Cows in Movies

Red Road

2010-03-22T21:15:00.000Z

Andrea Arnold, 2006

Having seen the superb Fish Tank, I went back and got her other feature film. And it readily stands alongside.

Rather like the Mike Leigh slice-of-life films, it's a harsh emotional landscape of contemporary Britain, realistic, and yet with an almost unbearable tension sustained. Andrea Arnold is a serious talent.

Shot on a bottom of the pile Glaswegian tower block estate, the cow count is predictable.

No cows.

The Last Detail

2010-03-18T01:01:00.001Z

Hal Ashby, 1973

The fact that this was directed by Hal Ashby two years after Harold and Maude, and stars Jack Nicholson two years before One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest should get your attention.

It's certainly a serious precursor to Nicholson's role as McMurphy; the same delicious headstrong cockiness and that prominent level of unfocussed intelligence that isn't quite as high as he reckons.

Two soldiers accompany a third across the country to a long stretch in military prison for stealing 40 dollars. It's an allegory about the way the military brutalises its recruits, for the way it brutalises society at large, even at a stretch for the arc of an individual life itself. Our guardians flail around offering us a good time for a short interval, but it's only ever going to have one outcome in the long-term.

As with many Coen brothers pictures, the wide American landscape offers plenty of opportunity for cattle, yet we're left wanting.

No cows.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

2010-03-17T01:32:00.000Z

Karel Reisz, 1960

Another film - like A Taste of Honey, Up The Junction, Kes and The Man In The White Suit - that has me marvelling at smoky mid-century Britain.

'I want a new house, one with a bathroom and everything,' says Doreen.

No cows, but this is definitely the first movie I've seen with moorhens. Not that they appear on screen, but the scene at the end where Arthur explains why he's seeing Doreen clearly has two moorhen chirrups.

No cows.

The Haunting

2010-03-15T10:01:00.000Z

Robert Wise, 1963

Overplayed acting, bizarre camerawork and exaggerated effects should make this hammy, but actually they work as intended. This is one of the scariest films I've seen in a long time, even allowing for the late at night lights off environment. I physically jumped several times, and had more moments where the hairs on my legs stood up than I can recall. An absolute masterpiece.

And despite being set in a haunted house, they still managed to get a horse in there. Yeah yeah, we've seen loads of horses. Bring on some variety. Even if it's not cows a good goat'd do.

No cows.

Alien Resurrection

2010-03-09T14:32:00.000Z

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997

This is a pedigree. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, having done the creepy nightmarish Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, about to embark on the luminous magic of Amelie and A Very Long Engagement.

Written by Joss Whedon, having written Toy Story and just starting to do Buffy. his gang-show approach is in full force, and his deep love of the Alien mythology shines through, with a sustained rich humanity.

And it's in deep space far in the future. Humans only.

No cows.

The Science of Sleep

2010-03-08T09:54:00.002Z

Michel Gondry, 2006

Horses are the Stephen Fry of livestock in movies. They're really good and everything, but do they have to be so prevalent?

This brilliant, playful movie - written and directed by the guy who directed Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind and a bunch of Bjork and White Stripes videos - features a horse dressed up as a toy horse. Nice variation, but still, it's the most overexposed animal.

No cows.

The Road

2010-03-04T17:11:00.002Z

John Hillcoat, 2009

There is much to recommend this film, a great premise, a continual tension, a look as bleak as the psychological landscape it explores, a superb performance from Viggo Mortensen.

But never work with children and animals, as the actors cliche goes. And not just because they're unpredictable on set, but because they can't fucking act. Dogs barking at people don't look alarmed, they look like a dog trained to bark on cue. Children don't have the requisite emotional experience to carry a film.

In something like The Road, a child needs to exhibit severe trauma. And be emaciated like Viggo, but of course you're not allowed to starve children for weeks before the shoot. So we end up with a plump child whining like he's being told he can't have money for a Wii.

