness was Mel Gibson. It's an appalling thought. I mean, imagine Mel hamming it up here, his narcissistic gurning turning De Palma's operatic vision into mugging farce. Fortunately, Mel had other commitments, and the role of Ness, as De Palma had always intended, went to the then relatively unknown Kevin Costner.

The title translates as "I remember" in dialect, but Fellini's visionary 1973 work (an Oscar winner) wasn't the rosy nostalgia about childhood he'd originally planned. His unique, untethered imagination bleeds into every frame of these '30s-set seaside snapshots, with—of course—sex and religion figuring prominently. Warring parents, twisted priests, Fascists, fantasy, farce and melancholy. As they say, very Fellini.

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.

After falling out with Tarantino over the credits for Pulp Fiction, Roger Avary made this violent Paris-set heist movie in a bid to establish his creative autonomy. It was hammered by critics, who dubbed it "Reservoir Frogs" and dismissed Avary as derivative. Zoe's better than its reputation suggests, though, and has the added pleasure of Jean-Hugues Anglade going spectacularly bonkers as a smack-shooting gang leader.

With grim, grubby retro-future styling, Michael Radford's movie, originally released in the eponymous year, is the best adaptation of George Orwell's feel-bad totalitarian parable. As reluctant rebel Winston Smith, John Hurt is perfect—looks like he's spent his life in misery. The revelation is Richard Burton, weighed down with strange love, melancholy and menace in his final role as O'Brien, the investigator who takes Hurt under his wing to crush him.

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.