The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Extremely uneven spaghetti western. Sergio Leone directs and makes beautiful landscapes look even more beautiful. Ennio Morricone’s music is iconic and haunting. And Clint Eastwood is as magnetic as ever. But the tone of the film is really odd, and sometimes scenes intended to be slightly “comedic” simply fall flat. In particular, Eli Wallach (the “ugly”) seems strange with his sneering and grimacing. Plus, there’s a sadistic thread that runs through it. Deliberate moral ambiguity, perhaps. 

It’s more ambitious than A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More (with which it’s often grouped as a loose trilogy), with an ongoing, parallel narrative about the US Civil War. There are spectacular battle scenes involving a huge number of extras. It’s unclear whether you are supposed to take it as an anti-war film, or whether it’s again being morally ambiguous on purpose. 

On the plus side, Lee Van Cleef (the “bad”) is charismatic as “Angel Eyes”. But the dubbed voices used for all of the actors – even the English-speaking ones – remain a barrier that prevents it from ever seeming even remotely real.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Awkward, hugely disappointing, almost childish biopic of Queen. The story has been dumbed down and sanitised (hardly anyone seems to drink or take drugs) and other than Freddie Mercury – whose bisexuality is touched upon – none of the characters have any depth whatsoever. The dialogue is poor. Some of the scenes are like a Spinal Tap-esque parody sketch. You keep waiting for the punchline, but it never arrives. You wouldn’t know from this film that they were an interesting group at all. The songs remain remarkable, and it’s always nice to hear them again, but even the scene showing the group pulling together “Bohemian Rhapsody” falls flat. We get the nuts and bolts of them recording the piano part, the guitar part, the harmonies and so on, but there’s nothing about how something so unusual was composed or what inspired it. 

Freddie Mercury is rendered without subtlety by Rami Malek. He somehow overplays the flamboyance while forgetting the all-important charisma. There are too many scenes showing his cats, and I like cats. 

By the time the film climaxes at the 1985 Live Aid show it appears to have completely given up with the various plot threads. Instead, it contrives to go out on a high note without having to resolve anything. 

Ultimately, you wonder why this film got made and who it was made for. There’s no real story to reveal, because the basics of their story is already so universally known. I was left wishing I had seen a comprehensive Queen documentary with concert footage and interview clips. That would have been so much more engaging.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Adaptation of John O’Brien’s novel, written and directed by Mike Figgis. 

Nicolas Cage is perfectly cast as an alcoholic who leaves Hollywood and travels to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. He meets a prostitute (Elisabeth Shue), who is also at a low ebb. (It certainly isn’t Pretty Woman.) 

The film suggests the possibility that the couple might somehow save each other from their fates, but it’s also intelligent enough not to present any easy solutions. It’s harrowing and heartbreaking to watch the situation unfold.

Cage and Shue are both stunning. I was completely convinced by them, together and apart. Their relationship is complex but believable, and the film follows it through to its logical conclusion without sentimentality or compromise.

Hope and Glory (1987)

Written, produced and directed by John Boorman, this is a poignant and gently hilarious view of wartime as seen through the eyes of a young boy. 

When Britain declares war on Germany on 1st September 1939, everything changes for Billy Rowan (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) and his family. His father Clive (David Hayman) signs up, leaving his mother Grace (Sarah Miles) struggling to come to terms with her new circumstances. Meanwhile, his older sister Dawn (Sammi Davis) gets involved with a Canadian soldier (Jean-Marc Barr). For Billy, the war is a thrilling adventure that excites and troubles him at the same time. 

The details are beautifully observed. Billy joins a gang of boys who go through the bomb wreckage taking delight in breaking things. His grandfather (Ian Bannen) is appealingly eccentric, and his role in a game of cricket is one of the highlights. Most moving is probably the moment when one of the children loses a parent in the bombings, only for the other children to leap on this piece of information as valuable gossip/currency to exchange. It seems inevitable that the film is semi-autobiographical. I especially like the way it presents the strange freedoms that the war offers – suddenly the old rules no longer apply – but doesn’t sentimentalise or romanticise the horrors either. 

As good a film about WWII and its effects as any I have seen.

Yesterday (2019)

Comedy drama written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle.

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling singer who – owing to a mysterious electrical event it’s best not to ask too many questions about – suddenly finds himself in a world in which no one has heard of The Beatles. In fact, it appears that they never existed. He begins performing their songs, is recognised as a genius, and swiftly finds himself on the path to fame and fortune. But there are problems. He’s clearly not cut out for the life of a rock star – especially one whose success is built on a lie. And he also happens to be in love with his friend and former manager Ellie (Lily James).

It’s a sweet and touching story. The songs are wonderful, too, as you’d expect. The joy of the film is that through people’s stunned reactions it feels as if you get to hear The Beatles’ songs for the first time.

Patel and James are extremely endearing. You are rooting for them from the very beginning, able to identify with the pair in every scene.

Ed Sheeran appears as himself and is a feasible enough character in his own right rather than merely a walk-on famous-person role. Kate McKinnon is also fairly strong as Jack's ruthless new manager, who makes no secret of her desire to make a fortune out of the singer.