At the start, this movie explains that all livestock is dead. Yet even before they've told us that there's a horse, one of only two animals in the whole movie (the other's an insect). The horse is such an overexposed animal, there's barely a film without one. Come on directors, give the equines a day off for once.

No cows.

Some Like It Hot

2010-02-25T20:22:00.003Z

Billy Wilder, 1959

Quite possibly the funniest movie ever made, the quickfire chemistry of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis just sparkles, and every frame with Lemmon's face in is a comedy classic. Couple this to the unerring luminous fabulousness of Marilyn Monroe and you have a movie that will never tire.

And let's say a small prayer of thank that the roles didn't - as was nearly the case - go to Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope.

It is a wonderful, brilliant movie. It is, however, not perfect.

No cows.

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer

2010-02-22T13:11:00.000Z

Kevin Billington, 1970

Two words: David Cameron.

I defy anyone to watch this film and not think of him. The stuffy old Tory leaders being superceded by a supercilious man from the PR industry telling you his clamour for power's really all about giving power back to you.

Written by the director with Peter Cook, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, it usually gets belittled in reviews. Like How To Get Ahead In Advetising and Cecil B Demented, it's two-star decried for being a heavy handed rant dressed up as a fictional plot. Which is exactly the reason I'd give those films four stars.

As with the Python's other work, they cannot write parts for women (what do we expect from a bunch of men who went to posh single-sex schools?). But if we leave aside what it doesn't do and concentrate on what it does, it's superb.

Despite numerous opportunities for cattle, there are none to be seen. However, there is a goat, standing on a bench with the prime minister.

No cows.

Bedazzled

2010-02-19T23:51:00.001Z

Stanley Donen, 1967

Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore in a fabulous 60s rewrite of Faust. They, as you'd expect, play a variety of roles. Eleanor Bron - who weirdly enough had a cameo with John Cleese in a 1979 episode of Dr Who written by Douglas Adams - matches up with a range of foils for them.

It's not just the script and acting but the setting. It's made me want to dig out a bunch of 60s British films I've not seen for a couple of decades - Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, Up the Junction, Alfie, and The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer. Hopefully some of them will have a better cattle count.

No cows.

Quadrophenia

2010-02-16T01:18:00.001Z

Watching this again the parallels with Saturday Night Fever are startling, as I said earlier. And now I'm wondering if the connection isn't more direct.

Saturday Night Fever was based on a 1976 article by Nik Cohn, 'Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night'. He said at the time it was journalism, but 20 years later he admitted it was fictional, based in Shepherd's Bush mods.

Was it even more fictional than that? Quadrophenia came out three years later. However Quadrophenia the rock opera came out in 1973. Did Cohn just lift the basics of the story and transplant it to disco era New York?

Whatever, there are some good rural bits in the movie as they go to and from Brighton, it wouldn't have taken much to put a few cows in one of the fields. Just ordinary ones would have been fine, they wouldn't have had to be customised mod cows with loads of wing mirrors sticking out. But no.

No cows.

Fish Tank

2010-02-05T12:02:00.001Z

Andrea Arnold, 2009

An astonishing capturing of the post-adolescent period of life, part adult with the serious choices to make, part child terrifyingly unaware of how the world works and the dangers that lie a moment away on all sides.

Profoundly realistic, proving that you really don't need guns, rich people, murders, helicopters or vampires to make compelling drama.

It's set in London, yet they still work in a major part for that most overexposed cinematic livestock, the horse.

No cows.

Don't Look Now

2010-02-04T10:34:00.002Z

Nicolas Roeg, 1973

A creepy film set in Venice is unlikely to provide cows a-plenty, but they still manage time to squeeze in that overfilmed animal, the horse. Horses have got to be the most common animal in films. The equine-loving brigade have surely had their fill by now, time to move over a few of the whinnying longfaces and get some lovely square-arsed square-nosed livestock on camera.

No cows.

Sweeney!

