• Director: Martin McDonagh
• United Kingdom, 2008
• 

In Bruges tells the story of two hitmen who lie low after a contract in the picturesque Belgian city. This is McDonagh’s first feature-length effort, having started out writing award-winning plays and then winning an Oscar for his short Six Shooter in 2006. Unsurprisingly then, the film is full of superb dialogue, with McDonagh’s script firing off the page like a sort of cocky, Anglo-Irish David Mamet.

The film’s characters are beautifully drawn, without recourse to too much background or showy tics. Each of the three protagonists – the two hitmen and their “sponsor” – has their own pace, their own unique style. Brendan Gleeson’s Ken manages to stay wise whilst being neither patronising nor paternal. Colin Farrell as his young colleague Ray is impatient and clumsy, yet he remains sympathetic throughout. Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes occupies his role as their master Harry with absolute authority, despite spending the first and second acts on the other end of a phone.

There’s violence here and there’s great beauty. There are cold-blooded killers and passionate lovers. This could turn out to be the precocious debut of a master filmmaker.

• Director: Joe Wright
• United Kingdom, 2007
• 

When a young girl uses a series of events to doom the romance of the housekeeper’s son and her elder sister, the course of each of their lives is changed beyond foresight. So goes the story of Atonement, an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s manipulative novel by upcoming British director Joe Wright.

Whilst the first act concentrates on the minute tensions of a pre-war country residence, the remaining drama unfolds on a much broader and more popular canvas set among the young nurses of London’s war effort and the British Expeditionary Force’s evacuation of Dunkirk.

Though our three protagonists comfortably succeed in displacing themselves to a new time and place, the film as a whole still feels unbalanced when detailed portraits are swapped for sweeping landscapes. When all is finally explained with a typical McEwan twist in the dénouement, this beautifully shot, seriously acted film rather struggles for credibility like a swan taking flight.

• Director: Wim Wenders
• Germany, 1999
• 

Ry Cooder visited Cuba in 1996 to record sessions for an intended Afro-Cuban collaboration. The Africans never made it out of Mali leaving Cooder and World Circuit’s Nick Gold high and dry. What followed was pure serendipity: within three days Juan de Marcos González managed to put together an extraordinary collective of musicians whose output became the Buena Vista Social Club album.

Cooder has been a frequent collaborator on Wenders’ films and the latter agreed to shoot the documentary on digital in 1998, with the former becoming a sort of central character. One might argue that with such colourful subjects against the dilapidated, colonial Havana backdrop, the film could have made itself.

The digital format gives the documentary a welcome rawness and interviews with each of the main Buena Vista players sets the scene for a triumphant coda in which these humble old gents gaze in awe at New York, most having never before left Cuba. A deserving Oscar winner even if rather uneven at times.

• Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
• Germany, 2006
• 

Crass Hollywood remakes of European art film aren’t often successful. The big budgets, the bigger country and the biggest names tend to kill off every single cell of zeitgeist in the original. And I can see that happening here, when they get sad-jowled Nicolas Cage to emote all over this one.

A Stasi official instigates a surveillance operation on a successful playwright. Beginning with an implacable dedication to finding the evidence he needs to condemn his subject, the official instead grows to respect and perhaps envy him, with difficult consequences for both.

The Lives of Others is steeped in atmosphere, the performances are beautifully restrained and the material is worryingly relevant to our times. Top that, Weinstein. Or rather, don’t bother.

• Director: Billy Wilder
• United States, 1944
• 

In some life insurance policies, where the policyholder dies in untypical circumstances, the policy pays out double. It’s called double indemnity, and when old Mr Dietrichson gets bumped off in revenge for the heinous crimes of being cranky and middle-aged, it’s made to look like he fell off a moving train.

It follows that the real protagonist in this movie is implausibility. That a housewife with a bad wig could persuade a worldly insurance salesman into helping her to off her husband. That our friendly local salesman would have no qualms about strangling a man with whom he has no beef. That the filmmakers thought a 23-year old actress would pass for the innocent teenage daughter.

Double Indemnity is creatively shot, and as we can expect from Wilder, the script is witty and sharp – indeed, Edward G Robinson positively thrives in his role as the shrewd invesigator Keyes. However, and perhaps this complaint is all too modern, the plot lacks purpose and the characters lack motivation, so the movie is robbed of any real tension.

