In Bruges (2008)

Directed and written by Martin McDonagh, this is a drama that also functions as a black comedy and a tense thriller. 

Two hitmen (Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell) travel to Bruges to await instructions for their next job from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). While passing the time as would-be tourists, they try to come to terms with who they are and what they do for a living – until a call from Harry changes everything. 

It’s brilliantly written – a superb character study with some very funny lines. It’s also extremely sad, as we see the pair wrestling with their consciences and questioning whether they are entitled to strive for a better kind of life.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)

A quirky comedy. 

Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow star as two friends who travel from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona, to attend their school reunion, anxious to impress the peers who snubbed them 10 years previously.

As with so many American films, there’s a lot about status anxiety. It’s a story about aspiration and class. It’s also about the importance of friendship. While some of the jokes miss the mark completely, and the writing could be sharper, there’s enough charm in the two leads’ performances that it works. 

I’m still not sure if it’s forgettable fluff or a satire of forgettable fluff. It certainly doesn’t have the edge of Clueless, but it’s in the same general universe.

The World's End (2013)

Directed by Edgar Wright, this is the third in a loose trilogy that began with Shaun of the Dead and continued with Hot Fuzz. 

The story concerns five friends, who – encouraged by Gary King (Simon Pegg) – return to their hometown to take part in a nostalgic pub crawl. Unfortunately, Newton Haven has been taken over by blue-blooded aliens. 

Once again, there’s an obsession with small English towns and the way people behave in them. 

The usual team of Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Julia Deakin, Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy all appear, alongside Rosamund Pike and Pierce Brosnan.

It’s not quite as strong as the first two films, perhaps because you know what to expect already. But the performances are all first-rate and there are many funny lines.

Nightcrawler (2013)

Grimly funny and deeply unsettling, this is a masterful crime drama that dabbles with the blackest comedy imaginable. 

Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) goes into business selling video footage of crime scenes to a TV network. He also has designs on their news editor, Nina (Rene Russo). But his work takes him into some extreme situations that reveal his amoral ruthlessness. 

The film expertly juggles various themes. There are the ethics of journalism’s involvement in personal tragedies, and questions about voyeurism. There’s also a brilliant strand of corporate satire, as Louis tutors and controls his assistant Rick (Riz Ahmed), lecturing him on business strategy and career advancement. It amuses and appals at the same time, because Louis seems simultaneously so utterly deranged and yet brilliant. 

It’s such an intelligent and well-paced film that you are immediately swept up into the protagonist’s murky world. Nothing you could add or remove would make it any better.

Made in Italy (2020)

An artist (Liam Neeson) and his son (Neeson’s real-life son Micheál Richardson) struggle to deal with the loss of their wife/mother while attempting to sell their run-down old house in Italy. 

The film tries to be poignant but isn’t well-written enough to inspire much of an emotional response – despite the tragic parallels with the actors’ own lives. Instead, it ends up being a sort of fifth-rate Richard Curtis homage – a rather tepid light drama with only one genuinely funny line.

Lindsay Duncan adds a little grit as a stern estate agent. Valeria Bilello seems rather idealised and one-dimensional as the son’s love interest. Neeson has his usual rugged appeal but sleepwalks through the role. 

It’s easy-to-watch, and of course the Italian landscapes are seductive, but ultimately it’s all rather mediocre.

The Life of David Gale (2003)

Thriller/drama directed by Alan Parker. 

David Gale (Kevin Spacey) plays a university professor and anti-capital punishment campaigner who finds himself on death row. A journalist improbably called Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) is sent to meet him and conduct his final interviews. Through their conversations, she begins to unravel what really happened in the crime he is accused of. We see those events unfold in flashback. 

It’s a tense and exciting story that’s slightly spoiled by the last five minutes, which offers one unlikely twist too many. As soon as you start asking questions about the plot logic, it collapses. 