2010-02-02T02:19:00.002Z

David Wickes, 1977

If the TV series didn't exist, this movie would be thought of as a pacy, grimy British crime flick alongside Get Carter. But somehow the anti flares-era snobbery prevails and anything to do with the Sweeney is seen as kitsch.

This (unlike the negligible limp sequel Sweeney 2) is a brilliant film of urban crime, power politics, the way the ruling eilte will always act above anything the law can affect or the front pages will tell. And the chemistry and banter between Thaw and Waterman is just magnificent; real, human and witty yet never undermining the gravity of their jobs.

Hard on the heels of Whisky Galore! and Shaft's Big Score!, this is the third film I've watched in recent weeks with more exclamation marks in the title than cows on screen.

No cows.

Take It Or Leave It

2010-02-01T10:11:00.000Z

Dave Robinson, 1981

Bob Marley made the most universal music ever. All around the world, all kinds of people love his stuff. Not as in don't mind it, but as in really deeply love it.

Madness have a tinge of that position in Britain. They have the music-hall element necessary for any British band to be taken to our hearts (Sergeant Peppers was profoundly experimental an all, but When I'm 64, Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite, Lovely Rita, they could all have been done on The Good Old Days). They also played a version of 2-Tone ska, the first multicultural music to originate in the UK. They have the British cuddly irreverence and cheek like we see in the Ealing comedies, but they can also make clear moral statements on songs like Embarrassment and Ghost Train. Their videos are still a joy to watch, fresh, funny, loose, boisterous, sparkling.

So, a film of them in their early days, played by the band themselves a few years later, it should be great, right?

Wrong. I've found a movie with an even greater great-band/shit-movie discrepancy than Control.

God, this film is boring. Shoddily shot, awkward, and with a pervading laddish meanness in lieu of any subtler way of having interaction, it's an endurance test. And I say that as someone who really loves the band and their music.

There's a fair bit of Sweeney London as the backdrop. Which of course has a dearth of bovines.

No cows.

Pulp Fiction

2010-01-29T13:04:00.000Z

Quentin Tarantino, 1994

As fresh, stylish, inventive, playful, and riotously original as you remember it. But Tarantino's never hot on the livestock, is he?

No cows.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

2010-01-28T00:13:00.000Z

Milos Forman, 1975

I saw this when I was about 15 and found it immensely powerful. Coming back to it a long time later, it is everything I remembered and more.

Magnificent group performances - so little is told of each patient's story, yet you feel you know it all and see exactly why they fail to function in the world), the subtlety of Nurse Ratchett's delivery, the allegory for the way society's norms will try to snap anyone who won't bend to them. And of course, Jack Nicholson's brilliant cocky lead, reprising many elements of his role in the underrated The Last Detail two years earlier (which was the next thing Hal Ashby directed after the magnificent Harold And Maude).

Cuckoo's Nest swept the Oscars, but then again what does that mean? So did fucking Chicago, whereas Apocalypse Now only picked them up for Best Cinematography and Best Sound.

Anyway, when a film's this good you can forgive it all manner of scenic oversights, even a lack of cattle.

No cows.

Car Wash

2010-01-27T17:14:00.002Z

Michael Schultz, 1976

This is a lightweight movie, but it's far from worthless.

The sense of post-teen high energy in dead end jobs is leavened with the understated gravitas of ex-con Lonnie. Newly Nation of Islamed Dwayne - now Abdullah - is heavy-handedly characterised until the final scene with Lonnie where they share their sense of inner turmoil that their collegues don't feel. No clumsy moralising or hokey wisdom, but instead a highly plausible and much more affecting simply acknowledgement of their common ground.

But mostly, it's a big bright daft sunshiney film, shot well so that we see the real life city going about its day around them. It's a hurried and caricatured affair, yet also somehow authentic, like finding a snapshot of childhood. And then there's Norman Whitfield's fabulous disco-soul soundtrack.

