You've Got Mail (1998)

A sort of remake of the 1940 James Stewart film The Shop Around the Corner. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are reunited from Sleepless in Seattle as different characters in another romantic comedy. It’s flabbier than that earlier film and less sweet as a result. For example, the father and grandfather characters didn’t work at all and the convoluted scene with the children was just bolted on so that you could see Tom Hanks being a nice guy. That said, Meg and Tom work well together and it was nice that they had more on-screen time as a pair. In SiS, the film had ended at the moment they got together. It’s interestingly of its time in the way that e-mail and coffee shops are both new enough to be presented as novelties.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

Wonderful romantic comedy. It’s extremely well-written and would work well as a play – it’s all dialogue. No helicopter crashes here. 

Meg Ryan is brilliant as the slightly crazed woman who sets out to find the man (Tom Hanks) she heard baring his soul on a radio phone-in. 

Sweet and sentimental.

The pair would reunite for You've Got Mail.

Clueless (1995)

Alicia Silverstone is wonderful in this Beverly Hills teen comedy, written and directed by Amy Heckerling and partly based on Jane Austen’s Emma. 

Particularly good is the linguistic invention of the script. Cher uses phrases such as “shame spiral” and “complaint rock” (Radiohead, etc), some of which entered into general use as a result of the film.

Captain Phillips (2013)

Terrifying true-life story about a Maersk cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates. The film steadily ramps up the tension to unbearable levels. There are no clichés and it’s entirely believable – even with Tom Hanks in the lead role. The music by Henry Jackman does a lot to build the atmosphere.

There was controversy that the film wrongly presented Richard Phillips as a hero, but I saw him as a mere victim. It inspired me to read his book A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs and Dangerous Days at Sea.