You're beautiful, perplexing

Beautiful Lies (2010)

Chosen by me as I like to go to the cinema a lot.

It starts as a moderately amusing, nicely played farce - with anonymous letters declaring love, mix-ups in communication and other silliness but actually has a rather depressing, sometimes creepy undercurrent.
To the film's credit it does not ignore this and barring the very forced ending explores these issues, which might not make for a laugh-a-minute comedy but at least follows through on actually how horrible the main character is being, even if for a good reason.
One moment of the film, which seems played for joyous celebration (following a ladies feet as she walks down the street and starts to skip and dance along) is almost too much as her happiness is based on a deception you know will come crashing down and takes on an unbearable Final Destination-esque quality. Plus this comes after an extended sequence of the woman walking through town with no shoes on (something that creeps me out and I used to have recurring anxiety dreams about) so this section is to me more akin to a horror film than a rom-com.
Which makes it a pretty interesting film really.

I see dumb people.

Harsh Times (2005)

Chosen from a list of DVDs Victoria Charvill was getting rid of.

Mostly well played (Rodriguez is especially good and J.K. Simmons is always fun) but grimly familiar.
It's ending is telegraphed to anyone who has seen Carlito's Way but the digressions it takes getting there are sometimes interesting (Bale starts to get recruited for Homeland Security who are quite happy he failed the LAPD's psych test) but when it falls back on the gangbanger and homelife cliches it bores.

You just said he was putting a load in some pinhead's dryer last night.

Kaboom (2010)

Chosen by Brian Marshall who had this to say: 'a strange film, it starts out as one thing then ends up something completely different. Witty scripting pushes this towards a comedy sex film, but the sex is like that you'd find in a 12A and the comedy moves towards lunacy as the film draws to a close. There's a mystery. A girl may or may not have gone missing and may or may not have been murdered. There may be creepy men running round in animal masks or it all could be the results of drugged cookies. Everything collides as the film quite literally rushes towards its ending leaving you realising that what you've just watched is 'nuttier than squirrel shit''

My college experience was nothing like this but movies keep insisting it should have been a drug fuelled orgiastic rampage.
Still the film is a fun romp, mixing in superhero beats (there's a brief discussion about a character's name coming from a Marvel comic) and Lynchian oddness (a very bizarre end of the world cult) with teen sex comedy stuff and the usual Araki frankness.
Sex and sexuality are as fluid as the loose grip on reality our main character has (though the strangeness begins before he has the potentially drugged cookie, leading to maybe a 'straight' reading of the plot). Others define him as homosexual but he seems less preoccupied with that and spends a lot of time fucking Juno Temple (rather wonderful here). 

Go soak your fat head

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Chosen by Mark Hooton who had this to say: 'Mine and Jim's least fave and the one we watched last, so we might have just burnt out by that point. It has some crazy threats of domestic violence in there with a shot gun and that's about all that really sticks'

Another dull monster quickie from the 50s. This one spends a lot of time with some odd sexual dynamics (I'm still not clear on the relationship between the fat one and the one who dies last or indeed what their names were) and swampland politics but never engages as a character piece or even as a monster movie.
The 'Giant Leeches' don't look too bad in the crappy black and white but are used too sparingly (the movies only 62 minutes but it could have fit in some more monster action in that time for not much more cost surely).

You are afraid to be in love, you are afraid of losing control

Walk the Line (2005)

Chosen by me from a list of DVDs Victoria Charvill was giving away.

Dull, dull, dull.
Some great music (though I'm fonder of the later period Cash this movie doesn't cover) and good performances but everything is so rigidly formulaic. You could swap the names and songs for anybody you wanted for all the difference it would make.
It plays a little Quantum Leap game with appearances from Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison but is so trite and rote that nothing really sticks in the memory.

Looks like a rat, smells like a skunk - some call them bone-eaters

The Killer Shrews (1959)

Chosen  by Mark Hooton who had this to say: 'Welcome to a film so bad the entire cast spend half of it drinking to escape the horror of actually trying to act in it. This is one of those films you watch with whole bunch of buddies and giggle at it and make jokes at the expense of the low production values and mild racism that is scattered throughout. I fear David may be watching it on his own and anything that would have made it entertaining will be lost to him, along with about an hour of his life. The best thing about this film was that in 1959 it had an estimated budget of $123,000 dollars; think how much that is adjusted! How can you not want to see a survival monster movie with a budget that huge it’s got to be pure gold…. Right?'

Well it's adjusted budget would be just under a million dollars. And it made ten times that much making it pretty profitable.
But yeah, it's a very dull film filled with people talking for ages in a kitchen and occasionally a shaggy dog thing kills one.
And that's about it.

Oh well, Uncle Charles - nobody will murder you here!

Intermezzo (1939)

Chosen by Emma Jones who had this to say: 'This film was introduced to me by my mum, who categorised it as one if her 'nice films'. It is a nice film, however it is so much more than that. It is a romantic film with a harsh reality-check. It has a line that has stayed with me from my first viewing at about 10 years old, that is: you can't build happiness out of the misery of others.

Even at that tender age I knew that Anita and Holgen could never really be happy together, and that their love affair was destined to be an Intermezzo. But that's ok, sometimes there are more important things than romantic love, you can't always put yourself first - and I respect this film for saying that. Anita doesn't throw herself off a bridge in an act of desperation, Holgen doesn't shoot himself out of misery, he goes back to his young family and she accepts a prestigious music scholarship. Parting is painful and always will be - but it's not the end of their worlds.

Intermezzo has so many great film elements: David O Selznick producing, the bewitching Ingrid Bergman (in her first Hollywood role), music arranged by Max Steiner and of course the phenomenal Leslie Howard; whose films are like rare gems due to his untimely death. It will always be one of my favourites and a must for a rainy afternoon'

Wow, well I can't really say it any better than that.
Bergman is a captivating, breathtaking presence. When we first see her play the piano it is easy to see why Howard would forsake his family (one that he is apart from for long periods) and she forms the strong backbone to a slight (a breezy 70 mins) tale.