Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Mary MCDonnell Writer/Director: Richard Kelly Rated: M (15+) Distributor: Madman Since its release in 2001 the Sci-Fi fantasy Donnie Darko has become something of a cult classic. In a relatively low budget yet ultimately stylish fashion it covers twenty-eight action packed days in which the eponymous anti-superhero must …

Starring: Bob Dylan Director: D.A. Pennebaker Rated: Distributor: Sony BMG Music Entertainment If you’re not already a Bob Dylan fan then let Cate Blanchett convert you with her remarkable performance in Todd Haynes new release I’m Not There. It will automatically lead you back to D. A. Pennebaker’s observational documentary of Dylan’s 1965 English tour …

Starring: John Hargraves, Jeanie Drynan, Graham Kennedy, Candy Raymond Director: Bruce Beresford Rated: MA Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment/ Screensound Australia Disappointment is the over arching mood of Don’s Party; disappointment in marriage, in career and, finally, in the Australian Federal election of October 25, 1969. After twenty years of conservative rule, ten friends gather in what …

Starring: Colin Friels, Helen Buday Director: Rolf De Heer Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella Aussie DVD Out in the remote Western Australian desert a man blows his trumpet at the setting sun. His blues are echoed back to him from the distant mountain range. A rogue dingo also howls his appreciation. This clever dog has been …

Starring: Bruce Spence, Natalie Bate, Max Gillies Director: John Duigan Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella Aussie DVD Aussie playwright Jack Hibberd was in London when he got the urge to write a play about life in a small Victorian country town. He got out his atlas, closed his eyes and pointed his finger at a spot …

Starring: Yuri Solomin, Maksim Munzuk Director: Akira Kurosawa Rated: G Distributor: Shock (Distinction Series) Legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa embarked on a film adaptation of the popular turn-of-the-century Russian book Dersu Uzala when he was just starting out on his illustrious career but quickly realised that it needed to be shot where it was set, …

Starring: Sam Neill, Zoe Carrides, John Clarke Director: John Ruane Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella Aussie DVD When this film was screened in the north Melbourne suburb that bears its name, audiences cheered the geography. But the performances also deserve an ovation. Sam Neill is adorable as the goofy Sting look-alike Carl Fitzgerald and Zoe Carrides …

Starring: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer Director: Jim Jarmusch Rated: R Distributor: Madman (Director’s Suite) From the very outset, Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man creates a eerie, strangely doomed tone. A bespectacled Cleveland accountant by the name of William Blake (Johnny Depp) travels by steam train through the wild west circa 1875, nodding off frequently along the …

Starring: Bryan Brown, Ernie Dingo, Angie Milliken, Aaron Pederson Director/Writer: Nick Parsons Rated: MA Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment Following hot on the heels of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Nicholas Parsons’ Dead Heart provided a dramatic examination of the ramifications of enforcing white fella law in black fella country. One of the main …

Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz Writer/Director: Terrence Malick Rated: PG Distributor: Paramount There’s something strangely timeless about Days of Heaven, even though it is firmly set in the year 1916 when the wheels of industry were turning America into a brave new world, full of hope and promise. Maybe it’s the …

Starring: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato Director: George A. Romero Rated: R (18+) Distributor: Umbrella Horror DVD Zombie fans the world over gather in salivating droves at conventions to celebrate George A. Romero’s series of gut guzzling horror movies. Starting with the original black and white 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, these …

Starring: Christina Sanchez Pascual, Julietta Serrano, Chus Lampreave Director/writer: Pedro Almodovar Rated: R Distributor: Hopscotch Entertainment Nuns shooting up behind closed doors; taking acid with their vows of chastity; lusting after fallen women who seek refuge in their holy sanctuary? It could only be the work of that devilish master of Spanish cinema, Pedro Almodovar. …

