MATTHEW CRAIG'S MUST-SEE MOVIES

PRINCESS MONONOKE (Mononoke Hime)
Billy Crudup, Clare Danes, Gillian Anderson
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki�s movies can, for the most part, be summed up in five words: Boy Meets Girl, Love Saves All. Princess Mononoke is no different. But what raises it above the rest of Studio Ghibli�s phenomenal catalogue, such as the unfeasibly Welsh Laputa, and the merely Oscar-winning Spirited Away, is the sheer passion of Crudup, Danes, and the rest of the cast, coupled with Neil Gaiman�s delicate tweaking of the original script. Princess Mononoke is a timeless fable that reinforces the notion that Love trumps Hate, and it does it in such a refreshing, clean fashion that, for a single sweet moment, you might actually believe it.

AMELIE (Le fableaux destin D�Amelie Poulain)
Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz
Directed by Jean-Paul Jeunet

The first sign that a movie has truly entered the cultural consciousness is when it is first ripped off�er, emulated by lazy fuckrag copywriters in some overpriced studio offices with all chrome and that. Amelie is a sweet, whimsical film about the rehabilitation of oddballs, and welds a strong ensemble cast, a clever story, and seamless CGI into the acme of romantic comedy. What McGregor and Zellwegger tried to destroy, Tautou and Jeunet defend with Gallic tenacity, and Robot Fist demands that advertisers be pummeled in the ballbag with snakes every time they try to rip it off. Have a new idea, damn your vulturine eyes!

ALIENS
Sigourney Weaver, Paul Reiser, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton
Directed by James Cameron

An astute military and corporate satire that still holds true today (What? Corporate interests manipulating trained soldiers into blindly leaping into a situation they scarcely understand, let alone prepare for? You�re kidding, right?), Aliens is a rare piece of science fiction cinema that isn�t entirely up its own arse. James Cameron directs up a storm, working from a superb script that combines the feel of Ridley Scott�s original movie with the gay abandon of half a century of war comics. Ultraviolent before Quentin Tarantino rented out his first Bette Midler movie, Aliens is also the first action movie to feature a powerful female lead. Where Alien�s Ellen Ripley was largely gender-neutral, Aliens� Ellen Ripley is very much A Woman. Maternal and nurturing, Ripley spends the last half of the movie kicking the shit out of xenomorphs. And why not?

LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA
Aamir Khan, Gracy Singh, Rachel Shelley, Paul Blackthorne
Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker

The one and only time cricket has ever been truly captivating, and the Greatest Sports Film of All Time (Raging Bull? Fuck off), Lagaan is the story of a group of diverse Indian villagers coming together to defeat a common foe: The British! Deciding to beat them at their own game, the villagers, led by the plucky Bhuvan, challenge the Britishers to a game of cricket. If they win: no tax for a year. If they lose: Deep Shit. The only problem is, none of the villagers have ever played cricket before, and the only available able-bodied men include an insane priest/hermit and a one-armed Untouchable bowler. Lagaan is as close to the archetypal Bollywood movie as my uneducated Western eyes have seen: the characters are broadly drawn, the basic plot is exactly that, and people burst into song at the drop of a hat. That said, the acting (and the singing) is superb, from Aamir Khan (Bhuvan) to the achingly beautiful Rachel Shelley. And the ending is so amazingly schizophrenic as to make me giggle, being both incredibly uplifting (and obvious) and unexpectedly bleak at the same time. Lagaan is the only sports movie that I can recommend without reservation. Shabbas!

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi
Directed by Ang Lee

In one way or another, all of the films in this list are love stories, whether it�s love for a place, a friend, or Life itself. Indeed, it sometimes seems like love stories are the only stories worth telling. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is very much a romantic love story, but it is also a cautionary tale, warning against the dangers of holding things back. Lee contrasts the all-encompassing fire of young love with the cold reality of a life spent in quiet yearning. Forget the fighting and the flying and the magic swords: the whole story is meaningless without the moment where Shu Lien and the mortally-wounded Li Mu Bai realise that they have wasted their entire lives by not giving in to their love. The pain of loss is balanced by the pain of guilt, as the young fighter, Jen, whose selfishness leads to Li�s death, comes to understand that her actions have consequences. It�s amazing to think that in such a visually stunning, action-packed movie, the things that really stand out are the quiet character moments, where nothing louder than an accusatory glare takes place.

