This year’s Oscars saw the Coen Brothers receive their sixth screenwriting nomination for Bridge of Spies. It was a solid effort, mostly remarkable for being the first time in 30 years that someone else has directed one of their works and it not being a major letdown. But then again, Spielberg could turn just about anything into a Best Picture contender by his reputation alone.

The first attempt by the Coen Brothers handling just the screenplay credits was for Sam Raimi’s 1985 film Crimewave, which limped out on a limited release 30 years ago. Critics were not impressed. Vincent Canby of the New York Times tried to be nice, but couldn’t help noting that it was “not funny” and “dimly humorless”—and no-one went to see it. The film made just over $5,000 against its modest $2.5 million budget. (For comparison, the highest grossing film of 1986, Top Gun, made around $386 million versus a $15 million budget).

So now that Crimewave is three decades old, how does it stand up over time? I approached Crimewave aware of its reputation but hoping that it would play better now that we’re attuned to the Coen’s sense of humour. Unfortunately, it hasn’t aged well. All early Raimi movies have the same cartoony aesthetic, but Crimewave looks particularly cheesy, as if shot on left over sets from Police Squad. It has received some retrospective turd-polishing in certain circles—Slant Magazine awarded it four out of five stars, the same rating they gave The Big Lebowski.

Back in 1985, Crimewave must have sounded like a good idea at the time. Raimi was still hot after his debut (now cult classic) The Evil Dead, and Blood Simple announced the Coen’s as a remarkably precocious writing-producing-directing duo. Sometimes match-ups that look good on paper turn out to be stinkers—see the putrid chemistry vacuum of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie in The Tourist.

Raimi’s hyperactive visual style would seem a great match for the Coen’s stylized dialogue, and some of the former’s directorial pizzazz bled over into the Coen’s earlier work. Yet the combination also failed in the Coen’s highest profile flop, The Hudsucker Proxy, where Raimi co-wrote and served as Second Unit Director. Tellingly, the Coen’s were working on the script for Hudsucker while Crimewave was in production, and both films share DNA with Raising Arizona at the zanier end of the Coen’s screenwriting spectrum. All three are postmodern spins on old Hollywood movies of the ’30s and ’40s that the Brothers love so much.

Crimewave starts well enough. Like Hudsucker, we meet our protagonist just as he is apparently about to meet his demise—Victor Ajax (Reed Birney) is a typical Coen-esque schlub dragged from his cell for a midnight date with the electric chair. Meanwhile, a carload of nuns race through the silent city streets to the rescue. Via flashback, we find out what led Victor to his perilous state. Ajax was once a regular joe installing security cameras for the Trend-Odegard security company. One partner—Mr. Trend—employs some repulsive contract killers to whack the other, Mr. Odegard. Through a series of woefully unfunny scenes Ajax falls in love with a femme fatale, butts heads with his love rival Renaldo (Bruce Campbell, a frequent Raimi associate), and ends up taking the fall for a series of murders committed by the unhinged exterminators.

Coen aficionados should enjoy some of the characters in Crimewave. The hitmen are the first in a series of big man-little man combos that would serve them so well, from John Goodman and William Forsythe in Raising Arizona to Goodman and Steve Buscemi in The Big Lebowski. This links in with a less appealing Coen trope, that of fat men screaming, hollering and shouting, which they like to work into any movie when they get the chance.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty juvenile and ugly exercise, and the pace of the film suffers from the studio’s intervention. Raimi was denied the final cut, and the editing is at odds with the director’s usual dynamism—even at a trim 83 minutes it plods terribly. Scenes drag on forever because the editing is so slack, exposing the weakness of the script. The screenplay is the real villain of the piece, with barely enough dialogue to get the characters from point A to B in a scene. It feels like a rough draft dashed off to set up the story’s structure, and got made into a movie by accident before the Coen’s could revise.

If it played faster they might have gotten away with the “jokes”, which are about as sophisticated as Stan and Ollie getting their hats mixed up. An example is a character walking into a broom closet instead of his apartment…that’s it, that’s the joke. These gags have whiskers on them, as someone in Hudsucker might say.

The only truly enjoyable part of the film is Bruce Campbell, making the most of slim pickings. Campbell was still a few years away from becoming a B-movie idol, but delivers the lines with his typical cult hero drollery. Raimi wanted Campbell for the lead, but the studio insisted on someone more “Hollywood”, resulting in the baffling casting of Birney as Ajax. He’s a completely insipid screen presence and the action grinds even further to a halt as he bumbles through his scenes. It’s the film equivalent of watching a stand up act die onstage.

After Crimewave flopped, Raimi retreated to his cabin in the woods to create Evil Dead II, one of the greatest sequels of all time. He would pare back his Loony Toon instincts to make his best film to date, A Simple Plan, and also helm one of the most emotionally satisfying superhero adaptations, Spiderman 2. Of course, the Coen’s career as filmmakers grew immensely over time, though it’s fascinating how they stuck to their guns with the same vein of wackiness in their next feature, Raising Arizona.

Crimewave is perhaps best remembered as a cautionary tale, carrying the whiff of hubris from three young filmmakers who perhaps felt they were too cool to fail. Careers have been ruined by less, and we can be thankful that Raimi and the Coen’s managed to survive after the unwatchable mess of this collaboration.

Few documentaries open as dramatically as Omo Child: The River and the Bush. Headlights pierce the dead of night somewhere in Southwest Ethiopia, a jeep pulls up at a settlement, and a man in Western-style clothing gets out. He is led into the darkness to another man, dressed in tribal gear, who is cradling a tiny baby. “He found her in the bush.” someone explains. “Is she alive?” someone else asks. The answer is obvious.

John Rowe’s gripping documentary introduces us to the Kara tribe of the Omo valley. They live off the land in a remote part of the country, their elders strikingly decorating their bodies with white markings. Like many indigenous tribes living in isolated parts of the world, the Kara are a deeply superstitious people, and believe that children can be born with a curse that will threaten their very existence. For generations, these cursed Mingi children have been killed by the women of the tribe, by strangulation, drowning, or leaving them in the bush for wild animals to take care of.

Our protagonist is Lale Labuko, a well-spoken and pleasant-featured young tribesman. His father stood up against the village elders to send him for some new fangled “education”, only recently introduced to the tribe by visiting missionaries. On his return, Lale discovered the truth about the taboo Mingi killings, which claimed his two older sisters as victims. He set out to save Mingi children from certain death by adopting them as his own, bringing them up far away from his ancestral home, and eventually challenging the Kara elders to bringing the barbaric tradition to an end.

Rowe and his intrepid crew filmed over a period of five years, and the documentary works best when dealing with the rhythms of tribal life. He has a real photographer’s eye for both the landscape and the people, and his images are particularly eloquent when focusing on the hard-worn faces of the elders and their women folk, many of whom have lost children to the Mingi curse.

The director is less confident dealing with narrative and the pacing of Omo Child drags because of it. This could be because our modern-day expectations of documentary filmmaking, and the material at Rowe’s disposal in such a challenging shooting location. So many documentaries today are a montage of footage from various sources, from CCTV to smartphones, giving them a sense of urgency and spontaneity that old skool documentaries rarely had. Perhaps by necessity, Rowe has to rely on straight up testimony to tell the tale. There’s plenty of gorgeous landscape shots interspersed with talking heads giving their account. The endless talking heads have the effect of slowing a riveting tale down, and perhaps a more experienced filmmaker may have found ways to show rather than tell. The result sometimes feels a bit National Geographicky.

