One of Kaurismaki’s funniest and most fascinating deviations in his oeuvre, this East Goes West road movie sutures music, cross-cultural misunderstanding, and deadpan humour into a pseudo-documentary, crowned by arguably the best hairstyle ever committed to celluloid.
Arguably Greenaway’s most controversial work about food and sex, this cult arthouse sensation pushed cinematography and visual style to a whole new ascetic level, as the wife of an ultra-obnoxious restaurateur cheats on him.
Enyedi’s dreamlike debut feature has a fabulist tone, though its thematic exploration of political and technological developments in modern human history never comes into full realisation, as the film charts the lives of a pair of orphaned twins who go their separate ways.
A boy, forced to stay with his inmate mother in prison, finds a place of imaginative solace in a young political prisoner, as this Turkish classic subverts the ‘prison movie’ by focusing on the communal spirit of women who find a ‘home’ within the four walls.
An exquisite and meditative biopic about a Japanese tea master who became influential with the shoguns during the 16th century as Teshigahara conflates the personal with the political in a beguiling way.
A Trans-Siberian train journey turns into a ‘Trans-Mongolian’ detour on the steppes as a group of Westerners find themselves ‘enjoying’ the hospitality of a Mongolian Princess and her people, in an oddly-structured but exuberant work that challenges exoticist assumptions in East-West cultural discourse.
A weaker work in Miyazaki’s oeuvre that while operating efficiently on plot and characterisation doesn’t quite do anything substantial thematically as a young witch travels to a new town to find work as a rite-of-passage.
Holy water from a temple is found to be contaminated in this decent adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, situated within Ray’s cultural milieu as this straightforwardly-told drama sees science and religion cross swords.
Almodovar’s Stockholm syndrome drama will probably be cancelled if made today, but while it isn’t a home run by his provocative standards, it features two impressionable performances by Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril.
One of Stone’s stronger works, this recreation of the 1960s American struggle for freedom amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War is at best fervent and emotional.
Eternality Tan 