Most audiences today won’t have heard of the name John Landis. They would have heard of “Coming To America” and “The Blues Brothers” but it’s unlikely they recognise the talent behind the lens. That’s because Landis has become one of Hollywood’s forgotten star directors. Legal troubles and a decade of poor work has put the director out in the wilderness. Forgettable films from a forgotten filmmaker.

Yet, you ask anyone if they’ve seen Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and most will reply “Damn right I have – best music video ever made!” Well, that was the brainchild of Jackson and John Landis.

I’ve heard Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s 2004 Oscar-nominated film to be likened to Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”. Yet, I’d hazard a guess this is more a marketing ploy to pigeonhole the film into a more saleable product. It is like saying Antonia Bird’s drama “Priest” is like “The Exorcist”. They both feature members of the church questioning their own faith after all, but the two films couldn’t be more dissimilar. Granted, “ City of God” and “Pulp Fiction” share the depiction of crime and a time-switching, non-linear narrative, but there is little ironic humour to find in Meirelles and Lund’s uncompromising film. “City Of God” isn’t interested in stylised characters that overplay the merits of the metric system or theatrical violence and pop-culture references, it cuts far closer to the bone than that.

The vampire: that harbinger of everlasting life and eternal damnation. From the cloaked gothic majesty of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” to the down and dirty night-crawlers of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark”, vampire’s have formed the basis for more literary and cinematic horror than any other fictional creature.
Early cinematic incarnations of the blood-sucking sun-haters were based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Infamously, Friedrich Murnau made “Nosferatu” in Germany without acquiring the rights to film the novel. After a lawsuit, all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed. The film …

World Cinema fan? – World Cinema bargains on Amazon.co.uk
10. Mark Lee (AKA Mark Gor)
Played by Chow Yun-Fat
Gangster Mark sports a duster, Alain Delon sunglasses and constantly chews a toothpick – and it’s a well known fact it doesn’t get any cooler than that (in fact, Quentin Tarantino reportedly copied the look and sported it for months after watching the movie). Mark isn’t just the epitome of cool though – he is a hitman of considerable skill and flair, and you cross him at …

MICHAEL MANN’S TOP 10 FILMS
1. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
2. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
3. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. Dr Strangelove (Kubrick, 1963)
5. Faust (Murnau, 1926)
6. Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
7. My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946)
8. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
9. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
10. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)

SAM MENDES’ TOP 10 FILMS
1. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
2. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
3. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974)
4. The Piano (Campion, 1993)
5. The Red Shoes (Powell, Pressburger, 1948)
6. Sunset Blvd (Wilder, 1950)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
8. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
9. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
10. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939)

JOE DANTE’S TOP 10 FILMS
1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. City Lights (Chaplin)
3. 8 1/2 (Fellini)
4. Les Enfants du paradis (Carné)
5. The Dead (Brakhage)
6. Rashomon (Kurosawa)
7. Psycho (Hitchcock)
8. Raging Bull (Scorsese)
9. The Searchers (Ford)
10. Once upon a Time in the West (Leone)

MILOS FORMAN’S TOP 10 FILMS

1. Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
2. American Graffiti (Lucas, 1973)
3. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
5. The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978)
6. Les Enfants du Paradis (Carné, 1945)
7. Giant (Stevens, 1956)
8. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
9. Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951)
10. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)