Still, the retro style of the filmmaking doesn’t hamper the overall punch of the documentary. This is the story of one man who had the courage to challenge the accepted wisdom of his society, dealing with death threats and succeeding in bringing about a change. The film won the Ethos Jury Prize at this year’s Social Impact Media Awards.

Rowe sensibly allows the elders to voice some opinion. They are wistful about the modernization of their culture. One woman tells how traditionally the tribe would wear animal skins, but the kids just want to wear Western attire. Despite their resistance to the modern world, traces of modernity are found—some elders sport bucket hats like those favoured by Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene in their Britpop heyday; guns look even more brutal and deadly when handled by a half-naked tribesman.

The most shocking testimony is from an older woman who unapologetically admits to murdering twelve children without any remorse. Rowe encourages some empathy with the elder’s feelings—Omo Child is also a portrait of a community in transition, and treats their deep-rooted superstitions with respect.

Ritualized infanticide may be shocking to our sensibilities, but the film allows you to understand that to the elder’s sensibilities it would seem crazy not to kill these children when a curse is potentially hanging over the community. As Lale’s crusade gathers pace, one elder talks about letting the Mingi kids live with the air of incredulity some Westerners adopt when speaking about Political Correctness Gone Mad.

Despite the harrowing subject matter, Omo Child is an uplifting film. It enthusiastically demonstrates how one person can make a huge difference, and Lale Labuko’s fearless endeavours make it easy to overlook that Omo Child sometimes resembles an extended showreel for his organization. Beyond his exceptional work saving children’s lives in Ethiopia, his story also offers some hope to us all in our era of fear and intolerance.

“I don’t need permission to do good things.” states Pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko halfway through Steve Hoover’s absorbing, unsettling sophomore feature Almost Holy (originally titled Crocodile Gennadiy). Mokhnenko wears the collar of a clergyman, but he also devotes himself to vigilante activities, scooping drug-addicted kids off the streets of his hometown, Mariupol, Ukraine, and forcing them into rehabilitation. He’s a charismatic, outsized presence, and his self-assurance in making that statement provides the documentary with its tricky moral quandary.

Hoover’s crew follows Mokhnenko on his nocturnal raids of gruesome shooting galleries around the city. The Pastor’s nickname “Pastor Crocodile” comes from an old Soviet-era children’s show, where a friendly crocodile goes about righting wrongs and battling an evil witch. Some of the kids Mokhnenko encounters with track marks on their arms are as young as ten-years-old. These kids have fallen through the cracks of society and belong to broken families with parents who themselves are junkies or alcoholics. Simply put, there’s no-one around to help them. There’s no state scheme to aid their plight, and the police are shockingly apathetic. The situation creates a space for someone like the Pastor, operating in grey areas of the law. Once in his care, he adopts some of them, and under his patronage, many will go on to lead healthy, normal lives. Others will leave or escape back to the “freedom” of the streets.

Hoover weaves together footage to create a portrait of this self-styled saviour. Hoover eschews a straight narrative by using a fragmented series of vignettes, skipping back and forth through time. With the aid of cinematographer John Pope and utilizing a discordant score of industrial ambience, Hoover creates an atmosphere of hallucinatory dissociation, presenting the Ukraine as a post-Communist dystopia. News footage and soundbites chronicling the country’s troubled recent history put the events in some context, Mokhnenko’s rescued souls representing smaller, more personal dramas set against a backdrop of national identity crisis.

Mokhnenko is a person of boundless energy and self-confidence. He has set up 40 rehabilitation centres under the banner “Pilgrim Republic”. Mokhnenko describes feeling like Superman when he first saved someone’s life, working as a firefighter in his younger years. It’s interesting that he reaches for the Man of Steel comparison, when his methods are closer to those of Batman. Dressed all in black, with a long coat flapping round him like a cape and an oversized crucifix on his chest like an emblem, he’s a self-modelled dark knight, as comfortable roughing up sex offenders as he is making insinuating threats to pharmacies supplying under-the-counter drugs to kids.

Hoover presents many of the episodes in stark verite style, showing the harrowing reality of the drug addict’s surroundings. One especially squalid encounter involves a mentally ill, deaf and dumb woman kept in a shed by an older man, who routinely sexually abuses her. Distraught and discombobulated, the woman can’t even remember or articulate what became of her baby, a mystery that Pastor Crocodile later resolves. As self-cast judge and jury in the cases Mokhnenko involves himself in, he decides that she should be taken into psychiatric care, and cooks up a bogus statement to make sure the hospital accepts her admission.

While Hoover describes the film as a portrait, the most significant problem with Almost Holy is a lack of perspective. It becomes obvious that the director is enamoured by Mokhnenko’s outsized personality when he treats him like a movie star, filming him swim in slow motion and working out at the gym. At times it feels a little like hero-worship, showing the Pastor as an inspirational speaker, a badass on the streets, a political firebrand, and a father to his extended family of lost boys.

On the flip side, Hoover often lights the pastor from behind or obscures his face with shadow, making him look like a gangster. Hoover acknowledges the shady side of the pastor’s activities, without offering any opinion of his own. These conflicted directorial choices make it a little difficult to decide what the Hoover’s actual stance is, and testimonies from other people in the story would give us a more rounded portrait of the man. Is the pastor motivated by fame, power and self-interest, as his critics suggest, or moved to help these people by a genuine sense of altruism? Is he playing tough for the cameras, or his he toning down his methods because a camera is present? What do his rescuee’s really feel about the pastor’s methods, once their past the shock of being virtually abducted by him?

“I don’t need permission to do good things.” Pastor Crocodile states, and in his environment that statement is at least partially true. It seems that he has transcended the law and is doing whatever he feels is best. The difficulty is that in doing his good deeds, he takes the voiceless from one dire situation and puts them in another where once again their feelings or opinions are disregarded. The question hanging over the whole piece is this—Gennadiy Mokhnenko is saving these people from themselves with his questionable methods, but should he? In many cases shown here, he’s rescuing them against their will.

Almost Holy is a handsomely shot documentary (though not surprisingly considering Terrence Malick as an executive producer) and some segments are as well-crafted as a prestige fiction film. With a charismatic and enigmatic central figure like the Pastor Crocodile, it should go down well with discerning arthouse audiences, and offers plenty to debate.

Cinema has had a rather ambivalent attitude towards rabbits. For every Thumper or Roger Rabbit, there’s at least five manifestations of the creepy little buggers capable of freaking an audience out. In celebration of the Easter Holidays, here’s a list of the scariest, most intimidating and blood-thirsty rabbits in movie history.

1. Rabbits in Night of the Lepus

Giant creatures running amok is a common staple of sci-fi horror, and it tends to work best when the monster is something that people already find disgusting or terrifying. Creepy-crawlies are especially effective in these types of movies. Making something bigger doesn’t necessarily make it scarier, and if the subject is relatively benign in the first place, the effect is comical—see Tomatoes, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, or Daryl Hannah. Rabbits fall into the latter category, and Janet “I was in Psycho once” Leigh and DeForest “Spock’s Mate” Kelley face off against genetically modified, flesh-gnawing bunnies in this notorious sci-fi stinker. The makers unwisely chose to ignore the humour present in Russell Braddon’s source novel, The Night of the Angry Rabbit, playing it deliriously straight-faced.

