Some Like It Hot (1959)

An absolutely wonderful comedy classic. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are the musicians who have to impersonate women to escape Prohibition-era gangsters. Marilyn Monroe is the singer and ukulele player in the all-girl band they join in order to flee Chicago.

It’s very, very funny and the slapstick is perfectly timed. Curtis and Lemmon make it work because they through themselves so completely into pretending to be women. The most amusing moment is probably the sequence on the train after lights-out when an absurd number of girls cram themselves into Jerry's tiny bunk for a secret party.

Monroe is perfect as Sugar Kane. There are stories of her being unable to remember her lines on set, but her performance is so natural and charming that it’s hard to believe.

Downfall (2004)

Harrowing account of Hitler’s final days in the Berlin bunker at the end of World War II. It’s presented from the perspective of his young secretary – one of the few people in his inner circle who survived, and whose account we are expected to trust.

There’s an appropriately depressing green/grey bleakness to the visuals, and the story is even bleaker. There are many suicides and you also witness a mother poisoning her children. In many ways I regret watching it, however brilliantly it was made.

There’s plenty of moral ambiguity, too. Hitler and his inner circle are humanised (which for many, I’m sure, was controversial), but the film struggles with the same problem as any work of art that tackles these events – how to make sense of something that simply makes no sense.

Bruno Ganz is all too believable as Hitler. Alexandra Maria Lara is perfect as the wide-eyed young Traudl Junge, who ends up working for him. Downfall cannot resolve the moral ambiguity of her seeming to be an innocent who didn’t know what was going on. That's difficult to believe. I’m also not sure it was a wise artistic decision to bookend the film with footage of the real-life Junge talking about what happened. A documentary might have been more successful than this slightly awkward mixture of a reimagining and actual interview footage.

Zulu (1964)

Fascinating war film documenting the Battle of Rorke’s Drift between British soldiers and the native Zulu warriors in 1879. Michael Caine and Stanley Baker are superb as the rival lieutenants co-ordinating the defence.

It’s a quirky tale with unusual humour and extremely well-drawn characters. Shot using the Super Technirama 70, it certainly has an unusually vivid quality. The most affecting scene shows a Zulu war chant competing with a Welsh choir in a battle not only of armies but also of cultures.

For a film in which so many people die, it’s surprisingly ungory. But despite the “clean” killings, it doesn’t in any way cheapen the loss of life. And while it doesn’t moralise, it does raise issues of the ethics of war.

The Way We Were (1973)

Romantic drama starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. They play completely opposite characters who fall in love but struggle to reconcile their differences. This occurs against a backdrop of American history from the late 1930s through to the late 1960s or early 1970s, and it weaves in such events as the news of Wallis Simpson marrying Edward VIII and the death of Roosevelt in 1945. The political drama culminates in a violent incident at the height of McCarthyism.

The film is engrossing and sophisticated, and the two stars are terrific. Streisand in particular really shines. What lets it down slightly is the plot: it was hard to understand why the couple ever got together when Redford never seemed to show much fondness for Babs and her militant idealism. Was he really just cold-hearted? Or was there another reason why he seemed so distant? The actors have great chemistry together but the idea of their characters as a couple never quite rings true.

Whiteout (2009)

Disappointing thriller set in Antarctica. A strangely uncharismatic Kate Beckinsale is a US marshal investigating a homicide that turns out to be linked to a Russian cargo plane that crashed in 1957.

The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is an interesting location for a drama, and there’s a definite sense of tension when you see the ice-pick killer on the loose in a blizzard.

But the film suffers from a weak script and an oddly anticlimactic ending. A potentially intriguing sub-plot about chemical weapons fizzles out entirely. And the big “unveiling” of the real villain happens too late: if the viewer could see it coming, why couldn’t Kate Beckinsale?

Wind River (2017)

Tense, gripping thriller set in the snowy wastes of Wyoming. A body is found and an inexperienced FBI agent is sent to investigate (Elizabeth Olsen as Jane Banner). She’s helped by hunter/tracker Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), who knows the land and who has had his own personal tragedy very similar to the one he becomes involved in.

It’s atmospheric and surprisingly scary. And there’s a wider point being made about the treatment of native American people. The saddest line in the film comes when Martin Hanson (Gil Birmingham) is wearing his traditional “death face” make-up and becomes disheartened and self-conscious about it, saying that there’s no one left to teach him how to do apply it properly.

My only criticism is that quite a bit of the dialogue is muttered or murmured in a way that’s difficult to decipher. But this is a brilliant film.

