Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

"flunking most heinously". The duo's flipped-out enthusiasm and the script's slangy flair make
for an air-guitar flourish of a teen comedy.
The Birds
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
"An apocalyptic tone-poem", Fellini called Hitchcock's last masterpiece. What sets the birds
off? Mother's incestuous sexual jealousy? The son's burgeoning emotional independence?
Tippi Hedren's lime-green dress? Whatever - the sexual tremors beneath the avian horror are
the movie's true motor; and the effects, instantly dated in 1963, now seem horrifyingly retrobeautiful.
The Birth of a Nation
(DW Griffith, 1915)
Proceed with caution, for this film is racist, ridiculous history and it revived the Ku Klux Klan.
But DW Griffith made the audience sit still for three hours, held by the rhythm of long shot and
close-up. Yes, it's ugly and compromised, but it's hard to resist - welcome to movie history.
Black Cat, White Cat
(Emir Kusturica, 1998)
Amiably beserk tale of chaos and carnival from Sarajevo-born Kusturica, set among a
modern-day Gypsy community living on the banks of the Danube. Petty crime and even
pettier punishment ensue, all leading up to an epochally frenzied wedding party full of
commotion, frolics and runaway ducks. Funny, fascinating and faintly exhausting.
Blackboard Jungle
(Richard Brooks, 1955)
Lurid high-school drama that introduced Hollywood to rock'n'roll, with slash-the-seats credit
music by Bill Haley And The Comets, but Elvis and co had yet to exert their influence over
these inner city juvenile delinquents. Glenn Ford exudes cool authority as a teacher drafted
into to tame their savage hearts, but Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier are on fire as the boys
who won't back down.
Blackboards
(Samira Makhmalbaf, 2000)
The doughty young Iranian director took her cast (mostly non-professionals) and crew high
into the mountains of Kurdistan for her second feature, about the desperate plight of the
Kurds. The imagery here is jarring and affecting: we see kids trying to smuggle themselves
past armed guards, and teachers walking across rugged ground with blackboards strapped to
their backs as they look for someone to educate.
Blade Runner
(Ridley Scott, 1982)
Filmic visions of the future tend to either laughably short-sighted or absurdly rose-tinted, but
Blade -Runner's holds up worryingly well. We might not have flying cars or new planets to
escape to yet, but Los Angeles is still well on track to look like this come 2019 - parts of it do
already. Bleak it might be, but Blade Runner's rainy, grimy, high-tech but rundown cityscape is
rendered with such richness and consistency and imagination, it's almost a celebration.
Wisely, Ridley Scott provides us with a familiar navigation device through this alien world: the
good old film noir. Android or not, Harrison Ford is a cop right out of the 1940s: weary,
reluctant, alienated but essentially effective. It also helps that he has a straightforward
assignment: track down and kill four escaped replicants, or artificial humans, who prove to be
formidable opponents. Thrilling though the chase is, there are complicating factors,
particularly Sean Young's futuristic Mildred Pierce-like femme fatale, who raises the film's
deeper, trickier existential questions: questions about humanity, and identity. Blade Runner's
world may eventually come to look dated, but its themes will continue to haunt us.
Steve Rose