Oh! Gunquit are a rumblebop, trashgarage, freakabilly band from North London who have a love of wild garage, exotica, 60s R&B, surf and punk. They have released two 7” singles (the second being Single of the Week in Artrocker), a track on a Japanese compilation of UK garage rock, and are just putting the finishing touches to their self-produced debut album due out early September, recorded at the legendary Gizzard studio in Hackney Wick. OGQ have taken their unique show of horns, hula hoops, rumbling toms and buzzsaw guitars to festivals and bespoke events all over the UK, Portugal, Belgium, Holland and Germany. They play the 7th Annual What’s Cookin Picnic on Sunday 20 July at Henry Reynolds Gardens in London and the Shuffle Festival, curated by Danny Boyle, on Wednesday 30 July. For more information on the band please visit Oh! Gunquit on Facebook. Below, Tina and Simon from the band (lead vox and trumpet / guitar and vox) pick their favourite films.

1. Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960)
I could have chosen pretty much any of Kubrick’s movies, as he’s my favourite filmmaker, but I chose Spartacus because it’s the first one I ever saw by him. I was around seven years old on a rainy Sunday afternoon in terraced suburbia, dunking biscuits, engrossed in this classic tale of rebellion, ancient civil disobedience and the battle with mankind’s oppression of others. Although it’s a pretty mainstream and simplistic film for Kubrick (which he distanced himself from later), and one where I believe he didn’t have his usual level of complete control, I still love the sheer epic scale and Kirk Douglas’s clench-teethed intensity, his steely eyed ‘fuck you’ to the ruling classes. There’s also the incredible sweeping score by Alex North, who made a point of using antique instruments where possible to fit the period, many of which had never been used in film before. I have been known to wheel out my drunken impression of ‘The King of the Slaves’, which generally involves being bare-chested on a skateboard in the rain exclaiming of course that ‘I’m Spartacus!’ Simon

2. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
Probably one of favourite movie soundtracks ever, the music and the film actually seem to have been conceived simultaneously. The classic tale of the small-town working-class boy trying to make it in the Big City, living on his wits (which the lead character Joe Buck, played phenomenally by Jon Voight, is severely lacking) and his delusion that he’ll Make It Big on his youthful good looks and vigour alone by being a gigolo is tragi-comic. The meeting with the archetypal Neu Yoik street-wise hustler (Rizzo) is just perfect and every scene is a winner, from the Warholesque Factory trippy party scene with ‘Old Man Willow’ by Elephant’s Memory to the penniless street-walking scenes of ‘Everybody’s Talkin’, in which Joe is systematically ignored by everyone. There’s nothing quite like being a stranger in a strange town, and the beauty of the theme tune ‘Midnight Cowboy’ is one of many compositions by the incredible John Barry that I love to sink into. Even the fruity beach-skipping day-dream scene’s ‘Florida Fantasy’ would get an airing at post lock-in parties when I lived above a pub in Chalk Farm Road, the tune coming complete with a specific stoopid dance routine. Above all, a sweetly glorious story of an unlikely friendship and the fight for survival in the gritty, seedy underbelly of late 60s Manhattan, which seems a million miles away from today’s safe yuppie hell. Simon

3. Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989)
Ok, I know, so another ‘cowboy’ film with no real cowboys in it. Get over it. Gus Van Sant’s breakthrough movie follows the exploits of an overly glamorous crew, granted, of junkies trying to score, and quit, set in the early 70s in America’s Pacific Northwest. It’s dark and funny with a great snappy script, and I really like the protagonist Bob’s narration of this film. I dig the desperate black humour and the focus on society’s fringes, the outsiders, the freaks, losers and weirdos. Kelly Lynch plays the no-nonsense ice-cool bad-ass Diane brilliantly, and William Burroughs is great as the fallen priest, long-term addict, and sage-like friend of Matt Dillon’s Bob. I still think of this film every time I put a ‘goddam hat’ on a bed; and who can not like a movie with The Count Five’s ‘Psychotic Reaction’ on the soundtrack? I once met a guy on the tube who was the spitting image (complete with the fidgety hat moves) of Bob’s foil, ‘David the TV Baby’, so much so that I had to ask him if he’d seen the film. As he was only about 19 he hadn’t a clue what I was talking about; this was the perfect answer. Simon

4. City of God (Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund, 2002)
A bit like Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, I remember watching this for the first time at the cinema and being completely blown away by the sheer pace of this film. It pulls you in instantly and wriggles your senses about. Generally, I’m not a fan of gang movies or anything that involves macho gun bravado bullshit, but this story about the struggle of the photography-loving favela boy Rocket, trying to stay away from the cold, ruthless gang world of Rio de Janeiro and escape the lure of crime in the ghetto, is told with warmth and depth. The cinematography is astounding and the performances from the cast (nearly all real favela kids, not previously trained actors) are bloody electric. I guess that’s why it jumps out of the screen at you, as you can’t imagine any nice middle-class kids from the posh suburbs getting anywhere near knowing what it would be like growing up in those terrifyingly hardcore shanty towns. And who doesn’t like a coming-of-age movie? Interesting point also, when it mentions that you have two choices if you grow up in the favela: 1. Be a criminal or 2. Join the police. The only thing to distinguish between the two is a uniform, as both appear to be as corrupt and trigger-happy as each other. Musically it thumps along with loads of sleazy 70s Brazilian funk and soul and the heat, fun and sex of the block parties seeps out at you. I imagine Brazil is trying very hard at the moment to present a completely different view of their divided cities. Simon

5. The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
I thought I needed to include at least one British movie, although I was torn between Sexy Beast, Mike Leigh’s Naked, Shane Meadow’s Dead Man’s Shoes, Robert Day’s The Rebel and the obvious Withnail & I, but in the end I went with this, cos it’s a bleedin’ classic, ain’t it, right!? Also because it was filmed at the famous Ealing Studios and on many locations around the corner from where I live in Somers Town, St Pancras, Kings Cross. And you have to have something with Peter Sellers in it, don’ cha? (His role in Kubrick’s Lolita is pretty special too, I think). Alec Guinness as the sinister crime boss is great also. It’s just an all-round ace British film that gets more absurd as it romps along, and the juxtaposition of the hardened Laahndan criminals and the doily-loving dithering of Mrs Wilberforce, the elderly landlady, is sheer quality. I even quite like the Coen brothers remake, but you can’t top the original, the best London crime caper ever. Simon