BAD BOY BUBBY
Nicholas Hope, Claire Benito, Carmel Johnson, Rachael Huddy
Directed by Rolf De Heer

Channel surfing with a film student pal one evening, I came across the unlikely sight of an apparently mentally retarded man shagging his mum. Checking that, yes, I was awake, and no, this wasn�t Channel Five, I carried on watching. What unfolded was one of the most touching stories that I have ever seen. Bad Boy Bubby is the story of a full-grown man, infantilised and completely cut off from the outside world, with no friends except a dead cat wrapped in clingfilm, and an overbearing mother that would don a gas mask to go down the shops. After ten minutes exploring Bubby�s claustrophobic cosmos, the story gets underway after he accidentally kills his parents (via the trusty clingfilm method), and leaves his claustrophobic world behind for the very first time. Bad Boy Bubby sort of fits into the same �feral child� genre as Nell � although Nell never robs a petrol station with a foetid cat in a suitcase and a bit of mimicked police brutality � and follows the na�ve manchild as he wanders from situation to situation. Manipulated, accepted and rejected by many different people along the way, Bubby accepts everybody at face value, rather like a child or a puppy, and his utter lack of complexity is a lot of fun to watch.

SPIDER-MAN
Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe
Directed by Sam Raimi

This movie is in my top ten for a number of reasons. First, because it shits on every other movie in the superhero genre, apart from Iron Monkey. Second, because it was a genuine rarity: a piece of ultraslick Hollywood jazz that not only lived up to the hype, but surpassed it. And finally, crucially, it�s in this list because of all the films I�ve ever seen, it�s the one that generated the most anticipation (I even considered setting aside my fear of aeroplanes to fly to New York to see it a month early). It�s the one that had me closest to the edge of my seat. And it is, thus far, the only film that had me wanting to cheer and whoop and applaud by the end. Spider-Man, at its heart, a rich coming of age story, with plenty of breathtaking urban gymnastics and costumed chicanery thrown in for good measure. The narration at the beginning of the movie gives it away: the heart of the story is in how Peter Parker�s love for Mary Jane Watson evolves from a painfully adolescent crush into the first flush of genuine grown-up love. This goes both ways, of course, as Mary Jane bounces from the de rigueur of dating the football captain to the convenience of the rich boyfriend to the frisson of the mysterious stranger to, frankly, the only real man in the whole story. What makes this such an enjoyable story � and what (rightly) frustrated so many people � is that at the very moment when they realise that the time is finally right for them to get together, Peter walks away. It�s hardly the most Hollywood ending, but for the story and the characters, it�s spot-on. Sam Raimi�s Spider-Man is a learning curve movie. It�s the story of a boy (and a girl) learning how to be an adult. Consequently, it�s also the story of a man who is coming to grips with the gravest responsibility of adulthood: the responsibility for one�s self. Of course, as the recent trailer for Spider-Man 2 shows, the learning process isn�t over yet�

AKIRA
Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

A puberty allegory of a different sort, this. The film that (definitively) introduced Japanese animation to a wide audience (because, whether they knew it or not, people had been watching Japanese animation for years before it came out), Akira set the standard for almost everything that followed: a complex, mature storyline, based on a complex, mature comicbook; powerful, occasionally harrowing imagery, superbly animated; memorable music that didn�t rely on the pop popsy of the day; and strong performances from the voice cast, who weren�t a bunch of A- and B-listers looking for an easy paycheck where they could phone in their voiceovers. Otomo�s story of the unbreakable bond of friendship, in the face of genuinely overwhelming forces, such as biological and social evolution, is compelling, to say the least.

BARBARELLA
Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea, Marcel Marceau
Directed by Roger Vadim

The original sci-fi heroine- and until Ellen Ripley, the best � Barbarella is a swinging Sixties sexfarce par excellence. Loosely based on the comics of Jean-Claude Forest, Barbarella starred Jane Fonda as the na�ve adventurer, whose freewheeling odyssey across Tau Ceti (and through half a dozen changes of costume), in search of missing scientist Duran Duran, was never going to win any awards for depth. But as sixties softcore goes, it�s not too bad. Jane Fonda�s dazzled (as opposed to dazzling) performance, coupled with the sheer spuriousness of the plot and the often hilarious visuals imbues what is otherwise a fairly stupid movie a degree of charm that means I rarely pass up a chance to watch it. My guts churn with barely-contained bile (and probably Sugar Puffs) at the thought that Drew Fucking Barrymore is keen to �reimagine� Barbarella. A product of its time, Barbarella is very much a one-off, and should be left the hell alone.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Malcom McDowell, Warren Clarke, Patrick Magee, Aubrey Morris
Directed by Stanley Kubrick

A film where nobody learns their lesson. A film where delinquent scum are paraded around like heroes, and where ordinary, law-abiding cat-ladies are cut down in their prime. A film where psychological torture is dished out like aspirin. You can see why it was banned for so long. Malcom McDowell�s charismatic and conspiratorial performance as the unrepentant teen sociopath Alexander DeLarge carries the viewer through a bleak, bureaucratic vision of the near-future that, even today, has familiar political overtones. Stanley Kubrick�s skilled direction and neologist screenplay (adapted from the novel by Anthony Burgess) throws Alex into a cold, grey, municipal world, which is all the better for him to act out his colourful cruelties. A Clockwork Orange is everything Mary Whitehouse warned us about � and thank christ for that.

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Review text (C) Matthew Craig

Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist