Baby Face

1933, US, directed by Alfred E. Green

More than seventy years after it was released, Baby Face is still remarkable for its blunt attitude to sex: I can't think of many films that take the idea of sleeping one's way to the top quite so literally (and none with anything approaching the wit of the scene where the camera tracks up the length of a skyscraper towards the executive suites).

The film begins in fairly typical Depression-era territory, inside a smoky speakeasy a stone's throw away from a looming steel-plant, where even the employed seem bone-weary; Barbara Stanwyck, though, isn't willing to settle for a job in her father's shebeen and when opportunity knocks she heads for New York and a succession of progressively wealthier men. The pacing is breakneck - the entire story is told inside 75 minutes - with Stanwyck's progression a little too simple (there are coincidences aplenty, and a group of men hopelessly unable to learn from the fates of their predecessors), but the actress is at the top of her game, and absolutely convincing as a ruthlessly ambitious young woman. The opening is interesting for the friendship she shares with a young black woman (played by Theresa Harris, here getting a rare onscreen credit), though once the pair land in New York her friend is quickly condemned to domestic service. It's also worth looking out for an extremely youthful John Wayne pop up as one of the early saps on whom Stanwyck tramples; his voice is absolutely unmistakable even if his attire is an unfamiliar suit and tie.

Faat Kiné

2000, Senegal, directed by Ousmane Sembène

Notwithstanding the fact that there's an awful lot going on here - commentary on the status of women in Senegalese society, on that country's post-colonial legacy, on the backdrop of the 2000 elections - Faat Kiné has to count as something of a disappointment by Ousmane Sembène's remarkably high standards. That was my impression in 2001, and if anything that sense is heightened on repeat viewings of the film, which highlight the rather schematic plotting, and some of the less subtle aspects of Sembène's commentary on social issues (it's quite a contrast to his previous film, Guelwaar).

Some of the reviews by well-regarded critics seem to me more than a touch patronising, since they fail to engage with the film properly, heaping the kind of unalloyed but uninformative praise that Sembène himself would no doubt skewer if New York critics were of any interest to him. Unlike many of his previous films, the social commentary sometimes stops the film in its tracks, as if to say, 'now we'll talk about AIDS', for example, rather than being interwoven into the text itself. Although Sembène also makes interesting use of colour (in both locations and costumes), and has an eye for small incidents of street life that give a vivid sense of contemporary Dakar, the film isn't as aesthetically pleasing as most of his work, either; it has the flat feel of a pretty ordinary television soap at times, with several unattractive and distracting zoom shots that are a striking contrast to the smooth camera movements elsewhere in his work.

Water

2005, Canada/India, directed by Deepa Mehta

The title of Deepa Mehta's film functions on a great many levels, beyond the obvious literal importance of the river that plays a major role in the spiritual and material life of the Indian city where the film takes place. The river also operates as a division between rich and poor, something that the townspeople must cross order to access the Brahmin residences - and which the Brahmins see as a convenient barrier. But it also represents the slow, inexorable process of change that is happening in India at the time when the film is set, the late 1930s, with the rise to prominence of Gandhi, bringing with him radical ideas about the the caste system and the position of women in a deeply conservative society. The sense of fluid grace also extends to the limpid filmmaking itself, with a narrative that moves insistently yet serenely forward.

Deepa Mehta's use of colour and enclosed spaces evokes the Afghan film Osama, which also has thematic resonances in terms of its clear-eyed view of the treatment of women in a traditional society; Water focuses particularly on the plight of widows, often forced to withdraw from life following the death of their husbands. The film's main weakness is the rather schematic romance that develops between one of the widows and a politically engaged young man, which seems a little too simplistic given the fraught circumstances, while the references to Gandhi tend to re-affirm the outsider's view that he was the only voice for change in India. However, that shouldn't detract too much from the film's achievements, on the levels of both form and content, nor from the fine, humane performances from the many generations of actresses who play the widows, from elderly women to a child of seven.

I Want to Be a Pilot

2006, Kenya/Mexico/Spain, directed by Diego Quemada-Diez

Filmed in the huge Kibera slum in Nairobi, I Want to Be a Pilot seemed to me to be filling in the gaps left by The Constant Gardener, in which, for all that film's strengths, the shanties are still not the main focus. My impression proved more correct than I expected, since the film was made by a technician on Fernando Meirelles's film. It's an intriguing short, which weaves comments from 50 children into a kind of poem that comes back constantly to the title refrain. The young character at the centre of the film, Omondi, is invisible even in his own slum - passers-by ignore this small boy as he crouches in an alleyway - never mind in the wider world, but the film gives him a voice and a means to convey his hopes, though the child who plays Omondi looks tragically aware of the reality of his situation and of the exceedingly thin thread by which those hopes hang (the film can be seen online).

Partie de campagne

1936, France, directed by Jean Renoir

Although it's not even three-quarters of an hour in length, Partie de campagne has nothing of the feel of a vignette, and it's as packed with incident as any of Renoir's full-length films. It's a beautiful evocation of a very specific time and place - and a fine adaptation of an intensely atmospheric Maupassant short story (although Renoir does not reproduce Maupassant's lingering descriptions of unpleasant agricultural odours). It's also achingly romantic, both in subject matter and tone - with an air of melancholy longing that lingers long after the final credits (the film is, if anything, more melancholy than the original short story, simply because it implies a far longer period of haunted remembering). Although the setting is the late nineteeenth century, it's not hard to imagine an updated version set in the 1930s - after all, the romance of an escape from the city in favour of the countryside banks of the Loire is at the heart of films like La Belle équipe, while the evocation of a young girl's romantic - and sexual - awakening is timeless (Maupassant explicitly compares young Henriette to Shakespeare's Juliet). The one distraction is the poor quality of the subtitles, at least in the print I saw; they don't capture the film's mood properly, and omit important information.

Little Miss Sunshine

US, 2006, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

An enjoyable - and often extremely funny - comedy of modern American manners, Little Miss Sunshine makes the most of a potentially mawkish premise with smart direction and an exceptional ensemble cast, who play off each other to great effect. There's a ring of the sitcom to the film's conclusion, but the film generally transcends this with its well-etched characterisations, which are all agreeably spiky (and sometimes, particularly in Greg Kinnear's case, borderline unpleasant). Though the film obviously exaggerates familial dysfunction for comic effect, it also grounds each character in just enough reality for their foibles to remain recognisable, and anyone who's ever taken a family road trip will identify with some of the truths that come out under the tense conditions created by such excessive proximity.