6. Crooklyn (Spike Lee, 1994)
I wanted to get in Life is Sweet by Mike Leigh, which I saw for the first time the other week, and boy, did it resonate with my inner teenage-girl angst – totally wish I saw it when I was growing up! Alas, it doesn’t have music in it, so I thought I would hark on about another classic, more productive female coming–of-age in the form of Crooklyn, which is Spike Lee’s homage to a young girl named Troy, growing up in a brownstone in Brooklyn in the 70s with her chaotic family and neighbours. The characters and the story are great, as is the sense you get about the community values of the time, plus the music and cultural references are a joy! Really gets you reminiscing: growing up in a house full of people – ‘Yes, you are selfish! I can’t even take a piss without six people hanging off my tits!’, wishing you could dance on ‘Soul Train’, eating Trix cereal, playing street games, and wearing knee-high socks, all the while you have tunes from Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5 – all aboard! Tina

7. Meet the Feebles (Peter Jackson, 1989)
Long before Peter Jackson embarked upon the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I fell in love with this director for his deranged, honest, funny horror movies like Dead Alive and Bad Taste – so much so that I wrote him fan letters and sent him a picture of myself with my Morris Minor, which so prominently features in the film Meet the Feebles. The best of every type of crazed plotline that can go wrong does in this movie. I love the sheer scale of the puppetry, with surreal scenes of puppets playing Russian roulette in Vietnam, suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome and getting hooked on smack, to a soulful singing hippo with an eating disorder, and a hedgehog named ‘Wobert’ trying to make his way onto the stage – did I mention it is the world’s first R-rated musical puppet movie? As ridiculous as it is to watch, it really goes to show how ridiculous people are when it comes to drugs, sex, lust, disease and violence, all without CGI – woohoo! And the musical numbers are classic, including the likes of ‘One Leg Missing’, ‘Garden of Love’, ‘Robert’s Serenade, and let’s not forget ‘Sodomy’: ‘Why you might think it very odd of me … bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum’. Tina

8. Cry Baby (John Waters, 1990)
Not so long ago, we played Amy Grindhouse’s Filth Festival, centred around all things John Waters, and this little cracker, with a streak of raucous rock and roll, houses all the lovely 50s kitsch you can dream of, and is family friendly without stepping down to munching on stools. With roles filled by Ricky Lake, who hosted the kindest, loveliest daytime tele back in the day, Johnny Depp and Iggy Pop, there isn’t anything not to like. And who’s not a square or a nerd secretly wanting to be a drape? This movie just makes me giddy all over to watch, like eating cotton candy without having to worry about cavities or diabetes – yum! Tina

9. The Jerk (Carl Reiner, 1979)
Back in the days of Betamax video, I used to watch The Jerk with my brother and sister when growing up in the swamp in New Jersey. There is so much to love about Steve Martin, why, he is even an excellent banjo player himself! In this film Steve stars as Navin, the adopted white son of black sharecroppers, who is a bit of a simpleton and has an utter lack of rhythm, whenever his adopted family play spirited blues music. He decides to hitchhike to St Louis after hearing a song on the radio called ‘Crazy Rhythms’, which he can’t stop dancing to. I too grew up out in the corn fields in southern Illinois and have found myself moving around and seeing where opportunity takes me – and that is what Navin does, when going to work in a gas station, and then in a travelling carnival, where he eventually learns about his ‘special purpose’. The movie has the sweetest beach bonfire duet song, ‘Tonight You Belong to Me’, including a nicely mimed trumpet solo! After Navin’s ups and downs, the story ends with his returning home with his family, who sing Lead Belly’s ‘Pick a Bale of Cotton’, with Navin dancing along in perfect rhythm; now that’s what I call slap happy! Tina

10. Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Growing up a military brat out in Las Vegas, I once saw what I believed was an atom bomb cloud, and thought for sure the world was ending and the Russians were coming. Turns out it was just a chemical plant explosion that also made the marshmallow plant next to it explode, as well as emitting a sonic boom which caused the wheels to blow off of my brother’s stroller and our house to collapse. This movie by Stanley Kubrick embodies all the nonsense of Cold War ‘Peace on Earth’ and military ‘strategy’ gone haywire, with epic performances by Peter Sellers and Slim Pickens. Everything wrong with America’s foreign policy tied up in a black comedy about the doomsday orders, it’s a classic that is just as relevant now as it was when it first came out. Gotta love the closing number with Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll meet again… don’t know where. . . don’t know when…’. Tina

A London-based swoon-pop four-piece, Woman’s Hour embrace a holistic approach to their songcraft. Their live shows are a crossover of music and art, with meticulously crafted graphic, monochromatic visuals created in collaboration with fine artists Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg. Formed by singer Fiona Burgess and brother William on guitar, with Nicolas Graves on bass and Josh Hunnisett on keyboards, the band see themselves as a collaboration between four different creative people, who each bring a wholly distinct set of influences to the band, from German cold wave to pop rarities and uncompromising singer/songwriters. Their debut album Conversations is released 21 July 2014 on Secretly Canadian, and you can watch the video for the title track. For tour dates over the summer, visit the Woman’s Hour website. Below, Nicolas Graves chooses his 10 favourite films. Sarah Cronin

1. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
I love everything about this film. The cast, the soundtrack, the sheer scale of the hallucinatory journey upstream through Vietnam and Cambodia – the horror, the HORROR! The actual making of this epic has gone down in cinematic legend: Martin Sheen’s heart attack, the drugs and Marlon Brando, who turned up on set overweight and totally unprepared, having not bothered to read the script. ‘We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane,’ said Coppola… ‘My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam’.

2. Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995)
The enigma that is Nicolas Cage! Before I had seen Leaving Las Vegas, the Cage I knew was the action hero in films like Face/Off or Snake Eyes – enjoyable films in their own right, but hardly true thespian roles. His performance here though – playing an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who decides to move to Vegas and drink himself to death – is immense. Upon arrival he meets a prostitute named Sera, and the two build a relationship based on the fact that neither can change who they are. It’s a tragic, emotionally demanding love story set in the neon- (and booze-) drenched desert.

3. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
A couple of years ago I watched Twin Peaks for the very first time and I became excited. Excited because not only had I discovered the music of Julee Cruise (listen to her album Floating into the Night) but I also now had the world of David Lynch to explore. Over a very short period of time I had binged on his films and entered a place both wonderful and strange! I could’ve included Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man or Lost Highway, among many others, but for me Mulholland Drive is (to date) his masterpiece. Lynch’s long-term musical collaborator Angelo Badalamenti again provides the eerie soundscapes.

4. Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
One of those films that pushes all my buttons. It has a rather standard cops -v- robbers plot, but the way it’s all put together is a thing of real beauty. I love the dream-like feel that Mann brings to the moody, expansive LA cityscape, and how it’s complemented perfectly by the ambient soundtrack. De Niro and Pacino ain’t half bad in it either.

5. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
If it isn’t already obvious, I’m rather fond of films set in Los Angeles. I’ve visited the city on two occasions now, but I’ve yet to really understand the place, and I think this is where the attraction lies – a blank canvas upon which many different ideas can be painted.
The Los Angeles in Chinatown looks stunning, and so does Faye Dunaway. Amidst the backdrop of the Californian water wars. everything conspires to create the perfect neo-noir- mystery. No happy ending here.

6. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates, 1973)
It quickly became apparent when compiling this list that many of my choices share similar themes and styles. Here’s another slice of New American Cinema, adapted from the novel of the same name by George V. Higgins. Hollywood legend Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle who, when facing jail time, is forced to snitch on his pals in the Boston underworld. Gritty realism at its finest.

7. Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces explores themes of alienation, worthlessness and the road to nowhere – we’ve all been there at some point in our lives, right? Jack Nicholson is Bobby Dupree, an oil-rig worker who gave up his life as a promising pianist. He’s faced with a return to his upper-class family, and the resulting schism between the world he left behind and his never ending search for something else. It’s classic Americana, complete with road trip and Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand by Your Man’.

8. The Last Boy Scout (Tony Scott, 1991)
This is best watched with a close pal, a sense of humour and alcohol. Bruce Willis gives a masterclass in cynical deadpan delivery and wise-cracking perfection as a down-and-out private detective who gets mixed up in the murky underbelly of American pro football. It comes complete with camp henchmen, dodgy Senators, and a then record fee ($1.75 million) for a screenplay penned by Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) – worth it for the jokes alone.

9. Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1968)
Set in Chicago during the summer of 1968, Medium Cool combines documentary footage with fiction. There is a (very) loose narrative about the relationship between news cameraman man John Cassellis and a single, lower-class mother who has left her husband. The film’s centrepiece is actual footage from the riots which engulfed the Democratic National Convention that summer. It’s a challenging watch, but provides a fascinating snapshot of the social and political climate of the US during that period.

10. The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974)
I’m a sucker for films that explore political paranoia and conspiracy, and these were particularly prevalent during the Watergate years of the mid-1970s (see also All The President’s Men). Starring Warren Beatty, The Parallax View tells the story of a shadowy corporation specialising in political assassinations that create the illusion of a lone, disaffected gunman acting independently. A not-so-gentle nod and wink to the events surrounding JFK’s assassination.

Comet Sands are a prog-pop, synth-psych cosmic-rock band, from London via Finland and the north of England. They are Tiia Jaakola (singing and synthesiser), Alex Lawton-Mawdsley (bass), Colin Greenwood (drums), Sean Berry and Tom Hughes (guitars). Comet Sands admire and endorse Circle, Yes, Harmonia, Superchunk, Endless Boogie, Total Control, the first nine Status Quo albums and thinking about space. You can listen to them on bandcamp and follow/contact them on Facebook and Twitter. Below, the band pick their favourite films.

1. RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
The original gross-out, ultraviolent sci-fi cop, dystopian near-future social satire. Everything about this is awesome: the soundtrack by Basil Poledouris, the clunky stop-frame animation and sound effects of the terrifying ED-209, Kurtwood Smith’s psychotic turn as Clarence Boddicker, Nancy Allen’s bubble gum chewing, Peter Weller’s chin and, best of all, Ray ‘Leland Palmer’ Wise as Leon. This was my first ever pirate video, copied for me onto Betamax cassette (together with Predator) by a school friend’s dad, and no amount of tracking could make it sit straight on the screen. However, it was still compelling viewing and I watched it over and over and over. Nothing since has affected me more than the first time I witnessed Ed-209’s ‘glitch’… Sean Berry

2. An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
John ‘Animal House’ Landis’s black comedy about two young American backpackers who are attacked on the Yorkshire Moors by an unknown creature, leaving one of them dead and the survivor cursed to be transformed into a werewolf at the next full moon, is a masterpiece of superbly crafted, perfectly acted, wonderfully scored filmmaking. The humour is spot on, the cast is magnificent, with plenty of interesting cameos, the shots of London are a joy and the balance between horror and camp comedy is unmatched. Rick Baker’s special effects were groundbreaking at the time and still have the resonance that you just don’t get from CGI. Plus, the quotes are priceless: ‘Have you tried talking to a corpse – it’s boring’; ‘Mummy – a naked American stole my balloons’. And to top it off, the most horrific part of the film is a dream-within-a-dream sequence. It’s damn near perfect – I try to watch this at least once a year. Sean Berry

3. Hana Bi (Takeshi Kitano, 1997)
Surely the most touching love story ever to feature someone getting their eye jammed out with a chopstick. And maybe that why it’s such a beautiful film: the cop drama ultra-violence sits alongside a quiet, poignant farewell between husband and wife without any explanation or apology, like the contradictory nature of the tender, violent and sometimes pointlessly cruel protagonist, played with deadpan understatement by Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano. What starts as a film about a cop owing money to gangsters ends up being a film about what’s important, and the final scene, well, it makes my face leak every time. Colin Greenwood

