My Favorite Movies

Five Minutes of Heaven
Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt play two men from opposite sides of Northern Ireland's sectarian curtain, one a former teenage assassin, the other brother and passive witness to his brother's murder. They're working class lads from a small town - Lurgan has a population of less than 40,000. They're lives were destined to be spent in the routine of working in a factory and raising a family, but their lives have been perverted by their situation and by one insignificant murder ? insignificant, that is, to everyone outside their immediate families.

Now, 33 years later, they are brought together again by a television crew keen to give the murder significance by presenting this spectacle of truth and reconciliation to a receptive audience. The former assassin is, by now, well versed in his role as reformed murderer and recalcitrant advocate for peace and understanding. The bereaved brother finds himself thrust into the guise of potential celebrity victim.

The media anticipate a spectacle, the two men are consumed by their internal monologues, the teenage killer now the ageing residue of the creature he was, the witness to the killing a man imprisoned by his own nightmares.

The teenage killer was just a young lad, concerned like all young lads with his appearance, girls, music, and his pals, consumed by a desire to be somebody, to acquire status. The only status open to working class lads is the status of gunmen - the old men orchestrate the violence, the young soldiers flow off the production line of bitterness and desolate expectation. He and his pals egg one another on, professionally aware of guns and terrorist warfare at too young an age. Their heroes are gunmen, their aspiration to be gunmen.

Just an ordinary street in an ordinary little town where everybody knows everybody despite the sectarianism. Just an ordinary murder of an ordinary young man who happens to be in the wrong place and a child of his times.

The two men turn up for their meeting in suits. Working class lads only wear suits for weddings and funerals. Do the suits sanctify them, divorce them from the harsh emotions which define their lives? They're going to meet as media images, icons of their situations; the film will strip them of their individuality and cast them only as stereotypes, dressed in suits for respectability's sake. The film people are smooth and certain of their liberal tolerance, but they are manipulators, careless of their language, and ultimately careless of the two men they are filming.

Nesbitt delivers humour bitterly, gallows humour, survival humour, ironic and severe. He's known too much introspection since childhood. Histrionic, intense, an emotional prisoner of memories and recrimination. Neeson, experienced, professional media performer, trying to submerge his past in public humility. He's well rehearsed, speaking lines he knows too well, speaking them loud enough and often enough to drown out his own emotions. Where do your sympathies lie? Can you empathise with either or both?

But he makes this a universal tale, not unique to Northern Ireland. He's from a small town in a small country, but his voice could be that of any survivor from any conflict. He is playing to the audience of reason, delivering a superficial truth which the converted will hear but which the gunmen of the world will not, and which will not be allowed to infect the next generation of young soldiers.

Superb performances from two gifted actors. Neeson has great physical presence, Nesbitt's emotional grasp is so powerful. An utterly engrossing and convincing screenplay by Guy Hibbert, and an utterly superb film. If you do not shed a tear watching this, weep for yourself.

Anyone asked to name a classic of Belgian cinema can simply point to this film, a production all the more remarkable for its bargain basement provenance. Made by three film students with a budget which makes shoestrings look like a luxury, "Man Bites Dog" ("C'est arrivé près de chez vous") is proof that making a memorable movie depends more on talent and a good story than on vast amounts of capital and an over-indulgence in special effects.

Three young film makers follow the exploits of Benoit, a mass murderer and petty criminal, and document his philosophy of life and pride in the professionalism of his work. Benoit murders people, quite instrumentally, to obtain money. Or because they get in the way. He's not a 'serial' killer with a fixation about a victim type or a drive to assert himself. He's just a guy, going about his business. The murders, the crimes are shocking because they occur in such a natural setting - the killing is unheralded, unanticipated.

"I usually start the month with a postman!" Even killer's have their routines. Benoit explains his theories about robbery and murder, provides a masterclass in the disposal of bodies, expresses his concerns about the murder of children (it attracts too much media attention), and recounts his theories about why old people are better bets for robbery than the middle classes.

