Peter Hoskin and Matthew d’Ancona count down the final 25 of The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films 25. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)Cinema sure does work in mysterious ways. Take Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick’s account of an Irish lad (played by Ryan O’Neal) who rises — and then falls — in 18th-century society. It’s a satire which lacks the vigour of Dr Strangelove (1964); a study of human nature which lacks the honesty of Paths of Glory (1957); and an adventure which lacks the expansiveness of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

My defining memory of Michael Jackson — vulnerable, brilliant, otherworldly — is of watching him dance to the soundtrack of a movie.My defining memory of Michael Jackson — vulnerable, brilliant, otherworldly — is of watching him dance to the soundtrack of a movie. This was early in our friendship, around ten years ago in New York. I visited Michael in his hotel room and was amazed to find it decorated with Hollywood posters and eight-foot cutouts: Anakin Skywalker peeping out from the folds of Darth Maul’s cape, ET bicycling over the full moon.

‘All character is action’ goes the old Hollywood cliché — that is, we learn far more about people by how they behave than we do from what they tell us about themselves. Whatever else you think about the internet (for good or ill), it does two really important but significantly different things to allow us to pursue this study of homo sapiens: first, it allows us to connect with each other in ways and with a frequency unimaginable just a few years ago (and so amplifies our natural tendencies); and second, perhaps more significantly, it allows the curious to watch and listen to how vast numbers of folk respond to events in the outside world and marvel at how they interact with each other as a result.

Rod Liddle says that metropolitan liberal ideology is too deeply ingrained in local councils, social services and the judiciary to be overturned by one panic measure driven by Labour’s sudden fear of the BNPThe government’s new and exciting ‘No Homes for Darkies!’ policy, announced earlier this week, has, for those of you on the right, a certain bracing, post-Weimar Republic feel to it. The policy — or, put better, pointless aspiration — was part of Labour’s relaunch, an amalgam of ideas with which it hopes to win the next general election, much in the way that Hull City might hope to win the Premier League next season by buying Michael Owen.