The Girl who kicked the Hornets' Nest

2009 Director Daniel Alfredson

The "Millennium Trilogy" winds to a close with this installment.

The punky protagonist Lisbeth Salander fights to prove that she's innocent of committing multiple murders. As she lies in intensive care, the corrupt officials in high office attempt to take advantage of her incapacitated state by accusing her of murder. She is taken under the wing of a protective doctor, who keeps the Police at bay for as long as he can. But fiercely independent Lisbeth isn't about to play the scapegoat, and the more her accusers work to ruin her life, the harder she and her loyal friend Mikael Blomkvist must push back to prove them wrong.

Unfortunately this film does not pick up on the slow pace of the 2nd installment. Noomi Rapace holds this otherwise flimsey and overlong composition together well. Whenever she is off screen the story seems to elongate verging on tedium. I am very surprised that Michael Nyqvis' role is not elevated to the gritty fast paced character of the first film. Both "Played with Fire" and "Kicked the Hornet's Nest" could have been combined into one fast paced film instead of 2 drawn out ones.

One to see in order to complete the set but only for the dedicated.

The Beekeeper

1986 Director Theo Angelopoulos

A ponderously paced but poignant story about an ageing beekeeper, who follows the pollen trail around a drearily grey Greece that is far from the picture-postcard vision usually seen on screen.

The film starts with  the marriage of a peasant girl to a military man. Spyro, the father, is at odds with his family for reasons that are never explained. With the departure of his girl, the family fragments and he leaves with his bees to a series of pollen areas in Greece. This is part of an annual migration of Beekeepers, although their numbers are dwindling. Along the way a dysfunctional girl foist herself on his good nature, which becomes increasingly tried. Eventually a bond forms that can only lead to one outcome.

This film is about the bleakness of despair in a hopeless world where all options have long since passed. Theo Angelopoulos' camera work is exemplary and his composition work would develop itself to perfection in the Trilogy series. Although transitions were at times a little jarring this shows a visionary director honing his skills. The film is slow with long static and tracking shots. It employs quite a bit of "action out of frame" to give the viewer a voyeuristic impression. One to watch when in a sombre reflective mood.

Mon Oncle

1958 Director Jacques Tati

This is Tati's second Hulot film contrasting the emerging ultra-modern wave of the late 50's with the more sedate and shambolic life he is used to.

This time, the story finds Hulot on a constant collision with the physical world. Visiting his sister and brother-in-law in their ultra-progressive household full of noisy gadgets and futuristic decor, Hulot inevitably has dust-ups with modernity, each one exceptionally funny. Taking a page from Buster Keaton’s playbook, Tati also employs his trademark techniques with sound and production design to achieve the indefinable, comic genius of his films: the rhythmic clacking of footsteps, the cartoon-panel distance of his camera frame from the heart of the action.

This is a wonderfully gentle satire on modern development that Tati was to take to a darker stage in his next film Playtime. This is marked a departure from his previous more gentle looks at rural attitudes. Tati is one of the cinema’s great treasures, and this movie is unforgettable.

Une femme est une femme

1961 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This is Jean-Luc Godard's deceptively sardonic tribute to the Hollywood musical comedy.

An exotic dancer decides that it is time for her to have a child. When her lover refuses to commit to the decision, she turns her romantic attention to his best friend. This being a Godard film, the straightforward story serves as a framework for improvisation and stylistic experimentation, allowing for odd interludes and unexpected images.

Like Alphville, this romp away from dense intellectualism that characterise the later Godard works this film fails on a number of levels. As a pure satire of the dross that was being churned out by Hollywood it is overlong; as a homage to the same machine it is banal. The musical score is jarring and the acting is hammed and stilted. It's quite painful to watch and requires real perseverance to see through to the predictably disappointing end. One to avoid unless as a cure for insomnia.

Malèna

2000 Director Giuseppe Tornatore

This beautifully shot film is about a young man's infatuation for a beautiful older woman that blooms amidst the outbreak of World War II.

Renato is a 13-year-old boy growing up in a small Sicilian community. Mussolini has risen to power and has declared war upon England and France, but Renato has other things on his mind, mostly girls. While hanging out with his friends by the seashore, Renato spies Malèna, the daughter of one of his schoolteachers, whose husband Nino is fighting with Mussolini's army. Renato is immediately obsessed with Malèna and follows her like a lost puppy, spying on her whenever circumstances permit and imagining her as his co-star in elaborate erotic fantasies inspired by his favorite movies. Renato, however, is hardly the only man in town to be struck by Malèna's charms, and her beauty leads to resentment from the women of the community. Malèna's circumstances take a turn for the worst after her husband is reported to have died in combat, and she is left to the forces of envy and gossip. The narrow minded jealousy of the town's women force her into the very circumstance that they all believe she came from. She is brutally treated and exiled. Renato has some less than encouraging news to report when Nino turns out to be alive and finds his spouse is missing.

Malèna was written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, best known for Cinema Paradiso. This film marks him as not only a very accomplished director and writer but also as an engaging and compassionate story teller. It is one of those films that once seen, is never forgotten.

Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

2008 Director Jean-Francois Richet

The life of Jacques Mesrine comes once and for all to a full bloody circle in a climax only fitting for Public Enemy No. 1.

In the climactic second part of the Mesrine saga, Jacques Mesrine is back in France after his brazen assault on the maximum-security prison from which he daringly escaped. Once again in police custody and facing stern justice for his crimes, the "man of a thousand faces" escapes directly from the courtroom after kidnapping the judge at gunpoint. As Mesrine continues to author his own legend through the media and his own memoirs, he becomes a household name and anti-hero across all of France. As he plans his last and greatest escape, leaving France - and the iconic character he has created for himself - behind, the police begin to close in and his monumental rise begins to shadow the inevitable fall.

The split screen shots that were used to such good effect in part 1 are absent in this concluding installment although all the loose cinematographic ends are all tied up very neatly. Equally fast paced, this is very watchable. The character development is handled superbly with Mesrine acquiring a captivating charisma along with his new found fame and confidence.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct

2008 Director Jean-Francois Richet

The first part of an epic two-film saga. Killer Instinct introduces us to Jacques Mesrine at the beginning of his incredible true-life career of bank heists, prison breaks and kidnappings throughout the 60's and 70's and across three continents.