It is a film of quite shocking, deliberately disturbing violence, not least in the casual nature of the rape scene. Shot in naturalistic manner - black and white, hand held camera, exactly as if three young film makers are keeping a documentary diary of the crimes and lifestyle of a criminal. Made before the worst excesses of reality TV began to bite in Europe, it nevertheless anticipates the popular fascination with the mundane, and the ongoing appetite for murder and horror, and asks very real questions about the collaboration between the media and sensation.

The film crew, indeed, collaborate with Benoit and act as accessories - being shot at themselves, confronting another film crew following another criminal. The humour of the film is a pulsing vein. This is a film to be enjoyed as a satire. This is a film to be taken very, very seriously.

Benoit airs his views on women, race, housing, the elderly. He is the narrator. He moralises about life - he is a criminal, but his crimes follow a logic and adhere to his own brand of morality. He rants like a populist politician. The crew observe. The media, it seems, can give anyone a voice and make them seem important. But, of course, the media is only feeding the curiosity and appetites of an audience. Does the media pander to public tastes ... or does it create public taste?

The criminal makes no plans. He acts spontaneously. His is a life of instant gratification, a chaotic lifestyle of self-glorification made all the more marvellous by the attentions of a film crew. Benoit poses, one moment the urbane intellectual spouting poetry and philosophy, the next brutally attacking an unsuspecting victim. He's coarse, vulgar, intolerant, arrogant, a bully, utterly self-centred ... yet the film crew elevate him to the role of star. And we watch, transfixed, wondering where the tale will take us next.

A wonderful film, beautifully assembled, which poses question after question about the art (and morality) of film making. In fact, the only question it answers is the one about naming a classic of Belgian cinema. Award winning, influential, delightful, with a very funny spoof superhero trailer as one of the DVD extras, this is a highly recommended film.

This is an eerily entrancing experience delivered up by director Shinji Aoyama. Shot in black and white, but on colour film, the images drift into sepia or become almost pastel tones. "Eureka" is primarily a visual experience, one of the most lyrically beautiful pieces of cinema I've ever seen.

Yet such a bleak story! A bus is hijacked. People die. There is no evident reason - the crime is random, chaotic, motiveless. The survivors are the driver and two school children, a brother and sister. Now, leap forward two years. How have they coped? What effect has the violence had on their lives?

The children have lost their parents and are alone in a big house. They do not speak. The bus driver moves in with them, acting as their parents, or simply as someone who can understand their pain and confusion. Perhaps the only one who can. The children appear to communicate telepathically. Meanwhile, a series of murders has begun and the prime suspect is the bus driver.

The driver looks for some cathartic experience to help them get on with their lives. He buys a bus. Together they transform it into a mobile home and set off on a journey. Bus drivers follow the same route day in, day out. But this is a magical mystery tour, a process of self-discovery.

Shinji Aoyama says that he was influenced by John Ford's "The Searchers", in which John Wayne searches for a young Natalie Wood, a child kidnapped in an Indian raid. "Eureka" doesn't have the overt violence and anger of Wayne's character. Makoto, the driver, is a much gentler individual. But the theme of the film is one of searching - for the lost voices, the lost emotions, the loss of self.

Does violence contaminate the victim? Makoto wonders if it has infected them all. As a victim of violence he has been powerless. Perhaps the only way a victim can recover is to exert power over others, to violate, terrorise, and brutalise others. Would the act of murder free him of the guilt of survival? They take off in the bus in search of rebirth.

"Eureka" is a long film - three and a half hours. Its plot is a narrow strand. This is the antithesis of the action movie. Much of the filming is in long shot, with the actors distant figures. There are no close-ups. The visuals are extraordinary. Much use is made of the intense contrast of black and white - night time shots, use of sunlight and shade, dense dark scenes with only a central pool of light.

The camera frames a scene and holds it, dwells on it languidly. There are long silences. The film could have been cut in half, but this frozen timelessness is an essential part of the experience the survivors endure.

There is virtually no music - a couple of almost ironic intrusions. The sound is entirely naturalistic. The black and white filming seems to enhance the notion of reality. It's as if you are watching a documentary, intruding on the intimate lives of victims, watching through distant cameras with only the sounds of nature and the modern world to intrude.

And so much of the film presents you with pattern and graphic imagery: the stripes and checks of clothing, the stripes of wooden boards, the patterns of the natural world, of roads and railways. The pattern of the bus driver's routine has been shattered. For the victims there is no longer any pattern to life, just a bland sameness, day after day.