As later films in this list will show, rabbits really can be scary. However, opening the hutch and filming a bunch of nibbly cottontails hopping around a miniature town set with ketchup on their fur just doesn’t cut it. A must see for connoisseurs of bad movies.

2. Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A few years after the Night of the Lepus debacle, the Monty Python boys got it right with their killer rabbit, a fluffy white bunny capable of taking out an entire phalanx of errant knights.

3. March Hare in Dreamchild

The ’80s was a golden period of creativity for Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, providing memorably grotesque characters in fantasy classics like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. They also provided the sinister muppets for Dreamchild, a sensitive and little-seen tale of the elderly Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

She’s off to America to pick up an honorary degree on the centenary of Carroll’s birth, and as her journey progresses, she hallucinates about the iconic characters that have haunted her whole life.

Alice has been adapted dozens of times, but few films capture the essence of John Tenniel’s indelible illustrations as well as Dreamchild. The denizens of Wonderland are a forlorn menagerie, castaways on a literary desert island from far-flung shores as diverse as nursery rhymes (Humpty Dumpty) and heraldry (The Gryphon). The film’s most memorable scene is the Mad Hatter’s tea party, featuring a mangy, insane rendition of the March Hare. Kids should stick to Disney.

4. Jack, Suzie and Jane in Rabbits

David Lynch explores his love of ’50s kitsch in this deeply bizarre “sitcom”, featuring three anthropomorphised rabbits on a shadowy, single set. Their activities are accompanied by an incongruous tinned laugh track, as the characters flatly delivering their lines completely out of order. The most disturbing aspect of this avant garde headfuck is the otherworldly stillness of the rabbits—while many strange things occur, nothing quite matches the stifling horror of the opening scene. One rabbit silently irons clothes while another sits motionless on the sofa, looking out at the audience. Brown trousers time, for no quantifiable reason.

5. Rabbit-Man in Sexy Beast

Jonathan Glazer’s quirky, sun-drenched gangster flick is memorable for many reasons, not least Sir Ben Kingsley’s demented turn as potty-mouthed nutjob Don Logan (he drops the C-bomb 21 times in the movie, but it feels more like 200). It’s disturbing enough seeing retired bank robber Gal (Ray Winstone) in a pair of budgie-smugglers, yet even that pales in comparison to the hellish Rabbit Man that stalks his nightmares. With a bearing of infinite malice, the creature rides into frame on a donkey, wielding an uzi.

6. Frank in Donnie Darko

There are few more unsettling images in 21st century cinema than Frank, Donnie Darko’s mysterious guide in Richard Kelly’s time-addled mindbender. It’s just a guy in a mask, but there’s something about the mask and his silent demeanour that chills you to the bone. Could it be the twisted ears, the vacant eyes, or the ghoulishly grinning buck teeth? Or all of the above? The Frank mask feels so unnaturally perverse that he unnerves you every moment that he’s on the screen.

7. General Woundwort in Watership Down

One of the most traumatic experiences growing up in ’80s Britain was exposure to Watership Down. It was perhaps the most mis-certified films of all time, declared “suitable for all ages” by the usually stringent BBFC. This resulted in a whole generation scarred for life by scenes of a rabbit warren ploughed over in rivers of blood, rabbits choking to death in snares, rabbits ripped to shreds by vicious dogs, and one of cinema’s greatest bogeymen—or bogeyrabbits—General Woundwort. The graphic violence stands in stark counterpoint to the idyllic watercolour backdrops and Art Garfunkel on the soundtrack.

Woundwort is a wonderful screen villain, the despotic leader of the shadowy Efrafra warren, pursuing the heroes across the gently rolling landscape in their search for a safe haven. With his milky blind eye and growling countenance, he’s a curious mix of Churchill’s indefatigable bluster and Hitler’s insidious dogmatism. When he launches into his final showdown with a ferocious farm dog, we believe that he stands at least half a chance.

With the award season officially over (and Leo finally has that Oscar), we’re now settling into the doldrums of the early season fare. And what better way to dirty up your palate than a couple of back-to-back Gerard Butler stinkers, Gods of Egypt and London Has Fallen?

But I must make a confession: Gerard Butler is one of my guilty pleasures. He’s an intelligent man who has a reputation for appearing in terrible movies, most of which have a nasty, insalubrious edge to them. Compared to the other classically handsome, well-dressed leading men that largely populate multiplexes these days, Butler is a bit rougher. His glowering appearance gives him a disreputable air onscreen, often portraying an unreconstructed ladies’ man, so macho that he will start a take clean shaven and finish it fully bearded.

His saving grace is that he flings himself wholeheartedly at any role, and is usually the best part of any dross that he’s starring in. Having blown his law career as a younger man, he chanced his arm at acting and is now headlining big, dumb Hollywood blockbusters. He makes no apology for that, which is his most endearing quality. He gives the impression of a man, now unencumbered by normal life, living the dream for all the geeks out there who ever fancied themselves as a movie star.

Let’s take a look at some of Butler’s greatest…ugh…hits.

1. Phantom of the Opera (Joel Schumacher, 2004)

This hot-and-heavy adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical megahit is a nostalgia piece, blasting you back into the ’80s from the first cheesy guitar riff of the title tune. The film looks like a bordello bedroom, with Schumacher lavishly spending much of the film’s substantial budget on gaudy costumes and extravagant set pieces. That’s a good thing, and frankly I think all films should include a falling chandelier.

Butler plays LeRoux’s Phantom as a murderous stalker, looking like he genuinely can’t wait to get his big hairy hands all over co-star Emmy Rossum’s supple young body. Under the lascivious direction of Schumacher, the starlet gives as good as she gets, giving Butler both barrels of a “let’s get it on” stare in most of their scenes. She also wears lots of frocks that fall down at the shoulder whenever she gets excited.

2. 300 (Zack Snyder, 2007)

Butler’s major breakthrough and most iconic performance came in Zack Snyder’s highly stylized interpretation of Frank Miller’s comic. He plays King Leonidas, a fierce Greek warrior who leads the legendary 300 Spartan troops into battle against the vast invading army of a decadent Persian pervert. 300 is infamously homoerotic, and Butler’s the straightest thing on the screen. He channels Brian Blessed as the noble king, maintaining his dignity despite spending much of the film dressed in red underpants. If your eyes can take the artifice of Snyder’s vision, it’s a true spectacle, and nothing can undermine the rousing nature of the old myth.

3. P.S. I Love You (Richard LaGravenese, 2007)

Another big hit for Butler in this club-footed and contrived chick flick. Butler play Gerry, an Oirish fella married to Holly (Hilary Swank). After Gerry dies suddenly, Holly is guided by a series of letters penned by her deceased hubby before his untimely departure, encouraging her to start living again.

Part of Holly’s journey takes her to Gerry’s homeland, shot like a Guinness commercial. Her potential new love interests include an Irish pub singer who looks creepily like Butler, and a mentally unbalanced Harry Connick Jr. This is queasy, unintelligible guff.

4. The Ugly Truth (Robert Luketic, 2009)

The pitch for this gravely misconceived rom-com could be: what if a man who hates women falls for a woman who hates herself? Butler plays Mike, the misogynist host of a crass relationship TV show for guys. His shtick is a little like a blue collar version of T.J. Mackie from Magnolia, without the good writing. He ends up butting heads and eventually bumping uglies with his new producer, Abby (Katherine Heigl), a shrieking, neurotic, self-hating woman-child. Despite her initial gag-reflex at Mike’s antics, she can’t help falling for his masculine “charms”. Together, they’re the most unappealing romantic pairing since Fred and Rosemary West.

