Don't Look Now (1973): review: 10/10

Following the death of a child, a couple go to Venice, where they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom has mystical powers.

The film is an exploration of grief, love, and  the need to believe, or the possibility of believing in the supernatiural.

So well filmed and acted is the piece that we viewers become partners in this exploration. This identification is largely thanks to Julie Christie's excellence, which succeeds in eliciting compassion.

Panic (2000): review: 7.5/10

A contract killer, married with a child and middle class, who works for his father, enters therapy: the therapist challenges his passive attitude to his domineering father. In the therapist's lobby, the killer also encounters an attractive young woman, with whom he becomes entranced.

This is an effective and elegantly balanced play whose humour is based on role inversions, and is well sustained throughout by all the cast.

Ordinary People (1980): review: 8/10

The troubled son of wealthy Illinois family consults a psychiatrist and starts a relationship with a girl with a mullet hairdo and thick socks.

Featuring The Psychiatrist as Detective (mother is The Culprit, of course): the piece is sympathetically filmed and intelligently acted, indeed is often quite moving, and seems to prefigure more recent slacker films such as "Garden State".