Instead, life flows like water. Much use is made of the images of water, of the natural cycle of rain flowing though the streams and rivers back to the sea. In the sea lies rebirth, in the sea lies hope and self-discovery.

But this is one of the most joyously hopeful and positive films I've ever seen. Bleak, set in a rural Japan which offers up none of the usual clichés of Japanese life, it transcends its extraordinary visual richness to offer up a hymn to the struggle of modern man, woman and child, searching for an explanation, for a reason for life in the face of violence and the unpredictable. It is a potent, powerful statement about the need to be reborn, to rediscover self and a sense of purpose.

An outstanding film, but not one which is going to capture everyone's imagination. It's a film you grow into. It's a film which you visually enjoy. It's a film in which, as you recognise the struggle faced by the survivors, you too begin to imagine your own need for a pilgrimage of self-discovery. Outstanding, but I suggest you rent it in the first instance ... and see how quickly it grows on you.

This is a film with a rare and timeless pedigree - based on events in Algiers in the mid-1950's, winner of several awards in 1966 when it was released, banned for several years in France, and still relevant to this day, it is a film whose black and white photography gives it immediacy and depth rather than vintage.

The 1950's, and European empires are in decay. The French have lost Indochina ... the USA filling the vacuum in Viet Nam, seemingly oblivious to the defeat the elite of the French army suffered at Dien Bien Phu. In Algeria, there is pressure for the creation of a muslim fundamentalist state and independence from the colonial ruler. The French Right, meanwhile, is backing the many French settlers who have a vested interest in staying. The scene is primed for a civil war of the bloodiest character.

"The Battle of Algiers" opens with a scene of torture ... or shall we say, interrogation. A skeletal Arab has been coerced into giving information. He is dressed in French uniform (black man, white uniform, echoing Fanon) ... ensuring the French don't actually have to kill him themselves ... and paraded around while French troops raid Arab tenement blocks. Within, some of the leaders of the resistance are hiding. And so we drift into flashback mode - how did the protagonists come to be where they are? What is the back story?

You're already fascinated. This is a piece of historical analysis. This is a documentary turned into fiction, and a piece of fiction turned into documentary. The director, Pontecorvo, uses non-professional actors, hand held cameras and diffused lighting to enhance this impression of watching live newsreel footage from the heart of the war zone. The film is about Algiers, but it can symbolise any conflict between a colonial power and the colonised.

The struggle boils down to a battle between the terrorism of the rebels and the terror tactics of the French paratroops. We watch bombs being planted in crowded cafés; it is chillingly real. We watch the cat and mouse games of activists being pursued through the narrow streets of the Kasbah. We watch the impact this has on the bystanders - they are polarised to join one side or the other. One of the leaders of the insurrection comments that terrorism is only a first step - they have to mobilise the people to take action, to strike, to attack the economic base of the colonialists. Already, the resistance is not confined to a few fanatics - men, women and children are actively involved, and their ranks are swelling.

It is superbly paced, beautifully scripted, and astonishingly choreographed - the complexity of the crowd scenes, the rooftop coverage of a living city, the ordinariness of the faces, all combine to create a sense of realism. You feel as if you are there, as if the action is taking place today.

And you wonder why so many invaders have failed to understand what motivates people when they perceive their country as being invaded and their culture as being abused. The French paratroops extol the virtues of the French Resistance fighting the German occupation ... but cannot understand that the Arabs might see themselves as a legitimate resistance movement, not simply 'terrorists'. The paras, themselves, seem to have already forgotten what happened to them at Dien Bien Phu.

"The Battle of Algiers" presents a lesson in history. It also presents a lesson in film-making, for this is cinematography of the very highest quality. A film with no stars, without a glamorous subject, and seemingly dated in its subject matter, yet this is a film which will surprise you by its ability to grip and hold your attention. Beyond a doubt, one of the finest films I have ever seen.

Beyond a doubt, my favourite werewolf movie, and a striking confirmation that 'teenage' horror can be graced by lean, character-led productions, good writing, and good acting, and not reduced to couch-potato indolence by Hollywood's fast-food diet of big budget, star-studied, slash and gore, titillating trivia. Do you get the impression I'm serious about this one?

