Summary: A stern woodworker takes on a wary young apprentice with a dark secret.



Discuss: Can criminals truly be rehabilitated? Are young offenders more apt to cultivate remorse for their transgressions than adults? Is it a duty to forgive others for the wrongs they've committed against you? What might compel someone to forgive another person for a terrible crime? Do you forgive the film's criminal for the crime committed? Is it just or immoral to forgive someone for the wrongs they've done to someone else? Who is in the best position to judge someone else's actions?

Summary: Wildly avant-garde and influential director Kenneth Anger faced heavy criticism and even a lawsuit from the government of California for allegedly breaking obscenity laws upon the release of this dream-like film in which a 17 year-old Anger directs himself as a boy who leaves home on his own one night and has an unexpected encounter with a group of beefcake sailors.



Discuss: With no overt or explicit scenes of homosexuality (everything is suggestive), in what ways does Anger express homosexual desire? Why does he depict himself being raped? Should his rape be considered a literal violation, a metaphorical initiation into a pre-destined life path, or something else entirely? Should this film be considered an important step forward for homosexuals' artistic expression and endeavours, and even for acceptance of homosexuals in society?

Summary: A brilliant yet aimless man must reevaluate his priorities before making his next move.



Discuss: What causes people with undeniable talent and skill to spurn their gifts? Might is be considered a waste or a shame if a person with talent and skill in some area forsakes them to tend to their personal drives and quests?

Summary: In a kinky take on the already provocative feminist classic, Baron Frankenstein is a mad scientist bent on fashioning a superior race of humans out of parts cobbled together from actual, beautiful people, but when he tries to breed his woman creation with his man creation, an innocent slip-up wreaks havoc on his work and his sordid marriage to his sister.



Discuss: How preoccupied is society with the physical attributes of people? What about you? Is the Baron's willingness to overlook his sister's familial relation to him in favour of her physical beauty a reasonable admonishment of the disgusting and unnatural extent to which people allow themselves to be transfixed with people's looks? Is it necessarily shallow or superficial to ever be dwell on people's looks?

Summary: The love of a man for a woman spans millennia throughout three parallel but interconnected stories.



Discuss: In what manners might love be said to endure beyond the span of a human life? Is eternal life possible? How do world religions bear their stamp on this film and what do they serve to illuminate?

Summary: Cursed to relive the same day every day, a jaded news reporter tries to grasp his fate.



Discuss: What would you do if you kept waking up to the same day? Do you think it would take you very long to realize your own erroneous ways? Until we make positive changes in our lives, aren't we essentially waking up to the same stagnant reality each day? Do we always have freedom enough to choose to be virtuous, even when it seems fate has locked us into a bind?

Summary: An ex-police officer named Nishi (Takeshi) resorts to borrowing money from the Yakuza to help care for his seriously ill wife.



Discuss: What thoughts and feelings does Nishi's generally flat and expressionless demeanour conceal? Does the film's extreme violence serve a purpose, especially when contrasted with the overall languid pacing and long contemplative stretches of silence? Can the film's ending be considered merciful and compassionate or is it rather senselessly and needlessly violent?

Summary: As peace sets in during 17th Century Japan, recently unemployed samurai warriors now rendered poor and derelict are expected by their code to commit ritual suicide (hara-kiri) in order to retain their sense of honour. However, after a warrior's son-in-law is humiliatingly put through this ordeal at the behest of a local feudal lord, the entire system is challenged and appropriate atonement sought.



Discuss: How do we decide which laws and codes are just and fair and which ones are unreasonable and unnecessary? Does modern-day Japan still hold onto outmoded and outdated laws and codes in their society? If so, what do you think may help bring about change?

Summary: When a cop's partner is killed in action by the Triad crime syndicate, his tireless devotion to justice exposes some powerful friends and dangerous enemies.