Directors Dayton and Faris display quite a gift for the set-piece (the family dinner that begins the film is exquisitely discomfiting, while a later sequence involving a policeman, a stack of porn magazines and a malfunctioning horn is flat-out hilarious), and for visual jokes - but also, more surprisingly, for direction of actors, drawing pitch-perfect performances from old hands like Alan Arkin and Steve Carell as well as the young Abigail Breslin (who looks like a sunnier version of Heather Matarazzo circa Welcome to the Dollhouse).

The Saviour

2005, Australia, directed by Peter Templeman

Like many a narrative short , The Saviour has a structure that revolves around a last-minute joke that ties the action up; this film deserves its fun with a carefully plotted set-up. It's essentially a deadpan variation on the theme of revenge as a dish best served cold, in an unusual milieu: those earnest young men who go door to door to promote the way to truth and salvation (the lead character (played by Thom Campbell) is not quite sure of his calling and it's not hard to sympathize with this rather lovable loser). Writer-director Templeman has fun with the relationship between Malcolm and his American pastor (if you ever wondered what happened to Friedrich Von Trapp from The Sound of Music, actor Nicholas Hammond is alive and well in Australia), while he's already a skilled filmmaker, making clever use of editing to compress time and play with the viewer's expectations.

Le Crime de Monsieur Lange

1936, France, directed by Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir's 1930s career must surely constitute one of the most extraordinary periods of artistic production in film; he seemed to casually turn out masterpieces almost every year while constantly expanding the limits of what is possible in cinema. This 1936 feature is no exception, and is filmed in a beautifully fluid style that fits an abundance of action into a compact, comprehensible whole. It remains absolutely fresh seventy years after it was made - while simultaneously capturing, as few other films have, something of the spirit of the Popular Front, the alliance of left-wing parties that came to power in elections held a few months after the release of Renoir's film; the heady atmosphere of those years was already in the air when Renoir was filming, and the optimistic portrait of the working class's future is very much of the age.

In portraying the capitalists and those they exploit, Renoir makes use of the conceit of an apartment building - or rather a courtyard - around which all human life revolves, something that crops up quite frequently in French films of the period: René Clair made good use of the idea, while Julien Duvivier exploited a similar location to masterful effect in La Belle équipe, also from 1936, and very much a Popular Front film. The dialogue is by Jacques Prévert, and has a wonderful snap, though it's not always well-served by the workmanlike subtitles (which would, in any case, have a hard time keeping up with the pace), while the acting is almost uniformly strong. Even against that backdrop, though, Jules Berry delivers one of the great performances in French cinema, a wonderfully oily turn as the predatory boss of the publishing house around which the action centers, and who gets his comeuppance in a manner that argues for the occasional intervention of natural justice.

Salvatore Giuliano

1962, Italy, directed by Francesco Rosi

Salvatore Giuliano, the film that brought Francesco Rosi to international attention, is a fascinating examination of the career of a notorious outlaw/mafioso, as well as of the post-war history of Italy, and Sicily in particular. It's also a meditation on the problems of truth and objectivity, from both the filmmaker's and the historian's perspectives as Rosi attempts to illustrate the realities behind the events that marked Giuliano's career. To this end, the director blends voiceover narration that sets out the broader political framework (linking the strength of the mafia to other developments, including the aftermath of the Second World War in Sicily) with careful reconstructions of individual events and the trial of one of Giuliano's closest associates.

Though Rosi's aims are ultimately quite different, the influence of neo-realism is clear in the the use of the actual locations of Giuliano's life and death, while the performers are almost all non-professionals (given that the film was made just a decade or so after Giuliano's death, that must have made for an interesting filming atmosphere). The portrait of a society with a deeply conflicted and unresolved relationship with the outlaw elements in its midst is very powerful, while Rosi's critique of the northern establishment's poor understanding of the Italian south comes through unmistakably. The film is captured in beautiful black-and-white, with some striking shot choices - the overhead angle that opens the film and its counterpart, later on, that looks down on the dead Giuliano in his bed, are especially compelling.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

2005, UK, directed by Dan Ireland

Though the storyline is fairly predictable, and a little overly cute at times, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is grounded by some fine performances that keep the film from straying too far towards mush. Joan Plowright is excellent in the title role, playing an elderly woman who moves to a London hotel to retain some independence - but also, we sense, because her family views her existence as something of a burden. It's to Plowright's - and her director's - credit that she resists the urge to overplay the part, instead conveying a quiet pride and intelligence, and an enjoyably dry wit.

Plowright has able support from a group of fine British character actors playing other hotel guests (Anna Massey and Robert Lang, in his final role, are especially good), as well as from Rupert Friend, as a foppish young man for whom Mrs Palfrey becomes a surrogate grandmother. The film is in many ways about finding new families when our own doesn't quite seem to work, and there's an undercurrent of comment on the treatment of elderly relatives that lends the film a little bite to go along with the sweeter moments.

Children of Men

2006, UK/US, directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Almost from the first frames, Alfonso Cuarón's new film imagines a Britain that is the antithesis of Blake's "green and pleasant land" (and its attendant mythology), with a dystopian vision of southern England two decades hence. Throughout the film, there's a sense that the joke's on us (or at least the residents of contemporary England), given the implication that the country is already well on its way to the drab, grey, law-and-order outcome depicted here (it's a joke similar to that made, with great wit, at the beginning of the zombie film Shaun of the Dead). There are few corners of resistance remaining in this adaptation of the P.D. James novel that imagines a world twenty years after the human population has become infertile (the absence of children makes dogs and cats even more ubiquitous than is currently the case), but one seemingly ordinary day Theo Faron (Clive Owen) finds himself dragged into an underground movement years after he's abandoned politics.

The narrative force of Cuarón's film is simple and almost overwhelming: once Theo's mission, to safeguard a young woman, is explained to him the film's focus narrows in short order to just his world (though there are a few jarring moments when the camera lingers, briefly, on other events just after he's left the screen). Cuarón employs claustrophobic, sometimes hand-held camerawork to remain at Theo's side at even the most fraught moments (an extraordinary sequence inside a car, with stunt performers coming at the vehicle from all sides, and a visceral scene of battle - virtuoso displays of technique that never distract from the narrative). Now and then, the references to contemporary realities are pointed out a little over-eagerly, but for the most part those resonances are allowed to emerge organically and are all the more powerful for that. Owen is excellent in the thoroughly unglamorous lead role, while his strongest support comes from Michael Caine, riveting in his few scenes as an aging hippy.