Recently returned from the war in Algeria, Mesrine soon bores of the 9 to 5 life and gradually drifts into a life of crime under the tutelage of veteran gangster Guido played in a very Brondoesque style by Gerard Depardieu. He quickly discovers he has a gift for robbing banks and forms a duo with lover Jeanne Schneider to rival Bonnie and Clyde. When the couple is finally hunted down in the Arizona desert, Mesrine is sentenced to ten years in a maximum-security penitentiary. But he is about to prove that no prison is big enough to contain him as his larger-than-life story unfolds.

This is a superbly made film that makes very effective use of split screen. It has the grit and realism reminiscent of the Bourne Supremacy and keeps you at the edge of your seat throughout. Unlike other films of this genre it shows that people are very complex and that compassion and caring can co-exist quite happily with cold blooded brutality. This will undoubtedly become a cult classic like the Godfather. Vincent Cassel plays the role brilliantly.

Kitchen Stories

2003 Director Bent Hamer

This is Bent Hamer's comedy drama" Salmer Fra Kjøkkenet" and is based on the real-life social experiments conducted in Sweden during the 1950s.

In the years following WWII, a research institute sets out to modernize the home kitchen by observing a handful of rural Norwegian bachelors. In the small town of Landstad, middle-aged Isak is one such research subject who regrets ever agreeing to participate in the study. Nevertheless, he is observed by Folke and the two develop a strange friendship until the observer becomes sick. This causes a problem with Folke's boss and Isak's friend Grant.

This is a wonderful little jewel of observational comedy, big brother without the cameras. It is also a touching tale of lonely people. For those who speak Norwegian and understand Swedish there are many language gags that are not translatable and so the subtitle reader is deprived of many of the subtleties of this film. Something of a unique film.

The Girl who played with Fire

2009 Director Daniel Alfredson

This is the second installment of author Stieg Larsson's best-selling "Millennium" trilogy.

A prominent magazine publisher launches a comprehensive investigation into Swedish sex trafficking. The publisher of "Millennium" magazine, Mikael Blomkvist  has built an empire on his ability to shake up the establishment. Approached by a young journalist with evidence that high-ranking Swedish officials are involved in sex trafficking and crimes against minors, the incensed magazine publisher launches a comprehensive investigation that threatens to implicate some of the most powerful politicians in the country.

Unfortunately this sequel lacks the pace and intensity of its predecessor. The two main character stories remain separate until the very last scene, so none of the chemistry that made the first film so tight is present. The film ambles along and feels more like the hyphen between two films rather than a real second instalment. Noomi Rapace delivers a brilliant performance but Mikael Nyqvist seems to struggle with a character that has suddenly turned two dimensional. Let's hope that the concluding part picks up the pace of the first.

Passion

1982 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This film is a major part in Jean-Luc Godard's ongoing investigation of the relations between painting and cinema and uses innovative forms to explore political and economic questions.

The plot, if it can be called that, is very simplistic. A director is shooting a film whose scenes are all reproductions of paintings by Goya, Valasquez, and other European masters. Production comes to a halt when his producers refuse to increase his budget until he explains the film's story to them. Meanwhile he is ending an affair with the wife of the manager of the hotel where the film's cast and crew are staying. In a sub-plot a factory worker attempts to unionize her fellow employees.

The story of Passion is elliptical and incomplete. It is a means of presenting a collection of scenes and images on related themes. This kind of story would become the hallmark of Godard's later career. This film marks the reunion of Godard with director of photography Raoul Coutard, who shot many of Godard's films of the 1960s. The cinematography is key to understanding this difficult film in which how an image is shot is as important as what it depicts. Godard and Coutard favor shots that begin as open, disorganized framings and become painterly compositions as the people and things in them move.

The American Friend

1977 Director Win Wenders

Wim Wenders' mines Dennis Hopper's real-life experience as a painter and collector in this existential take on the American gangster film based on a Patricia Highsmith novel featuring the notoriously sociopathic Tom Ripley.

Hopper stars as the eponymous American, currently a middleman selling the work of American painter who has feigned his own death to increase the value of his paintings. While auctioning this work in Berlin, he meets art restorer, Jonathan, who he learns is suffering from an incurable blood disease. When a shady friend requires Ripley to find a "clean" non-professional to do a contract hit in order to pay off a debt, even he is reluctant. But he quickly realizes that the physically vulnerable Jonathan would be perfect for the job, and tries to get him to accept by employing various subterfuges to persuade him that his condition is even worse than it is. For his part he guarantees the restorer that his family will be financially secure for life, and a deal is struck. As usual, nothing works out quite as expected.

This is a forgotten little gem. Dennis Hopper is really at his very best here. There is a touching reference to his earlier "Easy Rider" film but his persona is as different as can be. A dark gripping tale where the unpredictable ending does not disappoint. Although filmed in the 70's this film does not have all the tacky style that hallmarks that era. Filmed largely in an area of Hamburg harbour that no longer exists it is quite a trip down memory lane. Hard to find but well worth the hunt.

Pierrot le fou

1965 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This is Godard’s mischievous, free-associative tenth film. It falls more into the Breathless, Band a Part,  Le Petit Soldat genre, in that there is a discerable story to follow, rather than his more experimental efforts, taking the simple and well tried boy meets girl format.

He a rakish, unemployed adman choking on consumerist jargon and bourgeois conformity, she a happy-clappy coquette with unspecified links to an underground military faction. Each is an impulsive, alienated, despairing soul who finds solace in the other’s desire for chaos and withdrawal. They flee Paris for the south of France in a hail of gunfire and Gauloises. They converse in disjointed, inhumanly droll patter, break  into song, duff up gas station attendants and eagerly concoct a new civilisation on a deserted beach. Then, as their relationship begins to fray, it all goes horribly wrong.

