0001: THE CROW, Alex Proyas, USA, 1994

A man returns from the dead to hunt down the thugs who murdered him and his girlfriend. Viewed dispassionately, yes, Alex Proyas' [i]The Crow[/i] is about as juvenile as it sounds, catharsis by way of blood-soaked revenge, but its strength comes from the way in which it never pretends to be anything else. Time has not been kind; the lack of budget is obvious, the late Brandon Lee was a good actor, but not (yet) a great one and the script veers from pathos to self-parody in the same scene. Yet [i]The Crow[/i] captures just enough of James O'Barr's utter lack of guile, the grief and frustration laid bare in his original graphic novel's rambling poetry and ultraviolent monochrome scribbles that the film ends up far closer to genuine myth-making than adolescent power fantasy. Draven knows he can never bring his girlfriend back, knows he's not changing anything, knows people will forget them both and move on (unlike, say, the studios who backed three disastrous sequels), but that doesn't stop him hurting, and [i]The Crow[/i] is simply an expression of his attempts to deal with this, however futile they might be. 'When someone you love dies,' the foreword to the graphic novel reads, 'you will know what it is to be completely and utterly alone.' Clichéd, perhaps. Trite, even. Yet it's something no other superhero since has ever really seemed to understand.


0010: PEKING OPERA BLUES, Tsui Hark, Hong Kong, 1986

1913 Beijing, political unrest following a sea-change in government, soldiers on the streets and three heroines crossing paths – but [i]Peking Opera Blues[/i] is much more than 'just' another Hong Kong caper movie, showcasing matinée action, high drama, history, fantasy, musical numbers, comedy, romance, tragedy, gender relations and god knows how many more genre elements. This is why Tsui Hark gets a free pass, now and forever; what should be an absolute mess becomes a dizzying rollercoaster that rarely lets up, leaping through tonal shifts at breakneck speed yet never leaving the audience lost or confused. The acting is nigh-on pitch-perfect, the cast never missing a beat and every element just flat-out [b]works[/b]; the film is captivating, heartbreaking and hysterically funny by turns and never once feels rushed or forced. [i]Peking Opera Blues[/i] is hardly timeless per se – it looks its age – but this only adds to the charm. The wirework still thrills, the FX never detract from the setpieces and even the score's liberal pilfering from Peter Gabriel's [i]Birdy[/i] only ramps up the tension further still. Twenty-three years on it remains a high point in Tsui Hark's erratic career, one of Hong Kong cinema's greatest achievements and a peerless piece of entertainment.


0011: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, Tomas Alfredsson, Sweden, 2008

Any half-decent director can drench his camera in gore or pull a boo-scare with fast cutting and orchestral stabs, but it takes a lot more than that to leave the audience unsettled by what remains unseen or unspoken. Tomas Alfredsson's [I]Let The Right One In[/i] is a coming-of-age story in a cold, snowbound 1980s Sweden where Oskar, a shy, reclusive young boy befriends Eli, the girl who's moved in next door; the horror comes not so much from who (or what) Eli turns out to be, but rather the contrasts in everything that comes of their relationship. Eli is an inhuman monster whose victims don't deserve to die – she's also very much a person tormented by the awful things she has to do to survive. She draws Oskar out of his shell, building his sense of self-worth to the point where the boy is clearly smitten with her, but what good is any of this if he's sold his soul in the process? John Ajvide Lindqvist's screenplay deftly pares down his original novel, doing away with most of the extraneous splatter and leaving a love story as painfully bittersweet as it is terrifyingly [b]wrong[/b].


0100: A SNAKE OF JUNE, Shinya Tsukamoto, Japan, 2002

People still dismiss (some) arthouse cinema as a pointless attempt to legitimize self-centered excess; try explaining Shinya Tsukamoto's [i]A Snake of June[/i] without making it sound like hardcore pornography. Rinko (Asuka Kurosawa), a woman trapped in a loveless marriage, finds she has a stalker, Iguchi (Tsukamoto himself), a man determined to blackmail her into acting out any number of humiliating sexual fantasies. Tsukamoto even originally conceived the film as 'more violent, more pornographic and more immoral' – but though the gorgeous monochrome cinematography remains suffused with eroticism in the same way the summer rain falls constantly throughout, [i]A Snake of June[/i] is not about the stalker but the object of his gaze. Iguchi is a [i]deus ex machina[/i] whose sole purpose is to help Rinko realize there's nothing shameful in desire or need, that she can't (and shouldn't) keep that side of her personality subordinate to her husband's neuroses or society's expectations. Asuka's performance is astonishing – naked before the audience in every sense – but the real surprise is how something that reads like a sordid male fantasy could play out as such a carefully balanced, life-affirming, aesthetically vivid piece of cinema.