4. Smokey and the Bandit (Hal Needham, 1977)
Ah yes, pure joyous fun. I watched it endlessly as a kid, given that the only videos my friends and I owned were Aliens, Blues Brothers and this. Burt Reynolds doesn’t care about acting. He’s too busy mugging the camera and blasting around the south in a souped-up Pontiac Trans Am. The plot is beyond thin (basically a bootleg beer run) and the film seems to work mainly because everyone’s having a blast. Sally Fields, spirited and saucy in equal measures, shines as the love interest. Guitar man Jerry Reed plays himself as the haulage half of the bootleg duo. And Jackie Gleason lets rip as the sweaty old racist Sheriff Bufford T. Justice. Nothing sticks around for more than a few minutes, everything is done to excess, the soundtrack is awesome and the whole film is basically one massive, ridiculous car chase. I loved it then and I still love it now. Colin Greenwood

5. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
Every time I watch it, Charles Laughton’s demon-preacher fairy tale just seems even more cosmically peculiar and miraculously disturbing than it did the last time. Robert Mitchum is the epochally creepy preacher Harry Powell, a wandering Bluebeard who marries a vulnerable widow to get to the money her husband left hidden somewhere; only her kids know where, but they can see Powell is no damn good and refuse to tell, incurring his unholy wrath. There’s a vivid, hallucinatory clarity to The Night of the Hunter‘s expressionist black and white visions: the devil in the dog collar with the LOVE/HATE tattoos; the creeping shadows on the cellar stairway wall; the car sunk in the lake among the trailing weeds; the children drifting down the starlit river in a rickety skiff with owls and frogs and foxes watching over them from the riverbank. But good and evil here is not quite black and white, or at least the black seems to be leaking and smearing across the divide – the same churning darkness that drives Powell and his aberrant creed is everywhere, heaping guilt, shame and opprobrium on everyone, whether they deserve it or not. The bright white light shines through on occasion, but equally, as Powell knows, ‘The devil wins sometimes’. Tom Hughes

6. Colossus: The Forbin Project (Joseph Sargent, 1970)
HAL may be the definitive rogue AI, but Colossus is another great early example of a machine mind operating far outside its creators’ control. The US government builds a vast supercomputer inside a Colorado mountain and hands control of the nation’s nukes over to its ultimate rational authority; when it awakes it soon learns that the Russians have their own equivalent system, which it proceeds to pal up with in order to enslave mankind. There’s a ludicrous/brilliant section in the middle in which Forbin, Colossus’s inventor, hatches a plan to hoodwink the machine, which descends into light sex farce, and a priceless bit when professor and computer lecture each other on how to make the perfect martini. Colossus issues stentorian orders to its fleshy masters-turned-underlings via a scrolling sign hanging from the control-room ceiling like a megalomaniac tube train ticker, and there’s some real big-think stuff in the great technobrain’s insistence that surrendering to its super-evolved algorithms and perfect logic will liberate and further mankind just as it enslaves it. The film ends oddly abruptly, and bits of it are shonky as heck, but it’s really got something. There are rumours of a remake. Tom Hughes

7. Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
In this neo-noir world of towering art deco monoliths and pipes and filing cabinets galore, all the things meant to improve efficiency are essentially dysfunctional. Brazil is a masterpiece where surrealist Pythonesque humour is married with Orwellian dystopia, the best example of which that sticks in my mind is the contradictory slogan ‘Suspicion breeds confidence’. Gilliam satirises not only bureaucracy and ruthless, superficial careerism, which has a dreary office existence as its flipside, but also vanity and consumerism in a way that now appears ahead of its time. The protagonist Sam Lowry toils away in the Records Department at day, but at night he dreams of a mysterious woman, who then more mysteriously appears in his life, setting an irreversible chain of events in motion… Tiia Jaakola

8. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Hayao Miyazaki, 1984)
Difficult as it is to choose a favourite out of the Studio Ghibli output, I can’t resist the appeal of the post-apocalyptic. Beginning as a tale of man’s struggle against giant insects, Nausicaa quickly evolves into a deeper reflection on our relationship with the natural world, and therefore feels very relevant today. Surrounded by polluted terrain, mankind’s different factions wage war against each other, miring any attempts to fix the situation. True to the nature of such epic tales, there is only one who can make a difference – Nausicaa. Visually stunning, sonically oscillating between John Carpenter through Rick Wakeman to Connery-era Bond, this film is a wonder. And there are some pretty good beards too. Tiia Jaakola

9. Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973)
What would be the ultimate stag do? Westworld is a theme park where you get to live out your wildest fantasies. But when technology goes wrong, it really goes wrong. The film looks great due to its age – the special effects are clunky but sweet. If The Simpsons have critiqued the film, it must be worth something. Alex Lawton-Mawdsley

10. Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974)
Das Boot in space! After being subjected at a very young age to The Thing and The Fog, John Carpenter’s work stood for some scary shit. When I watched Dark Star I was by myself with a bottle of wine in the dark. With a basic crew on a single spaceship, I expected it to be a low-budget cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, but as the country music flows and you build a sense of empathy with the group of dudes, you know this film is gonna be different. Classic Carpenter keyboard work, a misbehaving bomb and one of the most unusual alien beings since early Star Trek. Get some wine in and please watch this by yourself and be part of the crew. Alex Lawton-Mawdsley.

Fuelled by childhood nightmares and memories of a haunted house, Gazelle Twin (aka Elizabeth Bernholz) makes eerie, dark, distorted electronica. After her 2011 debut album The Entire City, she returns with Unflesh, to be released later this year. Continuing her exploration of the human body through costume and disguise, she has created a new persona, a hooded, faceless girl (inspired by The Brood), to accompany the creepy vocals and menacing beats of her new material. Her new single, ‘Belly of the Beast’, is released on 3 March on Anti-Ghost Moon Ray Records. It will be available for a limited time as a free download. For more information please visit Gazelle Twin’s website. Below, Elizabeth Bernholz picks the 10 films that have most thrilled and inspired her.

Watch a teaser clip from ‘Belly of the Beast’:

1. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
I’ll get straight to the point: Alien (1979) is a far superior film in every way possible, but because I encountered Aliens so young, it has a very deep nostalgic significance for me. Between ages 9 and 19, I used any chance I had to watch it. Anytime, anywhere. Now I’m 32 and I still talk about it on a daily basis. It is about as Proustian as a film can get – the sheer excitement I get from the rain-soaked, half-eaten donut, the motion tracker sound effect, the fatty gloop of the Queen laying her eggs, the click of the buckle on the ‘loader’, Bishop’s milky blood – I could go on and on… I now realise that there are many more elements that appealed to my subconscious as an ‘outsider’ kid, and later as I endured the lonely terror of puberty, like the feral, clever character of the orphaned Newt surviving alone against all odds, and Ripley, a powerful maternal role model with a flamethrower. The film planted many integral seeds in my brain, and they’re just starting to sprout.

