Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

Ninotchka
(Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
"Garbo Laughs" was the astonishing poster line heralding the glacial Swedish actress's
appearance in a comedy. Lubitsch coaxes a wonderful performance from her as the ultraearnest
Soviet commissar who learns there is more to life than five-year-plans on a trip to the
decadent USA.
The Ninth Configuration
(William Peter Blatty, 1980)
According to Blatty, his novel The Exorcist wasn't so much about demonic possession as it
was an exploration of theology. In that sense, he's correct in claiming this to be a sequel. Set
in a military insane asylum, Blatty delivers an intriguing black comedy. Not only does he carry
on themes from The Exorcist, one of the inmates is the astronaut Linda Blair warned would
"die up there".
El Norte
(Gregory Nava, 1983)
The perilous journey across the Mexican-American border is the subject of this simple-yetbrilliant
treatment of the relationship between the US and its Central American cousins. Two
Guatemalan kids make their way north with only Good Housekeeping magazine to inspire
them; theirs is the rough end of the American dream.
North By Northwest
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
Why is everyone chasing Cary Grant - or trying to get him into bed? Because the fate of the
world is at stake; or, if not quite that, the happiness of Eva Marie Saint. Hitchcock at his most
entertaining, ignoring realism and walking all over George Washington's face.
Nosferatu: a Symphony of Terror
(FW Murnau, 1922)
Murnau's prototype vampire movie is a rich, strange and alluring creature. Scuttling between
the expressionist sets comes Max Schreck's feral, pointy-eared bloodsucker. His arrival
paved the way for a procession of refined, dapper counts - yet none were quite as scary as
this.
Notorious
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
One of Hitchcock's nastiest and most effective thrillers sees cynical CIA agent Cary Grant
essentially prostituting the woman he's falling for (Ingrid Bergman, luminous) so as to net
creepy, mother-fixated neo-Nazi Claude Rains in postwar Brazil. Perhaps his most sexually
anguished, emotionally punishing film until Vertigo.
Now, Voyager
(Irving Rapper, 1942)
No actress fought harder to get the parts she said she deserved - and one was Charlotte Vale
in Now, Voyager, as played by Bette Davis. She's a shy, retiring woman who becomes a
mature success. She has Claude Rains and Paul Henreid, and then: "Don't let's ask for the
moon, we have the stars."
Nowhere in Africa
(Caroline Link, 2001)
Unforgettably powerful study of a Jewish family that moves to Africa ahead of the Nazi
persecution in the 1930s. Poverty in Kenya flays them of their old certainties - only their
young daughter can find a way to grapple with their new life.Lushly shot with opulent, hautbourgeois
interiors giving way to the endless skies, and stirring performances from the leads.
Ocean's Eleven
(Steven Soderbergh, 2001)