"Ginger Snaps" takes the concept of the werewolf - a myth we have lived with since prehistory - and transforms it into a chilly tale of modern adolescence. It, at once, affirms teenage fears and plays upon them. Emily Perkins (Brigitte) and Katharine Isabelle (Ginger) are two teenage for whom puberty has been delayed, much to the consternation of their mother, who is constantly trying to feed them up on a healthy diet ... and checking their laundry for evidence that they've finally become women.

The sisters inhabit a world in which the intellect is numbed; the most terrifying demand made of teenagers is that they fit in. Outcasts - they are hated by their status-seeking classmates - the girls remain the closest of friends, darkly dressed, fashion-rejecting Goths united by a death pact and a fascination with the macabre, and haunted by the boredom and sterility of existence in the suburb of Bailey Downs.

On the night of Ginger's first period, the girls are attacked by a creature which has scented her blood. As they flee, it is knocked down and killed by a van. The girls escape ... but from now on, there's something not quite right with Ginger. Brigitte can see it, Brigitte works out what has happened, Brigitte sets out to save her sister, to find salvation not in religion, but in science and a drug remedy for the curse which has infected Ginger's blood.

This is sophisticated horror. Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle are magnificent in the lead roles: there is a tangible chemistry between them. Perkins creates a dark angst and torment, steeling herself to throw off her timidity and protect her sister; Isabelle exudes arrogance and an erotic cool, makes a seamless transition from social reject to sultrypredator.

The real horror of teenage years, of course, is boys and what happens naturally. How do you cope with it? How do you cope without it? How do you cope with relationships? Can you fit in with everyone else and avoid rejection, or are you forced out, left a terrified loner desperately trying to find friends and a role? Screenwriter Karen Walton uses the werewolf as metaphor for this. Her script has wit, and a feminist bite. Most teenage horror gives menstruation a wide berth - perhaps only 'Carrie' explores the issue with any consequence.

It is obviously a Canadian movie. This is not a put down. Anything but. Canadian cinema can often be counted upon to come up with something much more sophisticated than the Hollywood studios could tolerate ... or imagine. A low budget movie - Walton and director John Fawcett fought for years to get this made - it is yet proof that a good script and good acting are the vital ingredients in a memorable film.

This is a film about teenagers, but it is not a 'teenage' movie: I'm back to my harangue about so many teenage horror movies simply being devices for a load of scantily dressed celebrities and beautiful people to run around screaming, bleeding, and wise-cracking - it's a marketing device to get teenage bums on seats and into the Malls to buy the spin-off produce.

"Ginger Snaps" is a genuinely well-written and well-performed story. It works because it is character-led, because it addresses real human fears and worries seriously: you don't have to be a 15 year old to enjoy it. This is sophisticated, intelligent cinema. If there is a criticism, it is of the last 10-15 minutes of the production where it becomes an overtly 'horror' movie. Not that this seriously detracts from the overall enjoyment and impact of the film. It remains an honest, askew vision of teenage angst, adolescent sexuality, and human fears, and is also a sincere exploration of love, loyalty, and sisterhood.

The wit is savage, as razor-edged as a wolf's fangs. With puberty comes a superfluity of blood and hair growth. "Ginger Snaps" is a black comedy which uses the theme of transformation as something which happens to everyone - although this is a decidedly female perspective, we are left in no doubt that boys face puberty with as little knowledge and as much fear, despite the bravado. Adolescence is fraught with problems of relationships - finding friends, losing friends, facing the dangers that you might offend someone, do the wrong thing, wear the wrong thing, be isolated and excluded. For those who do feel left out, life is one long night of rejection, with nothing to do but howl at the moon and hope someone, someday will understand you and love you. Now that is real horror! For Fawcett and Walton the source of all human horror lies within the human body and human mind.

I say my only criticism is the last few minutes, when the monster appears? I'm still not entirely convinced this isn't a deliberate decision by Walton and Fawcett. This film has a very solid grounding in reality, having an almost documentary feel in places. If the real horror is within us, maybe creating a brief sense of unreality only drives the fears in deeper and makes the movie just a little bit scarier? In retrospect, the ending did leave me with a sense of disjunction which possibly heightened the film's emotional impact. Judge for yourself - I still rate this the best, the very best of the werewolf genre.

