Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

The Conversation
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Gene Hackman gives one of his greatest performances as a surveillance whiz incapable of
the most basic intimacy in Coppola's paranoid character study. An impeccable technical
achievement (the sound design was supervised by Walter Murch), the film arrives at its
unforgettable finale inside the self-made prison of a lonely, tortured soul.
Coogan's Bluff
(Don Siegel, 1968)
Clint Eastwood is Arizona sheriff Walt Coogan, hunting killer Don Stroud through the alien
territory of New York: the city cops mock the cowboy "from Texas", but out west or in the
urban jungle, Coogan always gets his man. This was the first of the tough, taut Siegel-
Eastwood collaborations that included Dirty Harry.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
(Peter Greenaway,1989)
Greenaway's trademark elements - schematic plot, extravagant design, stately Michael
Nyman score, bourgeois-shocking sex and violence - are all in perfect balance in this ripe tale
of culinary revenge, transformed into a seductive feast. The cast is outstanding, led by
Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren.
Cool Hand Luke
(Stuart Rosenberg, 1967)
Facile, sentimental, desperate to be loved, and larded with overripe crucifixion imagery, Cool
Hand Luke none the less thrives on Paul Newman's indomitable charisma as a convict who
won't be caged. The finest hours of Strother Martin and George Kennedy. Avoid eating eggs
beforehand.
Le Corbeau
(Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943)
A French provincial town is plagued by poison-pen letters from Le Corbeau, or "The Raven".
Who is the villain? A clever, dyspeptic whodunnit from Clouzot, brilliantly capturing a spirit of
paranoia, pettiness and self-loathing during the Nazi occupation of France.
The Cranes Are Flying
(Mikhail Kalatozishvili, 1954)
The Russian film industry effectively died out during Stalin's final years before bursting back
to life with this potent anti-war melodrama. Kalatozishvili won the Palme d'Or for his hardedged
antidote to Soviet propaganda, though it's Sergei Urusevsky's cinematography that
most stirs the senses.
Crash
(David Cronenberg, 1997)
Cronenberg's obsession with encounters between human flesh and hard technology usually
produces horrific results, but when it came to this adaptation of JG Ballard's novel, it
produced an erotic one, which many found even worse. In less able hands, this would be
patently absurd, but it manages a sleek, fatalistic conviction.
The Cremaster Cycle
(Matthew Barney, 1995-2002)
In an undifferentiated foetus, the cremaster is the muscle that dictates whether it will be male
or female. This is fine-art prodigy Barney's central conceit for his five-part meditation on the
creative process, which has given rise to more interpretations than David Beckham's barnet.
Bizarre rituals, claustrophobic struggles and (as Barney's budgets increased) dizzying
spectacles abound: an endlessly fertile seed-bed of ideas.
Crimes and Misdemeanors
(Woody Allen, 1989)