Gentry style

5. Godzilla (1954)

Ishiro Honda’s Gojira is a snarling dystopia of the present, pre-occupied by Japan’s legitimate anxiety over the nuclear capabilities of the USA. The mutant terrorist lays waste to the towering structures and, in doing so, stems the post-war economic resurrection of the city. Acting almost as an agent for Western forces, Godzilla has a strange place in the hearts of the people: at once an enviable, almost inspirational power but also an uncontrollable one. The urban landscape is a battle-ground and this iconic beast represents the awesome dangers of living in man-made world, substituting the peaceful order of nature with demented human designs. Much copied (see last year’s The Host) – and pummeled into near worthlessness by endlessly inferior sequels – this is a spectacular disaster movie that manages, from beneath the rubble, to tell a thrilling political allegory. (more…)

5. Frantic
4. Rififi
3. An American in Paris
2. Les Quatre Cents Coups
1. Le Samourai

5. Frantic (198

Polanski’s thriller begins with a gripping sense of confusion and desperation, flowing unevenly into a scarcely believable but hugely enjoyable clandestine world of missed connections and secret alliances. Whilst Walker takes a shower, his wife, Sondra, simply disappears and he is left to his own devices, attempting to retrace her steps through the Parisian underworld, accompanied only by Ennio Morriccone’s haunting synths. Polanski saw the film as a moment when a line is crossed, somewhere between the past and present; what a man used to be and what he might become. The stunning rooftop sequence purposely recalls Vertigo, reminding us of another detective in search of more than just a woman. Frantic explores the idea of the city as a place where anything can be discovered or regained, a space where nothing is lost, except those who are searching.

4. Rififi (1955)

Celebrated for the remarkable, wordless, 32-minute heist at the centre of the film, Jules Dassin’s intricate thriller is so consummately constructed that many forget that it arrived five whole years after John Huston (more…)

5. Friday Night lights
4. The Cincinnati Kid
3. The Natural
2. The Hustler
1. Rocky

5. Friday Night Lights:  I’m gonna miss the heat. I’m gonna miss the lights.

American football works well on screen, the staccato rhythms and technicalities of the game act as rounds of increasing tension, the variations of influential personnel offer us heroes, one after another. But there’s an inescapable hint of tragedy about the college game. The sadness of fleeting glory is exposed, the way in which the past, present and future of a young man is stripped down to one moment in one game; one decision, one twist, one turn; the significance of precision, the option of success. Coach Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) asks his team to be no less that ‘perfect’, no live nowhere but within the moment of victory. This is a spare, unsentimental film that discards the guts and glory myths that clog other movies to shed light on the stirring practicalities of focus, collaboration and belief. Peter Berg’s film allows us to see two rarely shared secrets: the fragility of the athlete and the possibility.

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