FILM: THE FIVE BEST REVIVALS

1

The Night of the Hunter (NFT, today, 6.30pm)

Conceived by creator Charles Laughton as "a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale", this Gothic spellbinder tracks Robert Mitchum's demonic preacher through a storybook American South.

2

Bicycle Thieves (Riverside, tomorrow, 8.0pm)

Shot like a documentary back in 948, Vittorio De Sica's guided tour of Rome's underbelly pioneered a new trend of Italian neorealism.

3

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (Phoenix, tomorrow, .25pm)

The Bard gone bad. A gleeful exercise in cultural vandalism, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo riff has Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes' star-crossed lovers at large in a Day-Glo Mexico City.

4

The Manchurian Candidate (NFT, tomorrow, 7.30pm)

John Frankenheimer's 962 essay in Cold War paranoia tars the commies and the patriots with the self-same brush. Frank Sinatra makes an anguished piggy in the middle.

5

The Sweet Hereafter (Lux, Wed 7pm)

Atom Egoyan's best film to date. Based on the novel by Russell Banks, it's a haunting, mercurial study of a Canadian community turned upside-down by a tragic bus crash. Ian Holm's lawyer picks over the traces.