A macabre little fantasia from Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who would go on to make "Amelie" and "A very long engagement"). He uses a simple plot device. Let this be a France which has succumbed to some dystopian nightmare, which has slipped into a condition of economic collapse where there is no food ... and the currency has dissolved, leaving barter the only form of exchange. This is a world where a bag of lentils will take you places. Now, take a dingy, dank tenement block, set on its own ... maybe some distance beyond the outskirts of town ... maybe not. Fill its rooms with an oddball bunch of tenants. Let the tenement belong to a psychotic butcher, who remains in business by harvesting the handymen he lures into the spare apartment. Now, let's complicate the action: let the latest handyman be some scrawny little bloke, a former circus performer, and let the butcher's daughter fall for him ... and enlist the aid of the underground to try to protect him from her father's meat cleaver.

Like I say, a simple little plot device. It works beautifully. 'Delicatessen' is quite a remarkable little film. Shot on a low budget, it is exemplary for anyone wanting to make movies: it helps if you have talent as a director and can enlist a highly competent crew of technicians and professionals; you will need an excellent script; and a superb cast won't go amiss.

It's a lovely script. The test of a good story is how quickly you suspend disbelief. You are riveted from the opening shots. You absorb the notion that this is a world with no currency and little food, where, frankly, anything is possible. You settle to enjoy the film. And your attention is held by the cast. These are wonderfully idiosyncratic roles and worthy performances - you settle to enjoy beautifully imagined characters, created by a blend of excellent screenwriting and wholly convincing acting. The action is both plot-driven and character-driven - the characters enlist your sympathies and engage your sense of humour.

And the humour is beautifully choreographed - watch the scenes with the bedsprings!

Jeunet's world of 'Delicatessen' is an extravagant fantasia. He never explains what has gone wrong in the world. Life goes on. Two brothers earn an incongruous living making those annoying toys that moo like a cow! One voluptuous tenant works at the oldest profession. Another devises foolproof means to kill herself. Our hero, the new handyman, plays the saw and dreams of happy days as a circus clown. Everyone watches TV. It seems that the only industry to have survived is the entertainment industry ... or, at least, the slapstick side of it.

It's an ironic take on French culture. French cuisine has become cannibalism - doubtless the tenants know how to make a boudin or pâté out of human remains. At least one of the tenants maintains tradition, though - he breeds snails and frogs in his flooded apartment.

But who are the underground, the troglodytes who inhabit the sewers and who are portrayed as bringing down society? The reality is that this is not a film with a hidden message or cryptic critique of French society. It's not a film in which you search for meaning. Jeunet offers fantasy - quirky, droll, surreal, but fantasy. The fantasy exists not to elaborate some political message, but to sustain the story. It's a plot device - the fantasy provides the vehicle for the story of love and butchery. It makes the inexplicable explicable.

A fine, funny movie with a superb ensemble cast and great direction. A film to savour ... and to speculate on how much it influenced the 'League of Gentlemen'.

Largely based on the account of Trudl Junge who, aged 22, became Hitler's secretary in 1943, "Downfall" portrays the last few days of the Nazi regime, now confined within the claustrophobia of the Berlin Bunker. The film opens with a brief interview of Frau Junge, an old woman accepting guilt for her part in the tyranny.

And then it's back to her first meeting with Hitler - an impressionable young woman, swept off her feet by an opportunity to be close to the ultimate celebrity. And then another jump through time to the Bunker and the last days, with the Red Army sweeping into Berlin.

It's a very physical performance by Bruno Ganz as Hitler; he makes the Fuhrer physically insignificant, a little man with big ideas and flamboyant but volatile emotions. Ganz's gestures, his body language, his passion, his histrionics are utterly convincing. It is a compelling piece of acting - Ganz describes (in an interview on the DVD extras) how he had to suspend his own hatred of Hitler in order to play the man. The aim was realism, accuracy, not caricature or parody. It's an astonishing performance.

