The Grey (2011)

Liam Neeson stars as the survivor of a plane crash in Alaska. He and his remaining oil industry colleagues attempt to walk to safety, battling icy storms and very hungry, very predatory wolves.

Director Joe Carnahan is effective at ramping up the tension, but the film – based on the short story “Ghost Walker” by Ian MacKenzie Jeffers – requires you to believe that the wolves are intent on hunting down the men and strategically picking them off one by one. I’m not sure how accurate this is in terms of the animals’ behaviour, but it’s certainly a negative depiction of the species, doing for wolves what Jaws did for sharks.

As it progresses the film takes on a more philosophical dimension, which just about works.

Copycat (1995)

An academic specialist on serial killers (Sigourney Weaver) lives a life of agoraphobic terror after being attacked by a psycho 13 months previously. But she has to face her worst fears when two San Francisco cops (Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney) seek her help in tracking down a brutal “copycat” killer. 

It’s tense and dramatic, and there’s a fairly major twist about two thirds in that I certainly didn’t see coming.

Weaver and Hunter are both excellent, but the latter is particularly strong and brings real depth to the role.

About Schmidt (2002)

Bleak black comedy about a man in Omaha, Nebraska who leaves an insurance company to enjoy his retirement, only to find that his wife dies soon after. Suddenly he has no shortage of free time, but he has no one to spend it with. Struggling to find meaning in his life, he begins to sponsor a child in Tanzania (his letters to the boy form the film’s narration), travelling around in his huge new Winnebago, and trying to persuade his daughter not to marry her waterbed salesman fiancé. 

Jack Nicholson is as fascinating to watch as always, and expertly portrays the bemused, slightly shell-shocked widower. Kathy Bates is excellent as the rather scary mother of his future son-in-law. 

It’s a fairly depressing film, and deliberately so. It’s to be respected for not offering any trite or easy resolutions to this lonely 66-year-old’s predicament in the way that a more obvious narrative might have done. But a few more laughs would have helped since a lot of it is genuinely painful to sit through.

The Family Stone (2005)

Funny and moving comedy drama about a family Christmas. The eldest of several children brings his girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) to meet the family, with all sorts of unexpected consequences. There’s romance and tragedy, conflict and farce, and a lot of highly amusing moments along the way. Diane Keaton is superb as the mother – the centre of the family – who is dying of cancer. But unusually, every character is perfectly played and the writing is expertly judged. It tackles prejudice about privilege, deafness and homosexuality with a lightness of touch that stops it being heavy-handed. And ultimately, it’s as heartwarming a story as you’d expect from a Christmas film, but with enough sharp observation to prevent it ever becoming schmaltzy or predictable.