Fast & Furious (2009)

Silly thriller based around flashy cars being driven fast, probably designed for young boys who’ve recently grown out of playing with Hot Wheels. It’s the fourth in the popular franchise, despite a confusing name that makes it sound like the first. 

A “lovable” crook (Vin Diesel) and an FBI agent (Paul Walker) team up to catch a drug baron (John Ortiz). Vin Diesel isn’t very expressive when he delivers his formulaic dialogue, so he acts with his muscles. His character’s sister (Jordana Brewster) and girlfriend (Michelle Rodríguez) also feature prominently. 

The action is slick. The violence is sanitised (not a drop of blood). The emotions are simplistic (not a smile nor a tear). It’s all constructed around high-speed racing. If that’s your thing, you will love it.

Half Moon Street (1986)

Awkward thriller that completely fails to make the most of its talented stars. 

An American scholar named Dr. Slaughter (Sigourney Weaver) works for a pro-Arab think tank in London. To supplement her meagre pay, she takes on work as an escort. Even more improbably, she only starts doing this because someone anonymously sends her a videotape about the escort industry. Incredibly, she doesn’t even adopt a fake name. (She might not have minded people knowing about her dual career, but the sexist snobs at her institute surely would have done.) Through this new line of work she meets Lord Bulbeck (Michael Caine), a diplomat brokering a peace deal in the Middle East and a man with dangerous enemies.

The disjointed, badly plotted narrative lurches from scene to scene. It hints at a complex web of interconnected threads, but the “big reveal” – when it finally arrives – turns out to be disappointingly simplistic. 

Many of the scenes seem to have been invented as an excuse to get Sigourney Weaver to take her clothes off – such as her sitting in the bath and calling in the landlord to tell him that the shower doesn’t work. Yet the film tries to have its cake and eat it by giving her lines about gender equality and being “in control”. You wonder how the iconic star of Alien, Ghostbusters, Working Girl and Gorillas in the Mist could possibly have been happy accepting this role. 

On the plus side, there’s a certain chemistry between Weaver and Caine. Most of the acting is reasonably strong, and the script avoids cliché. But Half Moon Street falls flat because director Bob Swaim seems unable to handle basic storytelling or plot logic. Instead, he creates a muddled mess that feels both half-baked and exploitative.

Return to Me (2000)

Chicago architect Bob Rueland (David Duchovny) loses his wife (Joely Richardson) in a car accident. Her heart is donated to an artist named Grace (Minnie Driver), who would otherwise have died. A year later, Bob and Grace meet by coincidence, and – without realising what connects them – begin to fall in love. 

It’s a strange film – not quite a rom-com and not really a drama, either. There are too many extra characters of little consequence. For example, Grace lives with her Irish grandfather (Carroll O’Connor), who owns an Italian restaurant and socialises with his friends. There’s quite a bit of these elderly men sitting around playing cards and talking about Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin. We also get to see a lot of Grace’s friend Megan (Bonnie Hunt, who also directed) spending time with her husband (James Belushi) and their children. There’s also too much about Bob’s dog (and even the boy who helps look after Bob’s dog). Plus, there are threads about painting, gardening and antique bicycles. A further dimension comes from the gorilla sanctuary that Bob’s wife worked at and which he helps to expand and redevelop to honour her life’s work. 

All of these bitty elements don’t add up to much. But when Duchovny and Driver are on screen together, it works. You just wish they had been allowed more screen time as a couple, and with less of the unfunny silliness that surrounds them.

Paris, Texas (1984)

Emotional drama directed by Wim Wenders. 

A drifter named Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walks out of the desert and appears unable to speak. His brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) travels from Los Angeles to collect him. We learn that he’s been wandering for four years without contact, presumed dead, and has clearly undergone some kind of psychological trauma. In L.A., he’s reunited with his son (Hunter Carson) and begins a sort of rehabilitation. But that recovery process cannot be completed without Travis facing up to – and finding – his estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski).

