Errol Morris' latest Oscar-winning documentary is no Moore-style polemic but an artful interrogation of infamous US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, who gave Morris 23 hours of filmed interviews in 2001, before 9/11 and the Iraq war, though unspoken parallels are hard to ignore. A formidable intellectual bruiser at 87, the old Cold Warrior seizes what may prove to be his last chance to make peace with history. Riveting.

Broad comic remake of feminist chiller

Left limbless, deaf, dumb and blind by a WWI landmine, US GI Timothy Bottoms is locked away in a hospital. Considered beyond medical help, he drifts in memories and fantasies, until, years later, he finally finds a way to communicate—to little avail. Based on his 1939 novel, this 1971 anti-war parable was the only film directed by blacklisted scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo. At times awkward, it's nonetheless driven by an acute, angry intelligence. Hard to forget.

Denys Arcand reunites the Quebecois characters who made '86's The Decline Of The American Empire so witty and engaging, and despite their age, disillusion and failing health, they're as intellectually provocative as before. Yes, it's talky, but as one lies dying, his friends reminisce about days of drugs and libido, and his son finds a backbone. A moving, note-perfect Oscar-winner.

When it was released in his native Hong Kong in August 1990, John Woo's brutal Vietnam-era epic Bullet In The Head was a box office disaster. Speaking to Uncut in April 2003, Woo remembered: "When we did the premiere, people just walked out...I felt totally exiled." Coming just over a year after the brutal massacre of students in Tiananmen Square, it's perhaps no surprise that the movie—called Die xue jie tou in Woo's native Cantonese, aka Bloodshed In The Streets—was too complicated, too downbeat, too pessimistic. And it is.

Gus Van Sant's Palme d'Or-winning take on the Columbine massacre makes for understandably difficult viewing. Van Sant deliberately shoots the movie flat and spare, looping the story, Rashômon-style, through numerous viewpoints. The Groundhog Day tedium of school life and the blank-eyed stares of the killers are chilling.

Shot in 1929 by German émigré EA Dupont, this sinuous, shimmering melodrama centres on a London nightclub where the sensuous table-top shimmy of scullery girl Sho-Sho (Anna May Wong) catches her boss' eye. Under his patronage, she's toast of the town, but stirs murderous passions. Flitting between glittering Jazz Age highlife and foul Limehouse backstreets, it exudes an atmosphere of almost illicit potency.

Although Vol 1 delivered gloriously demented energy, crazy-paving style and a skyscraper body count, Tarantino purists lamented the lack of wordy dialogue and funky gristle that would have made it a full Quentinburger with cheese. Well, here it all is in Vol 2. Sure, Uma'n'Keith (Carradine) share enough sassy lines and high-kicking homicides to hold you, but the conclusion still whimpers when it should bang.

In 1968, Raybert productions—a Hollywood hotbed of drugged-out '60s fornication—saw fit to hand would-be-Fellini Bob Rafelson The Monkees as a vehicle for his auteurist debut. This was the result.

The memory of Dennis Potter is not well-served by this inferior feature version of the fine '80s BBC TV series that confirmed Potter as one of Britain's most original and daring screenwriting talents. Here, Robert Downey Jr takes the Michael Gambon role of Dan Dark, the chronically ill pulp fiction writer who, delirious in hospital, finds reality merging with the fantasy world of his novels.