Secondhand Lions

2003, US, directed by Tim McCanlies

Secondhand Lions makes no pretense to be anything other than a charming shaggy dog story, and as such it's very enjoyable, even if the final moments are of a sweeter tone than most of what has come before. An eccentric coming-of-age tale that puts an adolescent boy in the company of his two unsocialised uncles, it's a great vehicle for the talents of both Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, who are winningly curmudgeonly, and occasionally ornery, throughout. It's also a film with a well-developed sense of Hollywood of old: the tales (tall or perhaps true) that punctuate the film are brought to life in a manner that recalls the swordplay fun of stars like Errol Flynn, with the film cheerfully foregoing realism in recounting the Boy's Own adventures of the two uncles in their youth.

Haley Joel Osment is a little awkward, not yet an adult actor, but his two co-stars and a busy plot provide plenty of distraction from those growing pains, while the way that director McCanlies keeps a veil over the truthfulness of the uncles (before giving in at the very end) lends the film a little edge that keeps things interesting from the perspective of the adult viewer.

Afrique, je te plumerai

1993, Cameroon/France/Germany, directed by Jean-Marie Teno

After several films that addressed very specific problems in Cameroonian society (such as the availability of clean water), Jean-Marie Teno tackles a much broader canvas here, that of the post-colonial legacy - or, more accurately, the view that independence has simply brought a new form of subjugation for the population, with a new cast of characters in power. Teno uses a wide variety of visual materials, including interviews, archival materials (particularly deeply paternalistic colonial-era newsreels), broadly didactic sequences and even the occasional staged scene to assemble a multi-layered picture of the colonial legacy in his country. His film also functions as an explicit effort to restore key historical figures and achievements (particularly leaders of the anti-colonial union movement) to their correct place in the discourse, while giving a sense of contemporary forms of resistance to the state and all that implies.

Originally conceived as an examination of publishing in Cameroon, Teno widened his focus during the course of filming, and although his critique of both the colonists and those who inherited their mantle is powerful, the film does bear some of the hallmarks of a draft, particularly in its slightly awkward structure, which focuses on books and publishing until an abrupt turn towards darker material at the halfway point. This is especially distracting on first viewing the film, which grows in power with a second look.

The Stepford Wives

US, 2004, directed by Frank Oz

Given the reviews that accompanied the release of The Stepford Wives, the actual film seems far better than we have any right to expect, particularly in its entertaining first hour. In updating the 1975 original, the film goes for the slightly wacky comedy tone that's familiar from previous Frank Oz outings, and which acts as a showcase for zingers from the pen of scriptwriter Paul Rudnick, who's much better at catty dialogue than he is at plotting (though there is also a surprisingly serious, and absorbing, scene when Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick discuss the state of their marriage). In keeping with the breezy tone, the production design and costumes burst with colour and energy; there's no doubt that the behind-the-scenes personnel had fun with the palette. Unfortunately, the tone becomes much less certain in the final half-hour, which bears confusing traces of re-writing, with a resolution that's unsatisfying. Nicole Kidman is much better here than in her subsequent foray into remake territory (there's a brilliant moment where we watch her react to the news that she's lost her job), while Bette Midler - who looks fabulous - provides some amusing support.

Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon

2005, South Africa, directed by Khalo Matabane

A drama-documentary hybrid, Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon starts off in somewhat confused fashion, before gathering itself and building to an often absorbing portrait of contemporary South Africa as a migrant destination, with many of the dispossessed arriving in the country after experiences that challenged even those who have come through the apartheid system. The initial confusion is perhaps appropriate, as we follow a rather lost young man in the Johannesburg park where he spends his afternoons sitting and trying to make sense of the world around him. A brief encounter with a young Somali woman, who tells him a profoundly moving story of loss and suffering, suddenly gives him focus and energy, and he assembles a rich collection of immigrant portraits as he searches for Fatima, the Somali woman.

The fictional framework is of the thinnest cloth, and functions entirely as a pretext for the interviews, which are with genuine migrants and refugees (from a bewildering variety of locations: Ethiopia, Uganda, DR Congo, Mozambique, Gaza, South Korea, the former Yugoslavia and so on); many of them are fascinating and pose difficult questions about national identity and South Africa's position and responsibilities on its own continent. The refugees often place South Africa in an unexpectedly privileged position when measured against some of its neighbours, despite its own troubled history, though the film doesn't minimise any of the experiences described.

King Kong (2005)

2005, US/New Zealand, directed by Peter Jackson

After the remarkable The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong is an inevitable comedown for Peter Jackson, not least because it doesn't have the sense that he was the first filmmaker to give true life to a particular story. Here he's competing, throughout, with the 1933 original. Although he has far more money at his disposal, and he almost doubles the running time, Jackson, for all his filmmaking skill, can't match the consuming weirdness of the original, while the appearance, in the interim, of Jurassic Park robs the 'lost world' sequences of much of their magic; throughout the film, there's an overwhelming sense that we've been here before (sometimes with less polish, to be sure, though the relatively creaky 1933 special effects are part of the original's appeal for modern viewers).

Despite all of that weight, the new King Kong remains entertaining: there's a tremendous energy to much of the narrative, and Jackson is exceptionally skilled at juggling the parallel storylines on Skull Island. That said, the editing shears could have been used far more liberally in some of the over-extended set-pieces; there's a sequence that involves dinosaurs, a giant ape, an imperilled actress and some very strong vines that is but one repetitious example (that the critics, for the most part, warmly welcomed King Kong and dismissed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, with its clever action set-pieces, seems to me a strange paradox). On the human side, Jackson does a decent job of capturing Carl Denham's flaws and his unfailing ability to destroy all he loves, whereas he's less capable of updating the gloriously strange ape-woman relationship bequeathed him by the original.

Beautiful Thing

1996, UK, directed by Hettie MacDonald

Beautiful Thing is a strong entry in a cycle of 1990's British films that moved beyond (often dour) kitchen-sink realism to take a more upbeat, hopeful look at aspects of working class life; this film is especially unusual in tackling the theme of gay teens coming to an understanding of themselves. The two boys, Jamie and Ste, at the heart of the story live in a London tower block, and Beautiful Thing narrates their experiences over one memorable summer. Here, the flats are a relatively peaceful enclave, with general racial harmony and a strong sense of community, but homophobia is alive and well, with nasty slurs slung thick and fast as local suspicions are raised.

