East is East
Directed by Damien O'Donnell Starring Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jimi Mistry
Irish director Damien O'Donnell makes a most impressive feature film debut with this wholly endearing and astutely observed serious comedy of generational and cultural conflicts in early 1970s Manchester. Winner of the BAFTA award for best British film of 1999, it features Om Puri as a strictly traditional Pakistani immigrant who runs a chip shop with his ever-patient wife (Linda Bassett) and finds himself in conflict with two of his sons when he sets up arranged marriages for them. This wise, hilarious and touching film juggles conflicting emotions with ease and skill.
The Blair Witch Project
Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Mynick Starring Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard, Mike Williams
Filmed in video verite style on a now famously minuscule budget, Sanchez and Mynick's mockumentary purports to follow the experiences of three student film-makers who disappeared in a woodland area of Maryland in 1994. The expository sequences are relatively boring, lulling the viewing into a state of complacency - which is soon shattered as the film taps deep into the fears within our imaginations. It really is all in the mind, because this is that rare horror film which wholly eschews graphic gore and flashy effects.
Get Real 15
Directed by Simon Shore Starring Ben Silverstone, Charlotte Brittain, Brad Gorton
Comfortably opened out from its theatrical origins, Simon Shore's sweet-natured and dry-humoured picture of coming of age and coming out deals with a perplexed, 16-year-old English schoolboy coping with a crush on the school's star athlete. It only overreaches itself when it ventures into Dead Poets Society territory for the finale - and it all seems innocent compared to the sexual frankness of the TV series, Queer as Folk.