Martin's Favourites
I have held some films very close to my heart. Here is a selection.
Two Days, One Night (2014)
7.4/10
Director: Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Starring: Fabrizio Rongione, Marion Cotillard
Sandra, a young Belgian mother, discovers that her workmates have opted for a significant pay bonus, in exchange for her dismissal. She has only one w... Read more
Taste Of Cherry (1997)
7.7/10
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Homayoun Ershadi, Adolhossein Bagheri
One of the great works of recent international cinema and the apex of contemporary Iranian film, Abbas Kiarostami's brilliant and deceptively simple f... Read more
The Sacrifice (1986)
8.1/10
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Valerie Mairesse
Andrei Tarkovsky's epitaph, a dark and complex film about redemption and nuclear holocaust, filmed inexile from his native Russia in Sweden, and starr... Read more
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
7.8/10
Director: Jacques Demy
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon
A beautifully restored version of Jacques Demy's classic, bittersweet musical of two young lovers (a luminous Catherine Deneuve and handsome Nino Cast... Read more
Nights of Cabiria (1957)
8.1/10
Director: Federico Fellini
Starring: Giulietta Masina, Francois Perier, Franca Marzi
The third of Fellini's trilogy of solitude. 'Nights of Cabiria' features Giulietta Masina as an impoverished prostitute living on the outskirts of Rom... Read more
A Woman Under the Influence (1975)
8.2/10
Director: John Cassavetes
Starring: Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands, Katherine Cassavetes
Unquestionably one of the greatest films of the 1970s, John Cassavetes' masterpiece centres on a dysfunctional Los Angeles family, and the perverse, h... Read more
Diary of a Country Priest (1950)
8/10
Director: Robert Bresson
Starring: Claude Laydu, Antoine Balpetre, Gaston Severin
A priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregatio... Read more
L'Avventura (1960)
8/10
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Starring: Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti
A scathing examination of Italy's aristocratic classes set within the framework of a mystery story, director Michelangelo Antonioni's groundbreaking f... Read more
Moonrise Kingdom ( Blu-ray ) (2012)
7.8/10
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jason...
Director/co-writer Wes Anderson's charming comedy/drama is set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965 and tells the story of... Read more
High-Rise (2015)
5.6/10
Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Elisabeth Moss, Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans
The brutalism begins with the architecture and extends all the way down to the residents in Ben Wheatleys High-Rise, a flashy adaptation of J.G. Ba... Read more