Glen Berry and Scott Neal (who went to the same theatre school) are excellent as Jamie and Ste, respectively, capturing the boys' conflicted feelings with a convincing mix of sweetness, vulnerability and hostility; director Hettie MacDonald's touch with the other actors is equally assured, with winning performances from Linda Henry (as Jamie's mum), Tameka Empson (as their corrosive, Mama Cass-loving neighbour) and Ben Daniels (as Jamie's mum's beau). Although the film is undoubtedly a little schematic - overall, coming out has rarely seemed this easy - it's got exceptional charm, telling its story with wit and an enjoyable sense of place; it seems a shame, then, that it's ghettoised for most viewers by appearing in the 'gay interest' section of the video store when it belongs with every other exuberant youthful romance.

The Departed

2006, US, directed by Martin Scorsese

From the opening frames, The Departed gives the impression that this Scorsese doing 'Scorsese', returning to the gangland territory of some of his most distinctive work, amping up the editing and adding yet more interwoven layers such that at times, it's like watching The Godfather or, for that matter, GoodFellas with the fast-forward button on. While Scorsese's always seemed absolutely assured in the Italian-American milieu, his take on Irish-American gangsters in Boston lacks the same conviction, and often spills into cliché; for all of the repetitious shots of Boston's golden State House dome, the film also lacks the remarkable sense of place that marked Infernal Affairs, the slick Hong Kong picture which Scorsese remakes here.

The remake isn't a shot-by-shot re-creation, of course: William Monahan's script adds characters, removes and then adds plot turns (particularly an altered conclusion) and throws in so many expletives that the film sometimes verges on self-parody (the opening voiceover is like a more profane re-tread of some of the sentiments in Mean Streets). The film adds about 50 minutes to the original's lean running time, much of it because the gangland boss played by Jack Nicholson occupies a much inflated place in comparison to the the Hong Kong version, which is presumably the price you pay for casting Jack in the role rather than Ray Winstone; the latter is quietly excellent as Jack's right-hand-man. Nicholson is in full-blown over-the-top mode and Scorsese makes no effort to reign him in, which seriously unbalances the picture. Much better are Matt Damon and, especially, Leonardo DiCaprio, who is absolutely convincing as an undercover cop internalising his experiences to the point that he is eaten away from within; he's the acting standout, and the biggest reason to see the film.

Caché

2005, France/Austria/Germany, directed by Michael Haneke

Opening like a conventional thriller, Caché quickly moves beyond genre expectations and takes up many threads that mark Haneke's previous work: a concern with representation; a dissection of the modern sense of anomie; and acute discomforts onscreen and for the viewer. Caché begins with a family's discovery that someone is watching them - and sending them videotapes to prove the point. As in the film scenes of Code Inconnu, this allows Haneke to play with our expectations such that we're never quite sure what is a 'real' and what is the taped version of that reality; these sequences unspool at some length, compelling the audience to become absolutely complicit in the voyeurism. Haneke offers no explicit explanation for the events depicted, but the film reminded me of J.G. Ballard's 1988 novella Running Wild, deeply concerned with issues of surveillance and youthful (mis)behaviour.

I was struck by the way in which Georges (Daniel Auteuil) repeats almost verbatim the words of his counterpart Georges in Code inconnu when absolving himself from any real blame in a childhood incident at the core of the film. Haneke uses that incident to pose difficult questions about where individual responsibility ends. Those past occurrences relate partly to the events of October 17, 1961, when the Paris police killed as many as 200 Algerians, events brought to public attention through the efforts of writers - especially Didier Daeninckx - and filmmakers. The cast is exceptionally strong; Auteuil has grown into darker material like this after starting out in some very lightweight fare, while Juliette Binoche is reliably excellent. The supporting work is equally strong, with, for me, Maurice Bénichou and Annie Girardot doing some of their finest work here.

Code inconnu

2000, France/Germany/Romania, directed by Michael Haneke
By Haneke's rigorous standards, Code inconnu counts as his most optimistic work, a rich, multi-layered portrait of intersecting lives in a Europe dealing with new realities that exist within and at its borders. As in many of his other films, the Western characters are caught in a paralysing anomie, their lives riven through with banal rhythms (Haneke seems to have a particular distaste for the supermarket), but here there's a clear sense of a path of escape from that suffocating routine, a path of some hopefulness (in contrast to the solution seen in The Seventh Continent).

In weaving what he terms 'incomplete tales', Haneke chooses to film each scene more or less continuously, with minimal cutting, subjecting the audience to sustained takes that have a sometimes hypnotic power. The second sequence, for example, is an extraordinary virtuoso take along a busy street, but in the contrast to the showmanship of a De Palma or even a Scorsese, the effect here is to highlight the unity of life on the street rather than to draw attention to itself. As ever, Haneke shows great skill in getting underneath the viewer's skin, confronting us with ordinary, unspoken discomforts that have tremendous power when given form on the screen, and he's blessed with an outstanding cast, not least Juliette Binoche in one of her strongest performances.

Haughey

2005, Ireland, produced/directed by Niamh Sammon for RTE

A four-part documentary made for RTE, Haughey is an essential addition to the growing body of work concerning this most divisive of public figures, the dominant figure in Irish political life since the late 1960s. Although the series was screened a year before Charles J. Haughey's death, it has the air of a blunt obituary, particularly given that the former Taoiseach is not interviewed. As with any decent obit, it's a balanced account, making clear his accomplishments in a number of areas (especially while Minister for Finance, from 1966-1970, and during his third and final stint as Taoiseach from 1987-1992, when the country finally grappled with its crippling debt burden, and took real steps towards peace in the North), but pulling no punches on his overweening ambitions and the constant questions about his lifestyle and finances that ultimately led to his downfall and utter disgrace (though not his impoverishment; indeed, the end of his career in public life was also the beginning of a life of true wealth given how he was able to profit from the property boom in Ireland).

While the entire series is absorbing, there are particular highlights: the 1982 GUBU period, inevitably, given the serial skulduggery that punctuated Haughey's brief term as Taoiseach in that year; the breathtaking 1990 betrayal of loyal supporter and friend Brian Lenihan in the presidential election controversy (some of the roughly contemporaneous footage of the sickly Lenihan is genuinely disturbing); and the 1992 events that led to Haughey's resignation. In contrast to all of the shenanigans, there are moments of courage, too; though you're never supposed to like a Minister for Finance, even a former one, Charlie McCreevy won my grudging admiration for his 1982 backbench revolt.

The format is standard for episodic TV documentary, with a strictly chronological approach that blends voiceover narration with contemporary footage, radio and television snippets, and dozens of talking heads. The gallery includes family members, businessmen (few improving their public images), government officials, politicians (in addition to the aforementioned McCreevy, Desmond O'Malley and Mary O'Rourke are especially good), journalists, and academics. For his part, longtime adviser and confidant (and driver) P.J. Mara does nothing to throw off the vaguely sinister image fixed in amber by Dermot Morgan's legendary turn as Haughey on the Scrap Saturday radio show, whereas Pádraig Flynn is, on camera at least, a surprising hatchet man; he comes across as somewhat frightening in the third installment, but looks marginally better by the conclusion despite pocketing a donation from a businessman who 'said he liked me'.

