Starring: Elijah Wood; Viggo Mortensen; Ian McKellen Director: Peter Jackson Rated: M Distributor: New Line It stands as one of the most ambitious film projects ever undertaken – the screen adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Brought to us over three tantalizing years, the films (The Fellowship of the Ring, …

Starring: Burt Lancaster; Alain Delon; Claudia Cardinale Director: Luchino Visconti Rated: PG Distributor: Madman Cinema Is there a more sublime film than The Leopard? Luchino Visconti’s 1963 adaptation of Giusseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novella ‘Il Gattopardo’ surely qualifies as one of the great masterpieces of world cinema. Set in Sicily a century before it was …

Starring: Catherine Deneuve; Gerard Depardieu Director: Francois Truffaut Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella World Cinema DVD There have been many films about the German occupation of France but perhaps none so dramatic as Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro. Centred, as it is, on the goings on at one of the many playhouses operating in Paris at …

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner Director: Robert Siodmak Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment Could film get any more noir than The Killers? Surely a more fatale femme than Ava Gardener’s Kitty Collins would be hard to find. And as for her victim, Burt Lancaster’s ‘The Swede’ has got it coming to him from the get …

Starring: Robert Evans Director: Nanette Burstein; Brett Morgen Rated: Distributor: Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, The Odd Couple, Marathon Man, Harold and Maud…. How’s that for a list of classics? And to think that the man behind every one of them, the producer par excellence, started out as a p-grade actor in bombs …

Starring: Garry McDonald Rated: G Distributor: ABC D VD The look of incredulity that sweeps over Warren Beatty’s face when interviewer ordinaire Norman Gunston explains that he has his own Tonight Show has to be seen to be believed. As does Gunston’s interviewing technique which pretty much set the standard for local comedy back in …

Starring: Henry Fonda; Jane Darwell; John Carradine Director: John Ford Rated: PG Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment We’ve seen the tragedy of Australian farmers forced off their land following years of unrelenting drought but few episodes in the developed world can match the devastation wreaked on the Oklahoma sharecroppers during the Great Depression. John …

Starring: Clint Eastwood; Eli Wallach; Lee Van Cleef Director: Sergio Leone Rated: R (18+) Distributor: MGM DVD After viewing Sergio Leonie’s seminal Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, which was recently screened at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum as part of its contribution to Design Week, I’ve been developing a whole new dress sense. …

Starring: Marlon Brando; Al Pacino; Robert Duvall; James Caan; Diane Keaton Director: Francis Ford Coppola Rated: R Distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment Who could ever forget the horror, the horror of witnessing studio mogul Jack Woltz waking up to discover the severed head of his prize race horse in bed with him? This image from The …

Starring: Al Pacino; Robert De Niro; Diane Keaton; Andy Garcia Director: Francis Ford Coppola Rated: Distributor: Paramount Throughout history, the Sicilian population has been besieged by foreign invaders and as a result, trust no-one except their own families… and even that’s a little shaky at times. Robert De Niro discovered this when he toured the …

Starring: Susannah Fowle; Barry Humphries; John Waters Director: Bruce Beresford Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment Was there ever a more wonderful name concocted for an awkward, outsider character than ‘Laura Tweedle Rambothan’? Lumbered with such title, the anti-heroine in The Getting of Wisdom has a tough time fitting in with all the upper crust girls …

Starring: Buster Keaton; Marion Mack Director: Buster Keaton; Clyde Bruckman Rated: G Distributor: Madman Director’s Suite It’s incredible to think that an old black and white silent film from 1927 can still make you laugh out loud, not at it but with it. And yet The General does just this, over and over again. It’s …

Starring: Robert Carlyle; Mark Addy; Tom Wilkinson Director: Peter Cattaneo Rated: M Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Basically, there are only two designs of human being; male and female. And yet, getting a good eye full of either still seems to be one of the most shocking things that contemporary society has to offer. …

Starring: Jan Vostrcil, Josef Sebanek, Josef Valnoha Director: Milos Forman Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella World Cinema DVD A bunch of bumbling firemen set out to honour their former president on the occasion of his 86th birthday by presenting him with an engraved trophy hatchet at their annual Firemen’s Ball. But even before the guests start …

Starring: John Lydon, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones, Paul Cook Director: Julien Temple Rated: M Distributor: Magna Pacific British director Julien Temple has a knack for tapping into enduring musical trends. When he was a film school student back in 1976 he snaffled a camera and started shooting footage of bands like ‘The Clash’ and ‘The …

Starring: Anthony Higgins; Janet Suzman; Anne-Louise Lambert Director: Peter Greenaway Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment Female power, property rights, art and patronage; these are just some of the concepts woven into Peter Greenaway’s debut feature film, The Draughtsman’s Contract – these, plus an old edict that the British writer/director picked up from art school which …

Starring: Frank Sinatra, Lee Remick Director: Gordon Douglas Rated: PG Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Until quite recently, you could bet that any gay or lesbian character in a film would almost always collide with some hideous fate. It was rare that any of them actually survived the end credits. And so it is …

Starring: Jim Henson; Frank Oz Director: Jim Henson; Frank Oz Rated: G Distributor: Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment T’was the morn after Mardi Gras and my artist friend, who had made some of the outrageous party decorations, sat me down in front of the telly and introduced me to his all-time favourite film; The Dark Crystal. …

Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey Director: Steven Speilberg Rated: PG Distributor: Warner Brothers Entertainment It’s hard to imagine a time when Whoopi Goldberg was in need of an introduction but Steven Speilberg felt it necessary back in 1985 when he cast her as the shy and systematically abused central character in his interpretation …

Starring: Graham Kennedy; Jack Thompson Director: Bruce Beresford Rated: Distributor: Umbrella ‘Football’s a load of bullshit.’ declares Geoff Haywood, the lynchpin character in David Williamson’s 1980 screen adaptation of his original stage play The Club, ‘You chase a lump of pigskin around a muddy ground as if your life depended on it and when you …

Starring: Shirley MacLaine; Audrey Hepburn; James Garner Director: William Wyler Rated: Distributor: MGM DVD From the opening shot of this black and white classic you get the feeling that you’re in for something out of the ordinary. Oscar nominated cinematographer Franz Planer tracks along a country lane with a posse of uniformed girls as they …

Starring: Michael Caton; Anne Tenney; Stephen Curry Director: Rob Sitch Rated: M (15+) Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment We all now know, for a fact, that in the heart of suburbia there beats the whisk of a loving Beta male who keeps his foxy lady pumped up with plenty of well deserved praise. But long before Kel …

Starring: John Meillon; Terry Camilleri; Chris Haywood Director: Peter Weir Rated: M (15+) Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment (AV Channel) It starts out looking like an ad for Alpine cigarettes circa 1974: a cool dude picks up his chicky babe in a white convertible and they fang it to the country, stopping to light another smoke and …

Starring: Joe Morton, Steve James, David Strathairn, Dee Dee Bridgwater Director: John Sayles Rated: M Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment A space ship plummets into earth near the Statue of Liberty and the sole occupant escapes with his life. His right foot is missing but this runaway slave from another planet has an uncanny power to mend …

Starring: David Wenham; Lynette Curran; Toni Collette; John Polson; Anthony Hayes Director: Rowan Woods Rated: Distributor: From the very first grainy video image we know we’re in for something decidedly dark. The accompanying soundtrack by the awesome trio ‘The Necks’ sets the tone in concrete boots. Something bad is going to go down and via …