The Wings of the Dove (1997)

Historical drama adapted from the 1902 Henry James novel and directed by Iain Softley. 

The wealthy American heiress Milly (Alison Elliott) is dying. Her friend Kate (Helena Bonham-Carter) schemes to inherit her money via a love triangle with her boyfriend Merton (Linus Roache). But inevitably things don’t go to plan. 

It's enjoyable but there are a couple of flaws. The first is that Milly never seems especially unwell. The second is that Merton doesn’t seem charming enough to have two women in love with him. What’s the appeal?

In places, more depth was needed to explore characters and their motivations. For example, Kate’s strict, stuffy aunt (Charlotte Rampling) is something of a caricature without being fully explained. This may be because the novel had to be condensed for the screen. 

That said, it's lavishly shot and generally well acted.

A Shock to the System (1990)

Graham Marshall (Michael Caine) works as an advertising executive in New York. After losing out on a promotion, he sets off for home and ends up accidentally killing a man in a minor scuffle by pushing him onto the subway tracks. No one else witnesses what happens, so he walks away from the scene without repercussions. This is a moment that profoundly changes his outlook, offering him a strange kind of liberation. Before long, he’s considering murder as a way to get what he wants in his personal life and also in terms of his professional ambitions. 

Caine is suitably creepy as a seemingly reasonable man who turns into a killer. Elizabeth McGovern is believable as the naive, admiring girl who ends up getting a little too close to him. And Peter Riegert convinces as the cocky, competent boss who takes the job that Graham assumed was his. 

There’s both a delicious kind of grim black comedy and enough dramatic tension to keep you hooked. The film also makes a point about the difference between the wealthy and the very poor, and between the young and the old. 

The ending isn’t what you might expect, but it does satisfy.

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?