Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

James Stewart as a rumpled lawyer skeptical of his client's trustworthiness. Ben Gazzara,
Lee Remick, and George C Scott all put in early appearances. An absorbing, cynical puzzler
in which no one ever means exactly what they say.
Andrei Rublev
(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)
The homeland of the medieval Russian painter is wracked by poverty and war in Tarkovsky's
epic, which drew enough parallels with the Soviet Union that authorities attempted to
withdraw it from Cannes in 1969. Rublev seeks to define the role of the artist in terrible times -
a task that was surely familiar to Tarkovsky.
An Angel At My Table
(Jane Campion, 1990)
Originally shot as a TV mini-series, Campion's three-hour biography of Janet Frame leaps out
at you, and it's easy to see why it made it to cinemas. Red-headed, unconventional Frame
(played by three different actresses) is forced by her strait-laced social mileu into years of
traumatic psychiatric treatment; that she came out in one piece is a triumph of the human
spirit in itself.
Annie Hall
(Woody Allen, 1977)
A bittersweet Manhattan romantic comedy fuelled by baby-boomer angst. Some of Allen's
wittiest gags are spouted by alter-ego, neurotic comedian Alvy Singer, to endearingly flaky
girlfriend Annie (Diane Keaton). Unforgettable stuff, including a cameo appearance by
Marshall McLuhan, a lobster chase in the kitchen and a split-screen shrink session.
The Apartment
(Billy Wilder, 1960)
Wilder's entry in The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit stakes, following corporate cog Jack
Lemmon as he seeks to fulfill his fantasy of taking "a slow elevator-ride to China" with pixieperfect
Shirley Maclaine. Adultery! Suicide attempts! Corporate cravenness! Shockingly
modern and dark in its day.
Apocalypse Now
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Coppola's troubled production put Conrad's Heart of Darkness in Vietnam. In its brilliant first
hour, the movie delivers both the spectacular thrills and stomach-churning atrocity of a
pointless war, even if the final showdown (Martin Sheen confronts "the horror, the horror" in
the rotund, muttering shape of Marlon Brando) is a tad opaque.
L'Appartement
(Gilles Mimouni, 1996)
A French thiller in the Da Palma/Hitchcock manner. Vincent Cassel is Max, a smooth young
flirt, on his way to Tokyo to get married, when he glimpses a woman in a Paris cafe whom he
thinks is Lisa, his first great love - played by Monica Bellucci. He obsessively tracks her, gets
into her apartment, but winds up having an affair with her lookalike (Romane Bohringer). A
gripping puzzle.
The Apple
(Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998)
A remarkable conflation of fact and fiction, and an extraordinary debut for a 17-year-old
director, this tells the true story of an Iranian couple who confined their twin daughters to the
family home for their entire lives. The film is less a dramatisation than a reenactment of the
story, in which the key characters play themselves. The simple set-up has complex
ramifications.
Army in the Shadows
(Jean Pierre Melville, 1969)