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13 million people saw Akenfield on television when it was simultaneously broadcast on LWT and premiered at London's Paris Pullman cinema (a move that is still seen as forward-thinking today - see Soderbergh's Bubble). It was chosen to open the 1974 London Film Festival. It was critically acclaimed across the board and has been shown in festivals in Los Angeles, Moscow and Tehran. It is truly a beautiful, elegiac little film. So, why has it been so totally forgotten?

Based on Ronald Blythe's 1969 book of the same name, Peter Hall (the famous theatre director) was brought on board to adapt it for the screen. It follows the story of Tom, a farmer seeking to escape the suffocating traditions and ways of country life. His tale is intercut with those of both his father and grandfather, revealing just how little has changed in the village in almost a century. A portrait of a rural English village over the changing eras and seasons, the film was shot entirely in the real Akenfield. The shoot lasted one year, with work only undertaken on weekends.

Seeking the authenticity of rural life, Hall made his cast up of local people from Akenfield and the surrounding villages. This angered Equity, the actor's union, who placed the film on a blacklist. In order to appease their strict rules, it was decided the cast would largely play themselves and could not work to a script. Instead they improvised their lines on camera and were never allowed to repeat the same words verbatim. Thus, it was deemed, this could not be construed as "acting" and would therefore not fall under Equity's jurisdiction. The result is unfailingly understated performances that have a ring of truth so lacking in many larger budget films.

Ivan Strasburg, the cinematographer, shot only with available light, even when indoors. He was forced to pioneer a new diffusion technique from behind the lens. Whilst this was almost as much an economic decision as an aesthetic one, it lead to the film's sumptuous painterly quality. Some of the sun-drenched harvest sequences, for example, are as instantly beautiful as anything Vadim Yusov photographed for Tarkovsky at the peak of his powers.

A brilliant film that, had it been made in the canonised era of Italian neo-realism, would have been accordingly recognised as a classic. As it is, it is a forgotten gem that few people remember and even fewer are likely to see in the future. It is available on DVD through the Ipswich Film Theatre, and I highly recommend you hunt down a copy before it completely disappears.

More akin to a lecture from a slightly eccentric professor than anything resembling a film, Sophie Fiennes sensibly allows the extravagant Slavoj Zizek to take centre stage throughout the three parts of this documentary. Zizek himself is a very amiable presence on screen, always humorous and entertaining even when putting forward some of his more extravagant theories. That's not to say it's just a series of stationary talking-head shots, in fact it is a beautifully conceived piece of cinematography. Zizek turns up appearing to actually be in the sets of the movies he is discussing, a technique that remains visually interesting even after 150 minutes. There are also numerous clips taken from the films in discussion that, for once, thankfully remain in their correct aspect ratio.

I just never really understood who this was all intended for. As an aid to film-studies students some of the concepts and arguments are a little too abstruse, and the films covered are more than amply examined in any number of textbooks. At best it is a cross-pollination of Zizek's genuine understanding of Freudian theory and his obvious admiration for the works of Hitchcock and Lynch, without being particularly enlightening on either psychology or cinematic technique.

An entertaining look into Freudian theory through cinema, but ultimately a little pointless.

This is the third interpretation of Fleming's Casino Royale novel (with both the woeful 1967 Feldman spoof and a lesser-known 1950's TV special with Barry Nelson as 007 coming before it) and the twenty-first "official" Bond outing. As such, you could have been forgiven for judging Barbara Broccoli's promise to deliver a fresh, new Bond into a fresh, new franchise with more than a little scepticism. But, amazingly, it wasn't all press junket hype; Casino Royale really does deliver a much-needed shock right to the heart of the ailing series.

Most of the pre-release press attention centred on the unsuitability of Daniel Craig for the 007 role. Apparently he was afraid of heights, couldn't drive a manual gearbox, had never played poker and, most alarmingly of all, was blonde. These stories may or may not have been true, I don't know, but I do know, blonde or not, Craig is perfect for Bond. This Bond, anyway. This isn't the same quick-witted schmoozer of Brosnan and Moore fame, smirking playfully behind the ubiquitous martini. Here is a Bond who somehow hasn't quite discovered how to disguise the brutality of his work behind those all-important tailored tuxedos. He is rarely genuinely charming, and is often not very nice at all. Right from the opening scene, a violent and visceral assassination in a grimy toilet, the audience can be left in no doubt that this is a different Bond. A more violent man for a more violent world, and one which Brosnan and the like could never have convincingly delivered.

The story opens with completely new material, including a spectacular "parkour" inspired set-piece through a building site and a chase to stop a terrorist destroying a new airliner. From here on in, the script follows the novel fairly closely, following a high stakes poker game. The film cleverly capitalises on the recent interest in poker to fully exploit the technicalities of the game that would previously have been double-dutch to most of us. It is here that we really begin to focus in on Bond and see behind the smarmy one-liners and Omega watches. We get to know his tells. As he says later, "I have no armour left".

Casino Royale is a Bond film that is, for once, more about Bond, the man himself, than the usual array of guns, gadgets and girls.

Oh, and thank god they didn't accept Quentin Tarantino's ludicrous offer to make an R-rated Bond revenge film. Kill Bill in an Aston Martin? No thanks.