Around Hitler, the fanatics cling to fantasy, believing to the end that some miracle will happen, that they will be proved right, that somehow the Fuhrer will conjure up ? what? Yet others are already plotting to abandon the sunken ship, to try to save themselves. This is not the downfall of Adolf Hitler, it is the utter collapse of a regime and its ideology. All that is left is fantasy, and recrimination. Ultimately, they blame the German people for having failed them. While the monstrous fantasy persists within the Bunker, above, on the streets of Berlin and across the German countryside, there is death, destruction, and a harvest of horror being reaped.

Within the Bunker are mortal creatures who once held the power of life or death over a continent but who are now reduced to fragile psyches searching for escape, for excuses, for some tangible ray of hope. As their world implodes, fanaticism vies with panic, the instrumentalism of survival, the obligations of duty, even individual heroism.

Superb performances are almost routine in this film, but Corinna Harfouch as Frau Goebbels provides one of the most memorable, demanding, and chilling screen presences I've ever seen. She portrays an empty husk of a woman inhabited by blind devotion and belief. Again, in interview, she explains just how much this role took out of her.

You are left with an impression of Hitler's ability to beguile. The functionaries are blindly obedient. The soldiers follow their duty. The women idealise him - Eva Braun is passionately in love, Alexandra Maria Lara plays the confused innocence of Traudl Junge, and Frau Goebbels is obsessed by an almost psychotic idealism and reverence for her Fuhrer. The claustrophobia of the Bunker is echoed in the moral and intellectual straitjacket of the Nazi regime's remnants.

The film delivers a convincing authenticity. It is disturbing, frightening, horrifying. And the DVD extras (available on the 2 disc edition) underpin its quality. The discussion of the morality of making the film, the angst which clearly gripped many of the actors, the determination to deliver a valid account, free of sensationalism, special effects, hype, glitz or gloss - all this becomes clear in the interviews and commentaries available on the second disc. An astonishing, important, and absolutely compulsive piece of viewing which will leave you moved, even shaken. Absolutely first class.

Is this the ultimate film about lost love? Guiseppe Tornatore explores the nature of love, its ability to flicker, burn, consume, then slip through your fingers because of a moment missed, a second's inattention ... and she's gone, and you're left with a lifetime of dreams and might-have-beens, and, occasionally, her reflection in your most private tears.

Set in a small town in Sicily, there is an autobiographical element as Tornatore pays homage to his youth. It's a setting anyone brought up in a small town or village will understand - a place of certainties, of warmth, or safety, of claustrophobia. Here we find young Toto (Salvatore Cascio), waiting, still believing his father will return from the Russian Front. He's too sleepy to be an altar boy - he spends his nights at the local cinema, watching the films and pestering Alfredo, the projectionist (Philippe Noiret).

The local priest runs the cinema and censors it, cutting out any pornographic images such as kisses. He notably fails, however, to censor Left-wing messages or to rob the films for their political content. Toto watches Jean Renoir and Charlie Chaplin. It's an evocation of the fascination of the cinema, the whole town packing the theatre each night to laugh, cry, cheer, and share experiences and passion. It's an intimate world where the public and the private overlap and live in harmony.

Toto longs to be a projectionist - Alfredo reluctantly trains him. The boy loves the cinema, loves its romance and power. At one point, Alfredo projects a film outside onto a white wall, so people locked out of the cinema can see it. It is one of the magical moments of cinema: I can watch this again and again and the magic remains fresh!

Toto grows to adolescence as the town's projectionist. The old cinema has burned down, the new one is glitz and glamour, no longer within the control of the Church, but run for profit by a speculative outsider, a man from mainland Italy. Toto knows his father will never return, that he lives only as charred memories. He is taking pictures himself, now, and his attention is captured by a beautiful newcomer, Elena (Agnese Nano). He is confident and adept at everything to do with the cinema, but inept at expressing his love for this girl.

When he is called up to do his national service in the army, Toto loses touch with Elena. It is his baptism into a world beyond his small town, a real world beyond the safety of the cinema screen. But the army cuts him adrift, leaves him alone. He doesn't fit in the way he fitted into his community ... and now he cannot go back. Alfredo tells him to leave town, to follow his talents, his dreams, never to come back. The central irony of the film is Alfredo's insistence that Toto should not be made a slave to nostalgia - memories should be liberating, enlightening, should be the fuel for the mind, not a mawkish prison for it.