Haughey's dominance of his era and his misbehaviour are by now well-known, so perhaps the key achievement of the series is the manner in which it pins down his divisiveness, especially within his own party, which was almost torn asunder (that Haughey's successor as leader of Fianna Fáil, Albert Reynolds is reduced, on camera, to tears when recounting old events speaks volumes about the passions raised). That polarising effect is undoubtedly critical to the continued fascination his life (private and public) exerts.

La Commare secca

1962, Italy, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci's debut feature narrates, from multiple angles, the aftermath of the death of a prostitute on the rundown outskirts of Rome. The debt to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon is obvious - as it is in more or less any film that employs this structure - but the film, with a script by Bertolucci, Sergio Citti and Pier Paolo Pasolini, transcends this limitation with its sense of place and time, that is, the slums of Rome in the early 1960's. The post-war building boom is apparent in the background, but the marginalised characters who populate the film lead lives little changed, at least on the economic level, since the 1930's; there's an added poignancy now in our knowledge of a city (and country) on the verge of enormous upheaval.

The film is essentially a police procedural shot through with shades of neo realism, filmed in often rundown locations with many non-professionals. It's remarkably assured for a 21-year-old director, who is already displaying considerable technical competence (there's a beautiful shot when the prostitute and a john descend a set of steps, while the sequences that show the woman dressing are staged with great care). By contrast, the acting is sometimes unconvincing, and the post-dubbing may reveal the limitations of the budget. It's not hard to hear, in the events recounted, an echo of Pasolini's fascination with the lower depths; indeed, there's a chill in the vague similarities with his own death.

The Skeleton Key

2005, US, directed by Iain Softley

Though director Iain Softley has never really fulfilled the promise he showed with Backbeat, which recounted the early years of the Beatles, there's a strange kind of fun to be had here with his orchestration of the clichés of the spooky American South (there's Spanish moss in the opening shot, for goodness sake!). Despite a cast with some major wattage (John Hurt, Gena Rowlands, Peter Sarsgaard and, in a true blink-and-you'll-miss-it turn, Isaach de Bankolé), the film is an unpretentious Gothic thriller, set in an Old Dark House chock-full of secrets. Visually quite attractive, the film does have some pacing problems: after revealing his hand early on, Softley is forced to pad things out for a while, before a well-orchestrated and original twist at the conclusion. Kate Hudson plays a much less frothy character than usual, and she's generally credible in a more serious guise, with the underlying charm that makes her so watchable. Films like this remind me of the pantomimes I grew up watching each Christmas - that is, an experience to be enjoyed in a crowd, where the implausibilities are actively noted by talking back to the screen, with the audience able to yell 'he's behind you!' as needed.

Sansho the Bailiff

1954, Japan, directed by Mizoguchi Kenji

Like most of Mizoguchi's films, Sansho the Bailiff is concerned with questions of social justice, with a particular focus, here, on the realities of life for the lower classes during the feudal period. Mizoguchi is blunt about the working and living conditions on a powerful man's manor (the set design and the crane shots effectively convey the cramped, muddy living quarters, while there are moments of distressing brutality); there's none of the elision or even romanticisation characteristic of some films that deal with the same period.

Beyond the broader social depiction, though, is a profound story of familial loss - of honour and status, certainly, but also the loss of humanity in terrible ways, when a nobleman's children are captured and enslaved, and separated from their mother who is, in turn, sold into prostitution. The children's father was a just man, exiled for the progressive views he has imprinted on his family, and the moment when his son realises how profoundly he has been diverted from his father's principles is deeply moving - the more so because he's aware that what he's done can never be undone. The son's subsequent behaviour is a shade too didactically obvious for my taste, while the resolution is a little slow, but Mizoguchi's exquisite eye for visual compositions is always diverting (several of the shots have the perfection of the finest printwork, and some of the same motifs), while the acting is uniformly strong.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

1969, UK, directed by Peter Hunt

My fond memories of this as one of the better Bonds seem misplaced on re-viewing the film after a long gap; perhaps it wasn't as obvious, then, how substantial a downgrade George Lazenby is when compared to even a going-through-the-motions Sean Connery. Along with the 2006 Casino Royale, this is one of the most domestically-minded Bond films, with hints that James might be ready to settle down (though he happily beds an entire harem while preparing himself for nuptial bliss).

Like its immediate predecessor, You Only Live Twice, this film brings arch-nemesis Blofeld out from the shadows, robbing him of much of his menace (especially since he's played here by a rather genial Telly Savalas), while Blofeld, for all his alleged smarts, has to learn the hard way that failing to dispatch 007 using one of the traditionally foolproof methods is bound to come back to haunt the average over-reaching criminal mastermind. Though Lazenby can't hold a candle to Connery, Diana Rigg is one of the most appealing Bond girls, lighting up the screen when she's around, and displaying some independence of spirit (which clearly wouldn't do, though the conclusion of the film is lifted directly from Ian Fleming's novel); the skiing scenes are also a pleasing distraction, even if some of the back projection work is unconvincing.

The Pursuit of Happyness

2006, US, directed by Gabriele Muccino

It's lucky that Will Smith is such a charming screen presence, because he does a damn good job of making you forget you're cheering for his character, Chris Gardner, to become, of all things, a stockbroker. While the up-by-your-bootstraps lessons of the film are well-intentioned, it's hard in retrospect to feel all that enamored with Chris's monetary aspirations, as if wealth is, in and of itself, the path to being A Better Person (unless, of course, you wish to join the clubby profession he works so hard to impress). The film also skates over the manner in which Chris's ambitions are the source of much of the tension that leaves him looking after his young son; it's hard not to sympathise at least a little with his double-shift-working girlfriend, focused on making ends meet to the point that she has no outside life. She's played by Thandie Newton, getting to do some interesting work for a change after far too many eye-candy turns; her absence leaves a hole in the later stages of the film even though it's necessary to the onscreen drama. Though the storyline is problematic, there's an authentically down-trodden feel to the locations, and there are moments when Smith captures, superbly, the weight of the world as it crashes down around Chris - made the more affecting by the (not always successful) attempts to shield his son from reality. The relationship with his child (played by Smith's real-life son), also feels authentic; their life together isn't always sunny, and there's a real tension when he grabs the boy by the arm or bundles him into a bus.