Fun and rewarding.

Drive (2011)

A disturbing thriller.

Ryan Gosling plays a getaway driver who becomes mixed up in a crime involving the husband of his neighbour (Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan respectively). After a brooding, menacing start, it turns very, very violent indeed. Gosling seems superbly intense in the lead, initially, but his character development takes him down a path that means you can no longer identify with him.

I found the violence somewhat gratuitous. I know that violence was in many ways the subject of the film, but a couple of the scenes were horrifically drawn out in a way that they really didn’t need to be. It was difficult to know what I was supposed to take away from it.

On the plus side, the driving sequences were exciting and the locations were well chosen. Gosling and Mulligan had a certain chemistry, too. There are echoes of Taxi Driver, but it doesn’t have the consistent logic or magnetic pull of that masterpiece.

Pretty Woman (1990)

Excellent romance starring Richard Gere as a ruthless businessman and Julia Roberts as the prostitute he initially hires and ultimately falls for. 

I’d heard a lot about this film but somehow never seen it until now. And what a gem it is. Gere’s acting seems to have improved exponentially since An Officer and a Gentleman. He has real presence. And Roberts has an effortless charm. Together, they have plenty of chemistry. 

The story is simple but expertly told. It’s subtle, too, where it could have been obvious: Gere’s transformation is slow and realistically gradual, rather than a character U-turn. 

There are two criticisms I would make. Firstly, it idealises Vivian's profession. She makes one reference to men always hitting her, but it gives little impression of the true dangers of her work. Secondly, it has the usual tropes of US 80s/90s films in that upward mobility is presented as the only real option to aspire towards.

Those points aside, it’s a pleasure to watch.

Oblivion (2013)

Derivative, shallow sci-fi starring Tom Cruise. I probably wouldn’t have bought this DVD, but I watched it because I found it being given away on a wall. 

The plot is rather confused, but Google usefully summarises it as follows: “Jack Harper, a drone repairman stationed on Earth that has been ravaged by war with extraterrestrials, questions his identity after rescuing the woman who keeps appearing in his dreams.”

That woman is Olga Kurylenko, who, like Cruise, hardly gets any dialogue at all. Another barely filled-in, completely thrown-away character is played by Morgan Freeman, who struggles to convey the grizzled leader of a band of human survivors. 

There are so many things wrong with Oblivion:

• As usual, Tom Cruise is a good-at-everything action-hero dullard who manages to save the world single-handedly. It’s Top Gun all over again. 

• In the absence of dialogue – or any kind of personality – Tom spends much of the film staring moodily yet conveying little emotion.

• Almost every element is borrowed from another sci-fi film. 

• We visit the remains of what used to be New York, but it’s nothing but lush, clean and green vistas. Where’s all the rubble and filth? Could it be transformed that thoroughly in just 60 years?

• There are plot holes aplenty. Best not to ask many questions. 

• Attempts to be “philosophical” end up hollow and self-conscious. 

• When we finally meet the alien presence, it’s a huge let-down. 

• The title has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the film. It's like they wanted a high-impact, single-word title, but all of the relevant words had already been taken.

Passchendaele (2008)

Gruelling depiction of two battles in 1917. Paul Gross wrote, produced and directed, as well as starring as Canadian soldier Michael Dunne. 

The middle section details a love story involving Dunne and a nurse called Sarah (Caroline Dhavernas). Their relationship is complicated by her troubled brother David (Joe Dinicol), who Dunne vows to protect. The narrative wrestles with notions of responsibility and duty set against the redemptive possibilities offered by love. 

It’s moving and harrowing. The film faithfully depicts the gruesome mud bath/bloodbath that saw 5,000 soldiers killed in 16 days, and the battle scenes look all too real. Only one thing doesn’t quite convince: you can see sunny skies in the background, even though it’s permanently raining. I wondered if that was an aesthetic choice, but the “making-of” feature on the DVD confirms that it was filmed in Canada and that the “rain” was just water being sprayed over the set.

It’s Complicated (2009)

Rom-com with little rom and and even less com. It’s not even very complicated.

Divorcee Jane (Meryl Streep) begins an “affair” with her own ex-husband (Alec Baldwin). But she’s also drawn to the architect she hired to make her huge home even bigger (Steve Martin). 

The film is directed by Nancy Meyers, who was responsible for Something’s Gotta Give, and very much follows the formula of that earlier film. But whereas that was just about salvaged by the talents of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, this film has to survive on the abilities of Streep alone. Baldwin is oddly repulsive (it’s not clear how much of that is intentional), while Martin seems bland and underwritten. 

These smug, wealthy people are difficult to like. That’s not helped by the shallow way the film addresses a potentially interesting web of relationships. But it’s not a story about how people actually are. Instead, it seems to be an aspirational exercise about how you too can be wealthy, have a huge home, have lots of friends, be loved by everyone and have a top-quality job that’s both well-paid and endlessly rewarding. 

There’s a bottom line of watchability with Streep, but that’s not enough this time.