5. Gamer (Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, 2009)

Although almost universally panned by critics, Gamer has a lot going for it. It’s a slick, brutal piece of business, combining elements of The Running Man and The Last Starfighter, imagining an all too plausible dystopia where people play video games using real-life avatars.

Butler plays Kable, a death row inmate controlled by a kid in an ultraviolent Call of Duty-esque shoot em up, which is televised to huge, baying audiences. Kable’s wife is trapped in a Sims-like game called Society, where closet rapists get to play out their most craven desires with living, breathing sprites from behind their semen-and-Dorito-dust encrusted keyboards.

Butler’s Kable is a typical Butler-esque action hero: a wronged man seeking retribution by murdering lots of people in a grisly fashion.

6. Law Abiding Citizen (F Gary Gray, 2009)

A throwback to the hackneyed Nineties trope of a criminal mastermind pulling the strings from behind bars. The moral centre of this gratuitously violent thriller feels a little off—Butler’s architect Clyde Shelton should be the protagonist, having witnessed his wife and daughter’s murder at the hands of two scuzzy home invaders. Thanks to a convoluted and far-fetched script, Law Abiding Citizen manages to turn him into a sadistic maniac orchestrating a series of gruesome murders from his cell.

7. Olympus Has Fallen (Antoine Fuqua, 2013)

Cruel, humorless and xenophobic, Olympus Has Fallen is a despicable piece of Right Wing trash. The dastardly North Koreans take over the White House in a spectacular bloodbath, holding Aaron Eckhart’s snivelling President hostage. The crux of the villain’s plan is that Americans won’t be able to tell evil North Koreans apart from kindly South Koreans. Bloody foreigners, all look alike!

Luckily, Butler’s special agent Mike Banning is on hand to save the day, with his penchant for stabbing people in the head. The whole film has a morbid fascination with massive head trauma, with countless skulls popped. Banning even tells the lead baddie to keep one bullet for himself, because otherwise Banning’s going to knife him in the brain. Perhaps that’s the best thing for him, because surely any terrorist ready to take time out from an all-out assault on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to shoot up the stars and stripes must truly hate freedom, and deserves a length of cold steel driven into his cranium.

One of the highlights of last year’s Sundance Film Festival, Robert Eggers‘ 17th-century folk horror flick The Witch is now scaring the pants off audiences during its theatrical run. The film falls into the subgenre Folk Horror, a largely British off-shoot of the horror genre exploring the urban inhabitant’s unease about the countryside, where spiteful and superstitious bumpkins are still in the thrall of demonic forces.

The most interesting aspect of Folk Horror is that the existence of the supernatural—whether it’s God, the Devil, or anything in between—is largely beside the point. What matters is whether the human characters believe, and how they behave having accepted or rejected the notion of something beyond our earthly plane. If The Witch made you question the therapeutic benefits of long walks in the woods, you may also take interest in these folk horror classics.

1. Night of the Demon

It’s fitting that the first film on this list is an adaptation of an M.R. James story, Casting the Runes, since the Cambridge scholar often used common folk horror themes in his tales—typically featuring a privileged city dweller visiting the countryside of his own volition, and through curiosity, greed, or sense of duty becoming embroiled in supernatural goings-on.

In Jacques Tourneur’s masterful adaptation, the protagonist becomes American psychologist Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), who flies into England to expose Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall MacGuiness), an eminent occultist and suspected head of a satanic cult. Thin-skinned and erudite, Karswell’s method of dispatching with skeptics is to surreptitiously pass them a runic inscription. If the victim can’t pass on the curse, a demon will appear to claim them.

Night of the Demon is pure class. Pacy, witty, intelligent and spooky, the film would be arguably scarier if producer Hal E. Chester had respected the director’s wishes to leave the Demon to the viewer’s imagination. A journeyman director, Tourneur had already proven his ability to generate chills via the power of suggestion in his earlier classic, Cat People. Yet the suspense the film generates make us both fear and look forward to a rewatch.

2. The Witches

In her last film role, former Oscar winner Joan Fontaine plays Gwen Mayfield, a school teacher recuperating after a run-in with a witch doctor in Africa. She gets back in the saddle by taking a new post in a sleepy English village—surely nothing can go wrong there, right?

Campy, quaint and dated, The Witches is about as scary as Hocus Pocus, but is worth a watch for folk horror completists. It effectively pinpoints the traditional start of the cycle, and is an interesting precursor to The Wicker Man (perhaps the most popular Folk Horror film), with the protagonist’s journey covering similar beats—a village in the grip of a powerful cult leader, action taking place in broad daylight, and an accumulation of sinister detail building towards a demented final act.

3. Whistle and I’ll Come to You & A Warning to the Curious

The works of M.R. James were adapted by the BBC in a sequence of one-off TV productions; Whistle and I’ll Come to You in the late Sixties and A Warning to the Curious in the early Seventies. Both use East Anglia’s geographical desolate coast to create a chilling backdrop of isolation and threat. These excellent adaptations are acutely eerie, following two solitary academics out to the seaside, where they uncover ancient relics that release ghostly figures who relentlessly pursue them.

4. The Devil Rides Out

This dapper adaptation of Dennis Wheatley’s novel finds Christopher Lee in a rare heroic role as Nicholas the Duc de Richleau. Here the Duke rescues a friend from a satanic cult, led by the dastardly Charles Gray. The Devil Rides Out rattles along at the pace of a Fu Manchu adventure, and while it’s a slight stretch to label it as folk horror—especially as the rural aspect is largely absent—Gray’s omnipotent cult leader shares similarities with the other well-educated, wealthy, manipulative and deadly demagogues of the genre.

5. The Witchfinder General

Legendary ham Vincent Price gives his finest and most restrained performance as the despicable Matthew Hopkins, self-appointed Witchfinder General, who orchestrated the execution of hundreds of women condemned as witches in order to line his pockets. The possible existence of witchcraft doesn’t matter in Reeves’ bleak and depressing vision of one man’s avarice, and its themes are as relevant today as they ever were—a man in a position of authority plays on the prejudices and fears of the ignorant to generate hatred towards a minority, milking the hysteria for personal gain. Sound like anyone you’ve seen in the news lately?

6. The Blood on Satan’s Claw

This grim, rural nightmare is a beautiful slice of occultist schlock. Set in early 18th century England, a local yokel unearths the decimated corpse of the Devil, unleashing an escalating series of violent events throughout the local community.

It turns that out the Devil is using the parish’s youngsters to grow new skin, fur and body parts for himself, excised from the host by the diabolic nymph Angel (Linda Hayden) in orgiastic ceremonies involving mutilation, rape, and murder. The film provides a twist on the usual Folk Horror standards, with the stern patriarch of the film acting as a positive force, seeking to rid his neighbourhood of evil for the good of the community rather than lining his own pockets.

7. The Wicker Man

The Wicker Man was poorly received on its initial release, but it has grown in stature over the years to become a cult masterpiece. It’s a classic battle of ideologies, as the humourless, virginal Christian policeman Howie (Edward Woodward) ventures to a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. His inquiries are thwarted at every turn by the cheerfully unhelpful locals, living in a Paganistic idyll overseen by the louche Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee).

