Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

One of Melville's most painstaking homages to American gangster noir, with Jean-Paul
Belmondo as the petty crook and copper's nark who is targeted by a fellow crook. Everything
is hard-boiled: this is a film about hats and trenchcoats as much as loyalty and betrayal.
Down By Law
(Jim Jarmusch, 1986)
Jarmusch's absurdist style flourishes in this story of a mismatched trio of convicts who go on
the lam from prison in Louisiana. When they seek shelter in a room that resembles the cell
they have escaped, it becomes clear that Jarmusch's droll comedy is also a riff on No Exit.
Downfall
(Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
Bruno Ganz makes a terrifyingly charismatic Hitler in this sombre account of the last days of
the Third Reich, as seen through the eyes of his young secretary. Set almost entirely in
Hitler's underground bunker, it details the ghoulish devotion of his Nazi court as the Soviet
army closes in on Berlin. A thoughtful, humanistic study of absolute power.
Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
(Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
A delusional US general brings on nuclear apocalypse in Kubrick's "nightmare comedy".
Gleefully satirical direction and a witty script lampoon cold-war posturing, while Peter Sellers
is at his brilliant best as a Nazi scientist, the US president and stuffy group captain Lionel
Mandrake. Doomsday has never been such a blast.
Doctor Zhivago
(David Lean, 1965)
David Lean is sometimes pigeon-holed as a purveyor of empty widescreen spectacle -
certainly not a criticism that can be levelled at his adaptation of Boris Pasternak's great novel
set during the Russian revolution. The emotion is in every frame: if all those scenes of Omar
Sharif and Julie Christie making calf eyes at each other aren't enough, Maurice Jarre's music
is there to tug at the heartstrings too.
Dracula
(Terence Fisher, 1958)
Silky-smooth Christopher Lee makes an urbane bloodsucker in this delicious gothic horror.
Filleting Stoker's novel, it's full of nice touches, such as the blood-soaked credit sequence and
the way the birds fall silent as Jonathan Harker approaches Castle Dracula. Peter Cushing is
sterling as vampire hunter Van Helsing.
The Draughtsman's Contract
(Peter Greenaway, 1982)
Arguably Greenaway's most accessible film, this elegantly structured and playful murdermystery/erotic
comedy of manners unfolds at a Restoration-era country house. The paradox
is that this is one of the most formally innovative period dramas in British film history, and yet
as close as its director has come to making a mainstream movie.
The Dream Life of Angels
(Erick Zonca, 1998)
Powerful, naturalistic drama set in Lille about an unlikely friendship between two young downand-out
women. Flat-sitting for a hospitalised mother and daughter, they try to overcome life's
difficulties. Zonca's first feature impressively weaves handheld camerawork with the raw
emotions of delusions and dreams.
Dreams That Money Can Buy
(Hans Richter, 1947)
An extraordinary assemblage of avant-garde film-making involving some of the highest of
high-art names: Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp. Richter's conceit is