The Seventh Continent

1989, Austria, directed by Michael Haneke (original title: Der Siebente Kontinent)

Michael Haneke's first feature film bears the hallmarks of a far more experienced director, already adept at discomfiting his audience; he's absolutely in control of the material in recounting, with horrifying precision, the progressive alienation of a seemingly ordinary family. The first of a trilogy of films on (his view of) the malaise dogging contemporary Austria, The Seventh Continent is formally adept, using repetition of visual motifs to establish a sense of the grey routine besetting his characters, and not incidentally unsettling the viewer by holding up a mirror to similar patterns in our own daily lives (though it's open to question whether the structure illustrates the artist's bias against those with routine jobs, or his rebellion against routine more broadly). At times the onscreen family seems relatively content, but Haneke gradually subverts the notion of a happy family in ways large and small - and, near the end, in tones of the blackest humour. It's easy to imagine what such potentially sensationalistic subject matter might have become in less rigorous hands, but here Haneke pitilessly observes, and shares with us, the destruction of every conceivable aspect of this family's existence, with an insistent and often distressing realism.

You, Me and Dupree

2006, US, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

I quite enjoyed the Russo brothers' previous outing, Welcome to Collinwood; although it wasn't overwhelmingly original, the vein of daffy humour and the gritty sense of their home city, Cleveland, were appealing. Here, though, their run-down version of Cleveland has been exchanged for flat, sunny locations in a nondescript Southern Californian town, and the material is similarly bland. Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson are both likeable performers, in quite different ways, but too often they're trapped in films like this, which pass the time and are then disposed of. Although more obviously comical than The Break-Up, released around the same time, the film shares some of that movie's problematic tone: at times it attempts to be more consciously dramatic but the script isn't up to the task. Large chunks of the running time are spent sketching in Matt Dillon's workplace problems - in many ways, the film isn't about growing up but about reconciling work and life - and that slows the film right down, only for things to perk up again when Wilson or Hudson are onscreen (why Hudson doesn't put the moves on dopey-but-fun Dupree rather than her weak, workaholic hubby is beyond me).

The Curse of the Golden Flower

2006, Hong Kong/China, directed by Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou's third historical epic, after Hero and House of the Flying Daggers, first struck me (and many others) as his transposition of Shakespearean themes to a Chinese context, but on reflection it's more John Webster than the Bard, given the insistently bleak view of humanity, and, importantly, the complete absence of any comic relief, which Shakespeare would no doubt have restored in a script polish. Like his previous swordplay films, Zhang is as interested in colour and form as he is in the details of plot, although the interwoven familial betrayals are crucial to the atmosphere of moral collapse in the court of a 10th century Tang dynasty ruler (Chow Yun Fat). The first hour of the film sets up the complex intrigue, focusing particularly on the Empress (played by Gong Li, reunited, onscreen, with Zhang after a ten-year hiatus) and her sons, while the second half sees the chickens come home to roost in spectacular, and bloody, fashion. Like Zhang's previous epics, the film looks astonishing. The sets, costumes and lighting are magnificent, often awash with colour, but it's not empty spectacle: like The Queen, the film uses the trappings of wealth to illustrate the notion of divorce from the people, while the almost hermetic removal from ordinary life has a certain poignancy at times: these characters are trapped in pre-ordained roles, and the film unfolds their tragedies mercilessly. The swordplay is less central than in the previous films, though the action, when it arrives, is brilliantly choreographed (the flying ninjas are especially thrilling).

A Prairie Home Companion

2006, US, directed by Robert Altman

Although I can't help thinking that A Prairie Home Companion's appearance on many a 2006 "Ten Best" list has more to do with the recent death of Robert Altman than with the film itself, it's still a lovely end to a career, with many treasurable small moments that illustrate the director's great eye - when he's on form - for the details of human foibles. The film is a loose adaptation of writer-presenter Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show, and purports to be the story behind the radio show's final broadcast (the portrait of rapacious capitalism destroying folk culture loses much of its sting, though, in the face of the show's continued real-life health despite its unfashionable style). Though Keillor loves his radio, his script also reveals him as an afficionado of the backstage tale: this is a film by and about show-people, and the actors look as though they're having tremendous fun with the material (though Meryl Streep's character eventually becomes wearing, she does belt out a great tune); it's especially enjoyable to see some of the radio characters given life (Kevin Kline is spot-on as detective Guy Noir). Although the set-up doesn't parallel the real-life history of the radio show, there's an unforced poignancy over the whole film that's utterly convincing and ultimately very moving - and that's inevitably bound up with the knowledge of Altman's own passing.

You Only Live Twice

1967, UK, directed by Lewis Gilbert

Watching the Bond films in order of release, it's not really surprising that Sean Connery took a break from Bond after You Only Live Twice: he seems less than inspired in this outing, something which I'm sure contributed to the film's relatively limited commercial success notwithstanding the exotic Japanese location. The film is also considerably less jokey in tone than its immediate predecessor, Thunderball, a film absolutely riddled with throwaway one-liners and a massive box-office hit to boot (the attitude towards women, though, is if anything more unreconstructed here).

You Only Live Twice was one of Roald Dahl's only screenwriting forays, and the results aren't especially happy (though Dahl claimed that much of his work was discarded): the closing stages, though they provided great materials for the Austin Powers spoofs, have a few too many holes even by Bond standards. It's a shame, really, because there are some interesting possibilities: when the film slows down occasionally and pays attention to the details of Japan it's really quite absorbing, while I've always preferred Bond when he reins in the punchlines and tones up the fighting skills (the ninja sequences are especially fun, and notable in that martial arts films had not yet made it big in the West).

Lucky Number Slevin

2006, US, directed by Paul McGuigan

Although it owes obvious debts to Tarantino and The Usual Suspects, Lucky Number Slevin is still a pleasing jigsaw-puzzle gangster flick, while the eminently guessable resolution isn't a major handicap. Director Paul McGuigan is clearly enjoying himself, using the extreme edges of his widescreen frames so that characters occasionally look as though they're about to bump into the sides of the screen, while the production designers get to have fun with the wacky wallpapers that decorate each interior (and which lend the film a casually retro feel). The pacing is surprisingly slow for this kind of thing: there's a languid atmosphere, in which characters are allowed to take their time to indulge in the telling of tales, but the action, when it occurs, is forceful. Josh Hartnett's face is a little more lived-in, especially around the eyes, than is usually the case (he looks vaguely like Benicio del Toro - though he's a lot more comprehensible than del Toro's character in The Usual Suspects); he, too, reveals his layers slowly, and quite convincingly. Despite the narrative puzzles, the film itself is refreshingly open about its influences - never more so than when Robert Forster pops up, near the conclusion, to reveal the intrigue in Jackie Brown style.