All set one one sunny Friday afternoon in urban LA, it's as cowless as you'd expect.

No cows.

Children of Men

2010-01-25T17:19:00.000Z

Alfonso Cuarón, 2006

A vision of the future so convincing, so recognisable, that I'm having problems thinking myself out of treating it as something of an inevitability.

The scene where Kee calls Theo for a private talk is in a barn with cows, which Kee talks about before getting down to the real purpose of their conversation. There are a couple of good off-camera moos in the farmyard too.

A Serious Man

2010-01-22T00:09:00.003Z

Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009

Another Coen classic. The people in their movies actually look like people instead of polished Hollywood waxjobs, the events always feel realistic even when they're highly implausible, you often don't know if the comedy is really funny or if you're a little confused, and the storytelling is really odd. You've no idea where it's going, where it'll end.

Avatar looked great but fucking hell, you knew everything that was going to happen before you went in didn't you? That Star Wars Lord of the Rings thing.Whereas the Coens don't let you even feel sure about when major characters will bow out or what's a reasonable point to end the story.

But once again they've let the bovophiles in the audience down. Are we really meant to be satisfied with a dead deer? Poor show, boys.

No cows.

Avatar

2010-01-21T12:32:00.001Z

James Cameron, 2009

Well, what can livestock you expect of this CGI eye-candyfest, set entirely on another planet? That said, there's some bloody good six legged horses, and in the early scene where the chopper first sets the avatars down in the jungle, a few little goat things dash out of the way as it lands. More goats in movies! Who'd've thunk it?

No cows.

No Country for Old Men

2010-01-20T01:17:00.000Z

Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007

Oh for fuck's sake, so much rural Americana, but where's the fucking cattle?

No cows.

Robinson In Space

2010-01-19T15:15:00.000Z

Patrick Keiller, 1997

For such a simple documentary I find this very hard to describe in a way that conveys how good it is.

Over the summer of 1995 Keiller toured England, shooting stationary images of industrial and cultural interest. Witty, lefty, evocative and utterly absobing, helped immensely by the comforting, wry Peter Sallisesque voiceover of Paul Scofield.

In the bit where they talk about coal going to Fiddlers Ferry power station there's a lovely shot of an indolent summery herd of friesans cudding.

Central do Brasil (aka Central Station)

2010-01-14T11:38:00.002Z

Walter Salles, 1998

Once again, goats get a good look-in. When I started keeping count of the cattle I knew that horses would be all over movies, but I never realised just how many goats there are. Amelie, Very Annie Mary, Robin and Marian, now this. Seven cow movies and four goat ones!

This movie also features donkeys and a pig.

No cows.

Saturday Night Fever

2010-01-12T17:30:00.001Z

John Badham, 1977

This is such a misunderstood film. Many people dismiss it as kitsch. The majority of these that I come across, when I actually ask them outright, haven't seen the film. Most of the rest have only seen the butchered TV edit that takes out the sex, swearing, drugs and violence.

It's actually a pretty gritty coming of age film, with Tony Manero awash in post-adolescent intense unfocused drive. More than anything, this movie reminds me of Quadrophenia. The dominant music-centred youth cult of the day provides a backdrop for the story and outlet for the protagonist, who moves beyond his shitty job, belittling parents and uncomprehending small minded mates into the wide world; not knowing what he'll do next, only that something else that makes some sense has got to be out there.

Now imagine taking all the sex, drugs, violence and swearing out of Quadrophenia and see what you'd have left. Ignore the TV edit of Saturday Night Fever, it's the 18-certificate version or nothing.

As the movie is set entirely in Brooklyn with a little Manhattan, there's a predictable level of bovine action.

No cows.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

2010-01-06T11:21:00.001Z

Garth Jennings, 2005

This is another teaser like Chocolat.

In the animation explaining the babel fish we see a farmer and a cow.

Later on, Arthur uses the expression 'till the cows come home' and Zaphod Beeblebrox asks 'what are cows?'. Sadly, he doesn't get an illustrative answer.