Discuss: Over-the-top in its violence even by the most generous of assessments, how can this film be said to actually emphasize a value on human life when it also boasts one of the largest body counts in cinematic history? To what degree are the characters imbued with morality and can their actions be deemed morally just?

Summary: Allured by the lives of local conmen, a female psychiatrist joins their company and finds her expertise on human nature challenged.



Discuss: Of which cons in the film were you aware? How well do you suppose you are able to accurately assess a person's character and spot a liar? A good con involves considerable skill and intellect, so is there any redemptive value to conning and deception?

Summary: Afraid his mistress will expose his infidelity to his family, a well-respected ophthalmologist takes extreme measures to protect his reputation.



Discuss: Does God or some other power watch over all of our actions? Do we create our own morality? What might prompt one to change one's moral code? How can we judge others who adhere to a different moral code from our own?

Summary: In the thick of a zombie breakout across America, a small band of survivors find shelter inside an abandoned shopping mall.



Discuss: Given the intentional satire of consumerist culture, is the zombies' feeling of menace derived from basic human nature? Does this manifest itself in the film at any time? How best can we stave off our most dangerous human appetites and tendencies?

Summary: James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) marks his twentieth outing here, this time teaming with the beautiful yet deadly Jinx (Halle Berry) to take down an international diamond smuggler.



Discuss: A veritable greatest hits of all the best (and worst) of the Bond film franchise since Dr. No, is this film's perpetuation of the chauvinistic stereotypes embodied by the series still acceptable? Does this film's stronger female lead (Halle Berry as Jinx) provide a radical enough departure from the pretty yet empty “Bond girls” of the past? Given the humanistic approach to 2006's Casino Royale, does anything in this film indicate a push toward contemporary attitudes toward gender?

Summary: Memories of a youth steeped in dismal misery are recalled by a family years after the abusive father has passed away.



Discuss: In what ways does music play an important role in the lives of these characters? What about your own life? Does the film's tone contain any traces of nostalgia? Is it possible to feel nostalgia for difficult or bleak times of one's life?

Summary: Daily life for the impoverished residents of a fictional community residing in a forgotten rubbish heap is depicted with sensitivity to their fears and hopes.



Discuss: What might one's small or large pleasures be whilst living in a place such as that depicted in the film? Does one have to be detached from reality in a way, such as the boy pretending to be a train conductor, in order to find anything worth appreciating about existence in such a place? What is the significance of the title (a kind of nonsense phrase in Japanese) with relation to the film's themes?

Summary: The approach of collectivism poses a threat to the greedy Kulak farmers of the pre-Stalinist Soviet Union.



Discuss: Commissioned as pro-collectivist propaganda by the Soviet government of the 1920s, is Earth in total sympathy with Communist ideals? What elements of the film might suggest otherwise? Has industrialization tarnished our land irrevocably or has its increased productivity been a boon?

Summary: Using the infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory as his jumping off point, Orson Welles narrates this documentary whose aim is to illuminate the playful and philosophical aspects of fakery, trickery, and magic.



Discuss: The great philosopher David Hume argued that to lie in any instance is unethical, but is it possible for fakery to be harmless and fun, or even ethical? Can fakery in itself be regarded as an art form? How does the medium of the cinema partake in fakery?

Summary: Three badass young women team up to abduct a young girl from her boyfriend then pilfer a family of crooked male farmers.



Discuss: In what ways can this film be interpreted as feminist? What ideals are promoted which serve to support women and reinforce the idea that they need not be helpless and weak but instead may be strong and vicious? Should the choice to take the young girl hostage be regarded as a rescue of any sort? Does this film, directed by a man, advocate the radical feminist notion of hating men?

Summary: During a summer at their cottage, two young sisters – one regarded as a beauty, the other as a dumpy tag-along – experience the first throes of adolescent sexuality.