Once Upon a Time in China

1991, Hong Kong, directed by Tsui Hark

Like many a Western viewer, I first discovered the Chinese/Hong Kong epic genre through Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Although exceptionally entertaining, it isn't really representative of the genre as a whole: this 1991 entry gives a much better impression, including with regard to the specifics of Hong Kong filmmaking style (all of the dialogue, for example, has been dubbed in post-production; it's amazing to me that this was still true for high-profile films in 1991, although that changed soon after). The Westernisation of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is also, in retrospect, obvious in the tightly plotted action and character development, whereas I confess I was occasionally confused by the developments here, especially in the twenty minutes immediately after the opening credits (the pre-credits sequence sets up what sounds suspiciously like a major plotline quite efficiently, but the film then goes in other directions, spiced up by brilliantly choreographed set pieces). The film is a mix of historical commentary (with a nationalistic flavour: plenty of derogatory references to the colonial masters and equally rapacious American traders, and I'm sure better knowledge of Chinese history would have helped me), spectacular sword and kung fu action and, almost improbably, melancholy reflection on the changes occasioned by the modern world. Though the film as a whole is sometimes scattershot, Tsui Hark has an extraordinary gift for filming action sequences: no matter how complicated the action, it's always clear who's doing what to whom, and he makes great use of the acrobatic skills of his performers, most obviously Jet Li at the height of his powers but also, among others, the excellent Biao Yuen.

Waking Ned

1998, UK/France/US, directed by Kirk Jones

A thick slice of Blarney, Waking Ned manages to transcend a welter of clichés with some charming performances, flashes of morbid wit, and beautiful cinematography. The film centers on the fictional village of Tullymore, where one of the residents has won the Lotto (the Irish national lottery); after some time, it becomes obvious that the winner is the recently deceased Ned Devine, and two of the villagers hatch a plan to claim the winnings in his stead. The opening 30 minutes are quite slow-moving, especially given the lighthearted genre trappings, but things warm up considerably when the deception begins; the two lead characters don't, however, have the mettle to be cute hoors and they re-evaluate their plan mid-way through (in ways that underline their very specific sense of community, though it's hard to reconcile the plan with the realities of modern Ireland). Director Kirk Jones has a good eye for both landscape and village life (even if that vision is somewhat outdated): the film, shot on the Isle of Man rather than in Ireland, verges on the painterly at times, which is a useful distraction from a flat romantic sub-plot. Ian Bannen and, especially, David Kelly are both excellent in rare lead roles, usefully mixing comedy and a touch of pathos, while the wake of the title is surprisingly affecting (and intermingled, Godfather-style, with other happenings, including one incident of the blackest comedy).

Days of Being Wild

1991, Hong Kong, directed by Wong Kar-wai

Much of the aesthetic that is familiar from Wong Kar-wai's later films is already present in this, his second feature; although the projected sequel to Days of Being Wild was never made, it's not hard to see In the Mood for Love as a kind of surrogate follow-up, especially given the way that Tony Leung pops up so mysteriously at the end of this film. As in his subsequent work, Wong's control of mood and pace is absolute: he's a master at atmospherics, especially a kind of languid dreaminess that proves almost overpowering for his characters, as if they're perpetually trapped in hot, clammy torpor. Wong uses music especially effectively in establishing and sustaining mood, here employing local versions of various Western classics that underline the period setting (the early 1960s) while keeping the viewer off-balance. It's hard not to see a kind of nostalgia for that period in Wong's work, especially given that he's returned to the era subsequently. The Hong Kong of 1960 comes across as strangely empty - surely at odds with the reality of the time - and is contrasted here with a version of the Philippines which is generally bustling and vibrant, though at least some of the characters carry their anomie with them (as did the players in Happy Together, despite their Buenos Aires setting). The cast is something of a who's-who of Hong Kong cinema of the period: Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau, Carina Lau and Jackie Cheung all get to display a more downbeat side.

Journal d'un curé de campagne

1950, France, directed by Robert Bresson

Bresson's great strengths as a filmmaker are underlined, for me, by his ability to make unlikely converts, whether to his exceptionally austere brand of cinema (at least after Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne) or to his intensely personal vision of suffering and redemption. This is the first film in which he fully expressed those cinematic and world views, and it remains one of his most powerful works.

Though Bresson pushes harder than most towards an intense, spare cinema, the film isn't without reference points: I couldn't help but think of Clouzot's Le Corbeau as an ailing young priest (Claude Laydu) experiences a chilly welcome from his demoralised new parishioners, caught up in their own village intrigues. At another moment, when the priest is cared for by a young girl after a fall, I thought, perhaps incongruously, of Frankenstein, where another girl seems to be the one person who understands the monster; given the villagers' attitude towards their curé, the comparison isn't entirely inapt.

Bresson's masterful use of close-ups is a key element of the film's success, whether capturing the anguished features of the priest, or in the startling composition of a young woman's pale face emerging from the darkness of a confessional. Though Bresson would no doubt shudder at the word, there's no doubting the importance, too, of Laydu's performance; his face perfectly captures the priest's physical and spiritual torture, while his expression when experiencing a brief taste of something approaching youthful freedom near the end is heartbreaking.

Comment je me suis disputé... ("ma vie sexuelle")

1996, France, directed by Arnaud Desplechin

Arnaud Desplechin's second feature is a crackling comedy of Parisian manners that also casts itself as a generational anatomy. In that, its most obvious precursor (in both length and breadth) is Jean Eustache's 1973 film La Maman et la putain. It's no particular slur on Desplechin to say that he doesn't quite reach the heights of the earlier film; he's still an exceptionally talented filmmaker, with an especially good ear for dialogue.

In contrast to some of - to give just one French example - Eric Rohmer's films, the many lengthy dialogue sequences here hold up under their own weight; Desplechin's characters are a credibly garrulous lot, interacting with one another rather than trading unwieldy speeches. The real reference point, though, is literary: the film unfolds like a good novel, revealing the characters' foibles and their complex interactions at an unhurried pace, shot through with the director's sometimes oddball sense of humour (as well as some extremely witty lines, many of them handed to his own brother, who appears as a budding priest). The film is also a coming-out party for a whole generation of young actors who were hitting their collective stride in the mid-1990's, and many of whom were already firmly established as members of the Desplechin repertory company. Mathieu Amalric, as the lead, Paul Dedalus (a name with obviously literary forebears), has probably never done better work, while actresses Emmanuelle Devos, Jeanne Balibar and Marianne Denicourt give notice of what is to come.

