griggs's - Favourite 100 Films List

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A woodcutter experiences a horrific series of events - an ambush, rape and murder.

In the telling of the tale however, each of the four participants give different views of what actually happened - is any of them telling the truth? Kurosawa's masterful film plays on the subjective nature of truth while unfurling a riveting tale of violence and greed.

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In seventeenth-century France, Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) uses his power to protect the city of Loudun from destruction at the hands of the establishment.

Soon, he stands accused of the demonic possession of Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), whose erotic obsession with him fuels the hysteria that sweeps through her convent.

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Alvin's eyesight is poor, he has little money and he can't stand the thought if being driven anywhere. So when he discovers his estranged brother has suffered a stroke he decides to make the journey by the only means of transport available to him - a John Deere lawnmower.

Hundreds of miles, six weeks and several breakdowns later Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) finally pulls up at his destination, where the fate of his brother awaits him.

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One of the greatest foreign language films ever made, Roberto Rossellini "Rome, Open City" was filmed in the direct aftermath of World War II on the war-ravaged streets of Italy.

Based on real events that took place in the Nazi-occupied Italy in 1944, it examines the choices that people are forced to make in wartime. Centring on the Resistance and its members, this is a tragic and emotional exploration of human spirit and the effects of war.

In postwar Japan, Godzilla brings new devastation to an already scorched landscape. With no military intervention or government help in sight, the survivors must join together in the face of despair and fight back against an unrelenting horror.

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Made in 1954, 'Godzilla' was Japan's first foray into big budget sci fi - costing ten times the budget of the average Japanese feature and twice as much as Seven Samurai - released the same year.

The film created a monster that would enter the lexicon of popular culture, spawn fifty years of sequels and inspire a new genre: the kaiju eiga or Japanese monster movie. Directed by Ishiro Honda, a friend and collaborator of Akira Kurosawa, and starring Takashi Shimura as the revered paleontologist who uncovers the horrible secret at the heart of the monster (Godzilla is a long dormant Jurassic beast awoken by the atom bomb), the original Godzilla is a fierce indictment of the atomic age. Sold to an American distributor, the film was cut, dubbed into English, re-titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters! and new scenes were added starring Raymond Burr as an American reporter observing the monsters rampage from the sidelines. All trace of the anti-nuclear message was excised in the American version. Now regarded as one of the great classics of cinema and still rated amongst the top twenty Japanese movies of all time, the original Godzilla is perhaps the definitive monster movie - both a bold metaphor for the atomic age and a thrilling tour de force of pioneering special effects.

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Mark (Carl Boehm), a focus puller at the local film studio, supplements his wages by taking glamour photographs in a seedy studio above a newsagent.

By night he is a sadistic killer, stalking his victims with his camera forever in his hand trying to capture the look of genuine, unadulterated fear - an obsession that stems from his disturbing and terrifying childhood at the hands of his scientist father. Mark slowly becomes enamoured with Helen (Anna Massey), who lives with her blind mother (Maxine Audley) in the flat downstairs, but how long before he turns the deadly gaze of his camera towards her?

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Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) leads a group of Anglican nuns to a remote Himalayan range of mountains, there to set up a mission in an abandoned harem.

This is her first position of authority and she finds both her physical and her spiritual limits being taxed as she has to maintain order and discipline in a claustrophobically hostile environment. Slowly but surely, however, the privations and hardship they must endure, the extremes of climate and the peculiar amorality of the local natives all combine to slowly corrupt the women's faith, pushing them further into jealousy, anger and madness...

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In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and manipulative older man, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction.

Joanna Hogg's shimmering story of first love and a young woman's formative years, 'The Souvenir: Part II' is a portrait of the artist that transcends the halting particulars of everyday life - a singular, alchemic mix of memoir and fantasy.

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Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) is a 21 year old supermarket worker from a small port town in the west of Scotland. Morvern believes that life is something that you get on with as best you can with what you've got.

one morning, Morvern finds that what she's got is a dead boyfriend on the kitchen floor...

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Cher is devastatingly funny, sinuous and beautiful as Loretta, an unlucky-in-love Italian widow who finds romance through the intervention of the Manhattan moon.

With her wedding to a close friend just weeks away, she meets - and falls hopelessly in love with - his younger brother (Nicolas Cage)! Her dilemma - and her equally passionate and hilariously eccentric family - make for an unforgettable film you'll find beguiling, enchanting and irresistible.

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When Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) solves the mystery of a Chinese puzzle box he enters the world of the Cenobites. A world where these cruel sadists thrive on pain. Later, restored to life by the blood of his brother Larry (Andrew Robinson), Frank rises to feed on the life force of others.

When Larry's wife agrees to provide the sacrifices he needs, the spills, chills and thrills are just beginning.

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It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.

Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) is returning to a loveless marriage; Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) is a stranger to a family that's grown up without him; and young sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) is tormented by the loss of his hands. Can these three men find the courage to rebuild their world? Or are the best years of their lives a thing of the past?

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"Kramer vs. Kramer" is a ground-breaking drama about the heartbreak of divorce and the struggle between work and family. Young husband and father, Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) loves his family - and his job, which is where he spends most of his time.

When he returns home late one evening from work, his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) confronts him and then leaves him to take care of their six-year-old son while she goes off to find herself. Ted struggles with the demands of balancing a high-pressure career while trying to adapt to his new role of single parent. Just as Ted starts to feel like a fulfilled parent, Joanna returns, but this time she wants her son back...

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An uncompromising, double-Bafta winning portrait of a particular milieu of working-class family life in southeast London, where its writer and director grew up, 'Nil by Mouth' is a powerful, astute, authentically foul-mouthed account of unfettered machismo, booze and drugs, petty crime and domestic

abuse. The performances are mesmerising throughout, with Ray Winstone as the volatile and self-pitying Ray, Kathy Burke as his longsuffering wife Val and Charlie Creed-Miles as her junkie brother Billy. Shot and scripted in a deceptively casual realist style reminiscent of John Cassavetes, this profoundly personal and humane film eschews sensationalism and sentimentality to illuminate a vicious circle of abuse and criminality. A dark but dazzling masterwork.