38-35

38. Intacto
More of a great concept coolly executed than a great film perhaps, but I liked it. The basic idea is that luck is a finite resource that people can steal or win from each other. Some people seem to be better at controlling their store of luck, so they end up with massive stockpiles. These are the kind of people who can walk away from plane crashes, survive concentration camps, trot across busy motorways, and, in the film's stand-out sequence, run full throttle through the woods, blindfolded and with their arms tied behind their backs, without bumping into any trees. So, you've got a shady group of super-lucky folk, going up against each other in odd challenges to pinch their opponents' luck. All this leads up to a game of Russian roulette in the desert with the world's luckiest man, while the police run around with a similar state of mind as the viewer (ie. pretty bewildered) . Are you following all this? The reasons for wanting to keep on accumulating luck are somewhat oblique: these lucky folk do a lot of moping around and don't seem particularly happy, so how lucky are they really? It's a nice mix of innovative set pieces and old people sitting around scratching their chins.

37. Baghead
This is a film about a man with a bag over his head. Or is it? Eh, yes. Yes it is. But it's definitely one of the top films in the whole 'man with a bag over his head' genre. And who is this man with a bag over his head anyway? Well, it could be one of the four dickheads stranded in a cabin in the woods. Or it could be someone else. I'm not telling. Although, you do find out at the end of this clever, jumpy, well-observed, cheap-as-chips, genre-jumping mystery movie.

36.Punch Drunk Love
A minor work. That would be the way to describe this if you were the kid out of The Squid and the Whale. 'Punch Drunk Love is minor Anderson'. It's minor in scale anyway, compared to Magnolia and There Will Be Blood, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; certainly it's a much better film than the self-important Magnolia. Rather than an ambitious epic about the life of a city or the roots of a nation's identity, this is a quirky wee thing about an oddball romance. Despite the kookiness though, it has that hard-to-define realness about it. The romance feels believable to me somehow, and I can relate to these people regardless of their oddness. And I like the way that the characters often seem to be in a daze, and how the washed out colours make the viewer feel a bit woozy too. Yes, I think I like minor works actually.

35.In the Loop
The thing that lets The Thick of It down sometimes, is that it relies too much on Malcolm Tucker. Now and again I think that it's a bit lazy, and that the easiest way to fill up the half hour show is to bring Malcolm in for a bit of inventive swearing. All very funny, but if Malcolm was a bit more in the background then the other characters might come through a bit more (especially the cabinet minister, because Rebecca Front's brilliant every time she's on.) So, the film improves on the TV series because it puts Malcolm in a busier context, he's just one part of a universally awesome ensemble. That said, the highlight of the film has to be Peter Capaldi and James Gandolfini squaring up outside the conference room: Malcolm Tucker toe to toe with Tony Soprano. And it's got the girl out of My Girl in it: how cool is that?