Basing his film ever so loosely on Lionel White’s pulp crime novel ‘Obsession’, Godard inventively drapes genre pastiche, literary references, flash inserts and cheeky agitprop over a robust ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ like framework to deliver a film which, in spirit, feels like both the sum total of his past work and an exhilarating sign of things to come. It’s a wild-eyed, everything-in-the-pot cross-processing of artistic, cinematic, political and personal concerns, where the story stutters, splinters and infuriates its way to an explosive finale.

Lebanon

2009 Director Samuel Maoz

This is a very different type of film by Israeli writer and director Samuel Maoz. A handful of soldiers take a claustrophobic journey into the heart of war. It tackles the collision between youthful idealism and the reality of conflict in a mesmerising and compelling format.

It's June 1982, and Israel is launching an invasion of Lebanon. Four men assigned to take part in the first strike are put on the same tank detail. After being given their orders the men set out toward the Lebanese border, recognizing little of what goes on outside beyond what can be seen through the gun sights. They roll relentlessly onward, occasionally arguing amongst themselves, until they arrive at their destination, a town already bombed into rubble by the Israeli Air Force. Few of their allies remain in the city, putting the soldiers in a perilous situation when a band of Syrian resistance fighters attack the tank.

With the exception of the opening and closing credits the entire film is based inside the claustrophobic, grimy world of the tank. One can almost smell the oil and diesel fumes. The only glimpses of the outside world are shown through the remote gun sights. This is a brilliantly constructed and acted film evoking a great deal of empathy with those placed in this precarious position. It also very subtly introduces the theme that not all allies have the same agenda. Well worth looking out for.

Metropolis

1927 Director Fritz Lang

This is the biggest budgeted movie ever produced at Germany's UFA. Fritz Lang's gargantuan Metropolis consumed resources that would have yielded upwards of 20 conventional features, more than half the studio's entire annual production budget. And if it didn't make a profit at the time, indeed, it nearly bankrupted the studio, the film added an indelible array of images and ideas to cinema, and has endured across the many decades since its release.

In the somewhat distant future the city of Metropolis, with its huge towers and vast wealth, is a playground to a ruling class living in luxury and decadence. They, and the city, are sustained by a much larger population of workers who labor as virtual slaves in the machine halls, moving from their miserable, tenement-like homes to their grim, back-breaking ten-hour shifts and back again. The hero is oblivious to the plight of the workers, or any aspect of their lives, until one day when a a beautiful subterranean dweller named Maria visits the Eternal Gardens, where he spends his time cavorting with various ladies, with a small group of children from the workers' city far below. They are sad, hungry, and wretched looking, and he is haunted by their needy eyes, something he has never seen or known among the elite of the city, and by this strange and beautiful woman who tells all who hear her, workers' children and ruler's offspring, that they are all brothers. And so she sets him onto a collision course with the rulers and controllers of this dark empire.

When it was premiered in Germany in January 1927, Metropolis ran 153 minutes. That complete version was heavily cut for release in America, removing a quarter of the movie. Only very recently has the entire uncut version been found and restored. Both Hitler and Goebbles were so impressed by the film that they invited Lang to join their publicity campaign. Lang packed his bags and left for America that day.

Cobra Verde

1987 Director Werner Herzog

In their final collaboration, Werner Herzog directs Klaus Kinski in the remarkable tale of Francisco Manoel da Silva, the flamboyant 19th century Brazilian bandit known as "Cobra Verde." Filmed on location with a cast of hundreds, Cobra Verde is a tale of adventure, greed and betrayal. It's the story of two worlds in collision, and of the man who was trapped between them.

When the owner of a sugar plantation unknowingly hires the barefoot, gun-toting thief to keep his slaves in check, he gets more than he bargained for as Cobra Verde, in short order, impregnates all of his boss's daughters. In revenge, he is sent on an impossible and deadly mission to sail to the west coast of Africa and re-open the slave trade. Not only does Cobra Verde succeed at this, he goes on to lead an unstoppable army of women in a savage war against the local king.

In this film Herzog has finally managed to reign in the mania that he unleashed in Kinski in the previous films. He shows a committed but compassionate man driven more by events than controlling them. This is a complex film, beautifully shot against the African backdrop with very unique and memorable locations.

Diary Of A Chambermaid

1964 Director Luis Buñuel

This is a remake of the 1946 Jean Renoir film based on the novel by Octave Mirbeau and is now considered to be a classic piece of Luis Bunuel film making.

Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer.  She quickly learns that he is a harmless boot fetishist, his daughter a frigid woman more concerned with the family furnishings than in returning the affections of her husband, who, in turn, can't keep his hands off the servants. The gamekeeper, is a fascist who keeps his masters informed of all the doings downstairs, and the next door neighbor is a veteran who can't stand the owner and is sharing a bed with his housekeeper. Celestine picks her way through this minefield carefully, spurning the advances of all of the men until it's convenient for her.

Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary Of A Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.

Made in U.S.A.

1966 Director Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard directed this brightly colored, pop-art homage to American crime cinema, which somehow finds room for commentary on leftist politics and the corrupt nature of advertising.

Paula Nelson is a mystery woman who used to be involved with  an outspoken Communist and has been linked to the murder of a foreign agent. Paula wants to silence him before he starts making trouble for her, but she can't find much hard evidence that's he's still alive outside of a recently discovered tape recorder that plays his recorded rants on current political issues. While speaking with a small time hood who knows about Paula's relationship, shots ring out and suddenly the hood is dead. As Paula tries to find a way to get rid of the body, she tries to discover who killed him and why, as a pair of lackadaisical hoods follow her around Paris.

Filled with references to American genre cinema this was the last film Godard would make with his one-time wife Anna Karina. The flimsy plot was loosely adapted from the novel The Jugger by Donald E. Westlake , who wasn't paid for the rights and prevented this film from being released in the United States until after his death in 2008.

L'Antidote

2005 Director Vincent De Brus

This film is a beautiful mixture of laugh-out-load humour and irony. Sadly not available with sub-titles, unless you speak french pretty fluently you will miss much of the subtler sides of the film.

