It’s taken me a couple of days to fully consider my feelings about Shame, the second film from director Steve McQueen. It’s unquestionably an overwhelming experience, and one that broadens and deepens as it progresses, but it is also a film marked by as many contradictions as qualities, some merely minor nuisances at an aesthetic level, and some that are more troubling at a fundamental one. In short, pretty much exactly the same reaction I had to Hunger (2008).

Humphrey Jennings was a gangly, Cambridge educated, pipe-smoking intellectual of the political left. He was a poet, a surrealist painter and an organiser of the major London surrealist exhibition of 1936. He was also joint founder of The Mass Observation Movement, an unusual nationwide anthropological survey undertaken for the first time in 1937. Jennings and his two co-founders recruited ‘observers’ from all over Britain to eavesdrop and spy on their neighbours and friends, noting the minutia of British life.

The third film out of four featuring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall is a crook-infested jaunt through the streets of San Francisco.

The story begins with a San Quentin prison escape followed by the California hillsides coming alive with sirens and police on the search for the convict.

Ah yes, British supremacy at its finest. To begin with, the film is chock full of beautiful cinematography, gorgeous locations and excellent acting. That aside, it is not a perfect film.

It begins with Christopher Plummer, playing Rudyard Kipling who wrote the short story this movie is based on, a quiet Free Mason working in his office located somewhere in India.

WARNING: Contains Spoilers Throughout

If there is one war that remains untouchable without criticism in American society - it is the second World War. The Allies (especially the United States) were the “good” guys and the Axis powers were the “bad” guys. This is unquestionable in American society. And perhaps there has been no better popular medium that has been used to celebrate the United States victory in this war then films.

How does one even begin to describe such a monstrous film? Is it even comparable to any other war film? Is it even comparable to any kind of film? If I were to attempt to describe it I would say it is a mixture of Apocalypse Now, The Thin Red Line, Schindler’s List, and The Shining. And I mention The Shining because, along with being at times slightly similar in style, Come and See is as much a horror film as it is a war film.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls follows three women through their ups and downs of fame and fortune, directed by “king of the nudies” Russ Meyer and written by prolific film critic Roger Ebert. The film was intended to be a direct sequel to the film Valley of the Dolls, but when 20th Century Fox got Meyer to direct, and the film took a very different path, they made what must be one of the most bizarre, entertaining and truly psychedelic movies ever.

When Tom Stall foils a vicious attempted robbery, rape and murder, he is hailed a hero and gains the attention of the national media. This uncomfortable publicity causes a threatening man to confront Tom and claim that he is Joey, the gangster who tried to rip his eye out with barbed wire, thus begins both an incredible thriller and a compelling mysterious family drama. A History of Violence.

You know that crazy, giddy feeling you get when you suddenly have a great idea and you scramble to find a pen to write it down? That silly sensation when you think you may have just heard something that could change your life so you scratch it out verbatim on your palm with a borrowed sharpie? The night I met my wife I sprinted home reciting her telephone number aloud all the way, desperate to get to my phone and dial her up before she slipped away.

Milan in winter. The camera hovers over a grand, architectural city engulfed in white. Elevated buildings of grey breathe in a covering of snow. The credits open over this scenery recalling films in the golden age of Italian cinema. The score by John Adams (the main suite is titled 'The Chairman Dances') swells over the images, stirring deep emotions - pride, love, fear. Beauty has been personified.