Spacey and Winslet are both excellent, as is Laura Linney as Gale’s friend and colleague. 

The film makes some good points about the evils of capital punishment, although you can’t help thinking that those points would be stronger still without the final twist. A simpler, more believable plot would have worked so much better.

Blood Diamond (2006)

An engrossing drama directed by Edward Zwick. 

A diamond smuggler working in Sierra Leone (Leonardo DiCaprio) begins to examine his motives after meeting an American investigative journalist and a local man who has been separated from his wife and son. 

DiCaprio is compelling but not quite at his best. Maybe it’s his South African accent that makes him a little less convincing than usual. That said, his character development as the film progresses is extremely well done. I liked Jennifer Connelly as the journalist, too. 

The film makes some strong moral points about trading in "conflict diamonds", but because DiCaprio’s character is presented as amoral it’s not as heavy-handed or judgemental as it might have been.

Fly Away Home (1996)

Heartwarming drama.

A girl (Anna Paquin) loses her mother in a car crash and goes to live with her inventor father (Jeff Daniels) in rural Canada. After some of his land is bulldozed by developers, Amy rescues several abandoned goose eggs and nurtures the geese to adulthood. Ultimately, she uses a microlight plane to teach the birds to migrate south. 

Remarkably, this is based on true events. 

It’s an ecological drama that could have ended up cutesy and trite but for the fact that it also addresses bereavement and family relationships.

The flying scenes are stunning and you can’t see how they were filmed.

A Simple Plan (1998)

Superb drama. 

Brothers Hank (Bill Paxton) and Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), plus Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe), find a crashed aircraft buried in snow in remote, rural Wright County, Minnesota. There’s $4 million inside it, which – after some debate – they decide to keep. That decision changes everything in their lives. 

This is a devastating story. It works as an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but really it’s a profound morality tale. 

Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton are excellent as the conflicted brothers with little in common. Bridget Fonda is great, too, as Hank’s wife who becomes increasingly pulled into the drama of their own making. The escalating situation is perfectly handled by director Sam Raimi. 

The novel, by Scott Smith, is even better.

The Road (2009)

Brilliantly bleak disaster/survival story adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy. 

An unnamed man and his son (Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel across the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic America following an unnamed disaster. 

It’s horrifying in places (there’s a recurring thread about vigilante bands of cannibals roaming the land), but it’s also a tender drama about the love between a boy and his father. 

The film asks you to consider what value life has after everything else has been lost. I like the way it doesn’t try to explain the event that led to this chaos. Instead, it just puts you straight into the situation and lets you stare it in the face.

My Fair Lady (1964)

The “classic” musical turns out to be a huge disappointment. 

A conceited professor of phonetics (Rex Harrison) tasks himself with taking a working-class girl named Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) and educating her sufficiently so that she can pose as a member of high society. 

Hepburn and Harrison have plenty of charisma and charm, but pretty much everything else falls flat. Elisa’s dustman father (Stanley Holloway) is an embarrassing disaster. The “chorus” scenes don’t really work, either, and the rather abusive treatment of Elisa is played for laughs in a way that you can’t imagine happening in a modern film. In narrative terms, the two transformative moments – Elisa learning to enunciate and the pair realising they are in love – are both completely thrown away, buried in pointless filler set pieces and side plots that drag out the running time. 

I liked Harrison’s talk-sing delivery of his song lyrics. The style almost approaches rap. But beyond a couple of memorable songs, all you’re left with is two talented actors struggling to rise above a drab and tiresome mess.

The Remains of the Day (1993)

Masterful slow-burning drama based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker Prize-winning novel. It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. 

The story focuses on a butler (Anthony Hopkins) and a housekeeper (Emma Thompson), who develop a deep love for one another but are unable to declare it. We see their story in two time periods – when they work at Darlington Hall in the late 1930s at a point when Lord Darlington (James Fox) begins entertaining fascist-sympathising aristocrats, and their attempt to meet up again in 1958.

