Tokyo Story (1953)

Essential Viewing

Japan

Feature Film
Original Title: 東京物語
Director: Ozu Yasujirō
Writers: Noda Kōgo, Ozu Yasujirō
Cinematographer: Atsuta Yuuharu
Composer: Saitō Kojun
Cast: Ryū Chishū, Higashiyama Chieko, Hara Setsuko, Sugimura Haruko, Yamamura Sō, Miyake Kuniko, Kagawa Kyōko, Tono Eijirō, Nakamura Nobuo, Osaka Shirō

Containing one of cinema’s greatest and most heartbreaking performances from Hara, Ozu’s beautifully paced and moving film, detailing an elderly couple’s sombre journey to Tokyo to visit their busy and insensitive, grown-up children, proves to be an unforgettable, deeply rewarding, and achingly sad masterpiece. Iain.Stott

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Vertigo (1958)

Highly Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Alec Coppel, Samuel Taylor, Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac
Cinematographer: Robert Burks
Composer: Bernard Herrmann
Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore

Hitchcock’s most acclaimed film, depicting a retired policeman’s journey into obsession as he becomes infatuated with the woman that he is hired to follow, is a dark, and at times, hard-to-watch film, which, with its stunning performance from Stewart, Herrmann’s wonderful score, and some appropriately ugly cinematography, manages to paint a scathingly brilliant portrait of the dark heart of man. Iain.Stott

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La Règle du Jeu (1939)

Essential Viewing

France

Feature Film
Original Title: La règle du jeu
Director: Jean Renoir
Writers: Carl Koch, Jean Renoir
Cinematographers: Alphen, Bachelet, Jacques Lemare, Alain Renoir
Cast: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Jean Renoir, Mila Parély, Julien Carette, Gaston Modot, Roland Toutain, Odette Talazac, Claire Gérard

Renoir’s delightful masterpiece, a satirical look at the lives of the idle rich and the complicit, accommodating poor, during a weekend shooting party at a country mansion just prior to WWII, proves to be an insightful, funny, and visually arresting film, and perhaps the definitive French farce. Iain.Stott

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Citizen Kane (1941)

Feature Film | Drama | USA | English | 1h59m

Dir: Orson Welles | Scr: Herman J. Mankiewicz & Orson Welles | Ph: Gregg Toland | Prod: Orson Welles | Mus: Bernard Herrmann | Ed: Robert Wise | AD: Van Nest Polglase | Snd: John Aalberg | Sfx: Vernon L. Walker | Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Everett Sloane, George Coulouris 

Welles’s brilliant and vibrant fictional biopic, depicting the life of a newspaper magnate from childhood to death, concentrating on his fruitless quest to fill the gap left by the maternal love that he was denied as a child, is a film that just about deserves its lofty reputation. With gorgeous photography, magnificent mise en scène, peerless production values, and several excellent performances (not the least of which coming from the incredible Comingore), Citizen Kane comes as close to capturing a man’s entire life on celluloid as any film ever has.

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Vernon God Little (2003)

UK

Novel
Author: DBC Pierre

Pierre’s satirical-but-human novel, following the misadventures of a small-town-Texas boy, accused of complicity in a School massacre and several other murders, is, with its delightfully original prose and continually surprising narrative, a wonderful portrait of the Columbine, reality-TV, and news-as-entertainment generation. Iain.Stott

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Skins: Series 2 (2008)

UK

Television Series
Creators: Jamie Brittain, Bryan Elsley
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Mike Bailey, April Pearson, Hannah Murray, Dev Patel, Joseph Dempsie, Mitch Hewer, Larissa Wilson, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Daniel Kaluuya, Siwan Morris, Kaya Scodelario

The second series of this popular, Bristol set, youth centred comedy drama, notably darker and more dramatic in tone than its predecessor, is an honest, brave, and often very funny attempt to capture the lives of a group of young people on the verge of adulthood. Iain.Stott

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The Pilgrim (1923)

Recommended

USA

Short Film
Writer/Director: Charles Chaplin
Cinematographer: Roland Totheroh
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Kitty Bradbury, Syd Chaplin, Mack Swain, Charles Reisner, Tom Murray

An escaped convict on the lam, disguised as a preacher, is mistaken for the new minister of Devil's Gulch, where he muddles through a service, falls for his landlady’s daughter, and comes unstuck at the hands of a former cellmate, in this tremendously entertaining if somewhat unexceptional Chaplin short. Iain.Stott

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