Contents Ballad Of The Wild Boys: Nick Cave and John Hillcoat's Australian outback Western The Proposition combines beauty with brutality. Nick Roddick talks to its makers about drugs, music, poetry and Peckinpah.

Natural Selection: Nicloas Winding Refn's Push

Contents Weight Of Water: The Dardenne brothers' special brand of realism has twice won them the Palme d'Or. As their most recent Cannes triumph L'Enfant (The Child) - about a young father who unthinkingly sells his baby - gets a UK release, Jonathan Romney talks

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#Under The Influence

Dominik Moll's Lemming shows the influence of Hitchcock's The Birds. How far has the French thriller tradition been shaped by the work of the master metaphysician - and does it matter, asks Robin Buss. Plus James Bell talks

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#Women, Windmills And Wedge Heels

With Volver Pedro Almod?var has made a welcome return to comedy, the country and his favourite actresses. By Paul Julian Smith
#Shimura Takashi: The Last Samurai

Kurosawa is best known for his director-actor pa

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#Cannes 2006: American Decadence And Other Tales

Adulterated meat, surveillance and US excess proved the abiding themes of Cannes 2006. Some anticipated films proved duds, but smaller pleasures abounded says Nick James.
#Cannes 2006: Unpopular C

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#Animation: Timeline

Andrew Osmond assesses the new innovative directions being taken with Animated cinema releases this Summer. This timeline is a longer version of what appears in the magazine.
#Songs For Swinging Lovers

With Three Times Hou

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#Edinburgh 2006: Giant Steps

US cinema in the early 1970s is a story of film-makers who refused to sell out. David Thomson celebrates a programme of their work at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
#Edinburgh 2006: Ten Sight & Sound Edin

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#Out Of The Rubble
Oliver Stone's World Trade Center tells the heartwarming story of two policemen plucked from the rubble. But is garnering sympathy for America's 9/11 tragedy now a lost cause, asks B. Ruby Rich
#Royal Blues
The Queen, directed

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#Jewels In The Crown

The Venice festival combined Hollywood blockbusters with more innovative indie film-making from Europe and the US. But it was a series of films from Asia and Africa commissioned in Vienna that was its strongest suit. By Jame

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#Girl Interrupted

Set against a backdrop of the vicious reprisals that marked the end of the Spanish Civil War, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth creates a beautiful and terrifying fantasy netherworld for the young girl at its centre. Could i