Jam, played by Christian Clavier, is a highly successful entrepreneur on the brink of a major takeover when he starts suffering from anxiety attacks. His doctor thinks that this is to do with childhood experiences and suggests he searches back in his mind to something that could be the trigger and will prove to be the antidote. Enter André Morin, played by the late, great Jacques Villeret, reprising his role of the amiable "con" (idiot) who proves wiser than everyone. Morin is a small time accountant who has become a champion of the little man – the small shareholders who are taken for granted by today's business leaders more interested in power and wealth. It is a real clash of cultures and provides plenty of laughs.

Without giving anything away the story obviously owes something to Citizen Kane. There is an interesting opening title sequence, which suggests more thriller than comedy and some good special effects for the Rosebud moment. If you loved Le Diner des Cons you will enjoy this film.

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Dogtooth

2009 Director Giorgos Lanthimos

This is a brave and bizarre film by writer and director Lanthimos dealing with the perils of social isolation. It is a very clever allegory of the overbearing "Nanny State" that favours fear and violence as a means to control its populace.

A father and mother live in a large house on the outskirts of town with their three children, whose ages range from mid-teens to early twenties. The children have never been allowed to leave the house, which is surrounded by a tall fence, and their knowledge of the outside world has been strictly controlled by their parents, who have chosen to teach them only what they believe is important and have deliberately confused or misled them in many other areas. The parents quite literally treat their children like animals, and the only contact the youngsters have with people outside their family is a woman who works with the father's business and comes by periodically to have sex with the eldest son. She makes the mistake of bringing a present for the two younger daughters, and explains the custom is that they should give her something in return. This simple act sets off a chain reaction of events that has terrible consequences for everyone involved.

This film is both disturbing and intriguing in equal measures. The mother's complicity in the father's paranoid delusions seems ambiguous at times and the cinematography lacks fluidity in places. There is an amount of explicit sexual content which some may find uncomfortable. A particularly unique scene to watch out for is the one where the parents converse silently by mouthing the words so as to prevent their offspring from overhearing. I think this will become a cult classic for all its little failings.

Le Ballon Rouge

1956 Director Albert Lamorisse

Most of Albert Lamorisse's films celebrate the miracle of flight, but few were as landmark as his 1956 short subject The Red Balloon. This is a truly delightful gem.

The story, told with a minimum of dialogue, concerns a little boy, played by the director's son Pascal, who comes across a helium-filled balloon. As he plays with his new acquisition, the boy discovers that the balloon seemingly has a mind of its own. The little red orb follows its new "master" all through the streets of Paris, then dogs the boy's trail into the schoolroom, which drives the teacher to comic distraction. Towards the end, it seems as though boy and balloon will be parted forever, but director Lamorisse has a delightful surprise in store for us.

This film serves as a color record of the Belleville area of Paris which had fallen into decay by the 1960s and was eventually demolished as a slum-clearance effort. Part of the site was built up with housing projects; the remainder was left as wasteland for 20 years. Ninety-five percent of what is seen in the film exists no more: the bakeries, the famous Y-shaped staircase situated just beyond the equally famous café "Au Repos de la Montagne", the long-gone steep steps of the rue Vilin where Pascal finds the balloon initially and the waste ground where all the battles took place. Only the church of Notre-Dame de la Croix, between the Place Maurice Chevalier and the Place de Ménilmontant remains.

It won numerous awards, including an Oscar for Lamorisse for writing the best original screenplay in 1956 and the Palme d'Or for short films at Cannes. The film also became popular with children and educators.

Le Petit Soldat

1963 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This controversial spy-romance tale by Jean-Luc Godard was banned from release in France for three years because it refers to the use of torture on both the French and Algerian sides during the Algerian struggle for independence.

The story focuses on Bruno Forestier, played by Michel Subor, a young, disillusioned man who becomes involved in politics, yet in spite of the fact that he stands up to torture and commits murder because of this involvement, he does not have deep political beliefs. Also featured is his lover played by Anna Karina, the then-wife of director Jean-Luc and appearing in her first film, as a motivating factor in Bruno's behavior.

This early film, looked at in the context of Godard's later, more militant work, is at once naive and fascinating. Seen in sequence this film marks a definite step in his progression.

Asoka

2001 Director Santosh Sivan

Cinematographer turned director Santosh Sivan follows up on his acclaimed 1999 opus Malli with this sweeping historical epic.

Asoka traces the life of Emperor Asoka, the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya who ascended the throne of Magadha in the 3rd century BC. To extend the borders of his empire, Asoka waged one of the bloodiest wars in history with the neighboring kingdom of Kalinga, leaving it ravaged and devastated. Confronted by the aftermath of his conquest in which hundreds of thousands lost their lives, Asoka is overcome with remorse and renounces the path of war to dedicate his life to spreading the teachings of Buddhism across the world.

This is a story based on legends.  This film does not claim to be a complete historical account of Asoka's life but an attempt to follow his journey. It is visually stunning and a brave effort to compact such a history into a mere two and half hours. Sivan has a very different and unique style of film making.

Detective

1985 Director Jean-Luc Godard

After several years of making films to please only himself, Jean-Luc Godard produced The Detective. Not to be confused with Gordon Douglas' vastly superior 1968 film of the same name. Not that there's anything so blase as a linear plot or appealing characters, but at least some of Godard's isolated vignettes are accessible this time around.

Set in the Hotel Concorde at St. Lazare, the film is set in motion when miserably married Nathalie Baye and Claude Brasseur attempt to collect a debt from mob-plagued boxing manager Johnny Hallyday. Meanwhile, hotel detective Jean-Pierre Leaud tries to solve an old murder case. These two gossamer plot strands are used to tie together Godard's scattershot views on modern life, with emphasis on the voyeuristic potential of the recent video-camera boom.

The director dashed off The Detective to raise money for a film he truly cared about, the controversial Hail Mary and it shows. This film lacks the flair and panache that Godard is capable of and repeats the ploy of a reversible number leading to a mistaken killing that he used in Le Petit Soldat in 1963.

The Seventh Seal

1957 Director Ingmar Bergman

This film launched the international career of its director, Ingmar Bergman, and made a star of its 27 year old leading actor, Max Von Sydow. Endlessly imitated and parodied, this landmark film retains its ability to hold an audience spellbound.