And so the film starts with Toto, now a successful, renowned film-maker in his own right, being given the news of Alfredo's death. Can he return? His home is the scene of so much love, of so much loss. He has been prepared to wait for love all these years ... or, at least, to try to escape from it - he has a string of failed relationships. Surely his home will simply rekindle the pain of loss?

Here is nostalgia as a motivating force in life, as cherished memory. Here we have love - and the loss of it. The joy, the pain, the anticipation, the dreams. This is a film which will make you cry, make you laugh, fill you with hope ... and trigger a few memories.

The "Director's Cut" restores the 51 minutes raped from the film during its first US release. Why did they do that? Most of the cuts are at the end, robbing the film of its conclusion, its meaning, its depth of emotion! The cut version is magnificent, the restored version more so. Could the American film industry not understand emotion? Were they determined to impose their definition of a happy, or at least cerebral ending? Was it an ironic take on the priest cutting out the naughty bits?

If you can, try to watch the shorter version first. Then watch the restored version. It will double your enjoyment of a magnificent piece of cinema. "Cinema Paradiso" will stir your emotions. Watch it with hanky in hand ... and be prepared to laugh loud and cry openly.

One of the classic love it or hate it epics, Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy is widely regarded as one of the great pieces of imaginative fiction, and the books are amongst the most popular ever written in the English language. Tolkein preferred to call his books 'romances' rather than 'novels' - they deal with an epic quest and follow in a European 'romance' tradition of epic tales of knights and adventures (not love stories).

The film trilogy could never have been made before CGI attained a certain standard and the special effects potential existed to film hobbits in scale, create a cast of thousands, most of them non-human, and build a fantasy world of castles, caves, forest dwelling elves, and fiery finales. The films, however, are not just a triumph of technology over the imagination, they are outstanding pieces of cinematography in their own right.

The films are reasonably faithful to the Tolkein romances, though they don't necessarily strictly adhere to the structure of the books: director Jackson has made some omissions and changes, and has developed the characterisation of various players in order to give the film more visual and dramatic intensity than the books required, weaving a tapestry of subplots around the central story of Frodo's quest to destroy the ring. While the books focus firmly on the task of the Ring bearer, the episodic nature of the films - with the nine characters of the Fellowship all facing their own adventures - requires greater balance of subplot / main plot.

'The Fellowship of the Ring' introduces us to the situation and the characters. It's a brave piece of film making - the opening requires a lengthy narrative to establish the background to the plot and familiarise the audience with the history (and geography) of Middle Earth, the mythical location of the action. We are plunged into a world of hobbits, little people, halflings with hairy feet. Unbeknown to the quiet, contented hobbit population of the Shire, one of them has possession of a ring - the Ring, a potent weapon for evil forged thousands of years earlier by Sauron, the evil lord of the rings.

Sauron, it was thought, had been destroyed, but is even now re-establishing his power and reaching out across Middle Earth to recover the Ring. Faced with the danger of its recapture, which will guarantee the triumph of the evil lord, the magician Gandalf instructs the young hobbit, Frodo, to take the ring to safety. Accompanied by three other hobbits he sets off, and the adventure begins.

It is actually a very slow film - even slower if you watch the extended version released some time after the original. It says something about the compulsive nature of Tolkein's story telling and Jackson's adaptation for the cinema that audiences have been so gripped and absorbed by the tale they have embraced the film.

Highly emotional in places - possibly even overly sentimental - the film explores themes of love, friendship, loyalty, duty, obsession, courage, and, of course, the struggle of good against evil. An extraordinarily courageous piece of film-making - shooting three films at the same time, taking on the mythical world of Tolkien (everyone who reads the book has their own vision of what it looks like), and relying so heavily on special effects there was a danger these might swamp the drama and narrative. What you end up with is viewing so compulsive, even after sitting through a very long film, you watch the final scene and can't wait to see what happens next in "The Two Towers".