0101: A FEATHER, Song Il-Gon, Korea, 2005

It was supposed to be one of three environmental-themed digital short films, only Song Il-Gon ([i]Flower Island[/i], [i]Spider Forest[/i]) ignored his remit and elected to shoot a simple, minimalist romance about letting go and moving on instead. Jang Hyun-Seong plays a film director visiting the remote island where ten years ago, he and his girlfriend (long since his ex) promised to return a decade on. Wondering if she'll keep the appointment despite their separation, he books himself a short stay, but as time passes he finds himself becoming friends with the young woman (Lee So-Yeon, [i]Untold Scandal[/i]) who runs the island's tiny motel. [i]A Feather[/i] belies its microbudget and brief running time in every respect with stunning cinematography, easy, naturalistic performances, careful, studied pacing and a blend of wry humanist observation with echoes of magical realism. A beautiful, almost painterly little film, gentle, warm and hopeful, and more genuine than any number of multi-million dollar Hollywood romantic comedies.


0110: PRINCESS ARETE, Sunao Katabuchi, Japan, 2001

When the eponymous heroine of Studio 4C's animated feature [i]Princess Arete[/i] fails to live up to her royal father's ideas of what is or is not appropriate conduct for a medieval bride, she's sold off to the petty and self-centered sorcerer Boax to keep her safely hidden from the public eye. Humility is not an easy thing for a writer to portray effectively; to have the hero claim 'Oh, it was nothing' and get the audience to [b]believe[/b] it, to suggest that once they take the first step (so to speak) pretty much anyone can save the world. Arete has no latent magic powers or any macguffin that turns out to be the key to the kingdom – what saves her is a simple moment of epiphany where she realizes the value of direct action, a paean to self-determination that's far deeper and more elegantly realized than many more critically acclaimed films, animated or live-action. [i]Princess Arete[/i] lacks the big-budget set-pieces of its peers, or the frantic, dazzling visual invention of the studio's regular output, but it remains a subtly affecting, wonderfully intelligent and fantastically human little fairytale, a forgotten treasure which deserves a great deal more attention.


0111: DUELIST, Lee Myung-Se, Korea, 2005

Lee Myung-Se's [i]Duelist[/i] is a loose adaptation of the 2003 television drama [i]Damo[/i] – a Choseon policewoman attempts to uncover a counterfeiting ring trying to undermine the ruling government – yet where the original series took a relatively realistic approach to medieval Korean detective work, Lee was far more concerned with the doomed romance between the heroine and the tortured male lead. A consummate visual stylist even before his breakout hit [i]Nowhere to Hide[/i]), the director trimmed the original narrative down to the bare minimum the central relationship required. The dazzling production design paints it in bold gestures that throw logic, period detail, cohesion or character backstory out of the window in favour of smirking anachronisms, in-jokes and general leaps of faith that left audiences completely lost on its release. Yet film is first and foremost a visual medium – for those who can accept it doesn't necessarily have to 'make sense', [i]Duelist[/i] functions as an extraordinarily beautiful, captivating tone poem and an achingly bittersweet love story. The pivotal sequence early on where a fight between the leads turns into a sensuous tango that doubles as an unconsummated love scene packs an emotional punch that dwarfs any modern [i]wuxia pian[/i].


1000: COWBOY BEBOP THE MOVIE (KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR), Shinichiro Watanabe, Japan, 2001

[i]Knocking on Heaven's Door[/i] is much more than 'just' an extended television episode wedged into [i]Cowboy Bebop[/i]'s existing canon. The plot could be straight out of the original animated series – a renegade special forces operative threatens to devastate Mars with biological weapons of mass destruction – but Watanabe and Studio Bones bring the series' lyrical, captivating, rock'n'roll cool to the big screen with a wildly entertaining sense of playful abandon that runs from the opening stakeout to the credits (a three-minute music video that has virtually nothing to do with the film proper), the unhurried detective work tracking down the villain, the blistering set-pieces (the hand-to-hand fighting is the equal of many a live-action feature) and the many throwaway lines that reinforce the connections between the five principals for anyone ignorant of the ground rules the television series established. [i]Knocking on Heaven's Door[/i] has dated, and countless movies have gone over the same ground before and since, but at its best (which would be most of the film) [b]nothing[/b] mashes so many influences together with the same wry, self-deprecating humour, quiet, unassuming pathos and dazzling, almost effortless panache.


Bubbling under:
THE NEW WORLD, Terrence Malick, USA, 2005
STOLEN LIFE, Li Shaohong, China, 2005
TEKKON KINKREET, Michael Arias, Japan, 2006
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, Sergio Leone, Italy/USA, 1968
HEAT, Michael Mann, USA, 1995
MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI, Lee Sung-Gang, Korea, 2002
IN THE HEAT OF THE SUN, Jiang Wen, China, 1994
A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY, Edward Yang, Taiwan, 1991