A 14th century knight is wearily heading home after ten years' worth of combat. Disillusioned by unending war, plague, and misery he has concluded that God does not exist. As he trudges across the wilderness, he is visited by Death, garbed in the traditional black robe. Unwilling to give up the ghost, he challenges Death to a game of chess. If he wins, he lives, if not, he'll allow Death to claim him. As they play, the knight and the Grim Reaper get into a spirited discussion over whether or not God exists. To recount all that happens next would diminish the impact of the film itself. The Seventh Seal ends with one of the most indelible of all of Bergman's cinematic images: the near-silhouette "Dance of Death", which ironically was filmed on a whim due to the chance lighting conditions of the moment.

Sixty years later, Bergman's stunning allegory of man's apocalyptic search for meaning remains a textbook on the art of film making and an essential building block in any collection.

The Milky Way

1969 Director Luis Buñuel

This is the first of what Luis Bunuel later proclaimed a trilogy about "the search for truth". The Milky Way (La Voie Lactee) daringly deconstructs contemporary and traditional views on Catholicism with ribald, rambunctious surreality.

Two vagabonds are making their way from Paris to Spain on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of Saint James are believed to be kept. While their journey begins in the 20th Century, as they travel they seemingly develop the ability to move through time and space as they pass through a variety of historical scenes taken from a broad range of theological texts and all involving heresy in one form or another. As they walk the long road to Santiago de Compostela they encounter Jesus who decides not to shave his beard to keep his mother happy; a young boy with stigmata and unusual powers; the Marquis de Sade who patiently struggles to teach atheism to a young girl he's captured; an eccentric priest who has an irreversible belief in transubstantiation until he changes his mind; two men who put their debate over Catholic dogma to the test in a duel with swords; and Satan who shows up just in time for a car wreck.

This is a diabolically entertaining look at the mysteries of fanaticism. The Milky Way remains a hotly debated work from cinema's greatest skeptic. While Luis Bunuel never made a secret of his skepticism about the existence of God, he was also raised as a strict Spanish Catholic and remained fascinated with the church's teaching throughout his life. Apparently, each of the film's historic episodes was adapted faithfully from an actual biblical text or historical account.

Good Bye, Lenin!

2002 Director Wolfgang Becker

Set in Berlin where West confronts East, this is a coming-of-age adventure that blends the fall of Communism with the salient emotions of a family's love.

In 1989, Christiane Kerner has lost her husband and is completely devoted to the Socialist East German state.  A heart attack leaves her in a coma, and when she awakens eight months later, the Berlin Wall has fallen and it's a whole new world.  Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal upon his mother's awakening, her son strives to keep the fall of the GDR a secret for as long as possible. Keeping their apartment firmly rooted in the past, his scheme works for a while, but it's not long before his mother is feeling better and ready to get up and around again.

This is a charming feel-good film that touches gently on the subject of hard held beliefs in the context of a changed world. Well acted by Daniel Brühl who plays the son in a constant state of near panic

Cinema Paradiso

1988 Director Giuseppe Tornatore

This is Giuseppe Tornatore's motion picture masterpiece. For those who have never seen it, this extraordinary celebration of youth, friendship and the everlasting magic of films is sure to captivate your heart and send your spirit soaring.

Based on the life and times of the director himself, Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village cinema. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent film director. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day the boy saves the projectionist's life during a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist himself. A few years later he falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later he has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can.

This is film making at its very best. It is a totally absorbing watch and not a dry eye will be seen anywhere. A lovely stroll down memory lane to a calmer less rushed world where people mattered and good things happened. The DVD release incorporates an additional 51 minutes of material that was edited from the release version. It broadens the experience considerably and adds a great deal more depth to the characters.

Slow Motion

1980 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This film whose French title is "Sauve Qui Peut (la Vie)" is pessimistic but visually stunning and marks Jean-Luc Godard's return to cinema after having spent the 70s working in video. It is an examination of sexual relationships, in which three protagonists interact in different combinations.

The film presents a few days in the lives of three people: Paul, a television producer; Denise, his co-worker and ex-girlfriend; and Isabelle, a prostitute whom Paul has used. Denise wants to break up with Paul and move to the country. Isabelle wants to work for herself instead of her pimp. Paul just wants to survive. Their stories intersect when Paul brings Denise to the country cottage he is trying to rent and Isabelle comes to see it without knowing that the landlord has been her client. The film is broken into segments entitled "The Imaginary," "Commerce," "Life," and "Music." Each of the first three sections focuses on one character and the last section brings all three characters together.

This complex film is often closer to an essay than a story; it uses slow motion and experimental techniques to explore questions of love, work, and the nature of cinema. Sauve Qui Peut (la Vie) was Godard's first film with his frequent collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville, who edited and co-wrote the film.

Fata Morgana

1971 Director Werner Herzog

The film's title, Fata Morgana, refers to mirages or optical illusions brought on by heat, and is an apt title for this storyless, hallucinatory work shot in the deserts of North Africa. It is a rhythmic, musical succession of images and short scenes.

One of the images is a pianist and drummer who play tiredly, surrounded by endless tracts of desert. This is an image that has been adapted and re-used in countless music videos and is a small piece of evidence suggesting that this is a very influential film. The narration, in English, comes from a Guatemalan creation myth, and the accompanying music ranges from Couperin to Cash, with significant contributions by Leonard Cohen.

Fata Morgana is one of Herzog's early features. His crew encountered many problems during the filming, most notably being imprisoned because cameraman Schmidt-Reitwein's name was similar to the name of a German mercenary who was hiding from the authorities and had recently been sentenced to death in absentia.

The Motorcycle Diaries

2004 Director Walter Salles

Based on the journals of the same name this is Walter  Salles' dramatization of a motorcycle road trip that the young Ernesto 'Che' Guevara went on in his youth that would show him his life's calling.

The Motorcycle Diaries stars Gael García Bernal as a young, pre-revolution Guevara. As a 23-year-old medical student in 1952 traveling across South America on a motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granado, played by  Rodrigo de la Serna, who co-wrote the source material. As they embark on their journey, both young men come of age and find their individual world views broadened farther than they ever expected. It is during this journey and his stay as a helper at a leper colony that Guevara realises that the South Americans are all one people controlled by dividing states. This was to be the turning point in this revolutionaries life.