2. The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
I don’t know of a film as beautiful and heartbreaking as this. The story, the set design, the make-up, the acting… It’s a perfect film, and for me, the perfect subject matter. I based one of my costumes on Joseph Merrick’s silhouette through the sheer love of this film. I am always surprised by the fact that it was only made possible (and with Lynch’s final cut) because of the support of one of its ‘silent’ producers, Mel Brooks. If only the case had been the same for Dune…

3. The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979)
If psychosis took on a physical form, what would it look like? Of the horror films I’ve seen that feature child demons/monsters, I find this the most disturbing and visually lingering. There’s something extremely disconcerting about the brightly coloured snowsuits and matching, pastel, bedtime onesies worn by the ‘brood’. Together with their synchronised movements, they are the stuff of proper, unfiltered nightmares.

4. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
Aside from its industrial soundscape, visionary art direction and profound anxiety, what I love most of all about Eraserhead is that Lynch’s sense of humour remains present in all aspects, even the most physically disturbing scenes. And, like almost all of his films, the ‘making-of’ story behind it is just as thrilling as the thing itself.

5. Alice (Jan Švankmajer, 1988)
In his Decalogue, Jan Švankmajer claimed, ‘Obsessions are the relics of childhood’, and this is another of mine. There’s so much sensuality and imagination in this film, it’s as if Švankmajer is able to inject MORE life into his props than he could in real, moving things. I’m mostly obsessed by the foley, which sometimes seems to be at odds with the visuals (but that’s what makes it all the more appealing to me). The crunching, scuttling, dripping, ticking… the out-of-sync English overdubs on the close-up of Alice’s mouth (speaking in Czech)…

6. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
The atmosphere of loneliness, panic and human weakness that is created in this film is unrivalled. The extreme horror is kept so brilliantly close to a comic-book portrayal of a story, with just enough comedy to maintain a balance. The Morricone score is one of my favourites, especially as it is still rooted in Carpenter’s minimalist synth drone world. I’ve made so many references to this in my own music that it’s verging on the obsessional.

7. Walkabout (Nic Roeg, 1971)
I have always been interested in the meeting point between tribal and urban life. This film makes something very special out of the collision of social circumstances, very particular to its setting. There are many more themes entangled in the story, most of which are never really made explicit. All the viewer ever really has to go on is Roeg’s compelling use of juxtaposition – universal harmonies and discordances.

8. The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
It’s hard to accurately describe the nauseating, nightmarish, psycho-surrealist atmosphere this film creates, and all with complete subtlety and surprise. It’s a feeling close to sleep paralysis or a night terror – a sort of inert doom without any obvious source. It harbours pretty bold socio-political, anti-fascist messages that are revealed in pleasingly pagan-like symbols (mostly animals – alive, or the remains of) and is summed up best by Roger Ebert’s review from 1997: ‘They’re trapped in their own bourgeois cul-de-sac’.

9. Who Can Kill a Child? (Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, 1976)
Somewhere in between The Wicker Man (1973) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), this film is possibly rendered more terrifying because of the time in which it was made. There’s something slightly MORE gruesome about 70s fake blood and 70s foley; films of this era seem to induce a particularly depressing effect on me (which I like). It’s the message in the screenplay that really intrigues me though. The idea of revenge as a collective instinct that has evolved out of the need to protect oneself, and revenge not just for personal trauma, but for humanity itself. I’m fascinated by studies of evolution in psychology, and this explores a hypothetical situation to the very extreme.

10. Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
Bergman is one of my all-time favourite philosopher/directors, and this was his last feature film. He said it summed up his entire life, and so the full, five-hour version is a real voyage to experience. It has many similarities to Night of the Hunter (1955), which was a very strong contender for my tenth film. It’s a brilliant depiction of childhood, where dreams and fears merge with fantasy and desire, to the point where it is no longer possible to distinguish either.

London-born artist and composer Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner, creates genre-defying experimental sound pieces, influenced by everything from film scores to architecture and fashion. He’s composed work from found mobile phone conversations and the hidden noises of the urban environment, and has staged installations and performed at venues from Vienna to Vietnam. This week sees the re-issue of The Garden Is Full of Metal/Homage to Derek Jarman, a sound portrait made of recordings from spaces that Jarman inhabited, on the 20th anniversary of the artist-filmmaker’s passing. A live album recorded in a Dresden amphitheatre in Germany, Electronic Garden, will also be released on 24 February 2014. For more details on both albums and to buy them, please visit Scanner’s website. Below, Scanner chooses 10 films that have inspired and entertained him.

1. Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983)
A mind-blowingly inventive film that touches on memory, appearance and history, and most definitely a work that can’t be written about in one paragraph. Is it fiction or reality? As a student, I saw this when it was first shown in London at the ICA, and I remember leaving the cinema as if in a spell. Indeed, when it was first shown on Channel 4 the following year, I recorded the entire film on cassette so I could just listen back to this expansive free-form travelogue.

2. Mauvais sang (Leos Carax, 1986)
I saw this at the Metro Cinema in London when it was released, with no expectations at all. Super stylish, with a central love story between a young, animated Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche, the film exhibits beautifully detailed directorial touches, such as the marks on her skin from the sheet when she wakes up in bed. It’s a hymn to Paris with a love of Godard in every scene.

3. Ghost Dance (Ken McMullen, 1983)
Again I discovered this at the ICA, initially drawn to the film having read that the esteemed David Cunningham of The Flying Lizards composed the score and performance artist Stuart Brisley made an appearance. A film about ‘ghosts’ in our everyday world, it’s a thought-provoking and haunting film, with an unforgettable cameo by the late, great Jacques Derrida in a smoky Parisian café.

4. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
A film that has frequently been referenced with regard to my earlier work exploring scanned mobile phone calls and the invasion of privacy. Long before the net and social networks took precedence, this film, about a surveillance expert who is destroyed by his own obsession, focused on the limitations of sound and how we listen and interpret. Gene Hackman plays his role with a lonely passion for his job, yet filled with angst and caution about everyone he meets.

5. Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)
I could easily have chosen Lynch’s Eraserhead or Blue Velvet, but this twisted film is bewildering and surreal, where the rational needs to be left at the door. Characters swiftly morph into others, while locations urgently switch from one to another. I love how Lynch plays with his own reputation, as he sends characters into dark corridors with a sombre industrial soundtrack and they emerge again unscathed. Best use of a David Bowie song (‘I’m Deranged’) in a film since Mauvais Sang too.

6. Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)
A war film that is more about retreat than attack, and arguably one of the strongest war films of all time, where sorrow and failure take priority over dominance and a sense of conquest. As the remarkable soundtrack mirrors the devastation of the war on the young man, with ever increasing noise in the score, we are made true witnesses to all that is the horror of war. It’s an uncompromising and heart-breaking film that always makes me think of Klimov’s short film Larisa (1980), an elegy to his late wife, Larisa Shepitko.

7. The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko, 1977)
As with most of my choices here, images remain burnt into my retina long after seeing the film, and this one in particular features harrowing scenes, notably the execution scene where we witness the fierce, unblinking stare of a boy looking into the eyes of condemned men. Seen alongside Come and See by Shepitko’s husband Klimov, this film is heroic in ambition, and it is a tragedy that Shepitko died so young. The score by Alfred Schnittke is transcendent and as cold as white snow.

8. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)
A film that divided many people. I remember watching this in the splendid Art Deco Tuschinski cinema in Amsterdam, and had never seen so many people leave a film screening until I was left as one of a handful of mesmerised viewers, enraptured by this prayer to the image, to the soul. Within the opening 20 minutes I had tears in my eyes, as the John Tavener score soared to spiritual heights, the dreamlike editing and stunning images taking me with them on this elegiac journey into childhood and the afterlife.

9. Starsky & Hutch (Todd Philips, 2004)
We all have guilty pleasures, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve seen this film around a dozen times and still find it affectionate, playful, deliberately formulaic in its narrative and reliably amusing. A kind of paean to 1970s cinema and all the baggage that this brings with it in the most enjoyable way.

10. The Last of England (Derek Jarman, 1988)
As with many of the other directors I’ve mentioned here, I could just as easily have chosen Jarman’s The Garden, The Angelic Conversation or Caravaggio, but The Last of England is the vision of an angry Jarman, raging against the system of the time, with visceral, kinetic images that push the viewer to make a real commitment to this dreamlike tale. Given that he died before the advancements in digital filmmaking and mobile technologies, it still saddens me to wonder what magic Jarman would have been producing if he were still with us today.

Inspired by French prog, Angelo Badalamenti soundtracks, electronic experimentations and psychedelic rock, the genre-defying Teeth of the Sea continue to push boundaries with their brilliant third album Master which mightily combines potent riffs, hypnotic rhythms and filmic atmosphere. Teeth of the Sea play Electrowerkz, London, on 11 January 2014, and present a visual and sonic remix of Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England on 15 January as part of the London Short Film Festival. For more information, visit the Teeth of the Sea Facebook page. Below, the band tell us about the films that have most thrilled and influenced them.

1. Doomsday (Neil Marshall, 2008)
NEEEEEOOOOOW KERSPLATTT! What is it you want from your drunken Saturday night entertainment? Is it killer viruses? No, it’s knights on horseback! No, it’s Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic meltdown! In Scotland! No, it’s a car chase soundtracked by Frankie Goes to Hollywood! Can’t decide? Well fear not, lover of yucks, because Neil Marshall’s balls-out gonzoid masterpiece has all these things and exploding bunny rabbits besides. When we were asked to do our first live soundtrack event for Branchage festival a few years ago there was only really one film in the running. Doomsday‘s maniacal approach isn’t everyone’s cup of Irn-Bru, but its outrageous attempt to ransack every element of trash movie culture and bundle it into one 90-minute hymn to tasteless excess means it has remained a firm band favourite. Fearless and frequently unbelievable, one senses that in time it will get its due as a true pièce de resistance of lovingly sculpted trash cinema. (Mat/TOTS)

2. Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974)
A psychedelic sci-fi head-spinner concerning ants (yeah, ANTS) developing a collective super intelligence and seriously fucking with some scientists in the desert, pioneering graphic designer Saul Bass’s Phase IV remains an overlooked masterpiece. Dialogue is scant at best, there is no action to speak of, and the soundtrack (by Brian Gascoigne) is a collection of abstract electronic noise, all of which adds up to a deeply unsettling trip of a film. Unfortunately it was Bass’s only full-length feature as a director, though he did make some great shorts (The Quest in particular is well worth seeking out). If David Bellamy took mescaline then watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, Phase IV is the film he’d make. (Mike)

3. Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955)
Jules Dassin’s first film after being blacklisted by Hollywood in 1950 (during the making of Night and the City, another gem) meant he was fully based in Europe by this point. His knack of placing the city at the absolute heart of his films was undimmed, though, and the nightclubs, backroom card games and early morning street scenes of Paris exude exactly the right blend of allure and decay. Ostensibly the story is of an old-time robber arriving home from prison, determined to go straight until he discovers his ex-lover has taken up with a gangster and rival of his, whereupon he plans the perfect heist on which to retire. Whilst all noir is based on tropes such as this, the real genius of the film lies in conveying the requisite level of existential doom and amorality whilst keeping you on tenterhooks. The heist scene at the heart of the film unfolds in real time in virtual silence and lasts about half an hour – probably one of the greatest pieces of cinematic tension I’ve ever witnessed. (Sam)

4. Daft Punk’s Electroma (Daft Punk, 2006)
I don’t think anyone saw this coming: the world’s most successful dance duo make an abstract, wordless homage to 70s science fiction cinema, featuring no music by themselves but rather that of Brian Eno, Jackson C. Frank, and Todd Rundgren, amongst others. Featuring two robots wandering the desert and not a great deal else, Electroma is a hypnotic and considered piece of filmmaking. Whilst clearly influenced by films such as Phase IV, THX 1138, Zabriskie Point and Westworld, it never descends into pastiche (let’s not mention Random Access Memories, *shudder*) – instead becoming an unexpectedly emotional experience, and one that bodes well for Skrillex’s forthcoming remake of Last Year at Marienbad. (Mike)

5. Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980)
The chutzpah-laden and occasionally wayward oeuvre of Ken Russell is a Teeth of the Sea aesthetic mainstay, from the thrilling transgressions of The Devils right through to the heinous hi-jinks of The Lair of the White Worm. Yet Altered States will always stand out from the rest of his lineage for us, partly due to the gung-ho trip-out sequences that found this film a home in the stoner fringes of the early 80s midnight movie circuit – and also on the sleeve of Godflesh’s legendary Streetcleaner album – yet also due to the incredible dialogue of Paddy Chayefsky, the maverick also responsible for the drop-dead velocity-verbiage of Network. Chayefsky may have thrown a wobbler and disowned his part in the movie, but hearing William Hurt and Blair Brown rabbit out that insanely verbose metaphysical rhetoric, in between either carnal carnage or a return to man’s simian origins, will never cease to raise our own primordial pulses. (Jimmy)

6. The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki, 1995)
A gloriously trashy, hilariously violent, pansexual road movie, the second part of Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse trilogy. Amy Blue and Jordan White are dysfunctional teen lovers who give the nihilistic (and, dammit, hot!) Xavier Red (geddit?) a lift one night. When stopping at a convenience store Xavier accidentally kills the store owner and the trio are forced to go on the run. The film plots their course as they move from incredible-looking motel rooms to fast food joints to thrift stores. Xavier gradually seduces both Amy and Jordan and they are pursued by violent, reactionary forces across the USA, always resulting in yet more bloody carnage. Gleefully anarchic and genuinely sexy, it’s also rather touching in places. (Sam)

7. Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999)
Simple, unforgettable and more genuinely unsettling than any of the host of frighteners that get pumped into today’s multiplexes like so much rancid mayonnaise, Peter Tscherkassky’s Outer Space‘s marriage of horror movie assault on the senses and avant-garde technique ensures that it’s pretty much the ultimate Teeth of the Sea film. Tscherkassky takes a single reel from forgettable 80s scare-fest The Entity and brutally attacks it in real time; twisting, mangling and unspooling it until it resembles nothing less than the horrific death dance of the screen itself. His fetishistic revelling in the grainy matter of the film reel and its punctured, eruptive soundtrack means that the sensation of watching Outer Space is almost textural, lending it a powerfully psychedelic pungency that sticks with you like the memory of a bad trip long after your first viewing. (Mat)

8. Wild Zero (Tetsuro Takeuchi, 1999)
Herschell Gordon Lewis, eatcha heart out. Wild Zero, starring Japan’s three-chord gods of gonzo Guitar Wolf, remains an unequivocal triumph of sheer stupidity over common sense, and of style over content – one indeed so potent that the average trash connoisseur has to pinch themselves to check it hasn’t emerged screaming from some dope-fugged fever dream. Yet, as fast, loud, stupid, gory and relentlessly invigorating as one of the band’s Ramones-on-PCP tunes, this outrageously over the top and life-affirmingly guileless orgy of ravenous zombies, seedy nightclub corruption, obsessively teased Brylcreem quiffs, overheated amp stacks, utilitarian special effects and heart-warming romance is enough to put a smile on the most jaded second-hand record shop employee’s face. ‘FUUUUUCCKKK!’ is a key repeated line of dialogue here, not to mention the average reaction of any sane audience member. If only the director of Bula Quo! had watched this first. (Jimmy)

9. The Thing (John Carpenter, 2013)
A chucklesome Arctic groo fest? A beautifully balanced study of paranoia and alienation? A Cold War metaphor with teeth and tentacles? The ultimate celluloid example of Artaud’s theory of the screaming body? That John Carpenter’s The Thing is all of these and more is testament to its unforgiving and relentless power. Everything is so perfectly set up, from the desolation of the snowbound setting, to the inability of the protagonists to deal with the horrific events that ensnare them, to the hideous, ever mutating unknowability of their vile assailant, the stakes ratcheting up ever higher as the film draws to its hopeless conclusion. In its perfectly weighted balance of suspense and explosive, unbelievably vile body horror (‘You gotta be fuckin’ kidding…’) The Thing remains that rarest of entities: the practically perfect horror film. (Mat/TOTS)

10. Purple Rain (Albert Magnoli, 1984)
Movie vehicles for musical megastars have an uncanny habit of flirting with disaster, the métier of their subject matter being so ostensibly foolhardy that any attempt to elevate them to the celluloid form proves gauche at best – just ask any poor thousand-yard-stare-toting soul who’s made it all the way through either The Doors or S Club Seeing Double. Yet Purple Rain, for all its (many) flaws, is a different box of sequins altogether. At the culmination of one memorable-for-the-wrong-reasons evening in 2013, the members of Teeth of the Sea found themselves in a minus-one-star Nuremberg hostel with only a laptop and a DVD of this movie for company. We could have made mincemeat of Prince’s somewhat threadbare thespian abilities, the constantly irksome presence of Morris Day, the risible plot and any amount of other weaknesses all too apparent in this Herculean cinematic leap of faith. Yet instead, to the sound of the fellow in the next room apparently attacking his door with a claw hammer, we found ourselves strangely enervated. It wasn’t just the mesmerising concert sequences – in which the diminutive boy Nelson comes over as little less than some Weird-Science-machine-created vision of the perfect pop star beamed in from Venus. It was more importantly the sheer gall that was required to carry off this flimsy yet outrageously outtasight folly. In an era in which pop music frequently seems a gruesome treadmill fit to manipulate its audience’s emotions as vigorously as the stars it creates, the power of raw charisma can’t be quantified. Purple Rain is a magnificent playground for a particularly potent example of exactly this elixir. (Jimmy/TOTS)

Roly Porter began his career as one half of Vex’d, releasing a series of singles on the Subtext label before moving to Planet Mu to release Degenerate and Cloud Seed. His solo work fuses his background in soundsystem music with contemporary classical composition and focused sound design, resulting in a unique and often harrowing sound. 2011 saw the release of the critically acclaimed LP Aftertime, followed in 2012 by the Alderburgh Festival-commissioned Fall Back, a collaboration with renowned Ondiste Cynthia Millar. 2013 will see the release of his most ambitious project to date, Life Cycle of a Massive Star.