8. Picnic at Hanging Rock

There are few true examples of folk horror from beyond Britain’s shores, and the vast expanses of the Australian outback are a stark contrast to the usual bucolic locations found in the genre. Weir’s ethereal, stunningly beautiful oddity is a mystery without a solution, following a group of school girls who explore the titular outcrop one lazy afternoon before vanishing without a trace.

While no cause for the disappearance is given, the strange rumbling sounds on the soundtrack during the girls’ exploration suggests that their burgeoning sexuality has awoken a primeval force within the rock itself.

9. The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project works as a folk horror because it plays on the unease of city slickers out in the sticks, and remains ambivalent about whether the witch exists or not. It plays on the primal fear of being lost in the woods, and the real horror is the breakdown of civilities between the group as hunger, cold, and terror sets in.

There’s a sense that the three documentary filmmakers investigating a gruesome legend bring their misfortune upon themselves—they went looking for the witch and not the other way around. The found footage format puts us right in there with the protagonists, fearfully peering into the dark to see if something’s lurking in the trees.

10. Kill List

Ben Wheatley’s best movie to date is a dangerous mash up of nihilistic gangster tropes and cabalistic horror. The easy soundbite is Get Carter meets The Wicker Man, and while Kill List is a worthy successor to both cultural touchstones, it’s also something more unsettling and elusive. It’s a folk horror in reverse, as the esoteric machinations of a strange cult worm their way into the brittle status quo of a career hitman, restlessly ensconced in his home before his best friend approaches him with the usual “one last job.” The depth and perversity of the cult’s transgressions is never made clear, and the viewer is drawn into an ethical Bermuda Triangle—weird things are happening, and your moral compass spins wildly without ever finding a place to lock on to.

It’s almost Oscar time again, and I’ve followed the Academy Awards for long enough now to know that they don’t always represent the quality and scope of the year’s best movies. Yet, there’s something about the award season’s glitziest bash that turns me into the film buff equivalent of a WWE fan, who knows deep down that the fighting isn’t actually real, but can’t help going mental when the contenders start hurling themselves from the top turnbuckle.

In anticipation of the 88th Academy Awards nominations, here’s a list of Oscar’s worst and weirdest oversights in the Best Picture category.

10 Films That Should’ve Won Best Picture

#10. Pan’s Labyrinth

Dark-hued, dangerous and melancholy, Guillermo del Toro’s visionary fairytale grows in stature year by year, already looking like one of the films of the young century. It is a deeply textured masterwork, creating a fully realised reality and alternative reality for its young heroine Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), who seeks refuge from the horrors of post-civil war Spain in a fantasy world, only to find it as dark and violent as real life.

Evoking the primal, ancient morality tales of old rather than the sanitized hokum of Disney, it strikes a resonant chord in our deepest wishes and fears. It was probably a bit too obscure for voters—foreign language films rarely get much recognition in the Best Picture category, although lightweight fare such as Il Postino has made a showing in modern times. Martin Scorsese’s The Departed took Best Pic, and it had the misfortune to go up against the excellent The Lives of Others in the Best Foreign Language Film category. I’m sure time will separate Pan’s Labyrinth from both movies significantly.

#9. Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino’s burst of pure cinema is arguably the most influential film of the past twenty-five years. It changed the way people made, wrote and thought about movies ever since. Two decades later, QT is an auteur who can make whatever he wants, please the critics (most of the time), and pack out theatres across the world. Hell, he could even adapt his grocery list for the screen and it would still be a hit.

Pulp Fiction was the perfect blend of attitude, style, music, dialogue, set pieces, dance moves, top shelf performances, and sheer, balls-out bravado. It was sensational, and struck at exactly the right time.

#8. Field of Dreams

The 62nd Awards were arguably the nadir for Oscar, with the twee Driving Miss Daisy beating a strong field including Born on the Forth of July, Dead Poet’s Society, My Left Foot, and my pick, Field of Dreams to Best Picture.

You don’t need to be a baseball fan to be enchanted by this tale of Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), compelled by ghostly voices to build a baseball diamond over his crops. Told straight and featuring Costner at his most disarming and sincere, it’s a wonderful piece of modern myth-making. It’s a film about nostalgia and regret, but also an optimistic, magic hour celebration of the dreamer in all of us.

#7. The Killing Fields

Losing to Milos Forman’s grandiose, gaudy and rather campy Amadeus, Roland Joffe’s The Killing Fields is an impassioned yet sensitive depiction of the apocalyptic Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. It’s centred on the relationship between two journalists, American Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterson) and Cambodian Dith Pran (Dr. Haing S Ngor) caught amid the brutal regime change.

Working from a grown up screenplay by Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I), Joffe captures the chaos and turmoil of those years in great detail, with escalating panic as the US ditches its Cambodian allies. Schanberg is reluctantly forced to follow suit, leaving Pran to fend for himself in Year Zero. Ngor’s dignified, resolute performance is humbling—a first-time actor, he survived the ordeal in real life before making it to the States in 1980.

#6. Raging Bull / The Elephant Man

Take your pick, either film would have been a worthier winner than Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, which no one has seen since it took the Best Picture trophy at the 53rd awards. Both biopics shot in wondrous black and white, Scorsese and David Lynch’s films examine opposite ends of the human spectrum—Robert De Niro’s repugnant, self-destructive Middleweight Champ Jake La Motta, and John Hurt’s gentle and intelligent John Merrick, trapped inside a hideously deformed body.

Raging Bull is brutal and depressing, The Elephant Man ethereal and heartbreaking. Both have become modern masterpieces.

#5. The Exorcist

William Friedkin’s iconic horror has lost some of its shock value over the years, and I think it is all the better for it. Once you’re over all the head-spinning and spider-walking, you can concentrate on the story itself, and it always amazes me each time I see it how positive the film is. The Exorcist is a good movie in the purest sense of the word, and I think that you can draw encouragement from it no matter what your theological standpoint.

If you’re a person of faith, it makes great propaganda for the church, showing the Devil as crude and debased, while God’s humble servants selflessly lay down their lives to save a possessed little girl. If you’re agnostic, you can be buoyed by the sheer decency of the human characters in the film. If a bomb goes off in a public place, there are always people who run towards the explosion, disregarding their own safety in the hope of saving others.

That’s what the characters in The Exorcist are like, especially old and dispirited Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) and young and doubting Father Karras (Jason Miller)—on blind faith they ride to the rescue with no evidence that God has their backs. Despite its diabolical reputation, I find The Exorcist such an incredibly uplifting film.

#4. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick didn’t get much love from the Academy—between them, they won a grand total of zero awards for Best Director. 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture, but I’m listing Dr. Strangelove because I absolutely hate the film that beat it, George Cukor’s smug, shrieking My Fair Lady. (Interesting side note: Audrey Hepburn sported one of two dodgy Cockney accents in the Best Pic category that year, along with Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep in Mary Poppins.)

Perhaps coming a little too soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Strangelove‘s acerbic satire has become synonymous with the insanity of war. Comedy madman Peter Seller’s three performances are rightly celebrated, but it is the supporting trio of Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens and George C Scott that really stick with you, ultra believable as crazed military men deliriously willing to push the world over the brink of mutually assured destruction to get one over on the Ruskies. Kubrick observes all this madness with a sardonic, deadpan gaze, and the film concludes with one of the most terrifyingly beautiful scenes of all time – the end of the world set to Dame Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again.