It’s a sort of road movie, and the landscape shots always look stunning. Ry Cooder’s iconic slide-guitar soundtrack helps to make it even more atmospheric. It’s a painful exploration of the characters’ feelings, and in some ways quite upsetting. The climactic scene towards the end doesn’t quite satisfy, however: it changes the pacing and feels self-consciously “theatrical” compared to what’s gone before. On the one hand that magnifies the impact, but on the other hand it jars slightly with what’s come before. 

That point aside, it’s a poignant story about families and the damage they can do to each other.

The Wrong Man (1956)

Enthralling thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on a true story. Oddly enough, Hitchcock himself shows up at the start to explain this in a brief monologue at the beginning. 

Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) is a New York musician who is wrongly arrested for a series of robberies. He is identified by several witnesses who seem to recognise him. He and his wife Rose (Vera Miles) seek to prove his innocence, but events take their toll on both of them in different ways – especially Rose, who suffers a mental decline. 

It’s a noir-ish crime drama that – like all Hitchcock tales – takes on an additional psychological dimension and keeps you guessing until the very end.

Manhattan (1979)

Woody Allen plays a 42-year-old TV writer who is dating a 17-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway). But when he meets his best friend’s mistress (Diane Keaton), he falls for her. 

It’s shot in black and white, so the shots of New York (often at night) look stunning – elegant vistas of architecture and light. These scenes are given an additional stately grandeur by the music of George Gershwin. 

There are funny lines, as you’d expect, and the usual, masterfully handled tangle of interconnected relationships. Given the various allegations about Woody Allen’s private life, the age-difference narrative stands out as being awkward. It appears that he’s deliberately playing with taboo. And to his credit, he certainly doesn’t write a very nice character for himself. 

All of the acting is remarkable. Meryl Streep is excellent as one of Allen’s two ex-wives. Keaton is funny as a self-conscious intellectual. And Hemingway is quietly magnetic as the emotional centre of the film – the one character you really care about and who seems motivated by love rather than personal gain.

Masked and Anonymous (2003)

An awkward, over-stylised mess. The “plot”, what there is of one, details a future North America in which society has partly broken down. An iconic rock star named Jack Fate (Bob Dylan) is released from prison to play a benefit concert. 

There are too many actors. None of them have much to do but they all look a little too pleased with themselves for being in a film with Bob Dylan. As usual, John Goodman plays an annoying fat crook. I find him unbearable – exactly the same persona in every role. Jeff Bridges plays a journalist and Penélope Cruz is his strange girlfriend. These characters have the annoying names Uncle Sweetheart, Tom Friend and Pagan Lace.

The all-star cast also includes Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Val Kilmer, Chris Penn, Mickey Rourke and Christian Slater. It’s remarkable that you end up not caring about a single character, as none of them are remotely developed. They are all merely mouthpieces for self-consciously cryptic speeches and pseudo-profound utterances that add up to very little. Even Bob Dylan gets annoying, and he was the only reason I watched the film. Yes, he’s enigmatic and charismatic – he can’t be anything else  – but nothing is ever done with those qualities. 

The music is the most interesting element: Dylan performs a few songs “live” within the film and every other song featured on the soundtrack was written by him but performed by another musician. 

The political angle is another missed opportunity. We learn that totalitarianism is bad. 

I found it difficult to get to the end, but I ploughed on out of misplaced loyalty to Bob.

What’s New Pussycat? (1965)

Deeply unfunny farce directed by Clive Donner. 

Peter O’Toole is a playboy who can’t stop chasing after women in Paris. Peter Sellers is a lecherous therapist with his own problems. Woody Allen is in love with O’Toole’s fiance. It’s all over the place, both in terms of storytelling (a potentially interesting love triangle idea is quickly forgotten) and morals, which seem informed by a curious mixture of Carry On-style English repression and clichés about “European” looseness. In the world of this film, men are portrayed as womanising beasts and women exist only to please them. 

The only laughs come from Woody Allen, who is naturally funny in his scenes – although he does have to take the blame for writing such a poor script overall. Peter Sellers is once again wearing a silly wig and doing a silly accent, but neither of those generate any hilarity. The final section – Ursula Andress literally parachutes into the film and everyone runs around after each other in a country hotel – seems muddled and desperate, as any notion of “plot” is completely abandoned for cheap visual gags that fall flat.

