Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

One Million Years BC
(Don Chaffey, 1966)
The movie that Quest For Fire was meant to obliterate, with absurdly overripe cave-gal
Raquel Welch making her first indelible impact on the collective male libido. Equally
memorable for Ray Harryhausen's tremendous (albeit anachronistic) stop-motion dinosaur
fights.
One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing
(Robert Stevenson, 1975)
Disney does London (with help from Derek Nimmo and Peter Ustinov) in a spiffing kids' caper
concerning spies, nannies, some secret microfilm and much attendant ballyhoo. OK, the
Chinese-baddie stereotypes are rather old hat, but they're not really nasty; and the sight of a
dino skeleton's head bobbing along above the London fog is an all-time treat.
Onibaba
(Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
An artfully macabre horror movie that uses avant-garde flourishes and a primordial reed-bed
location to bring an old folk tale to life. The focus is on two women who lure lost warriors into
a hole in the ground then plunder their weapons. But a returning soldier, and a strange mask,
bring out their savagery.
Orlando
(Sally Potter, 1992)
An impressively-mounted adaptation of Virginia Woolf that remains one of the high-water
marks of British art cinema and gave Tilda Swinton an early high-profile role. With a narrative
that starts in Tudor England and races through the centuries, it's still a riveting and seductive
watch.
Orphée
(Jean Cocteau, 1950)
Cocteau's modern interpretation of the Orpheus myth proves that the most poignant magic
can be realised with primitive special effects. Mixing classical mythology with his own
obsessions, he set this fantastical fable of morbid love in beatnik Paris, resplendent with
motorcycle boys and poet-toughs, where smitten lovers are transported into the underworld
via magic mirrors.
Osama
(Siddiq Barmak, 2003)
The first post-Taliban film, Barmak wears the badge of a contemporary Asian film-maker -
scrupulous naturalism and emotional fidelity - but with an extra, harrowing note of outrage.
Marina Golbahari stars as a 12-year-old forced to disguise herself as a boy. Her unmasking is
a clarion condemnation of a nightmare regime.
The Others
(Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) A haunted-house movie that conjures terror out of thin air, most
of it directed towards a convincingly frazzled Nicole Kidman. As the mother of two
photosensitive children, she's a housebound victim of increasingly strange goings-on. There
are no special effects, just unbearable tension and unfathomable mystery.
Out of Sight
(Steven Soderbergh, 1998)
Best-known for putting George Clooney's suave bank robber and Jennifer Lopez's curvy
federal agent in the trunk of a car for a smoldering meet-cute, Soderbergh's jazzy, often
hilarious caper is more than the sum of its heartthrobs. Toying with linear time, this wry
nocturne is cool, sexy, and mysterious.
Out of the Past (AKA Build My Gallows High)
(Jacques Tourneur, 1947)