Starring: Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, Ian Holm Director: Mike Newell Rated: M Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment If you want to see a film about real life obsession and a big fat crime of passion, check out Dance with A Stranger. From the moment that rich boy David Blakeley (Rupert Everett) claps eyes on the vivacious tart …

Starring: Tab Hunter, Gwen Verdon, Ray Walston Directors: George Abbott, Stanley Donen Rated: PG Distributor: Warner Brothers Every great musical has a standout showstopper and in Damn Yankees! it’s ‘Whatever Lola Wants’ – a thrilling partial strip tease performed by the incomparable Gwen Verdon in the unlikely setting of a men’s locker room after hours. …

Starring: George Greenough, Ritchie West, Nat Young Director: David Elfick Rated: G Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment Surf rage is rampant on our most popular beaches, so much so that the Australian Surfrider Foundation is currently planning to erect signs in the sand laying down the laws of wave etiquette. Overcrowded conditions and agro wax heads may …

Starring: Afre Woodard, Delroy Lindo, Zelda Harris Director: Spike Lee Rated: M Distributor: Universal Spike Lee’s semi-autobiographical trip back to Brooklyn circa 1975 is laced with some of the greatest soul hits of the era. Set consciously to them, the story of an only girl in an all boy family of five spins out like …

Starring: Buster Keaton, Annie Cornwall, Snitz Edwards Director: James W. Horne Rated: G Distributor: Madman It’s the perennial high school dilemma: to be a popular athlete or a studious nerd. Some lucky people have it all but for the rest, it’s mostly one or the other. And it seems it was ever thus. Even back …

Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Rated: M (15+) Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Did the Queen of the Nile really wear such provocative gowns as Elizabeth Taylor parades so majestically in the title role of the four-hour long epic that is Cleopatra? As her cleavage plunges ever deeper …

Starring: Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi Director: Giuseppe Tornatore Rated: M Distributor: Umbrella World Cinema DVD For twenty odd years, movie-goers in the small Sicilian village of Giancaldo have been deprived of witnessing even so much as a kiss up on the screen of their local Cinema Paradiso. The town’s priest has taken it …

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston Director: Roman Polanski Rated: M Distributor: Paramount Golden Classics Extras: Retrospective interviews with Polanski, producer Robert Evans and writer Robert Towne. In book after book on the craft of screen writing Robert Towne’s Chinatown is cited as a near perfect example of a film script. The complex plot …

Starring: Alan Arkin, Arthur Garfunkel, Anthony Perkins, John Voight, Martin Sheen, Orson Welles Director: Mike Nichols Rated: M (15+) Distributor: Paramount Golden Classics Extras: Commentary by Mike Nichols and Steven Soderburgh I wonder if, in the wake of last week’s devastating defeat, Mark Latham is taking comfort in his favourite book, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a …

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman Director: Michael Curtiz Rated: PG Distributor: Warner Brothers I have a huge black and white photograph of what looks suspiciously like Madonna and Warren Beatty in period costume locked in a passionate kiss at a dark, rain splattered airport. It’s an image that could have been lifted straight out of …

Starring: Gordon McRae, Shirley Jones, Claramae Turner Director: Henry King Rated: G Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment “Is it possible for someone to hit you real hard and it not to hurt?” asks the baby-doll-faced Louise (Susan Luckey) of her mother Julie Jordon (Shirley Jones). Julie has experienced domestic blisters at the hands of …

Starring: Wendy Hughes, Robin Nevin, Nicholas Gledhill, John Hargreaves Director: Carl Schultz Rated: PG Distributor: Umbrella Aussie DVD It’s leading lady calls it “a forgotten classic”. If so, then this wonderful screen adaptation of Sumner Locke Elliott’s autobiographical novel needs to be refreshed in peoples’ minds as a matter of urgency. Apart from a few …

Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross Director: George Roy Hill Rated: PG Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox It’s the very last shot in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that stays cemented in the mind. It’s a close-up on a freeze frame of Butch (Paul Newman) and the Kid (Robert Redford) belting out of their …