Well directed and steadily paced this is quite a remarkable film. Some directorial licence has been made with regard to historical accuracy but it does not detract in the least. A very well made film.

Pan's Labyrinth

2006 Director Guillermo del Toro

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to fantasy cinema that defined such early works as Cronos with this haunting drama set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

It concerns the strange journeys of an imaginative young girl who may be the mythical princess of an underground kingdom. Her mother recently married a sadistic army captain and is soon to bear the cruel military man's child. The young girl is forced to entertain herself as her recently-formed family settles into their new home nestled deep in the Spanish countryside. As her bed-ridden mother lies immobilized in anticipation of her forthcoming child and her high-ranking stepfather remains determined to fulfill the orders of General  Franco to crush a nearby guerrilla uprising, the young girl soon ventures into an elaborate stone labyrinth presided over by the mythical faun Pan. Convinced by Pan that she is the lost princess of legend and that in order to return to her underground home she must complete a trio of life-threatening tasks, she sets out to reclaim her kingdom.

Beautifully shot and acted this film is a huge improvement on del Torro's earlier works. Although the plot is classical the delivery is done with impressive imagination and flair. Well worth watching although some of the scenes are definitely not for the young, notably the scene where the Captain beats a soldier to death with a bottle and the whole sequence with the eyeless monster.

Che: Part Two

2008 Director Steven Soderbergh

This is part two of Soderbergh's Che Guevara Saga. Part one ended with the taking of Havana. This film deals with the fated Bolivian Campaign.

In 1967 Guevara resurfaces in Bolivia to organize a modest group of Cuban comrades and Bolivian recruits in preparation for the Latin American Revolution. But while the Bolivian campaign would ultimately fail, the tenacity, sacrifice, and idealism displayed by Guevara during this period would make him a symbol of heroism to followers around the world.

Benicio Del Toro keeps up the mesmerising performance that he started in part one. It is a pity that Guevara's African campaigns go unmentioned as much of what happened in the intervening years had bearing on the outcome of this campaign. Partly because one knows how this will end and partly due to the non-changing surroundings, this film lacks the pace and energy of its predecessor. However, as a concluding glimpse at this iconic figure it is well worth the watch. Though Parts 1 and 2 were screened together at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, they were set to be released separately.

Play Time

1967 Director Jacques Tati

Tati directed this film nearly a decade after Mon Oncle. Playtime continues the adventures of M. Hulot in a starker and more indifferent social setting.

The colourful Paris of Mon Oncle, last seen being slowly chipped away by progress, has now vanished almost entirely. Playtime takes as its setting an ultra-modern Paris where familiar landmarks appear only as fleeting reflections in the new buildings of glass and steel. Alternating between Hulot and a group of American tourists, Tati exploits the chaos just below the overly ordered surface of this brave new world. Again moving from one nearly wordless episode to another, Tati sends his alter ego off to make an appointment in a whirring, featureless office complex. He subsequently moves on to an exhibition of new inventions, meets an old friend at an aquarium-like apartment, and wreaks havoc in a snooty new restaurant.

Although ambitious and technically complex this is not the most polished of the Hulot films. It proved unpopular and unprofitable and helped usher in the financial difficulties that would plague Tati late in life before finally getting the recognition it enjoys today. Tati was generally dissatisfied with this film as can be seen in the small extras where he casts the script into the collapsing rubble of the set as it is demolished.

Herz aus Glas

1976 Director Werner Herzog

This is Herzog's treatise on the power and importance of art.

It is the story of an 18th-century Bavarian glassblower who by virtue of his delicate work casts a spell over his neighbours. He is the principle employer in the town and his wares are the stuff of legend. So when he dies without revealing the secret to the famous "Ruby Glass", the townsfolk will do literally anything to find the answer.

Herzog was known to put his actors through the wringer to get the results he wanted. In this film he decided that the best way to get his people to dance to the crack of his whip was to actually put them under hypnosis. The dazed, zombie-like performances certainly fit the subject matter.  The word usually used to describe Heart of Glass is "haunting". Some viewers have gone beyond haunted and into "possessed." Watch carefully and spot director Herzog in a bit as a glass carrier.

La Cage Aux Folles II

1980 Director Edouard Molinaro

Renato and Albin, the internationally popular gay couple from La Cage Aux Folles, return in this sequel directed by Edouard Molinaro.

In a move to make his partner jealous, the flamboyant Albin waits in a local café, in full drag, hoping to be picked up.  But Alvin gets more than he bargains for when the fly he catches in his web is actually a spy who uses him as an unwitting courier for a secret microfilm. Now on the run from ruthless agents, Albin and Renato flee to Italy where they attempt to hide out on a family farm, with Alvin posing as Renato's wife. Once there, Albin becomes an object of lust for a group of lonely farmhands.

Unlike most sequels, this film not only keeps the format of the first but also allows the characters room to expand and show new facets of themselves. The plot is farcical but the delivery is deadpan and the result is very funny. Albin's confusion at having to be a man dressed up as a woman pretending to be a man is hilarious. A very good sequel to a ground breaking film.

Summer Things

2002 Director Michel Blanc

Based on the novel by Joseph Connolly, this is a masterful example of ensemble comedy with an acidic tone that offers unexpected dividends for lovers of French farce. A surprise pairing of Jacques Dutronc and Charlotte Rampling makes this quite a delight.

Leaving her husband Bertrand Lannier in Paris, bourgeois housewife Elizabeth journeys to Le Toquet for the summer holidays. There she is joined by young single mother Julie, hard-up neighbours Veró and Jérôme and their gangly teenage son Loïc. Too poor to stay in the same fancy hotel as Elizabeth, Jérôme has booked his family into a rundown caravan site, much to the chagrin of his status-conscious wife. Meanwhile, Loïc is eager to lose his virginity, Elizabeth is wondering whether she trusts the adulterous Bertrand, Julie is chasing after anything with a pulse and, on the other side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth's nymphomaniac daughter Emilie  is partying with Kevin in Chicago, little realizing that he has embezzled money from her father's firm to pay for the trip.