The two lead performances are astonishing and perfectly nuanced. There’s so much feeling and power in what they don’t say. There’s passion and tenderness, too, even though it’s all held back behind the mask of duty. 

It’s a superbly shot film, too, becoming hypnotic where a lesser director would have made it merely dull.

Hugh Grant is excellent as Lord Darlington’s godson and Christopher Reeve adds gravitas as US Congressman Jack Lewis.

One Fine Day (1996)

Rom-com about two single-parent New Yorkers. 

Journalist Jack (George Clooney) meets architect Melanie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and – across a hectic day involving career and childcare challenges – the pair have to put aside their differences and help each other. 

It’s nearly brilliant, but the script just isn’t sharp or funny enough. The two leads are both excellent, and there’s plenty of chemistry, but even with their considerable talents the dialogue cannot sparkle and the humour cannot hit home. For example, a thread about the couple accidentally switching mobile phones isn’t sufficiently mined for comic effect. A more skilled writer (such as Nora Ephron) would have done so much more with it. 

It’s a shame because Clooney and Pfeiffer exude charm and their performances are worthy of a better film than this.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Very sharp, very funny mockumentary about a beauty pageant in the small town of Mount Rose, Minnesota. 

Every member of the cast is outstanding. Kirsten Dunst is the sweet Amber Arkins, who wants to follow in the footsteps of her hero Diane Sawyer. Ellen Barkin plays Amber's mother, and Allison Janney is her mother’s friend. Kirsty Alley plays the head of the pageant’s organising committee and a former winner of the same competition. Meanwhile, her daughter (Denise Richards) may or may not be killing off her rival contestants.  

Surprisingly, the film wasn't a success. It’s in the style of This Is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, but it has a savage black humour and intelligence of its own.

The Butcher of Prague (2011)

Also known as Lidice and Fall of the Innocent, this drama tells the story of the Nazi massacre in the Czech village of Lidice. 

Karel Roden plays a man who returns to his village after a spell in prison, only to find that it no longer exists. 

Beyond the history lesson, I didn’t get a great deal out of the film. Not entirely sure why, as the performances were mostly strong. Perhaps I was just in the wrong frame of mind to witness more senseless killing and cruelty.

Dream House (2011)

Psychological thriller starring Daniel Craig as an editor who moves into a new suburban home with his wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and two daughters. But all in the house is not as it seems and only his neighbour (Naomi Watts) seems to really know what’s going on. 

There are a couple of major plot twists, so it’s difficult to reveal any more about the story without ruining it. Craig and Weisz are OK (and it’s quite interesting to watch this real-life couple play a pretend couple), but Watts is oddly underused. The creepy premise isn’t quite followed through, so it slightly runs out of steam. 

Shutter Island is a better treatment of similar themes. Also, the main part of the film works as a psychological study, so it’s a shame that a genuine supernatural element is confirmed near the end. All that said, it’s a fairly entertaining romp.

Face/Off (1997)

Absurd body-swap action-thriller directed by John Woo and incorporating elements of sci-fi and horror. 

A criminal (Nic Cage) and an FBI agent (John Travolta) have their faces switched with the use of pioneering technology. Meanwhile, the criminal has planted a bomb somewhere in Los Angeles. 

Cartoonish and unbelievable, Face/Off ends up being possibly the strangest film I’ve ever seen. Cage plays it like a pantomime villain, hamming it up so much that you realise the film is nearly a comedy – and would perhaps have worked better that way. On the plus side, the action sequence involving speedboats is one of the best I’ve ever seen. 

The film doesn't really bother to explore the complex identity questions it hints at: are we "ourselves" (with a consistent being at the core) or are we merely what we look like? It's so ridiculous that it takes cinema to a different level where different rules apply. Forget logic. It’s a thrilling, farcical mess that somehow works – despite Travolta’s creepy tic of touching the face of anyone he meets.