#3. Vertigo

No popular filmmaker quite flaunted his kinks and fetishes on the screen quite as obsessively as the Portly Pervert (aka Master of Suspense) Alfred Hitchcock. Vertigo, his most personal vision, was met with a mixed reaction by critics and making little impact at the Oscars, only picking up a couple of technical awards.

These days we’re all amateur psychologists, so I think the modern audience is better positioned to appreciate Hitchcock’s masterpiece. It’s the eerie, twisted tale of a detective ruthlessly shaping a shop girl into the object of his obsessions, an icy blonde (what else in Hitchcock?) that he couldn’t prevent committing suicide because of his fear of heights. James Stewart is magnificent, tainting his good guy image to queasy effect.

#2. The Third Man

Orson Welles already had the greatest film of all time under his belt (Citizen Kane), and a few years later he gave us the greatest movie entrance of all time in Carol Reed’s funny, thrilling and fatalistic The Third Man. We follow Joseph Cotten’s gullible pulp novelist through the noirish, expressionistic underworld of post-war Vienna in search of his old best friend Harry Lime (Welles), wanted by the authorities for peddling dodgy penicillin. Anton Karas’s fabulous zither theme perfectly captures the tone of the film, managing to be jaunty and slightly sinister at the same time. A thing of joy.

#1. Citizen Kane

Although regarded as a cornerstone of modern cinema, Orson Welles’s masterpiece lost out on Outstanding Motion Picture to a film well-regarded but little-seen these days, How Green Was My Valley. Maybe it isn’t so difficult to see why – the Oscars have always been a popularity contest, and I think you need to be a bit of a cinephile to get the most out of Citizen Kane. The film is like Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu, a magnificent, chilly mausoleum to its creator’s limitless talent, ambition and vanity. A miraculous piece of film making, but there’s little warmth within.

Also worth mentioning is another losing Best Pic nominee at the 1942 ceremony, a tight, atmospheric detective thriller called The Maltese Falcon. While small in scope, it crystallised our notion of noir, and its influence can be seen in movies as diverse as Chinatown, Blade Runner and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Cinema is rich with partnerships seemingly born of some benevolent movie-loving God; Laurel and Hardy, Leone and Morricone, Scorsese and De Niro. Cantankerous Englishman Michael Powell and softly spoken Hungarian Emeric Pressburger forged such an alliance under the banner named The Archers, a maverick filmmaking team responsible for some of the most wondrous and idiosyncratic works in British cinema. Their films are a very English fantasia, imbuing the typical stiff-upper-lip of the period with an artistic fervour uncommon in English movies. By combining sweeping romance, technical virtuosity and wit, Powell and Pressburger create pure cinematic beauty. Listed in order of accessibility, here are five essential Powell and Pressburger movies to watch.

Five Essential Powell and Pressburger Movies

#1. A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

David Niven stars as Peter Carter, a dashing squadron leader who bails out of his stricken Lancaster bomber without a parachute. He awakens on a desolate Kent beach, completely unharmed. He goes on to fall in love with June (Kim Hunter), the American radio operator who talked him through what should have been his last few minutes on earth. Turns out Peter’s miraculous survival is due to a clerical error in Heaven (although the word “Heaven” is scrupulously avoided in the script), and the celestial pencil-pushers dispatch an emissary to bring him back from the brink of life…

A Matter of Life and Death is one of Powell and Pressburger’s warmest and wittiest pictures, and the pair are clearly having fun with all the visual effects at their disposal. The film inverts the famous switch of palette in The Wizard of Oz, presenting the fantasy world in stark monochrome and the earthly plane in vivid Technicolour, an effect still capable of drawing a gasp. It’s eye-popping, from Jack Cardiff’s luscious cinematography to Alfred Junge’s awesome set design. The imagery remains influential, from the vision of an amusingly bureaucratic heaven to the vast stairway between the two worlds.

For all the eye candy on display, the film remains grounded due to the delightful chemistry between Niven and Hunter, and the ever-welcome presence of Roger Livesey as the charming doctor who believes Peter’s visions could be the result of a brain injury.

#2. Black Narcissus (1947)

If Troma had made Black Narcissus, it would be called Maniac Nuns in Heat. Structurally it is the most conventional of Powell and Pressburger’s key films, resembling a modern psycho-thriller. Deborah Kerr headlines as Sister Superior Clodagh, a nun charged with setting up a school and hospital for the natives deep in the Himalayas. The location is Mopu, an ancient palace that once housed the local ruler’s harem.

Black Narcissus is thick with lush exoticism, and the film builds to a throbbing, murderous crescendo. It’s quite simply the sexiest movie ever made where the nuns keep their clothes on.

Powell and Pressburger’s production team do an amazing job of turning Pinewood Studios, in the sleepy home counties of England, into the exotic mountain retreat. Some of the images on display here are forever. I can’t wait for a 3D release of Black Narcissus on the Occulus Rift—I’ll walk hand in hand with Sister Clodagh across the windswept courtyards of Mopu until I forget to eat, shower and sleep.

#3. The Red Shoes (1948)

Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?

Vicky: Why do you want to live?

Moira Shearer is absolutely radiant as a talented but untested ballerina who falls under the spell of the shadowy impressario Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), and the answer to both questions is—because there is no choice. Often considered the filmmaker’s masterpiece in a gallery of masterpieces, The Red Shoes is an impassioned examination of the artistic temperament. Vicky dances because she absolutely has to, which creates a tragic parallel to her role in The Red Shoes ballet, where a cursed pair of slippers force the heroine to dance until she dies of exhaustion.

While The Red Shoes may be a bit niche, set in the rarefied atmosphere of ballet, most should identify with its themes. Furthermore, the bravura 15-minute ballet sequence is one of the finest things ever committed to film.

#4. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Winston Churchill tried to stop the production of this film because he felt it would damage morale during the war effort. Although it lightly satirizes the old guard of the British military hierarchy, he missed the point. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp takes a step back from the immediate horrors of WWII to lament the passing of an era of gentlemanly warfare, and perpetuates the myth of the English as sporting and morally superior in their conflicts. This is a little difficult to swallow from a modern perspective—the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, Bloody Sunday and the sinking of the Belgrano are just a few examples of how we haven’t always punched above the belt.

Politics aside, the film is deeply magnanimous about the friendship between English military man Clive Candy (Roger Livesey) and his lifelong German friend Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook). Their bromance begins after a duel for the honour of each man’s country, survives The Great War, and deep into World War II.

Few films chart the trajectory of a man’s life with such poignancy. At the best part of three hours long, it doesn’t feel a minute too long, thanks to the gracious presence of Livesey and the dignified Walbrook. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was Powell and Pressburger’s second collaboration, and their first in the luxurious technicolour that would become the hallmark of their most beloved productions.

#5. A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Beguiling and elusive, A Canterbury Tale is perhaps Powell and Pressburger’s most enigmatic work. All of their great films are uniquely their own thing, but this more than any of the others defies standard categorisation. Like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, it presents (a longer) chapter of WWII as an overall narrative of the British Isles. This was a brave stance given that this vision Englishness was in grave danger of extinction if the Allies lost.

Instead of conforming to a genre, A Canterbury Tale is more interested in tracing a line between the modern world and the pilgrims of Geoffrey Chaucer’s era. The theme is delicately observed, creating a sense of profound historical resonance. The villain is also a guardian of a certain English way of life, and while the bittersweet finale feels deeply spiritual, it is not a religious film.