• Director: Kevin Macdonald
• United Kingdom, 2007
• 

James McAvoy’s turn as leading man here is a superb mix of naïveté, youthful exuberance and abject fear. It’s perhaps unfortunate then that Last King will always be remembered – pretty much to the exclusion of everyone and everything else – for Forest Whitaker’s career-defining performance.

As General Idi Amin Dada, the complex, brutal and at times thoroughly unhinged dictator of Uganda, Whitaker is terrifyingly believable. Just as Amin dominated Ugandan life so completely, Whitaker completely owns this movie, his character even managing to dominate the scenes in which he doesn’t appear.

Director Macdonald might not have intended to stake the entire success of the movie on the Amin characterisation working well but it seems that way, with Whitaker justly earning 2007′s Best Actor Oscar, such that you have to wonder what else there is to say about Last King without mentioning him. Art imitating life, indeed.

• Director: James Ivory
• United Kingdom, 1992
• 

There’s something grating about the bourgeois self-satisfaction of the upper middle class during Forster’s era, as it sits around babbling blithely about suffrage and philosophy. Yet for all its self-professed modernism, it took two World Wars to truly change the character of English society.

Nevertheless, Forster is documenting progress here and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s screenplay is sharp enough to navigate the material with enough sensitivity and distinction between the three families.

Elsewhere, the locations are formidably rich and well photographed, a feature typical of all Merchant Ivory productions. And defying the otherwise sagging middle section of the film, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson bring fizz to their scenes together, prefacing their brilliance in Ivory’s next and more accomplished effort The Remains Of The Day.

Bing and I both frequented the Showroom Cinema opposite the railway station. One day he returned from one particular screening raving about what he’d seen and insisting I get down there sharpish and catch it.

That was the first run of Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated documentary Buena Vista Social Club and I didn’t catch it. Nor did I catch the second run.

It would be eight years more before I finally picked up the original World Circuit album and inevitably a number of those ageing musicians had passed on: Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Pio Leyva, Ruben Gonzalez, Manuel Puntillita Licea.

Four of the original members are currently on tour in the United Kingdom. All of the dates I’ve seen advertised are sold out.

This time I was not prepared to miss out so easily and I booked the tickets three months in advance. It was more than worth the wait, and those four original Buena Vista members (Manuel Galbán, Orlando Cachaíto López, Jesús ‘Aguaje’ Ramos, Guajiro Mirabal) were joined by a fifth, namely nimble-fingered laoud player Barbarito Torres.

The venerable greats were joined by members of an emerging younger generation. Pianist Ronaldo Luna evoked memories of Gonzalez’ beautiful solos. Following in Ferrer’s footsteps came Carlos Calunga, whose extraordinary vocal range was ably backed by Idania Valdès, the daughter of original Social Clubber Amadito.

The set list included elements of son montunos, danzón, cha cha cha, boleros and Cuban jazz. Alongside Social Club favourites such as Candela and Dos Gardenias, there was a lively rendition of Chanchullo and even a tender Somewhere Over The Rainbow, providing a beautiful contrast to the more raucous numbers.

• Director: Robert Duvall
• United States, 1997
• 

It’s amazing The Apostle isn’t better known, despite an Oscar nomination for Duvall’s intense, virtuoso acting performance. Duvall also wrote and directed his labour of love, and financed it himself, having been unable to find a backer throughout the 80s.

Perhaps the material scared them away. A denizen of the weird and colourful world of the evangelical South, preacher Sonny Dewey commits murder and resolves to do good until his inevitable capture by the authorities. In the wrong hands, this might have been cynical or overly dry, but Duvall’s rendering is full of poise and sensitivity.

His preacher is approaching retirement age, crackling with the electric energy of a mission, but more than a little unnerving in private moments. It’s a delicate balance to achieve but Duvall manages to pull it off with something akin to zealous devotion.

• Director: Paul Haggis
• United States, 2004
• 

Paul Haggis is one of those people who was obviously born to make movies. Already a decorated screenwriter of note, his mainstream directorial debut landed Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Editing at the Oscars.

Choosing Los Angeles to tell a series of interrelated stories (see also: Magnolia, Short Cuts), Haggis’ defining theme is the cause and effect of racial prejudice.

Some characters and their stories are less effective than others: Chris Bridges’ Anthony is rather too glib, Brendan Fraser’s Rick Cabot is simply there to glue a couple of stories together and his wife (Sandra Bullock) leaves it very late to make a useful contribution to the narrative. On the whole though, Crash is an emotionally powerful ensemble drama and hopefully a precedent for Paul Haggis as a director.