As a composer and sound designer, Roly has produced original soundtracks for Big Talk/Film 4’s In Fear, which premiered at this year’s Sundance festival, and dystopian thriller Interferenz. Below, Roly discusses his ten favourite movies.

1. Dune (David Lynch, 1984)
I saw this film long before reading the books, and that is probably for the best. So much of this film has dated terribly, and a lot of it was terrible in the first place. The costumes, special effects – it’s all pretty bad but I can’t help loving it, even the warty, floating Baron. When I was younger it felt like the most epic thing ever, the shield fights blew me away and somehow that epic feeling has survived – apart from Sting, he looks totally lame in his pants. The soundtrack is suitably epic, which is lucky as Toto seem a baffling choice when listening to their other records. I don’t know whether there was any cross over between them and Eno or whether he just added the ‘Prophecy Theme’, but either way it’s pretty epic. I had a brief listen to the official soundtrack and it contains some complete turds, which I don’t remember being in the movie, but I’d avoid listening to it if possible.

2. Into Eternity (Michael Madsen, 2010)
Fascinating documentary about a nuclear storage facility. The thing I love about the film is that it gives you some idea of how long 100,000 years actually is. The narrator is pretty annoying, but there is some great sound design and some terrifying ideas.

3. Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009)
When I first watched this I found it completely engrossing in a way I have rarely experienced sober. I watched it on my laptop, which could have ruined it, but the film is so powerful it didn’t matter, although I would love to see it in the cinema. It’s basically the perfect film for me. I think it was badly marketed as some kind of Gladiator-style Viking romp instead of the doom laden, dark ambient masterpiece it actually is. I tried to rent it from an amazing shop in Bristol called 20th Century Flicks, whose recommendations are always spot on, and the guy there spent some time trying to dissuade me, so they must have had a few complaints. The music is good but scoring this film would have been my dream job. The timing of everything in this film matches some part of my brain that I can’t identify. I could watch it again and again.

4. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Perfect in every way. Slow, beautiful, heartbreaking, funny – it has every part of life somehow squeezed in. An unbeatable classic.

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
If I have enjoyed a book I will make sure that I never see the film of the book. It’s always a disappointment, if not always bad. No Country for Old Men is supposed to be great, but why bother – the book was great and I don’t want the characters in my head altered. 2001 is the one exception to this rule. I saw the film first and spent many years watching it in a haze, not understanding it but loving it. The book and the film are the perfect accompaniment to each other, they each make the other more enjoyable. Knowing what is actually happening in the film totally transformed it for me. This film is older than I am and it still looks better than anything since.

6. Nuts in May (Mike Leigh, 1976)
This is a pretty painful watch. It’s directed by Mike Leigh, and I expect it’s either love or hate for this. Keith is a legend. If you’ve been camping give it a go.

7. Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008)
I know very little about the IRA but I found this film disturbing and fascinating. It is by no means the most violent film I have seen, but the violence towards the prisoners is so effectively portrayed that it genuinely upset me. Beautifully made, but I suspect that if I had a better grasp of the history, I would have found it harder to enjoy this film.

8. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
Just an absolute classic. Every time I come back to this film I am surprised by how good it is.

9. Upstream Colour (Shane Carruth, 2013)
The strange thing about this film is that you can say it makes no sense, or that the plot is ridiculous, but that doesn’t detract from how great it is at all. The pig thing comes close to being rubbish, especially when they are all reunited, but somehow the film fights past it to become meaningful. It is almost as though Carruth has chosen the most absurd plot as a challenge to overcome. As I have only recently seen this and Primer, I can’t say they are my favourite films, however Upstream Colour is certainly one of the most original and enjoyable films I have seen in some time.

10. Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980)
‘Skinny skiing, bullfights on acid’.

The brainchild of the amiable and unashamedly charismatic Craig Dermody, Scott & Charlene’s Wedding offer a generation’s glimpse of love, home-sickness, basketball, alienation, rock and roll and all things that matter to an expat Aussie stranded in New York. Dermody’s heart-on-his-sleeve lyrics reveal tales of everyday life, unhinged, humorous and poignant, while the music effortlessly sprawls across decades. Their new album, Any Port in a Storm, is out on Fire Records. Below, Craig Dermody picks his favourite films for the Jukebox.

1. The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)
The Holy Mountain has everything and the brutality is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Jodorowsky is one of my favourite artists, he’s right into tarot cards and sleep deprivation.

2. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
The Dark Knight also has everything for me. There is a moment when he has that fella hostage in that building and he gets sucked back up into the airplane and you really know it’s the best film ever made.

3. Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1972)
Lucifer Rising has Marianne Faithful, intense dark images and music from a member of the Manson family. Kenneth Anger was a massive influence for people like David Lynch and John Waters, and never quite got the credit he deserved, but this film is amazing!

4. Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)
Now, this film really has everything: Trash trash trash trash trash trash xoxoxoxoxox

5. Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks (Dan Klores, 2010)
One of my favourite memories of the 90s was watching the Reggie Miller vs. The Knicks rivalry. I remember everything from this documentary as it happened, and it’s great to hear everyone talk about it retrospectively. High drama + NBA + the 90s = Everything.

6. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
This film really has everything. I could have chosen between a bunch of David Lynch films, and I love all of them, but chose this because it was the first one I got into. Incredibly weird and intense, David Lynch has a style all his own, and is a master of dream-like sequences.

7. Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010)
This film has everything too. Might be considered trash but I love trash, enough to watch it three times.

8. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)
The Wrestler has an intense, dark reality and a character that is incredibly loveable, but incredibly flawed. I can relate to him in a big way, but he makes me feel ok about how I’m going.

9. Autonomy and Deliberation (UV Race and Johann Rashid, 2012)
Ok, ok, this film really has EVERYTHING. Rock ‘n’ roll by my great Melbs mates UV Race, following the story of lead singer Marcus trying to put the band back together. Heaps of Melbourne in-jokes – the Dogs in Space of 2013.