With an acidic tetchiness, Blanc challenges us to find anything to like about its morally ugly but physically attractive characters. The tone of this scabrous comedy is unerringly caustic. After exploiting these holidaymakers' foibles for comic effect, he throws them into tragedy, before skilfully weaving the disparate narrative threads together for a finale that's as hesitant as it is satisfying.

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow

2004 Director Theo Angelopoulos

With The Weeping Meadow, one of filmmaking's greatest remaining masters embarks on his crowning achievement: a projected trilogy whose goal is nothing less than "a poetic summing up of the century that just ended."

This first film, spanning 1919-1949, begins with refugees from Odessa settling on a piece of land that was promised to them on Greece's misty northern plains. In a transgression of mythic proportions, the foundling Eleni falls in love with her adoptive brother Alexis and, after marrying his widowed father, flees with her lover to the nearby port of Thessaloniki. As the unrest of the 1930s pits fascism against leftism, Alexis, a talented musician, departs for America and leaves Eleni behind to bear the brunt of Greek history: war, political repression, civil war.

The ambition of Angelopoulos's concept is matched by the grandeur of his style, which takes his majestically fluid camerawork to new heights of virtuosity and produces a steady stream of stunning images. More boldly than ever, Angelopoulos juggles foreground and background, personal and political, story and history into a vision that is simultaneously tragic and epic, capped by a powerful allegorical vision of a "weeping meadow" that feeds the river of history with the tears of individual griefs.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

2008 Director Uli Edel

This is Uli Edel's brave exploration of an often forgotten part of German history, the rise and fall of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing terrorist organization that became increasingly active in the 60's and 70's.

Also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, after its founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the Red Army Faction was formed by the radicalized children of the Nazi generation. Their aim is to create a more human society but by employing inhuman means they not only spread terror and bloodshed, they also lost their own humanity. The man who understands them is also their hunter: the head of the German police force Horst Herold. And while he succeeds in his relentless pursuit of the young terrorists, he knows he's only dealing with the tip of the iceberg

The film is adapted from author Stefan Aust's definitive account of this revolutionary group. The action is interspersed with media footage and is gritty and fast paced. Moritz Bleitreu plays Andreas superbly. Many of the original locations were used in this film including the court where their final destiny was to play out. If you want to feel the winds of change that swept through Europe in the late 1960's and 1970's then this is a must-see film.

Last Year in Marienbad

1961 Director Alain Resnais

A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the film is a riddle of seduction darting between a present and past which may not even exist.

At a social gathering at a château, a man approaches a woman and claims they met the year before at Marienbad. He is convinced that she is waiting here for him. The woman insists they have never met. Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorientating shifts in time and location, the film explores the relationships among the characters. Conversations and events are repeated in several places in the château and grounds seen not only from diffenent perspectives but also different time frames.

Hypnotically dreamlike, Last Year at Marienbad is a surrealist parody of Hollywood melodrama, a high-fashion romance with a dark, alien underbelly. Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the château and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows, the trees in the garden do not.

The Man From London

2007 Director Béla Tarr

This is a dark philosophical drama by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Although similar in style to his previous films this one explores new directions.

A  switchman at a sea port, witnesses a murder from his watch tower. He had reached a point in life where he was content to embrace loneliness while turning a blind eye to the inevitable decay that surrounds him. Upon bearing witness the murder, however, the he is forced to wrestle with such profound issues as punishment, mortality, and the sin of complicity in a crime he didn't even commit.

As with Tarr's other films the long held shots, slow tracking, long observant vistas unfold gracefully before the eye. The environment is claustrophobic and the mood sombre and menacing. Curiously, though, the film was made in Hungarian and then dubbed into an odd mixture of French and English. Quite why an English Police Inspector would be investigating a murder on French soil is not explained. This dual language aspect gives the film a surreal quality that is a departure from his previous starkly realistic films. Well worth watching, especially the very long sequence involving the murder itself, where the camera swings slowly from one side of the docked vessel to the other like a pendulum clock as events unfold on both sides of the vessel unaware of each other.

Che: Part One

2008 Director Steven Soderbergh

This is Soderbergh's epic account of the legendary Argentine revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. Filmed in two parts this portion deals with the Cuban episode.

The first part opens with Che meeting Fidel in Mexico City in 1955 and joining the small invasion party that established a base in the Sierra Maestra in Cuba. It ends in January 1959 when the 30-year-old Che, cautioning against triumphalism and forbidding his men to indulge in looting, heads towards Havana to begin what he considers the really important part of the revolution, creating a new kind of society.

It's an intelligent, fast-moving, well-researched film, based in part on Che's posthumously published Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, offering both a convincing account of the bitter, hard-fought struggle and a portrait of a great and complex revolutionary. He was first valued for his medical skills, but soon became such an essential adviser that Fidel tried to keep him out of harm's way. Benicio Del Toro gives a masterful performance of Che establishing him as an actor of considerable skills.

Rififi

1955 Director Jules Dassin

Following his expulsion from America during the years of the Unamerican Activities hearings Dassin directed this landmark film about a jewellery heist and the consequences of unfettered greed.

A quartet of thieves band together to commit a seemingly impossible robbery of an English jewelry shop in the Rue de Rivoli. Dassin takes one of the parts as a safe cracker under the pseudonym of Perlo Vita. The heist is meticulously planned and successfully executed but things start to go wrong when a rival gang wants to take a percentage and kidnap the gang leader's son as leverage.

The set piece of the film is an intricate 28 minute sequence that depicts the robbery in detail all filmed in absolute silence without dialogue or music. The tension that Dassin injects into this sequence is so enthralling that it draws the viewer to the very edge of their seat. Although the misogynistic scenes at the beginning of the film would not be considered "according to Hoyle" in today's times they do not detract from the mastery of this often overlooked gem.

La Cage Aux Folles

1978 Director Edouard Molinaro

Oddly, this was one of the most successful foreign films ever shown in the U.S. A comedy based on a French stage play, La Cage aux Folles depicts the farcical chaos that results when a gay man attempts to play it straight.

