Dark City

This movie looks so good, you could eat your dinner off it. A decade old now, it still looks as impressive today. It's science-fiction noir, akin to Blade Runner & The Matrix - it's Hitchcock & Philip K. Dick's deeply suspicious and malformed offspring. It is ace.

A man wakes up in a hotel room. There is blood all around him. A dead woman lies in his bathtub. The phone rings. A breathless voice on the other end - 'you've got to get out. They're coming.' But they're already outside.

Yes! Great start for any movie. Our hero Rufus Sewell (usually curly-haired Brit villian-for-hire) has no memory and must unravel the mystery surrounding him along with the audience. He lives in a city of imposing skyscrapers, dark alleys and perpetual night - all shot through with an irresistible 20's noir vibe. He is constantly pursued by the Strangers, other-worldly, trenchcoat-sporting evildoers with supernatural power.

We dare not reveal any more of the plot, save to say it leaves normality behind and shoots off into sci-fi pretty fast, but always retains its noir feel and is riveting from the first frame. It starts off great and keeps getting better all the way through. A rarity, to say the least, in modern cinema.

Made by Alex Proyas, director of The Crow and I, Robot, this is a visual feast and there's a terrific cast to boot - William Hurt is the hard-boiled copper on Sewell's tail, Jennifer Connelly the lounge singer from his past, Kiefer Sutherland on ham duty as the mad scientist helping our hero and Richard O'Brien, he of Crystal Maze fame, as chief villian. Watch it, and know that this was out at least a year before The Matrix came along. I can see the crystal! To the industrial zone! What a show.