1000 Films To Change Your Life by Paul Bullock

Let's face it, after innumerable Jimmy Carr 100 Greatest Things I Did Last Sunday shows and a fair share of 1000 Films You Must See Before You Die type books, we don't really need yet another bunch of talking heads telling us what to see, think and feel regarding the movie world. But Time Out's latest venture into this area is one to look out for. Rather than taking a clinical (read: boring) countdown approach, or even collecting every film ever made and then dismissing everything made after 1980 (hello, Halliwell’s!), 1000 Films To Change Your Life approaches cinema with a witty, intelligent and original edge.

Separated into chapters according to the emotions we feel when watching a film - Joy, Anger, Food For Thought, Desire, Fear, Sadness, Exhilaration, Regret, Contempt and Wonder - the editors of this superb volume have collected some of the finest critics and best moviemakers to garner their thoughts on why we continue to flock to the church that is the cinema.

There's something here for everyone. Want a straight forward analysis of the themes Stanley Kubrick investigated in his impressive cannon? Try Ben Walters' superb System Failure. Want an article which utterly dismisses the idea of film theory? How about Geoff Andrews' mocking I Have A Film Theory, which puts forward the not entirely unfounded idea that you need a name beginning with K to be a successful filmmaker. Not in the mood for that? What about Tod Davies' (a woman by the way) spirited defence of Emmaunuelle, Skin Chic?

And for the more gossip oriented among you, it also has some titbits Heat would kill for, including Bill Nighy‘s love for Nic Roeg‘s Performance, Takeshi Kitano hoping to see hardcore porn in The Virgin Spring and instead finding a typical Bergman musing on life and death and Isabella Rosellini confessing her desire to strip Marilyn Monroe naked and have her wicked way with her. Crikey!

There's still plenty of room for disagreement though. Chris Peachment's otherwise excellent essay on sex symbols, Desire in the Dark, gets the obvious (Bardot, Bogart and Bacall) and the not so obvious (Louise Brooks, Frances McDormand), but omits Katherine Hepburn and, criminally, the heavenly Grace Kelly who deserves a chapter for her entrance in Rear Window alone.

There are also controversial opinions on Wes Anderson (“the most annoying American film-maker of his generation”?!) and American Beauty (“stagey direction, clunky symbolism and madly histrionic performances”?!). And as if that's not bad enough, everyone manages to go through the whole book without even a perfunctory mention of Billy Wilder's The Apartment, not only the greatest film ever made but one of the few which could comfortably sit in each one of the categories mentioned.

But quibbles aside, this is a highly recommended read which is a must-buy for any serious cineaste.