Ageing has several disadvantages, but chief among them is that riding around the foyer of the Odeon piggybacked on a friend, whooping the Indiana Jones theme tune and cracking an imaginary bullwhip in the faces of anyone off to see Lorenzo's Oil looks a lot worse as the years roll by. When I was a kid, I frequently used to leave films so fired up that I often had uncontrollable urges to emulate whatever square-jawed ramrod I had just spent my pocket money watching, and in any available medium: make-believe, snow (weather permitting), Lego or, when the studios were on their game, exorbitantly priced action figurines. And from the pitying look a female friend once gave me when I told her I had never seen , and her covetous fascination with the Golightly lifestyle when I joined her for her umpteenth viewing, I suspect adulation is not just a boy thing, either. 1) Han Solo had the bigger following, but for some reason, I was always drawn by the head-boy angst of Luke Skywalker - especially when he strides back as fully qualified Jedi badass (3mins) at the start of Episode VI. 2) "See, my mule don't like people laughing. Gets the crazy idea you're laughing at him." I'm still struggling to rid myself of my Clint Eastwood infatuation, but it was his backhand take on conflict resolution in A Fistful of Dollars that got it started it for me. 3) Appallingly, the only time I've ever cried uncontrollably in a cinema, Jim Carrey was the man responsible. Ace Ventura's gag runs it close, but something about Truman Burbank's existential quest hit the knockout blow in 1998. Weirdly, subsequent testings haven't had anything like the same effect. 4) I could take or leave the vacant Neo when The Matrix came out, but I was utterly obsessed with Agent Smith: an increasingly thwarted digital jobsworth to match Pink Panther's Chief Inspector Dreyfus. Hugo Weaving's fastidious mannerisms - unbelievably subtle bits of irony slipping out of the machine - still make me laugh. 5) The sharp clothes, the criminal tang, the nonchalant seductions, the air of alienated yearning: The Beat That My Heart Skipped is probably the only film in the last few years where I've found myself seriously fantasising, eight-year-old style, about being the protagonist. (OK, I admit I may have been under-employed when it came out.) For anyone new to Clip joint, we'd love it if you posted your own suggestions - ideally with a video link - in the comments section below. The best one will win a prize bashed out of the colourful guardian.co.uk/film piñata. Interesting suggestions backed up with a specific clip from the work in question, illustrating the theme most clearly, will always stand the best chance of winning; it's not always possible to find key scenes online, so posting the trailer is the next best option. And now a cheery telepathic yodel goes out across the inner landscape for everyone who came out walking for last week's special on . Here's what came buzzing out of our hive mind: 1) Apocalypse, Now gradually peels back the layers, to utter rawness, of the human psyche. Marlon Brando walks the edge of the razor, , in his superb extemporised monologues. 2) You posted an awful lot of great dream sequences - it was incredibly difficult to pick just a single one. I've gone for the marriage fantasy from Roy Andersson's recent You, The Living, because it's not ostentatiously surreal; quite the contrary, this is still totally absorbing. 3) "My mother's dowry was her own weight in gold coins. The investigation proved them to be chocolate. My father died of grief. My mother, of diabetes." in Fassbinder's adaptation of Despair, which hinges on that old psychological staple, the doppelganger. 4) This week's curio from the attic: Abel Gance's , from 1915, which gets in early on the tradition of depicting altered mental states in comically heavy-handed style with some brutal diffraction (and the pointy-headed mad scientist seems to have inspired , too). 5) And this week's winner is … steenbeck, for suggesting the user's guide to the mind and its attendant functions in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. It's a shame this is totally unsuitable for kids, because the dramatisation really reminds me of those huge, detailed, fun, in children's science books. Thanks to MsSauerkraut, Mr Wormold and StevieBee for the rest of this week's picks © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our | (read more)
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