1987: Kárhozat (Damnation)

Bela Tarr's early film deals with a man in love with a married woman in a small Hungarian town, but what it's really about is light and shadow and movement in space. Not quite Werckmeister, but recommended in the unlikely case you're into this kind of thing. (7)

1983: Zelig

Woody Allen's mockumentary on the "chameleon man" whose looks change in response to his surroundings pretty much takes the format of a standard History Channel documentary and is about as entertaining - but a little more so for the occasional typical Allen joke ("I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women."). (6.5)

1989: Thrash Altenessen: Ein Film aus dem Ruhrgebiet

Watching the late-80s documentary about Essen's then-not-yet-famous metal band Kreator and their social and architectural surroundings was an all-around weird experience. That is all.

1980: Stardust Memories

This almost plotless picture is Woody Allen's Otto e mezzo, a film about a famous director (Allen) who gets pestered by half of the people about how brilliant they are and the other half about how his old films were funnier. But it's better than Fellini's movie, or at least the 25 minutes I managed to sit through, merging Allen's usual humour with some shots of real beauty. And aliens. (7.5)

1982: The King of Comedy

Set in contemporary New York, this Martin Scorsese-directed movie, stars Robert de Niro as a chronic loser who is driven to violence by his inability to adjust to the social world around him, but is ultimately not punished for it. - Yeah, it sounds like Taxi Driver, but the synopsis applies equally to The King of Comedy, which must be described as its companion piece, though in terms of aesthetics the latter film is not in the same league as the former. What's worse, while Taxi Driver makes the audience oscillate between a lack of comprehension of and pity with Travis Bickle, The King of Comedy invites scorn for the insufferable wannabe comedian Rupert Pupkin, thus forcing the audience to display one of their lesser characteristics: the tendency to look down on losers. (unrated)

1984: 1984

Michael Radford's rendering of Orwell's story has every frame shot in grey and blue and the production design seems to have been done on the assumption that dictators deliberately make their countries look depressing. It's a bit like having someone shout DYSTOPIA! at you for 100 minutes. (5)

1981: Diva

In my memory, this film, which was released in Germany only in 1983, seems to be on constant reruns at the local arthouse throughout the mid and late 1980s, so it was always a noteworthy classic in my mind, a bit below Blade Runner perhaps. Funny I only saw the movie - about a postman chased by gangsters because they want his bootleg recording of a famous opera singer's performance - now. It turns out not to be so remarkable; I guess its popularity has a lot to do with its aesthetics, including a general stiltedness, looking very hip, very zeitgeist at the time. An interesting historical document. (6.5)

1984: Broadway Danny Rose

It's got the right colours for a Woody Allen film - black and white - but is little more than an anecdote. Cool idea with the helium, he should have made more of that. (6.5)

1983: Rumble Fish

Coppola's film about a juvenile delinquent trying to emulate his older brother suffers from a wildly lacklustre script and, to a lesser extent, a phoned-in performance from Harry Dean Stanton Dennis Hopper. Yet it's sort of enjoyable for its 1980s aesthetics: Filmed in black and white except for the fish, the frames depict a dirty, run-down neighbourhood, but in a squeaky-clean way: I bet all the dust you see onscreen is designer dust. (6) A better treatment of this kind of topic by Coppola is Outsiders.

1983: Prénom Carmen (First Name: Carmen)

Godard's comedy about love&terrorism has nothing to offer in terms of plot, cinematography or whatever one might expect from a film, but it's really very funny. Finally I know where Helge Schneider got his humour from. (7)

1984: Blood Simple. (Director's Cut)

Though it suffers from the same nondescript cinematography that reduces so many '80s pictures potential quality, the Coen brothers' debut - a sort of noir comedy about the nastiness that ensues when a man finds out his wife has an affair - is a neat enough movie. Like all Coen brothers pictures, though, it is overrated. (6.5)

1983: Sans soleil

Situated on the border between fictional and nonfictional film, Chris Marker's second-best known film features a woman reading the letters sent to her by a cameraman who travels the world, while we see the footage he has shot. The somewhat experimental book of moving pictures emphasizes the strangeness of foreign continents, or at least that's what I felt it's doing. (7)

1985: Jagged Edge

Lame female midlife crisis/courtroom drama from the pen of Joe Eszterhas, who later gave us the not dissimilar Basic Instinct. Features good-looking horses and bad-looking haircuts. (5)

1980: Altered States

A brilliant scientist tries to find the essence of the self using unusual methods, which turns out to be a bad idea. The longer it goes on, the harder it gets to take it seriously. (5)

1984: Body Double

Brian de Palma's take on Rear Window has 1980s: Decade of Bad Taste written all over it and even features Frankie Goes To Hollywood performing "Relax". Interestingly, de Palma uses the kind of dramatic scene that most writers would have put at the end or maybe the beginning of a script as a turning point right in the middle; rather neat. Even so, not his strongest bit of work, especially in visual terms. (7)

1981: Eye of the Needle

The Second World War: Ruthless Nazi spy vs. upstanding, albeit inept, English Rose. Who clearly does too much crying for this to be called a feminist film, and the overly dramatic score is bordering on parody, but why not? (6)

1987: The Dead

Marred by its almost BBCish cinematography (one Fred Murphy's responsible), the film about a dinner party, if that's the right term, in early 20th century Dublin, managed to entertain me without exactly blowing my mind. My knowledge on the sociocultural context is pretty poor, though, so it's quite possible that I missed stuff. Favourite scene: The piano instrumental. Favourite character: The drunk. Pretty strong ending. (6)

1980: The Fog

I like simplicity, but John Carpenter, based on my sample, takes things a little too far in this respect. But the idea of a deadly fog coming to getcha is nice and the film, set in a California coast town, has a good sense of place and features accomplished cinematography. Quite decent entertainment, all in all. (6.5)

1983: Brainstorm

Ah, science fiction - it doesn't age well. This flick revolves around an invention by which people's expriences can be recorded on magnetic tape. On magnetic tape! This anachronism goes well with the general trashy early '80s look of the film, which is somewhat surprising coming from director Douglas Trumbull, the man responsible for the special effects of 2001 and Blade Runner. One character has a space-themed vision towards the end, and it doesn't look like the star gate sequence at all. As for the plot, well, there's the military getting interested, etc.

I can't say I recommend it, but I certainly liked it. (7)

1989: Crimes and Misdemeanours

It's about an unsuccessful documentary filmmaker shooting a film about his successful filmmaker brother-in-law and a doctor whose lover won't let him go, but what it really is is another Woody Allen picture. I haven't seen all of them, but compared to most I know, this one suffers from poor cinematography (1989!) and a general disregard for the visual side of things. (6.5) That's regrettable from the man who gave us Manhattan, and I'm not just saying that because that one's in black and white.