The Naked Gun (1988)

Satisfyingly silly slapstick. It’s a satire of James Bond, TV cop shows and Chandleresque detective stories. Leslie Nielson is lovable as the utterly buffoonish Frank Drebin and Priscilla Presley is excellent as his girlfriend. The jokes are extremely childish and basic, and all the more funny for it. Some of the baseball references passed me by, but that in no way reduced the enjoyment.

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson (2016)

Reasonably engrossing saga of the true-life events of 15th January 2009, when Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed a damaged Airbus A320 in New York’s Hudson river after both engines failed. The film intercuts the story of that day with flashback scenes and details of the aftermath in which Sully is subjected to a public hearing. The National Transportation Safety Board questions his decision not to return to LaGuardia airport, despite the fact that he's being widely celebrated as a hero who saved all 155 lives on board. He has to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, the sudden adoration of the public and the threat of seeing his career and reputation in ruins.

Tom Hanks takes the lead role and is his usual blandly competent-but-unremarkable self. Laura Linney is rather weak as his wife, stuck at home worrying and not given much of a role. Ironically, Sully’s actual wife is tougher, more glamorous and more charismatic – as can be seen in the DVD-extra documentary.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Stanley Kubrick’s film about marines in the Vietnam War is very uneven. The first section, detailing the marines’ training with their drill instructor, is compelling and blackly funny. R. Lee Ermey is fantastic as the terrifyingly tough sergeant and it’s worth watching if only for the call-and-response marching songs.

The second part of the film is less involving, despite being set in the war itself. This is mainly because we haven’t been introduced to most of the characters and therefore don’t especially care about them. The battle sequences are brutal and extremely well-filmed.

Matthew Modine is fine in the lead role as Private J.T. “Joker” Davis, from whose point of view the film is presented, but in terms of narrative arc and characters you can empathise with there’s still something missing.

She’s Having a Baby (1988)

Romantic sort-of comedy-drama about a young couple (Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern) who get married and eventually embark on parenthood. It’s a strange film. There are several dream sequences/magic-realist interludes that don’t add a great deal (and which possibly confuse the narrative), although the scene in which a street of all-American dads mow their lawns in stylised formation is effective satire that would have been critically applauded if Dennis Potter had shot it.

The lead actors are OK if not spectacular in the two key roles, but the main problem with the film is that it doesn’t establish their relationship and what they mean to each other – until it’s too late. We meet them on their wedding day with Alec Baldwin trying to talk a nervous Kevin Bacon out of getting married because he doesn’t want to lose his best friend (this seems like a homo-erotic sub-plot, but the film is so muddled that you can’t be sure). It would have been far better to start with an establishing scene – a romantic walk along the beach, or whatever – that shows how the couple really feel about each other. Instead, it leaps into themes of social conformity and how Americans are expected to behave. When Kristy secretly stops taking the pill in order to get pregnant it comes as a total surprise because the character is so underwritten that we don’t know how she feels about anything, let alone contraception and parenting. And then it becomes a different sort of film in the last 45 minutes. John Hughes juggles many themes (peer pressure, our role in society, masculinity, etc.), but doesn’t satisfactorily address any of them.

It’s difficult to know who this film is for. Was it made for female Bacon fans (he’s topless a lot of the time)? And if so, how are they meant to feel about the women in the story?

Greed (2019)

Anything directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan is worth watching – see also Twenty-Four Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story or The Trip.

Wiki politely calls this “A satire on wealth, centred around a billionaire high-street fashion mogul’s 60th birthday on the Greek island Mykonos.” Others have suggested it is based on the life and career of Philip Green. Arrogant, ruthless and teeth-whitened, Steve Coogan is utterly convincing as the brusque bully in the lead role – Sir Richard “Greedy” McCreadie – as is Isla Fisher as his ex-wife. David Mitchell is perhaps too shy and indecisive as the biographer, although it makes sense that someone more ruthless would be denied access to such a controlling figure. 

There are several interwoven strands:
• The life of the entrepreneur, from school days to the present.
• The build-up and aftermath of his outlandish, stupidly expensive themed party.
• A look at (mostly dysfunctional) personal relationships: father/son, husband/wife, husband/ex-wife, employer/employee.
• A vain daughter attempting to be the star of her own reality-TV show.
• A biographer attempting to research the life of McCreadie.
• A savage satire on wealth and success.
• A searing condemnation of the way the fashion industry is built on a brutally exploited slave underclass.

It does all this and manages to be funny. There’s high drama, too: I certainly didn’t predict the way the party would end...

At the closing credits, the film presents you with some sobering statistics about the pitiful wages people get paid working in sweatshops.