Discuss: Does the film regard sex and the loss of one's virginity with an entirely cynical eye? In what ways do the two sisters' approaches to sex differ? Does the young sister tell a lie or tell a truth at the end, and if she is being truthful then what does that mean about her attitudes toward sex?

Summary: A jewel thief (Rebecca Romijn) gets a second lease on life thanks to a mistaken identity.



Discuss: To what extent does our gaze as viewers and voyeurs lead us to construct an image of who a person truly is? How do we define ourselves and forge our own identity, really and truly, in our dreams and in reality? How might our lives resemble that of Nico the photographer in his constant assembling of his photo-mosaic?

Summary: After a mysterious kidnapping, a truck driver finds himself drawn into a subterranean maze of doom lurking beneath his city's Chinese district.



Discuss: Is the film's use of Asian stereotyping acceptable? Can it ever be okay to enjoy stereotypes for what they are without betraying one's preclusion to sensitivity?

Summary: An oil rig worker takes a wife then succumbs to a serious accident shortly after, leaving her with some difficult decisions to make.



Discuss: Is the wife's faith unreasonable or justifiable? Does the final scene's suggestive wink ruin the film or make it more palatable?

Summary: A nerdy loner obsessed with birds tries to build his own mechanical wings.



Discuss: Nerds in films tend to be endearing, but is there anything about this protagonist that endears him to you? Do the prevalence of opportune bird droppings and the boy's ornithological mania imply some sort of higher power or higher calling at work?

Summary: A married woman recounts a troubled affair she had with a man she met in town while her husband was at work.



Discuss: Do unfaithful partners ever have a legitimate reason to cheat? Is there ever any harm in hiding an affair from a loved one? Is it preferable to stay in a dormant relationship and never entertain the idea of having more, or to risk a comfortable life and the feelings of people close to you in order to pursue your own interests?

Summary: An affluent couple living in Paris eerily begins receiving recorded videos observing their home anonymously. After some investigation on the part of the husband, terrible latent secrets and terrors are dredged up to the surface to confront him.



Discuss: Has France forgotten its deplorable conflict with Algeria nearly forty years ago? How responsible are the citizens of a country for knowing its past crimes? To what degree are we expected to internalize collective feelings of guilt for these crimes?

Summary: Two playful young women forge a whimsical friendship that draws them closer and closer to the peripheries of reality – and to the dangers lurking within a house destined to be visited by a brutal murder.



Discuss: How are the film's senses of reality and unreality defined, established, and subsequently shattered? How can one accurately define reality? Are the constructs of what we deem to be real open to change? Are we passive spectators in life or do we possess sufficient self-efficacy to alter reality and change the course of our lives?

Summary: A four-year-old boy is volleyed around by the dissolution of his family as each parent struggles with their own needs and problems before attending to him.



Discuss: How early in a child's life can one learn to distrust one's parents? What degree of sympathy should be afforded to parents who don't know how to look after their child? Is it possible to repair damaged relationships and put families back together or does family turmoil always leave scars?

Summary: Tumult ensconces the theatre world of 1940s Paris when a sophisticatedly seductive female starlet baits the hearts of a series of men intent on claiming her as their own.



Discuss: In a twist on the old adage, is it better to have loved and lost than to have held onto love for too long? What drives people to seek long-lasting love from a single person or, alternately, to pursue the exclusive affections of someone? Does the tragedy of love ultimately lie in oneself?

Summary: Chungking Express is two distinct stories, each premised on the disappointments and excitements of waiting for love, respectively.



Discuss: How long would you wait for love? Do you believe in fate? What is the significance of both protagonists being policemen?

Summary: The life of 18th Century Armenian poet Sayat Nova is explored in a series of highly surreal and visually inventive tableaux unaccompanied by either camera movement or dialogue.



Discuss: Is the standard linear approach to presenting the biography of a person the ideal method or do some people's lives warrant specially tailored representations? What is gained by making the film devoid of camera movement or dialogue? Is the cinema the best medium with which to convey this particular vision?