Former BBC film critic Barry Norman and I seem to be the only two human beings on the planet who rather like Mimi Leder’s action thriller, The Peacemaker (1997).

The 1990s was awash with high concept action films, coming off the success of John McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988), all the major studios wanted a slice of the cake and one film stands out from the crowd of their collective effort, one film had the courage to treat its audience with the respect they deserve, one film cultivated the best actors going and allowed them to perform, one film had the guts to temper its high concept with a human drama,. I am of course talking about The Fugitive.

At the risk of losing all credibility with my readership, I will say this, I love Moulin Rouge! Is it a great film? No. Is it even a good film? Disputable. Is it a film that at the very least you’ll find inoffensive? I can’t even make that assurance. What I can guarantee about Moulin Rouge is this… your opinion of it… will be a strong.

More emphasis on "guilt" than "pleasure" in this weeks examination of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001). Please listen, I've not lost the plot. Honest.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

Penny Marshall's Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) is an acute example of the bizarre trend in the 1980s of blending comedies and thrillers. For Whoopie Goldberg it makes an excellent example of her often underrated work as an actor.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

Through every era of cinema there are particular types of film and film genres that are unique to their time period. Formed by technical limitations (silent film for example) or fashion (The Western and the Noir being notable for their decline in popularity). So many of the films made in the 1900s through to the 1960s wouldn’t and in some cases couldn’t be made today. There is a buffer zone, it’s easy to imagine a film from the 1930s being produced in the 1940s or even the early 1950s, just as a film from the 1990s could have been produced in the 2000s.

Abel Ferrara is American cinema’s black sheep; during his peak (1990-1992) he was producing some of the most daringly pessimistic films of a generation, King of New York and Bad Lieutenant being incomparable with other American films at that time; even Martin Scorsese (whom Ferrara is occasionally described as the “poor mans” version of) would never sink to the levels of depravity, darkness and distress that Ferrara felt so completely comfortable within.

In a career with more lows than highs, why are Abel Ferrara's films so watchable? This and other questions are asked in this edition of Left Field Cinema, as we examine Ferrara's lowest basest work to date Fear City (1984).

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

Sometimes accidents and mistakes can lead to great cinema. A classic example of this being Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Arc, the protagonist Indiana Jones is confronted by a sword wielding opponent who displays incredible skill with the blade.

Lee Tamahori's Mulholland Falls (1996) is a classic case of "the cinema of mistakes". A peculiar and paradoxical bracket which implies that sometimes the more errors a film makes the better it becomes. This poor mans L.A Confidential is a lot better than it would have been without Tamahori's blundering inconsistencies.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.