The Fifth Element (1997)

I hated this film. I don’t think it’s rubbish, necessarily (I’m sure it turned out the way director Luc Besson intended), but I hated it. It’s irritating on so many levels: the aesthetic is ugly, the characters are completely uninteresting and even the sci-fi elements lack the all-important “wow” factor. Bruce Willis runs around in a vest, shooting a lot and looking like he’d rather be in a different sort of film. Gary Oldman hams it up as a daft villain. And Milla Jovovich plays a sort of super-human “perfect” woman with orange hair. 

It has some of the pantomime silliness of Flash Gordon, but absolutely none of the charm. And it steals from Blade Runner (there’s Vangelis-like music at one point, and Jovovich seems modelled on Daryl Hannah’s Pris at others), but it has none of that film’s vision or innovation. It’s played for comedy, but it’s never funny. It falls flat. The crass talk-show host Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker) is just embarrassing – possibly the most annoying film character I’ve ever encountered. 

Absolutely nothing about this film appeals.

Spellbound (1945)

Alfred Hitchcock thriller that unfortunately doesn’t rank up there with his best work. 

The new head of Green Manors, a Vermont-based mental asylum (Gregory Peck) turns out to be an imposter and possibly a dangerous killer. But psychoanalyst Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) falls in love with him and wants to unpick the mysteries of his past to clear his name.

It’s stylish and visually intriguing, like all of Hitchcock’s work. There’s plenty of tension and excitement, too, but the plot suffers because it hinges – somewhat ridiculously – on the interpretation of a dream. The dream itself was devised by Salvador Dalí and is full of that artist’s familiar imagery. 

Peck seems a little wooden, but Bergman is terrific.

Sleepers (1996)

Four friends growing up in New York in the 1960s end up in a youth detention centre, where they are brutalised by the staff. We then meet them again, 13 years later, in 1981, and find out how those harrowing experiences have defined every aspect of their adult lives. 

The first half is compelling. Director Barry Levinson brilliantly sets the scene and evokes both time and place perfectly. But in the second half, the film seems to lose its way. A lengthy courtroom segment takes the focus away from the themes of friendship and community that initially made the film so watchable. And something about that plot – the convoluted account of a faked legal hearing – just doesn’t ring true. 

The cast is excellent, with memorable performances by Robert De Niro (reliably brilliant as a priest who befriends the boys), Minnie Driver (who falls in love with three of them), Dustin Hoffman (an alcoholic lawyer) and Kevin Bacon (one of the abusive staff at the Wilkinson Home for Boys). Brad Pitt is less convincing as the grown-up version of Michael Sullivan. 

There’s overbearing music by John Williams

The film is often disturbing, as you’d imagine from the subject matter – and all the more so because the 1995 novel it’s drawn from (by Lorenzo Carcaterra) is semi-autobiographical. It makes some profound points about how cruelty shapes and damages us, but somehow it still misses the mark.

Fair Game (2010)

Superb thriller. Adapted from the memoirs of the two protagonists, it tells the story of CIA operative Valerie Plane and her diplomat husband Joseph C. Wilson. The pair were responsible for exposing the US government’s fabrication of the evidence about Weapons of Mass Destruction that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. 

Naomi Watts and Sean Penn deliver remarkably convincing performances in the lead roles. There’s the political saga, but also the story of their marriage and family, and the strain that these events put on them. 

I admire the realism of it, such as the way that every scene featuring the couple’s children had them constantly asking questions and demanding attention. I also respect the film for delving into the moral ambiguities of the topic – should you tell the truth even if it puts loved ones at risk? – and not providing any simplistic answers.

Heat (1995)

Cop tries to catch criminal gang causing havoc in Los Angeles. Al Pacino is the cop. Robert De Niro leads the gang. 

Heat is a complex film that introduces multiple threads. At its worst it’s in danger of becoming an episode of Miami Vice or even The A-Team. At its best, it’s like a cut-price Scorsese imitation, albeit without the elegance and sophistication. The script is reasonable enough, but there are casting problems. Val Kilmer is jarringly woeful as one of the gang members. Furthermore, the gang guys have no chemistry whatsoever. Even De Niro seems to be struggling a little with the material. Plus, some of the music is intrusive. And the threads about the stand-in getaway driver and Natalie Portman as a troubled teen could both have been removed in the interests of tightening up the narrative.

On the plus side – and it's a big plus – Pacino rises to the challenge of his role and is every bit as cool as usual. The scenes featuring him and his wife (Diane Venora) are convincing, and there’s a depth to him that the other characters lack.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

Remarkable drama that seems to consist of several films elegantly woven into one. It begins with a story about motorcycle stunt rider (excellently portrayed by Ryan Gosling), whose discovery that he has a son with his ex-girlfriend (a passable Eva Mendes) leads him into a spate of bank robberies. That, in turn, introduces a story about the cop (superb-as-ever Bradley Cooper) who tries to apprehend him. The consequences of their brief meeting ripple out across the years and affect the lives of several others. 

I love the way the film keeps surprising you with its various sideways turns. It’s also encouraging that rather than simply glorifying guns, there's an intelligent exploration of the ethics around them.

Bradley Cooper perfectly conveys a good man who makes mistakes that will always trouble him.

This is a multi-part tale that never sacrifices clarity to realise its ambition.