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USA/Canada: George A. Romero, 2005

(Watched with commentary by George A. Romero, Peter Grunwald and Michael Doherty)

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USA: Victor Fleming, 1939

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USA: Chris Columbus, 1992

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USA/Canada: George A. Romero, 2005

Surprisingly, this fourth entry in the "Dead" saga actually has more in common with Zack Snyder's 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead than Romero's original, and while it is the better movie overall, its lead performers seriously let it down. Snyder's movie had Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames, whereas Land has Simon Baker pretending to be a lump of wood and Asia Argento wearing fish-nets and scowling. It's good to see Romero doing a new "Dead" movie, but this entry doesn't live up to its predecessors. Perhaps we've become too jaded for his particular brand of social commentary to work, or perhaps he's lost his touch.

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Original title: Ôdishon
Japan/South Korea: Takashi Miike, 1999

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UK: Lynne Ramsay, 2002

It's a giant cliché, I know, but you don't just watch Morvern Callar, you experience it. Cinema at its essence, to me, is about making people feel emotions, and Morvern Callar certainly does that: it leaves me depressed about the banality and directionlessness of life every time I watch it, and I'm hardly a pessimist or manic depressive. I'm of the opinion that this film is the cinematic equivalent of an open book - that there is no hidden meaning to it, but simply a series of powerful images and emotions that the individual viewer must interpret for themselves. A lot of people, I'm sure, will hate the fact that it has no real ending to speak of (come to think of it, it doesn't have much in the way of a beginning or middle either) and of the eventual feeling of pointlessness, but in the end that's actually incredibly true to life.

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Spain/Canada: Isabel Coixet, 2003

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