Children of Men

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.

Robinson In Space

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.

Robin and Marian

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.

Withnail and I

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.

Bunny and The Bull

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!

Capturing the Friedmans

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.

Human Nature

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 Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

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

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.