Persistence of vision

ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)

A beautifully bittersweet movie with Allen dissecting his defunct relationship with eccentric songstress Diane Keaton. The experimental flourishes coupled with the director’s trademark wit and multiple shrink jokes make this joyful viewing.

BAD TIMING (Nic Roeg, 1980)

An unbelievably creepy Art Garfunkel and a demented Theresa Russell play fucked-up mind games with one another. As twisted as movies get. We like it.

BEFORE SUNRISE (Richard Linklater, 1995)

Using naturalistic dialogue to dazzling effect, Linklater’s chance-meeting romance rescues love from the chocolate box and lets it loose in the real world. Two strangers meet on a train, but their mutual enchantment is overshadowed by inevitable curses of time and distance (his flight leaves the next day). Achingly romantic.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (Joel Coen, 1998)

Like most of the Coens’ output, this hard-boiled botched kidnapping semi-comedy is a lovingly crafted affair which involves everything from German pornstars to green nail polish. An absolute masterpiece which improves every time you see it, featuring a phenomenal turn from Jeff Bridges as a man who just abides.

BLOW OUT (Brian DePalma, 1981)

Gripping conspiracy theory thriller inspired by both Watergate and Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick scandal. John Travolta plays a sound operator who accidentally records a political assassination. The film’s chilling denouement foreshadows the fuck-everybody spirit of the Reagan years.

CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar Wei, 1994)

Though the once groundbreaking visuals have been appropriated by a thousand car commercials, this Hong Kong based meditation on lost love and pineapple has lost none of its charm.

COLD WATER (Olivier Assayas, 1994)

Virginie Ledoyen and Cyprien Fouquet are two rebellious adolescents who runaway from home, and onwards toward a tragic act of defiance. A compelling and peerless portrayal of teenage fuck-you, fuck-everybody nihilism.

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Ang Lee, 2000)

Lee’s gorgeous visual poem marries martial arts and epic romance to perfect effect. Sublime Chinese heritage cinema, we’re pretty sure this will stand up over time.

CRUMB (Terry Zwigoff, 1995)

An offbeat documentary portrait of controversial cartoonist Robert Crumb. This features what has to be the most dysfunctional family of all time, and is deeply affecting despite offering unprecedented levels of access to one very strange man and his bizarre arse orientated sexual fantasies.

DO THE RIGHT THING (Spike Lee, 1989)

On the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn, tensions occur along racial faultlines. Lee’s most powerful and witty film is a vision of New York not so much as melting pot as meltdown, while Rosie Perez’s turn is a dead cert for cinema’s most accomplished and shrill shrew.

ED WOOD (Tim Burton, 1994)

Like its subject matter, the legendary Z-movie director this film has an irrepressible charm, and represents a career best for both director Burton and star Johnny Depp.

GOODFELLAS (Martin Scorcese,1990)

An epic gangster story which postulates that given the choice between death, jail or suburbia, one should take anything but the latter. It contains still-shocking acts of violence but the biggest shock of all is that Ray Liotta acts even Robert DeNiro into the shade. Inarguably a classic.

HANA BI (Takeshi Kitano, 1997)

Hollywood often pumps out movies that combine happy-family values and ultra-violence. Kitano’s films could be said to do the same, but as this tragicomic tale of a hitman and his fatally ill missus shows, he marries these elements in a very different and infinitely more powerful way. Violent, yet poignant.

JACKIE BROWN (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)

The finest hour yet from visionary genius Tarantino, this languid but magnificently layered crime caper sees the director’s trademark skills – bubblegum dialogue, inspired casting and an inclination toward cinematic experimentation – utilised in a more mature and contemplative direction.

THE KILLER (John Woo, 1989)

An assassin takes one last hit in order to pay for a sight operation for a girl he has accidentally maimed. This inspired marriage of martial gunplay and melodrama is action cinema at its absolute best.

RAGING BULL (Martin Scorcese, 1980)

Impressive, in-your-face, black-and-white boxing masterpiece loosely based on the career of heavyweight semi-great Jake LaMotta, portrayed with magnificent brutishness by Robert deNiro in a career-high tornado of furious anger.

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)

A stupendously powerful normal-life-horrorflick of such severity that test audiences fainted and/or ran away, this cautionary anti-heroin tale charts the spiritual descent of two young lovers from newlywed bliss to cold-turkey disintegration.

RUMBLEFISH (Francis Ford Coppola, 1982)

Filmed in haunting, hypnotic black-and-white of an almost spectral beauty, Coppola’s depiction of two brothers caught up in gang violence in ’60s America fuses classic teen-rebellion existential angst with dazzling cinematography to stunning effect.

THE SHINING (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

Easily the creepiest movie ever, Jack Nicholson’s demented turn and the ever gliding camera make this a genre classic. It’s high fear factor is rivalled only by those chilling on set tales of Stanley terrorising Shelley Duval in search of the perfect take.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1987)

Stark and unflinching depiction of capital punishment set in the director’s native Poland. Featuring an horrific seven minute murder – the longest in cinema – and an equally disturbing five minute execution sequence, the entire Bush family should be strapped down and made watch this on a loop. Unbearably sad.

THE STRAIGHT STORY (David Lynch, 1999)

Though it lacks the psychotic fury often associated with the director, this couldn’t exactly be described as ‘normal’ either. The tale of a decepit 73-year-old who undertakes a 150-mile journey in his lawnmower to reach his long-estranged brother, its contemplative rhythms make it Lynch’s most mature, serene and atypical work.

TRUE ROMANCE (Tony Scott, 1993)

In spite of, or thanks to, Scott’s ultra-flashy MTV-style direction, True Romance still cuts it as the greatest entry yet in the enormous canon of road-movies. The plot’s pure genius: guy mets girl, they fall in love, they find a shitload of drugs and they hit the road, pursued by all manner of evil adversaries. Bubblegum at its finest.

TREES LOUNGE (Steve Buscemi, 1996)

Undeniably tragic, but so funny, sweet and deftly observed that it’s almost feelgood, Buscemi’s Cassavettes-inspired directorial debut stars Ol’ Bug Eyes himself as a barfly pissing his life down the tubes in a nondescript suburban shithole. A glorification of loserdom, beautifully carried off.

WHEN WE WERE KINGS (Leon Gast, 1997)

The finest way to savour The Greatest in his pomp: this astonishing documentary follows Muhammad Ali’s epic 1974 battle with George Foreman, the attendant build-up and the wider cultural significance of the Ali phenomenon. It is truly spellbinding.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (Pedro Almodovar, 1988)

Madcap Spanish furiously fast farce with Carmen Maura as a woman who gets dumped by an answering machine. Featuring terrorists, gaspacho, telephones, sleeping pills and promiscuity, this is perhaps the only film which can truly claim to be hysterical in every sense.