Excellent cast, if I had to single out exceptional performances, then Ian McKellen gives the role of Gandalf a gravitas and authority which dominates the screen, Viggo Mortensen displays dignity in the role of Strider / Aragorn and delivers a convincing portrayal of a man carrying a superhuman burden of responsibility while enduring the all too human pangs of love, and Sean Bean exemplifies the brooding, flawed Boromir, the anti-hero, or is that anti-villain? And the Nazgul - superbly drawn creatures! The nine characters of the Fellowship all win and hold your sympathies throughout the three films - an achievement in itself.

No sex please but a blend of slow moving love stories, at times intense and poignant, this is a film which shifts effortlessly from slow pace and humour through swashbuckling action, intense drama, to battle scenes with limited gore but a body count which runs into thousands. If you love it, you can watch it again and again and never fail to be wholly absorbed - if you hate it, don't even try.

It's a film, a trilogy which should be experienced at the cinema - the bigger the screen and the louder the volume the better. On the big screen, it is truly epic ? if you can cope with being pinned back in your seat long enough for your backside to appreciate the full meaning of epic. If you watch it on DVD, go for the extended version with its outstanding addition of extras (commentaries on the film, interviews, making-of documentaries, and more) - exceptional value, and so many more hours of watching for any fan already bordering on a need for treatment. One of the great film experiences, and a yardstick for future film quality.

Second of Peter Jackson's adaptations of Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and another masterly use of CGI and special effects. "The Two Towers" sees Frodo and Sam pursuing their lonely quest - the intensity of their isolation and claustrophobia of their peril is handled with sensitivity and dramatic conviction. They will be joined by the tragic Gollum / Sméagol - an iconic piece of special effects given great humanity by Andy Serkis.

The other members of the Fellowship of the Ring are left to go their own ways and fight their own battles. Jackson balances the main plot with intense and gripping sub-plots, his characters benefiting from a superb ensemble of actors. Brad Dourif gives us a loathsome, manipulative Wormtongue, Bernard Hill a troubled Theoden, and Miranda Otto as Eowyn is a woman surely any romantic hero would fall in love with? Surely?

It's a blend of stories and characters which holds your imagination and emotions in a relentless grip - a tribute to Tolkein's ability to write a story, and Jackson's skill in transferring this to film. The special effects are essential to the film - Tolkein could rely on the reader's mind to do the job. Despite having read the books three times before the films were made, I had no difficulty adapting my imagination to Jackson's - it is a mark of his success as a visionary film-maker that so many others have been able to suspend their own vision of Tolkein's world and become fully absorbed by the film representation.

Jackson, of course, has adapted Tolkien - his films are reasonably faithful to the books, though there have been changes. The films, in their own right, become convincing portrayals of a mythical world consumed by the battle between good and evil. The combination of special effects and landscape make the three films visually stunning and amplify the drama.

I have to say this is a film best experienced at the cinema - make sure you see it on the big screen at least once if you want to fully appreciate its epic power and drama. If you watch it on DVD, go for the extended version with its outstanding addition of extras (commentaries on the film, interviews, making-of documentaries, and more) - exceptional value.

Third and final film in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and, once more, an absorbing use of CGI and special effects. "The Return of the King" sees Frodo, Sam, and Sméagol approaching journey's end while the remaining members of the Fellowship become embroiled in the final battle against Sauron.

Again, Jackson blends together the central story of the Ring bearer's quest - a lonely, fraught journey - with the sub-plots which have developed around the other characters. The drama is intense and, though the narrative swings from place to place, it is convincingly handled and easy to follow the complex tapestry of characters and drama.

The body count will mount relentlessly. There are moments of humour. The love story remains a vital interest. And there's action, action, and more action. If you've got this far, you know you love it. And you won't be disappointed although, if there is a flaw, it's in the ending, which seems a bit coy and overly sentimental - Jackson doesn't follow Tolkein's tale, which gives us a final battle for the Shire, so I found the ending just a touch tame. Nevertheless, compulsive viewing, unless, of course, you don't like spiders - you may have nightmares.

Again, I have to say this is a film best experienced at the cinema - make sure you see it on the big screen at least once if you want to fully appreciate its epic power and drama. If you watch it on DVD, go for the extended version with its outstanding addition of extras (commentaries on the film, interviews, making-of documentaries, and more) - exceptional value.