Following my post on Z (1969), here’s a Friday Five that won’t win you a game of Scrabble. After all, poster space is limited and who wants their film to show up in Google anyway. To go one better, when they eventually make a film of Dirk’s life it will be called simply ‘?’ (5 stars – “!”, Derek Malcolm, the Evening Standard)

ONE LOVE

1) M (Lang, Germany, 1931)
Peter Lorre gives an unforgettable performance as deranged child killer Hans Beckert, who is eventually tracked down by means of a large letter ‘M’ chalked on the back of his coat. We’re lucky that the German word for ‘murderer’ also starts with an ‘M’ otherwise this would all be terribly confusing.

2) X (Corman, US, 1963)
A scientist uses special eye drops to give himself x-ray vision, with hilarious consequences. No, wait, disastrous consequences. I forgot the bit where he scoops out his own eyes.

3) W. (Stone, US, 2008)
Oliver Stone’s surprisingly sympathetic biopic of the life and presidency of George W. Bush. Fun fact: when Dubya’s staff arrived in the White House they found that the outgoing Clinton administration had removed the ‘W’ from every computer keyboard in the building, the ankers.

4) π (Aronofsky, US, 1998)
Sean Gullette plays a reclusive, obsessive number theorist who believes everything in nature can be understood with “math”, whatever that is. The first rough cut of the film was known as 22/7. Yes, that’s a maths joke.

FOUND ONE-TING

5) G (Cherot, US, 2002)
It’s a hip-hop version of ‘The Great Gatsby’. I don’t think I need to comment further.