Young Laurent returns to St. Tropez bearing the news that he has found the girl of his dreams and they are engaged.  What's more, she and her family are on their way over for dinner at his father's home to meet the in-laws-to-be.  This traditional meeting of families seems typical, but because this ultraconservative family will be expecting to meet Father and wife, they'll never be prepared for the shock of meeting Renato and his flamboyant, campy, outrageous lover and drag-queen, Albin.  So in a great effort to please his son, Renato asks Albin for the performance of a lifetime. Thus setting up an unforgettable evening that is charged and ready to detonate an explosion of zaniness and absurdity.

La Cage aux Folles' pleasant, nonthreatening comic sensibility attracted a large mainstream audience in both Europe and the United States, which was at the time unusual for a film with a homosexual theme. Indeed, the film was popular enough to inspire two remakes: a stage musical and, nearly two decades later, the hilarious Hollywood comedy The Birdcage with Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Gene Hackman.

Dante 01

2008 Director Marc Caro

Co-director of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, this is Caro's solo directorial debut. It is a nightmarish tale of a deep space prison and the newly arrived inmate suffering from a mysterious alien infection.

Dante 01 is a maximum-security prison located out of harm's way at the edge of the galaxy. Upon arrival for psychiatric evaluation, the sole survivor of a horrifying alien encounter finds himself in the middle of a battle to harness his strange new powers. But the volatile force that now dwells within him is greater than anyone realizes.

This is not a remake or variation of Alien but a vision of universal hope versus human cynicism. The dark style that is Caro's trademark pervades this film and makes the outcome even more surprising. This film is a brave allegory about our nature, our beginnings and our destiny. The cast include a few familiar faces from both his previous films with Jean-Pierre Jeunet and there is enough originality here to give pause for thought.

The City Of Lost Children

1995 Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

Caro & Jeunet team up again to produce a fantastically-twisted fairy tale chock-full of curious characters, spectacular stunts and unforgettable visuals.

A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they will slow his aging process. A gutsy little girl and a sentimental strongman join hearts and hands to save a small boy's dreams from a madman's master plan. They encounter a barrage of weird and wonderful characters on their way, many of whom will be familiar returns from Amelie and Delicatessen.

Reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's harrowing Brazil this film is filled with dazzling visuals, ingenious gadgets and state-of-the-art special effects. It is a journey into the darkest recesses of the human psyche conjuring up nightmarish images and juxtapositioning them next to kindness and compassion. A great mix and quite a ride that will delight and disturb in equal measures

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2009 Director Niels Arden Oplev

Based on the late author Stieg Larsson's successful trilogy of books, this is a dark journey into the skeletal closet of the wealthy and powerful.

A journalist is hired to uncover the truth about the disappearance of a wealthy Swedish industry baron's niece forty years ago. He pairs up with a dysfunctional maverick computer hacker and together they embark on a disturbing journey into the darkest recesses of a family's history. The deeper they dig for the truth, however, the greater the risk of being buried alive by members of the family who will go to great lengths to keep their secrets tightly sealed.

This film grabs you by the lapels and keeps your attention riveted throughout. It is masterfully constructed and Noomi Rapace gives a captivating performance that is Oscar worthy. The film is gritty, haunting and fast paced with some violent scenes that are uncomfortably real. This is definitely not one for children to see. Although much depends on the hacker's abilities the film does not get bogged down with technology but concentrates more on the human element. There are a good many references, intentional or not, to  Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow up. This is a cracker of a start to a trilogy and I hope the sequels can keep up not only the pace but also the superb acting and excellent cinematography.

The Mirror

1974 Director Andrei Tarkovsky

As the son of a famous Russian poet, this is a stream of consciousness overlayed by his father's poetry.

This non-linear autobiographical film is Tarkovsky's most personal meditation on time, history and the Russian countryside. Through a series of episodes and images, he captures the mood and the feeling of the period just before, during and after the war. Lyrical reminiscences of his mother and of his father's poetry figure large in the film, along with extraordinary images of nature.

Combining black-and-white and color work, with some unusual documentary footage, this highly regarded movie is structured with the logic of a dream. It's a wonderful, slow amble through someones innermost fond memories.

Roma

1972 Director Federico Fellini

This is Fellini's autobiographical tribute to Rome. Narrated by Fellini himself it features a stream of consciousness made up of a mixture of real-life footage and fictional set pieces.

It flows from one episode to another, beginning with his early years in Rome in the 1930's during the time of Mussolini. At the age of 18, he moves in to a tenement building and explores the wild characters living in neighborhood. The events that follow switch between the past and contemporary times, including a story line that involves a 1970's film crew making a movie about Rome. He also incorporates segments of Roman history and problems in the government, including an improvised speech from Gore Vidal. Throughout this journey there are visits to an outdoor restaurant, a movie theater, a music hall, and a brothel. In one famously surreal segment, groups of clergymen gather together for a Catholic fashion show spectacle. After a visit to a street festival and some on-camera interviews, the film concludes with a long night sequence of a large group of motorcycles driving around some of the major landmarks of Rome.

This is a "sit back and let it roll over you" type of film. It is quite enjoyable providing you're not expecting a plot nor much cohesion between the various episodes.

Wasabi

2001 Director Gérard Krawczyk

I was a little surprised to find Jean Reno playing the lead in this slapstick rom-com that masquerades as a crime thriller.

Jean Reno plays a detective in the French police force. His methods are "hit first, then hit again then hit some more, then arrest those left standing". Quite predictably he is suspended from work and as he wonders what to do for the next 60 days, he learns that an old flame in Tokyo has died naming him as the sole beneficiary in her will. Once in Japan, he meets his daughter, who doesn't think much of him and appears to be unaware that he is her biological father. As he tries to bond with her, he examines the facts behind her mother's death and begins to suspect that it was no accident.

To be honest the best part is the Wasabi scene from which the film takes its name. It is genuinely funny if somewhat predictable. But then the whole film is predictable throughout. It's a shame because Reno is an iconic actor with some major films under his belt. Anyway the kids will like it because of the cartoonesque, over the top, harmless violence.