I saw an interview with Bear Grylls recently where the adventurer praised The Revenant’s realism, saying it accurately depicts a grim struggle for survival in an inhospitable landscape. He liked it so much that he went straight to a travel agent afterwards, booking a nice winter break for himself and the family in the frozen wilderness of Canada where The Revenant was shot.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the movie, including ridiculous ones like a histrionic piece in The Guardian calling The Revenant “pain porn” and drawing a comparison to ISIS. All news is good news for “Team Revenant” in the run-up to the Oscars, and all those column inches about bear rape and liver eating will surely keep it fresh in everyone’s minds right up to the ceremony.

I don’t really understand why some people are getting so hot under the collar about the film. While the content is gruesome and often brutal, the stylistic choices made by Alejandro Iñárritu keeps the action at a removed distance, even when the camera is shoved up someone’s nose. We’re never given the opportunity to get to know the characters, so we just sit there, observing Hugh Glass’ ordeal with cool detachment, waiting for him to get his revenge so we can all go home. Mel Gibson got the job done about an hour less in Payback, and it was a bit more fun.

DiCaprio and Co. keep talking about what an arduous location shoot it was, which leads me to my main beef with the movie: Iñárritu puts his cast and crew through hell for the sake of authenticity, but makes so many flashy choices that keep drawing our attention to the artifice of the piece. Here are five of them.

1. Long, Long, Long, Masturbatory Takes

Iñárritu and Lubezki are up to their Birdman tricks again, filming long sequences of The Revenant in elaborate takes. The film’s opening set piece is immense, a stupendous tracking shot through the mayhem of an Indian raid on Leo’s fur trapper camp. It’s a little too perfect, as the camera glides clinically through the bloodbath, taking the time to pan and tilt at just the right moment to capture people getting their heads caved in.

Some call this immersive; I call it showboating. It’s like watching a demo reel for a hyper-realistic first-person shooter, and the technique calls attention to the whereabouts of the camera rather than making it disappear. The trouble with long takes is that it goes against the usual visual rhythm we expect in a film, so when the cut doesn’t come, it makes us more conscious of the director’s decision not to cut. Because of this, I’m spending more time admiring the craft than getting involved in the action.

By comparison, look at George Miller’s virtually invisible direction in Mad Max: Fury Road. There are no such flourishes from him. Miller’s only interested in orchestrating his team in service of the story, and that is far more immersive. Iñárritu’s choice of long takes serves his ego rather than the story.

2. Stuff-on-Lens Syndrome

Another thing some people find “immersive” that I find a bit too video game-like is stuff getting splattered all over the lens. It worked in Saving Private Ryan because it felt like some ultra-intrepid film crew was documenting the battle. It doesn’t make sense in The Revenant. Cameras didn’t exist back then, so what is getting spattered with blood, water and misted up by Leo’s breath? The viewer’s eyeballs? It just brings attention to the fourth wall, and once you do that, it makes the viewer conscious of that transparent barrier between them and the action.

3. Ridiculous Dream Sequences

You know when someone at work starts telling you about a dream they had last night, and you take it as an opportunity to think about something else? Dream sequences in movies almost always have that effect on me. Because they’re dreams, the director can throw any old nonsense in there, or use it to fill in some back story that decent writing could have covered in dialogue. We didn’t need a dream sequence in Jaws to show Quint’s harrowing experience on the USS Indianapolis.

The Revenant gives us some very repetitive dream sequences to show us what happened to Leo’s dead wife. It’s pretty hackneyed, and it gets comical when she starts floating around above him like a possessed Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters.

4. Tom Hardy’s Accent

Hardy’s talent as an actor is undeniable, but he’s a very odd duck. In interviews, he looks like he’d rather be wringing the life out of the interviewer with his bare hands than answering their banal questions. And Hardy goes through accents like Inspector Clouseau goes through costumes and silly wigs. The Peter Sellers comparison is apt because one has to wonder—does Tom Hardy need to hide behind these crazy voices the same way Sellers needed to with his characters?

Hardy picked up a Supporting Actor nomination for this year’s Oscars, and he certainly immerses himself in the role of Leo’s nemesis John Fitzgerald. As a Brit, he could have chosen any kind of American accent. Instead, he chose the most outlandish, impenetrable accent he could muster, basing it on Tom Berenger in Platoon. It struck me as such an ostentatious acting choice that every time he spoke it took me out of the movie—like Iñárritu’s directorial choices, the accent feels too much like self-indulgence.

5. “What the hell are you looking at?”

Having spent a couple of hours getting splashed, splattered and breathed on, the fourth wall is finally shattered when Leo peers right down the lens at us in The Revenant’s final frames.

It’s reminiscent of 12 Years a Slave‘s most sanctimonious moment when Solomon Northrup casts a challenging gaze into the camera. That movie spends about an hour showing us that slavery is a bad thing, then Brad Pitt shows up to tell Michael Fassbender that slavery is a bad thing. Then Northrup looks straight out of the movie at us, as if to say, “Shame on you, don’t you know slavery is a bad thing?” Well, no shit, it’s only been abolished for a hundred and fifty years or so.

At the end of The Revenant, Leo fixes us with a similar meaningful gaze, although his message seems to be more universal.”Mankind…bunch of assholes, huh?”

The British New Wave of the ’60s had a profound impact on British culture. The films of that period focused on the ordinary lives of disaffected anti-heroes against a realistic, working-class backdrop—typically shot in stark black and white with terse dialogue in heavy regional accents. The themes and aesthetic are still visible in today’s film, TV, music, literature and art.

Here are five essential British New Wave movies, listed in order of accessibility.

#1. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

(Karel Reisz, 1960)

Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) is the quintessential angry young man, working long hard hours at the factory so he can live a little at the weekends. Enjoying himself usually means ten pints of stout, a packet of fags, and a quick knee-trembler in the bushes around the back of the social club. He views the world with utter contempt, and is determined not to end up like his parents, “dead from the neck up.”

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is surly and cynical. The film is ripe with vicious, polemical dialogue from screenwriter Alan Sillitoe, who adapted his own novel for the screen. Viewers only familiar with Finney’s cosy work in films like Big Fish and Skyfall will be in for a pleasant shock—he’s absolutely mesmerizing here. It’s also a beautiful film to look at. Shot in sooty black and white by the brilliant Freddie Francis—cinematographer on classics such as The Innocents and The Elephant Man.

#2. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

(Tony Richardson, 1962)

Writer Sillitoe is at it again, this time crafting a compelling and intimate tale of rebellious youth and class warfare from his own short story. Tom Courtenay is outstanding as Colin Smith, a petty criminal from a tough working-class background who ends up in borstal after robbing a bakery. Told largely in flashback during our protagonist’s early morning runs, Smith’s final act of self-defeating rebellion is magnificent, with a montage cut with the precision of Keyser Soze’s final reveal in The Usual Suspects.

#3. This Sporting Life

(Lindsay Anderson, 1963)

Hellraiser Richard Harris turned in his finest performance in This Sporting Life. The actor’s volatile charisma was a great fit for the lustful, brutish Frank Machin—a coal miner-turned-rugby league player, whose talent is matched only by his violent streak. Off the field, Machin engages in a tempestuous, ill-fated relationship with his recently widowed landlady.

