Know how sometimes you can't get a song out of your head? Well, watch this Otto Preminger classic at your own peril: even if you've never heard the title tune before, you'll be humming it long after the movie is over. A tricky mystery, the film deals with the murder of a popular young woman, with whom several men seem to be involved. But the most unusual is the police detective (Dana Andrews) who, as he sifts through the clues, finds himself drawn over and over to the painted portrait of the murdered woman until he becomes obsessed with her. Preminger won the Oscar as best director, though he finished the film after Rouben Mamoulian started it. Oscars also went to the cinematography, the screenplay and supporting actor Clifton Webb, as the acidic columnist who was close to Laura. -Marshall Fine, Amazon. com.

Donnie Darko is a thought-provoking, touching and distinctive offering from relative newcomer, Richard Kelly (II). It's 1988 in small-town America and Donnie, a disturbed teenager on medication and undergoing psychoanalysis for his blackouts and personality disorders, is being visited by a being in a rabbit suit whom he calls Frank. It's this anti-Harvey that saves Donnie from being crushed to death when an airplane engine falls from the sky onto his house. This is the beginning of their escalating relationship, which, as Donnie follows Frank's instructions, becomes increasingly violent and destructive. Added to this is Frank's warning of the impending apocalypse and Donnie's realisation that he can manipulate time, leading to a startling denouement where nearly everything becomes clear. "Nearly everything", because Donnie Darko is a darkly comic, surreal journey in which themes of space, time and morality are interwoven with a classic coming-of-age story of a teenage boy's struggle to understand the world around him. The film leaves the viewer with more questions than it answers, but then that's part of its charm. Performances are superb: Jake Gyllenhaal underplays the mixed-up kid role superbly and Donnie's episodes of angst positively erupt out of the screen. There are also some starry cameos from Mary McDonnell as Donnie's long-suffering mother, Patrick Swayze as Jim Cunningham, the personal-development guru with a terrible secret, and Noah Wyle and Drew Barrymore as Donnie's progressive teachers. Undoubtedly too abstruse for some tastes, Donnie Darko's balance of outstanding performances with intelligent dialogue and a highly inventive story will reward those looking for something more highbrow than the average teenage romp. [+]

Pandora couldn't resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let's just say in Mulholland Drive David Lynch indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, "a love story in the city of dreams", Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film's first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. Identities exchange, amnesia proliferates and nightmare visions are induced, but not before we've become enthralled by the film's two main characters: the dazed and sullen femme fatale, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), and the pert blonde just-arrived from Ontario (played exquisitely by Naomi Watts) who decides to help Rita regain her memory. Triggered by a rapturous Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", Lynch's best film since Blue Velvet splits glowingly into two equally compelling parts. -Fionn Meade.

richard harris,lindsay wagner,james coburn,karen black. Threatened with recapture after a prison escape, Martin Stechert grabs a 12-year-old as hostage.

Starring Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette, Gerard Depardieu. (1996) Directed by Christopher Hampton Music by Philip Glass CAST: Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette, Gérard Depardieu, Robin Williams, Jim Broadbent, Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard, Elizabeth Spriggs, Peter Vaughan, Julian Wadham, Roger Hammond, Ralph Nossek, Neville Phillips. NOTES: In The Secret Agent, the great Polish born author Joseph Conrad explores the confused motives that lie at the heart of political terrorism. Playwright Christopher Hampton (who also wrote "Dangerous Liasons") does a credible adaption of this dark tale of revolution and betrayal. This small independent film features an intriguing cast of Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette, Robin Williams, Gérard Depardieu and Christian Bale. Released in 1996, Philip Glass's score performed by the English Chamber Orchestra captures the moody desolation of nineteenth century London and the madness and desolation that is at the center of Conrad's novel. Don Christensen CREDITS: Directed by Christopher Hampton. Written by Joseph Conrad (novel), Christopher Hampton. Music by Philip Glass.

Some pundits called it a flawed, exploitative action film that glamorised drug dealing and the luxury of a lucrative criminal lifestyle, spawning a trend of films that attracted youth gangs and provoked violence in cinemas. Others hailed it as a breakthrough movie that depicted drug dealers as ruthless, corrupt, and evil, leading dead-end lives that no rational youth would want to emulate. However you interpret it, New Jack City is still one of the first and best films of the 1990s to crack open the underworld of cocaine and peer inside with its eyes wide open. It's also the film that established Wesley Snipes as an actor to watch, with enough charisma to bring an insidious quality of seduction to his role as coke-lord Nino Brown, and enough intelligence to portray a character deluded by his own sense of indestructible power. Director Mario Van Peebles stretched his otherwise-limited talent to bring vivid authenticity and urgency to this crime story, and subplots involving a pair of tenacious cops (Ice-T, Judd Nelson) and a recovering coke addict (Chris Rock) provide additional dramatic tension. Although some critics may hesitate to admit it, New Jack City deserves mention in any serious discussion about African American filmmakers and influential films. -Jeff Shannon.