Les Choristes

2004, France, directed by Christophe Barratier 

A (very) old-fashioned crowd-pleaser, re-using an especially well-worn cinematic chestnut, that of the inspirational teacher. Perhaps school remains a place of negative memories for many people, because the plotline seems to appeal generation after generation, in many different guises (some of them pretty good). On this occasion, though, there's a little too much tugging at the heart-strings and an excess of angelic moppets, while the action is so schematic that the screenwriting devices creak. The film is a remake of an 1945 feature, and the symbolism of the caged birds was probably the more powerful then; here, the analogy to the Resistance is spelled out rather clumsily, while it's not clear why the action has been moved to 1949. On the plus side, the film is a great showcase for Gérard Jugnot, who delivers a nice performance that helps to counter-balance some of the scripted mawkishness. Jugnot is a major star in France, who has worked most often in a broad comic register (he's especially funny in the anarchic films he made with his Splendid theatre buddies, such as Les Bronzés and the Le Père Noël est une ordure) but he's convincing here as the quietly insistent schoolteacher, and elevates the film several notches.

Capote

2005, US, directed by Bennett Miller

Capote doesn't attempt to be a comprehensive biopic of its title character, focusing almost exclusively on the period of the author's life devoted to the creation of his best-known work, In Cold Blood, which took him away from his familiar New York social element to the flatlands of Kansas. In this telling, the creation of his 'non-fiction novel' extracts a toll so heavy that it explains his later decline as a writer, while the film uses that process to reveal Capote as a manipulative, sometimes outright deceitful, individual who is often incapable of relativising his own problems despite the terrible series of events that he has set out to chronicle. In choosing to focus on Capote's relationship with Perry Smith - a relationship cultivated to assist in the book's creation - the film gives short shrift to the victims of Smith's (and partner Hickok's) crime; indeed, the film goes from killings to sentencing within 35 minutes, and much of the remainder of the running time takes place in various jail cells. That quibble aside, director Miller does a fine job of compressing events without compromising his eye for the finer details, and without ever yielding to the temptations of hagiography inherent in chronicling (part of) the life of a fascinating, conflicted writer; the painterly Midwestern landscapes also function as arresting intertitles. Philip Seymour Hoffman perfectly captures Capote's mannerisms without allowing his performance to become a distraction: within a few minutes, I'd almost forgotten who was playing the lead as he vanished into the character, allowing the author himself, and his manifest failings, to steal the limelight - as was his wont.

Brokeback Mountain

2005, US, directed by Ang Lee

Given the tremendous amount of noise that accompanied Brokeback Mountain's release, it requires an effort to examine the film as 'just' a film rather than a social cause célèbre. There's no mistaking the movie's Oscar credentials: serious subject matter; strong acting; and a stately (often excessively so) pace that cries out Academy Award. However, that's not to say that the film is without interest. For starters, Heath Ledger delivers a remarkable performance as Ennis Del Mar, one of two cowboys (the other played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who conduct an intermittent love affair over twenty years or more; Ledger's depiction of a man unable to convey his emotions is unflinching and often heartbreaking (it's a depiction of male emotional closure that's probably recognisable to most people). Michelle Williams, too, is excellent as Ennis's wife; only Williams's face, of the main actors, fully captures the kind of hard-scrabble existence that circumstances like this surely dictate.

On the down side, the line readings by Gyllenhaal and - especially - Ledger are sometimes so gruff that they border on the distractingly incomprehensible. In addition, for all the filmmakers' evident sincerity, and their respectful adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's source material, there's something very Jerry Maguire about lines like 'I wish I knew how to quit you'. That said, the film's sex scenes - particularly in the early going - have a saltiness that's rare in Hollywood films of any stripe, however tame they may seem in comparison to the work of more independently-minded filmmakers. And Ang Lee again displays a gift for re-creating a very specific American time and place in a manner reminiscent of probably his strongest film to date, The Ice Storm.

Bande à part

1964, France, directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Shot in just over three weeks, Bande à part has a kind of improvisatory spirit that retains considerable charm: it's constantly on the move, re-inventing itself on the fly with a grab-bag of references (to film, literature, music and the outside world) and occasionally coming unglued as it tries to do a little too much (a problem not uncommon with Godard's films of the mid-1960's). The plot, taken from a pulp novel and centered on a robbery, is of little consequence: the bande à part of the title is composed of three supremely inept burglars (which doesn't prevent the robbery from having a surprisingly brutal streak), who are generally more interested in their own breezy cool than they are in money. Arthur and Franz (Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey) are both constantly at play, acting out their fantasies of gangsters and cowboys; it's no wonder that Odile (Anna Karina) is bemused - as evidenced by her comment directly to the camera - when the boys announce that they need a plan. Needless to say, they are far too distracted by themselves to actually plot things out in any great detail: the meeting to discuss the plan devolves into the film's most beguiling scene, as the trio dances the Madison (with a voiceover from Godard himself making clear that they are as disunited a group as you'll find in cinema, as apart from each other as they are from society more generally). It's interesting that a film which Godard has filled so copiously with reference points has also ended up as one of his own most quotable films, with references popping up in everything from Wong Kar-wai to Ferris Bueller's Day Off; that said, his vision of a wintry, unglamorous Paris, barely developed since the war, is absolutely his own.

Thunderball

1965, UK, directed by Terence Young

Though it was a massive financial success -- out-grossing, in raw dollars, entries that came years later despite ticket inflation -- Thunderball is an undeniable disappointment given the standards set by the first three films. It's the first Bond movie to break the two-hour bar, and the padding shows particularly in the lengthy, unexciting underwater fight sequences (which are sometimes laughable; director Terence Young was apparently unenthusiastic about the underwater fights, and it's a pity he didn't stand his ground).

The series also shows the first signs of slipping into self-parody, especially in the guise of Adolfo Celi's SPECTRE No.2, while the quota of throwaway one-liners is significantly higher. Sean Connery is absolutely at ease as Bond here, with the character now clearly moving more towards the smooth than the brutal end of the spectrum; he spends a tremendous amount of time in beach-wear chasing women notwithstanding the imminent destruction of a major city, but also finds time to win at cards. The sequences which outline the SPECTRE plot to steal nuclear devices, remain gripping (the scenes on board a NATO plane are especially good), while the SPECTRE board meeting is also enjoyably dry, but overall the extended running time undercuts those early highlights.