Top 5 films worth another look

Hollywood marketing is akin to being propositioned by a 300-ft hooker - terrifying, magnificent and utterly overwhelming. For those plugged in to the monolithic hype network that fizzes around the interweb and adorns our billboards with gurning celebrities and obnoxious animated gerbils (now in 3D!!), the stream of information moves at such a pace that it's hard to slow down and take stock. After all, it's hard to concentrate when James Cameron's grabbing you by the ear-holes and screaming, "AVATAR! IT'S A GAME CHANGER! NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN! NOT EVEN YOUR SHOES! AVATAR!!!"

So here are five movies definitely worth spending a couple of hours with, no matter what you've heard. Some of them were met with lukewarm reviews on release but are worth reassessing; others were simply swept away in the undertow. All I know is that once in a while, it's therapeutic to look back rather than forward for once.

1. REDBELT (2008) - Dir. David Mamet

As a playwright first and foremost, David Mamet has had a patchy history as a writer and director of movies. But he delivered something special last year with Redbelt, a studied look at the world of mixed martial arts and the tension between living a life of physical and mental discipline and entering televised tournament bouts for cold, hard cash. The fight scenes are kinetic and authentic, but it's the underlying philosophical struggle that gives the punches real weight.

2. SUBWAY (1985) - Dir. Luc Besson

For my money, Luc Besson's best film. It's just that no one agrees with me, so apparently my money is worth less than a slap in the chops. Cooler than Leon and smarter than The Fifth Element, Subway is Besson's purest contribution to the cinema du look movement. Christophe Lambert puts in a career-best performance (that's not saying much, admittedly) as Fred, a thief with an utterly obsessive personality, who takes refuge from pursuers in the Paris Metro, which is home to a menagerie of subterranean denizens. This film is hopelessly romantic, painfully idealistic and thrillingly youthful. But, based on past experience, you'll probably disagree with me. You hateful bastards.

3. DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978) - Dir. Terence Malick

Well, you can't make a list of misunderstood movies without at least one Malick film, can you? He's also my favourite director and I swear to God I will fight you if you say any different. Days of Heaven is the dreamiest film in a career of dreamy films. Its lack of a focused storyline meant no money and little recognition (apart from a richly-deserved Oscar for Nestor Almendros' awe-inspiring cinematography), but this movie was always going to be too good to make any money. Malick's tale of transient rural labourers in the early 20th century is a masterclass in what movies can do that books can't. Eschewing reams of dialogue and exposition frees the film to tell its story and convey its mood using performance and cinematography. The end result is a poem which doesn't have to resort to anything so clumsy as words. The best kind of poem.

4. ONLY YESTERDAY (1991) - Dir. Isao Takahata

While Hayao Miyazaki continues to (justifiably) garner acclaim with his escapist, fantasy-themed parables, Studio Ghibli's other co-head has created some of the studio's most powerful work too. Takahata's films are more grounded in reality than Miyazaki's and tend to be less visually flashy, but there's always an undercurrent of raw emotion pushing them forward. Only Yesterday follows a directionless 27 year-old as she considers her future and looks back on her childhood. The film serenely exploits the human impulse to recall the purity our youth and mourn how the world has warped us. Only it's nowhere near as much of a bummer as that sounds.




5. SERENITY (2005) - Dir. Joss Whedon

Firefly is pretty high on the list of awesome shows that got cut short before their prime, and it took a feature film continutation to fill that Mal Reynolds-shaped hole in fans' dreary lives. Clearly there wasn't enough of us, however, as the film failed to make back its budget. All I know is that I couldn't convince my girlfriend, or anyone else, to see it with me. I may have just stumbled upon the realisation that Serenity failed commercially because of the crushing social isolation of its fans. Sorry, Joss!

What I can't figure out is why no-one else was interested in seeing it. Serenity is a supremely entertaining sci-fi blockbuster which combines thrilling action scenes with compelling characters and a healthy dose of the funnies. Perhaps it was the perception that you had to have watched Firefly to follow it (which is incorrect; Serenity's story is completely self-contained). In any case it's certainly worth seeing if you missed it; in a just world, this film would have gone on to become a summer tentpole franchise. Particularly gushing superlatives must be thrust at Nathan Fillion's Mal Reynolds, arguably science fiction's best leading man since Han Solo.