No cows.

Control

2009-12-31T11:53:00.000Z

Anton Corbijn, 2007

What a dull movie this is. You don't get any explanation as to why these people wanted to be in a band, what the music meant to them or anyone else, what Curtis's motivation was for writing, what the emotional content or basis of his relationships were, nothing.

There's a bit after he leaves Debbie that starts to move, but is quickly snuffed out by the clumsy 'voices during hypnosis' bit.

Heavy handed, superficial, uninvolving. It feels like a movie made by a photographer. Imagine if Joy Division had never existed and this was just a piece of fiction. Nobody would like it. It is entirely reliant on people approving of the subject. As such, it stands alongside The Buddy Holly Story.

And there's no cows.

The Ladykillers

2009-12-29T02:04:00.001Z

Alexander Mackendrick, 1955

Alec Guinness delivers yet another brilliant comic performance, and shows the breadth of his talent by being an utterly complete character yet unlike any others he played.

And I love it for showing that real Britain, the shonky working class housng where you have a hammer hanging by the sink for banging the pipe to make the water work. This would get on to the screen later in the kitchen-sink dramas of the late 50s and early 60s, but the Ealings are the earliest British films I've seen where life seems real. And their approach to community and authority rings true as well. That is my Britain.

The Ladykillers is another urban Ealing comedy, so, once more, there's no place for cattle. There is consolation to be had in - as with Whisky Galore! - there's some non-plot related random horse action. This particular high quality gratuitous equine scene features Dennis the horse eating a load of apples off Frankie Howerd's cart.

No cows.

Whisky Galore!

2009-12-28T14:51:00.000Z

Alexander Mackendrick, 1949

Gratuitous shot of three horses walking on a beach, and of course some sheep, but no cows.

Robin and Marian

2009-12-23T12:05:00.001Z

Richard Lester, 1976

What a weird pedigree. Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, How I Won The War) directing Sean Connery as Robin Hood, Audrey Hepburn as Marian and Ronnie Barker as Friar Tuck.

And it's no merry adventures thing, it's 20 years after as Robin returns from fighting in the crusades and finds Marian's been living in a convent. It's got all the zest you expect from Lester, but with a softened pace.

An unashamedly soppy film, it nonetheless carries a constant ache, it is is about lost time, the way that maturity does not often deliver the answers that youth expects will come. Hepburn's performance - her first in nearly a decade - is wonderful, a constant melancholy behind the eyes counterpointing her poise and wisdom, and there is a powerful feeling of a long love glowing between her and Connery.

Being set in the 12th century, there's a lot of quality livestock living around people. We get goats, pigs and geese, but surprisingly few cattle. But although they only have a minor role, it does at least have considerable prestige, drawing the funeral carriage of Richard the Lionheart.

Deconstructing Harry

2009-12-22T17:00:00.003Z

Woody Allen 1997

Whilst it's another of Allen's relationship-orientasted films, this has a dark, raw quality that points the way to the later comedy-free thrillers like Match Point and Cassandra's Dream. This harsh view of the world is compunded by a lack of cattle.

No cows.

A Taste of Honey

2009-12-10T11:44:00.001Z

Tony Richardson, 1961

Two Smiths lyrics are lifted from this script*, and you can see why. Much as New York City is the only place where Shaft could make sense, so Industrial Manchester should get an Oscar for best supporting actor for A Taste of Honey.

Growing up, the 1960s seemed centuries beyond the 30s, but from today's vantage point they're becoming indistinguishable. The grimy mid-century Britain of Man In The White Suit looks the same as the one in A Taste of Honey, and even Kes is the same thing if you allow for the advent of colour film.

And, as you'd expect for an inner city, there's no cows.

= = = = = = = = =

* 'I dreamt about you last night and I fell out of bed twice' from Reel Around The Fountain, and 'the dream has gone but the baby is real' from This Night Has Opened My Eyes.

