The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Films

The Five Best Films

The Third Man (PG)

A front-runner for the greatest-film-of-all-time award. Carol Reed's thriller leads us around post-war Vienna, through which slithers Orson Welles's smirking racketeer.

West Beirut (15)

Involving rites-of-passage debut from former Tarantino collaborator, Ziad Doueiri, all played out in a divided-up, war-riven Beirut. A vibrant and authentic-looking walk on the wild side.

Last Night (15)

Don McKellar's warm, witty, oddly intimate meditation on the end of the world as we know it. Genevieve Bujold crops up as the sort of French teacher you always wished you'd had.

It All Starts Today (12)

A French Blackboard Jungle, delivered in hard-ball, high-minded fashion by writer-director Bertrand Tavernier, and a timely reminder of how impoverished political film-making has grown of late.

Ten Things I Hate About You (12)

Armed with a TV director, rookie screenwriters and an untried cast, Ten Things... (right) plays Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew as a high- school comedy, and gets away with it.