• Director: Pedro Almodóvar
• Spain, 1987
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There’s much to like about the performances in Law of Desire. Eusebio Poncela plays a marvellously ambivalent, sexually ambiguous film director as his insouciance gives way to raw emotion while Carmen Maura takes well to her role as his gold-hearted, rough diamond sister.

But the real turn here is delivered by Antonio Banderas who, in portraying his second of three exemplary Almodóvar nutters, does a fine job of representing reckless jealousy with a worrying streak of sincerity.

So much for great acting, because the story holds about as much water as a bucket with a hole. Nevertheless, Almodóvar manages to plug it for a while at least and his treatment of similar themes – in 2004′s Bad Education – would prove more fruitful next time.

• Director: Wes Anderson
• United States, 1998
• 

For many cinemagoers – myself included – Rushmore was a first peek inside the meticulous bazaar of Wes Anderson’s creative mind, unless of course you’d been lucky enough to stumble across a showing of Bottle Rocket two years before.

Looking back, with the benefit of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou as hindsight, Rushmore looks like a relatively restrained affair, but it’s a unique mind that generates this level of detail and the results evoke a child’s devotion to modelmaking.

It’s the work of a fastidious, curious mind and there’s that strange sense of real humanity which offsets a strong whiff absurdity. Rushmore is like a scale model of Anderson’s later work, with all the pieces (especially characterisation and sountrack) glueing nicely together.