Shaft's Big Score!

2009-12-09T00:05:00.002Z

Gordon Parks, 1972

This is the second movie taken from Ernest Tidyman's novels about black New York private detective John Shaft. Strangely they went straight from the first to the third book, for some reason ignoring Shaft Among The Jews.

All credit to director Parks for having a stab at writing a Theme From Shaft stylee follow-up theme tune for this one himself.

This cost a bit more to make than the first Shaft movie largely, one suspects, due to the overused helicopter. Yes, helicopters, cars driving through piles of cardboard boxes, cars ploughing into lines of oil drums, it's practically an I-Spy Book of Cop Show Cliches.

And kinnell, look at the frigging poster!

Helicopter exploding, speedboat, and immensely phallic gun from Shaft's leathered groin. And what an apologist defeated tagline, 'you liked it before so he's back with more'. Why not 'the first one was good and we'd like some more of your money'?

There is a theory that the badness of a movie is proportional to the amount of screentime devoted to helicopters. I'd like to add a bovinity-dearth corollary to that.

No cows.

Shaft

2009-12-08T21:31:00.000Z

Gordon Parks, 1971

With the cold wintry New York City playing a strong role as supporting actor (can you imagine if this were shot in Cleveland or Huddersfield?), it's a great tense, pacy blaxploitation caper, but let down by a lack of bovinity.

No cows.

Duck Soup

2009-12-07T10:42:00.001Z

Leo McCarey 1933

"I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thoughts, I'd rather dance with the cows until you come home".

Groucho gets in a good cow gag there, and there is a scene with a horse in bed, but that's as good as it gets on the livestock front.

No cows.

Withnail and I

2009-12-04T00:33:00.001Z

Bruce Robinson, 1987

A very large and prominent bull 'wants to get down there and have sex with those cows,' giving Marwood a different kind of The Fear.

However, encouraged by Farmer Parkin and with the aid of a cascade of groceries, he sees the bull off and manages to shut that gate and keep it shut.

Harold and Maude

2009-12-03T13:03:00.000Z

Hal Ashby, 1971

No cows.

Bunny and The Bull

2009-11-28T14:56:00.001Z

Paul King, 2009

Well, the title gives you high hopes for cattle, doesn't it?

However, this Withnailesque blend of comedy underscored poignant melancholy is shot in a dreamlike magical style so, for example, horses appear yet they're cartoons.

There is an actual live dog called Cow, and there's a full size live bull made of cogs and assorted other metalwork.

And then there is, briefly but significantly, a big black bull.

Result!

Coffy

2009-11-24T22:42:00.001Z

Jack Hill, 1973

No cows.

Possibly the most pronounced cows:gratuitous tits ratio discrepancy of any movie that's any good.

Capturing the Friedmans

2009-11-23T23:27:00.001Z

Andrew Jarecki, 2003

In this absolutely extraordinary documentary - how can you manage to deal with an issue like child sex abuse without making an audience jump to conclusions? - when Peter Panaro talks of driving upstate to visit Arnold Friedman in jail, the sequence starts with a great close-up of a cow pushing its big square nose towards the camera in a sunny field.

Being John Malkovich

2009-11-23T11:43:00.000Z

Spike Jonze, 1999

No cows.

Chocolat

2009-11-20T17:16:00.001Z

Lasse Hallström, 2000

This is a halfling, a bovine twilight film, an undefined double-agent of teasing confusion. Several times you hear cows in the background, but you never get to see them. I think that means it counts as a no-cow film.

Sleeper

2009-11-18T00:38:00.002Z

Woody Allen, 1973

No cows. But an eight foot chicken is something of a commendable mitigating factor.

Confessions of A Dangerous Mind

2009-11-16T14:50:00.001Z

George Clooney, 2002

What's not to love about this criminally overlooked movie?

