1560, Peru. In a beautiful poetic opening scene the conquistadors cross an Andes pass, situated between the peaks and the valleys, between conquered land and unexplored forests, between 'heaven' and 'earth', shrouded in mists, they make their way down a narrow path. Aguirre's meglomania grows as around him his comrades mutiny and die in his search for the lost city of El Dorado. Herzog's best film, an unforgetable tour de force. Made before the director himself gave in to meglomania on a later t find out more...

A very weird little Aussie number, winner of the Grand Jury Special Prize at Venice. Bubby is 35-years-old but has never been outside the squalid flat where he lives incestuously with his grotesque mother... until the day his Pa returns to the nest. Tasteless and disturbing, but compulsive viewing. find out more...

A psychotic American commander worried about the subversive effects of water fluoridisation on his "vital bodily fluids" starts off an attack on the Soviet Union. No-one can stop the fighters and no-one, as yet, knows about the failsafe Doomsday Machine. Brilliant black comedy. find out more...

Herzog's epic movie about a man's obsessive attempt to bring opera to the Indians living deep in the Peruvian jungle. To do this he must take a steamship/tub way up the Amazon river system, a monumental task, at one point involving transporting it over a not unconsiderable hill, with the help of a system of pulleys and massed Indian labour. A surreal comment on madness, power and vision. There is also a documentary, Burden of Dreams, about the notoriously fraught making of the film. find out more...

Cahit's life is on the rocks, his wife's dead, his job's collecting empties in a rock bar, his clothes are a mess and his flat is a garbage tip. He meets fellow third generation Turkish-German Sibel, who wishes nothing more than to escape the embraces of her deeply religious family, and who proposes a marriage of convenience. The film charts the long and tortuous relationship of these two self-destructive rock'n'rollers in a 'narcotically vivid love story'. More than just a movie. find out more...

William Keane struggles with the supposed loss of his daughter at a busy bus terminal in New York, but he is a man struggling with schizophrenia? Is the child's disappearance real or imaginary? And is his obsessive interest in helping young girls of a fatherly nature, or is there a darker motive? Winner of the Critics Award and Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Deauville Film Festival, Keane is a powerful and haunting film driven by a mesmerising performance from Damian Lewis. find out more...

Gus Van Sant's latest masterpiece is very much in a similar vein to his previous two films (Elephant and Gerry). Meditative, ambivalent and beautifully shot, Last Days is a loose retelling of the Kurt Cobain suicide. The dialogue is made up of mumbled non sequiturs and directionless enquiries. The cinematography, as in Elephant, is a mixture of pristine framing, expert use of natural light and patient static observation. Though the pace of the movie is arguably too testing for some viewers, the find out more...

Bizarre but brilliant mathematical mystery, shot in black & white and set to a nervy, industrial soundtrack. Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is a bit of an oddball; either a misunderstood techno genius, or just the sort of weirdo who sits with his hood up at the back of the bus, depending on your tolerance levels. Living in a computer-filled slum in a world which, to his eyes, is no more than a series of numerical equations, Max stumbles across a seemingly meaningless 216 digit number. But when two si find out more...

Ran, Kurosawa's last great epic, is a Jidaigeki (Japanese period drama) depicting the fall of Hidetora Ichimonj, an ageing Sengoku-era warlord who abdicates as ruler in favor of his three sons. His kingdom slowly disintegrates as the sons struggle for power, murdering rivals and laying waste to the land, and Hidetora goes insane after watching his retainers slaughtered in an epic massacre, the centrepiece of the film. As the kingdom crumbles and rival warlords move in for the kill, the Ichimonji find out more...

We start with compulsive liar Roberto picking up a teenage girl in a disco and we follow his affair with her while he carries on robbing and murdering. A powerful adaptation of the real life serial killer that documents more than just his dark achievements but gives a wholly believable insight into the man's damaged world and the chaotic ineptitude of the society upon which he preys. Harsh but utterly hypnotic. find out more...