I don’t like the theme song sung by Tom Jones, either.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Cold War black comedy.

Apparently losing his mind, a US Air Force general (Sterling Hayden) orders a nuclear attack on the Soviets. This, we learn, will trigger a “doomsday machine” response so vast that will render Earth uninhabitable. With the clock ticking to call off the strike, we follow the story in three related threads – the struggle to retract the order from within the air base where the general is stationed, the progress of the B-52 plane that’s on the way to drop its bombs, and the discussions in the war room where the US president considers the options. 

Stanley Kubrick directs, and there’s a beauty to some of the black and white shots. Unfortunately, the film is constructed around Peter Sellers, who – for no apparent reason – plays three different roles. If you don’t find him hilarious (I don’t), you’re in trouble. Some of the satire hits the spot (a British RAF exchange officer not being able to call the president and avoid Armageddon because he doesn’t have sufficient spare change in his pocket), but a lot of it falls flat. It taps into a potentially rich seam of material regarding the futility of war and mutually assured destruction, but it’s too uneven and simply not funny enough to make those points in a satisfactory manner.

24 Hour Party People (2002)

Michael Winterbottom’s vivid and highly entertaining biopic of Tony Wilson, boss of Factory Records and founder of the Hacienda nightclub. Wilson is perfectly evoked by Steve Coogan, who really captures the flamboyant brilliance of the man. 

The film is witty and fairly innovative. At times it breaks the fourth wall with speech direct to camera. Real footage is woven in with recreations so, for example, you “see” Coogan as Wilson in the crowd of a Sex Pistols concert. It makes a strong case for Manchester as a thriving centre for culture from the late 1970s (punk) to the early 1990s (“Madchester”). 

Along the way we get the story of Wilson’s TV work for Granada Reports, his relationship with wife Lindsey (Shirley Henderson), and the rise and fall of Wilson-promoted bands Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays. It’s very funny in places, and even the fantastical sequences such as sightings of a UFO and a conversation with God himself – the sort of gimmicks I usually hate – work well in this context, such is Winterbottom’s masterful juggling of the various threads of fact, fiction, myth and reality.

Man on Wire (2008)

Documentary directed by James Marsh that details Philippe Petit's iconic 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Adapted from Petit’s own memoir, To Reach the Clouds, it reconstructs the complicated plans and schemes leading up to the big event. The narrative is presented like a crime story, introducing the various characters who worked with him – often against the law – to gain access to the towers and help make the carefully plotted sequence of events come together. 

Petit’s descriptions and recollections are fascinating, but he seems prone to a degree of self-mythologising. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s the accounts of his colleagues that really bring this story to life. It’s especially notable how emotional they feel about the wire walk – a moment that clearly took on symbolic significance beyond mere hair-raising spectacle.

Hidden a.k.a. Caché (2005)

Brilliant French thriller. 

TV presenter Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) start receiving mysterious video cassettes at their front door. These VHS tapes show footage of their own home being spied on and are accompanied by childish drawings of violent imagery. They are also subjected to mysterious phone messages. This premise becomes more creepy still when it becomes clear that whoever is watching and threatening them seems to know everything about Georges’ life from childhood onwards. The police aren’t interested, in the absence of an actual crime, but the situation intensifies as it begins to draw in their son (Lester Makedonsky as Pierrot) and a key individual from Georges’ personal history (Maurice Bénichou as Majid). In trying to unravel the mystery of what’s going on, the couple instead begin to unravel their marriage. 

I love the way that you think you’re watching a scene in the usual way, but then it becomes clear that you’re watching the surveillance tape of it instead. This is a neat innovation in a film that’s otherwise unfussy and straightforward in terms of its sets and direction. Indeed, a lot of it is deliberately humdrum.

It’s superbly unsettling. As the plot escalates, you expect to get closer to the truth of the events. But this enigmatic film deliberately keeps you guessing and refuses to offer simplistic solutions. As such, it presents bigger questions that stay with you.