A rattling good tale taken from the 'unauthorised autobiography' of game show host and CIA hitman Chuck Barris, turned into a characteristically sparky screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, directed by George Clooney, a great lead performance from Moon's brilliant leading (almost solo) man Sam Rockwell, and even hilariously underplayed cameos from Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.

I'll tell you what's not to love. Not a cow in sight.

Worse, for the third time in only eleven movies so far logged here - Amelie and Very Annie Mary being the others - there are goats but no cows.

In the Helsinki scene a truckful of goats goes by. Later, in East Berlin, Chuck gets into the back of a truck with a load of blokes and a goat. It looks a lot like the same truck and leads me to the conclusion that they shot all the 'icy European cities' scenes in one swift go, recycling the goat truck.

Cheapskate production values? Or bovophobia?

The End of The Affair

2009-11-13T15:13:00.000Z

Neil Jordan, 1999

No cows.

Very Annie Mary

2009-11-10T22:48:00.003Z

Sara Sugarman, 2001

No cows.

Despite Annie Mary wearing something that looks like cow-print chaps, and despite the extensive use of rural location and the inclusion of quality close-ups of more unusual livestock like geese and goats, this is nonetheless a bovine free zone.

Human Nature

2009-11-10T15:42:00.000Z

Michel Gondry, 2001

From the writer/director partnership of Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry, whose follow-up was the incomparable Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, comes this tale of human pretence, artifice, neurosis and the way we value what we idealise at the cost of what we actually have. As Nathan Bronfman advises Puff, a man raised as an ape as he struggles to become civilised, 'remember, when in doubt, don't ever do what you really want to do'.

And at the end, as Puff marches proudly back to the forest, he nods to two cows in a field by the road. It's not just a passing touch but a clear symbolic comment that civilisation has turned us all into domestic cattle. Moo.

The Omen

2009-11-09T01:23:00.001Z

Richard Donner, 1976

No cows.

What kind of diabolical film could be set in modern England with a herd of giraffes and a troop of baboons, yet no cows? Truly satanic.

The Man in the White Suit

2009-11-08T20:12:00.001Z

Alexander Mackendrick, 1951

No cows.

A model horse and a painting of a stag in Mr Birnley's study are as close as it gets.

The Italian Job

2009-11-07T15:00:00.001Z

Peter Collinson, 1969

No cows.

Amelie

2009-11-06T14:26:00.002Z

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001

No cows. (But there is a rather fine goat).

Annie Hall

2009-10-29T11:43:00.000Z

Woody Allen, 1977

No cows.

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

2009-10-28T10:19:00.003Z

Terry Gilliam, 2009

I suspect Francis Ford Coppola is a bovophobe. Although I estimate that cattle appear in about a third of all movies, there's not a cow to be seen in the entirety of the Godfather trilogy, I don't think there are any in The Conversation, and then in Apocalypse Now there's that cruelly drawn-out scene of the cow being slaughtered. And they did it for real.

Of course, there's a sick irony in ever having happy cows on screen at all, given that movies are shot on film made with gelatin from the boiled bones of animals including cows.

But anyway, as with Apocalypse Now, there are only dead cows in The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. They are banged into by a gondola as they float lifeless in a river.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2009-10-27T13:30:00.000Z

David Fincher, 2008

Several times during the film Mr Daws, Benjamin's elderly room mate, recounts tales of the seven times he was struck by lightning, visually depicted by scratchy old film of the event.

'Once when I was in the field, just tending to my cows,' he says, and lo, there are some cows who appear unscathed as Mr Daws gets zapped.

I think we'll see a lot more of these reflective, intelligent, meditative films about ageing in the coming years (indeed, I'd say Charlie Kaufman's epic Synedoche New York is already on the list). The 60s and 70s were full of teen culture because of the demographic bulge of baby boomers. Now they're getting old and dealing with very old, senile, gibbering wrecks of parents and realising it's their turn next.

Here's hoping there'll be plenty of nice cows in them.