A friend of mine once had an interesting way of choosing which films to go and see. She would read The Daily Mail’s cinema round-up, and choose to watch the movies that their critics liked least. A vaguely discerning type, she said that this worked for her every time. It would be easy to feel that Hollywood’s annual Academy Award ceremony - the body that voted Titanic its most successful film of all time - was a similarly dubious arbiter of quality. I mean, how can you give Martin Scorsese, director of such classics as Goodfellas and Taxi Driver, his first ever Best Film and Best Director Oscars for a movie as deeply flawed as The Departed? Thankfully, on many occasions the Academy does reward quality movie-making, and this weekend Lewes Cinema have chosen to reshow a number of gong-winning films that deserve their recognition.

And so, in order of appearance, we have: Pan’s Labyrinth, (Fri, Sat 6pm, Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Make-up), a shockingly violent portrayal of a young girl’s fantasy life in post-Civil-War Spain; Happy Feet, (Sat 4pm, Best Animated Feature), the left’s global-warming-warning antidote to March of the Penguins; An Inconvenient Truth (Sun, 2.30pm, Best Documentary, Best original Song), Al Gore’s wake-up call for civic action on climate change; and The Queen (Sun, 5pm, Best Actress) Stephen Frear’s moving look at the political upheaval caused by Lady Di’s death, starring Helen Mirren as ‘Cabbage’, aka Elizabeth II. Unrepresented, sadly, is Lifetime Achievement winner, Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer to whom we will raise our next pint of Harvey’s. DL