Anderson directs with panache, employing an aggressive flashback structure. His matchday scenes still rank among the best ever filmed, making egg-chasing look raw, immediate and gladiatorial.

#4. A Taste of Honey

(Tony Richardson, 1961)

Controversial at the time for its depiction of interracial sexual relationships and homosexuality, A Taste of Honey makes a refreshing watch today as a story told from a woman’s perspective in a time of deep-seated sexism. Breezy and tender, the film is about a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, Jo (Rita Tushingham), who spent her childhood trailing around from one grubby bedsit to the next with her boozy, irresponsible mother Helen (Dora Bryan, stealing just about every scene she’s in.) Left high and dry when her mum marries her fancy man, Jo ends up pregnant by a black sailor, and lodging with a gay student when her beau goes back to sea.

Tushingham makes a brilliant screen debut as Jo, stranded on the wrong side of just about every social and economic barrier of the era. It’s a deeply empathetic, unsentimental performance, making Jo embattled but never a victim.

#5. Billy Liar

(John Schlesinger, 1963)

Billy Liar makes just about every list of British New Wave movies, and for good reason! The film is regarded as the punctuation mark before British film moved into a different era, specifically the “Swinging London” movies (Darling, Alfie and Blow Up).

Tom Courtenay stars as Billy Fisher, a childish pathological liar who seeks refuge from his humdrum existence in an elaborate fantasy world. There’s little to connect him with the other anti-heroes of the period besides his existential angst. That’s because Fisher comes from a comfortable middle-class background and works a steady job at a funeral directors.

Billy Liar is required watching for anyone interested in the evolution of British cinema.

Bumbling, overstuffed, and set in the middle-class fantasy world of Richard Curtis, Love Actually is an uneven ensemble romantic comedy that frequently appears on lists of the top Christmas movies. It had me suckered for a long time, even landing on my own list of favorite Christmas movies—but then I stopped to give the film some more thought.

It’s a very easy film not to think about. It slips down so easily, built on the stammering charms of Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, and the jolly-hockey sticks enthusiasm of Emma Thompson. It has a great cast of established actors as well as up-and-coming ones, a twinkly Christmas setting, and an upbeat pop soundtrack. The problem is, the film doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny—it’s a terrible Christmas movie, and has some pretty cynical things to say about relationships. For a film that could also be described as a chick flick, it also has a rather repellent attitude towards women.

Many Christmas films follow a basic template—the protagonist (usually male) needs to overcome either a spiritual or physical challenge, otherwise Christmas is off. Die Hard‘s John McLane (Bruce Willis) overcomes a physical challenge, before reuniting with his wife and kids. Bad Santa‘s Willie T Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) may be an alcoholic, safe-cracking store santa, but even he encounters a Scrooge-like change of heart, and finds redemption in his highly dysfunctional but loving surrogate family.

But if you carefully examine the storylines in Love Actually, you’ll realise that it’s almost a counter-Christmas movie. Christmas is a time for giving and for family, whereas in Love Actually it’s a time for ignoring your family and chasing girls half your age. For most in men in the film, their only challenge is a personal one of self-gratification.

First, there’s dishy Prime Minister David (Grant), who instantly falls in love with Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), the film’s token working class person. They seal the deal with a cheeky snog backstage at David’s niece and nephew’s nativity play. But David isn’t there for the performance—it’s just sheer chance, and he has an awkward moment with his sister Karen (Thompson), who mistakenly thinks her brother’s there for the children. Fat chance, he’s just chasing a girl.

Then there’s Jamie (Firth), who buggers off to France after his wife cheats on him, only to fall for his Portuguese maid Aurélia (Lucia Moniz). He’s a bit sniffy towards her at first, and they don’t speak a word of each other’s language. But as soon as he catches sight of her in bra and panties, he’s head over heels. He ditches his family on Christmas Eve so he can fly back and declare his love to her.

Of all Love Actually‘s stories, the only one that follows a traditional Christmas movie arc is the one with Billy Mack (Bill Nighy). He’s the first character we meet after Hugh Grant’s touchy-feely opening monologue, a washed up rock and roller shamelessly aiming for one last shot at the big time, with a drossy cover of “Love is All Around”. Curtis can’t stop referencing the song in the first few minutes of Love Actually, since it was Wet Wet Wet’s mega-hit from Four Weddings and a Funeral. The twist is, it’s now called “Christmas is All Around”, and there’s fun to be had from the way Nighy shoehorns in those extra couple of syllables on the chorus.

Despite the best efforts of Nighy, Love Actually fails as a Christmas movie. It doesn’t really resemble one in terms of structure, and it has such a selfish message at heart. The film is also very cynical about relationships and women. Although billed as the “ultimate romantic comedy”, Curtis takes a strange stance on relationships in this film. On one hand, he’s all googly eyed and innocent, smitten with the idea of love at first sight; on the other he’s like Buddy Love, lascivious and skirt-chasing.

I have no problem accepting the notion of “love at first sight” in films. I was totally on board when Michael Corleone was hit by the thunderbolt in The Godfather, falling instantly in love with Apollonia. Don’t even get me started on Leo DiCaprio and Claire Daines doing their coochy-coo faces through the fish tank in Romeo and Juliet—loved it.

Love Actually seems to suggest that the moment you turn your back, your partner will be hopping into bed with someone else. This fate befalls Jamie, cuckolded by his wife, and Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen’s marriage is clearly damaged by Harry’s ill-advised flirtation with Mia (Heike Makatsch). Even hunky, handsome Chiwetel Ejiofor isn’t immune. Having just married the gorgeous Juliet (Keira Knightley), he isn’t aware that his Best Man Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is hopelessly in love with her, and spent their whole wedding obsessively filming close ups of her smiling face. If that wasn’t enough, he shows up on their doorstep on Christmas Eve, posing as carol singers and declaring his love to her with some cue cards, in the manner of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.

Juliet’s actions in this segment are pretty despicable, which brings us to the subject of how women are portrayed in Love Actually. Most barely register as characters. Many are either prizes to be won, floozies, or too over-the-hill to be attractive anymore. Things are way rosier if you’re a bloke in Love Actually. If your wife cheats on you, dies, or gets a bit old and knackered, don’t worry because there’s always some young bit of crumpet waiting around the corner for you. And while there is a long-standing tradition in Hollywood where older men play opposite young, attractive actresses in films, but Love Actually really pushes the envelope. Alan Rickman and Heike Makatsch, Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon, Colin Firth and Lucia Moniz, Liam Neeson and Claudia Schiffer—all these match ups felt highly implausible.

The objectification of women is most evident in the film’s most risible storyline, that of Colin (Kris Marshall), a hollow-eyed creep who’s poison with the ladies. He treats himself to a ticket to Milwaukee because he’s heard American birds get turned on by an English accent. Of course, in the world of Love Actually, he’s able to rock up in a dive bar and stumble upon a trio of hotties instantly seduced by the way he speaks. A foursome follows, soon to be a quintet when Denise Richards gets back home.

All this goes against what we normally expect from Christmas movies, which usually reinforce the virtues of self-sacrifice, open-mindedness and the pleasures of family life. While there is nothing wrong with skirting genre expectations, Love Actually is filled with bogus Christmas cheer. In fact it preaches the opposite—screw your family, chase the girl, and look after your own best interests.

If over the holidays the doorbell rings and your significant other tells you that it’s carol singers, maybe go see for yourself. Just in case…