Green Zone (2010)

Exciting thriller loosely based on real events and directed by Paul Greengrass, with the familiar, dynamic style that makes his best films so watchable. 

It’s 2003 and Matt Damon is a US soldier in Baghdad, leading a unit in the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. But working with a member of the CIA (Brendan Gleeson) and a journalist (Amy Ryan), he comes to realise that there aren’t any weapons to find and that the government has acted on false information. 

It’s a thriller, a war film and a conspiracy drama. 

Matt Damon – rarely less than brilliant – is as riveting as he ever was. 

The fast cuts make it especially exciting, and I like the "low-res" visuals (which were no doubt exceedingly expensive).

As Good as It Gets (1997)

Superb comedy about a bitter romantic novelist named Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson), who insults everyone he meets. He also lives with OCD, avoiding the cracks in the pavements and disposing of soap bars after a single use. When he’s forced to look after a neighbour’s dog, his compassionate side slowly begins to emerge. A lesser film would have made the most of that and gone no further than a simple man-with-pet comedy, but this complex character study evolves into something deeper and goes a lot further into exploring human behaviour. 

Helen Hunt is absolutely superb as the cafe waitress that Nicholson falls in love with but is unable to articulate his feelings towards. Her three-dimensional character seems entirely real. Less convincingly Greg Kinnear plays Melvin’s gay artist neighbour, who Melvin slowly begins to accept and like – despite all his prejudices. 

It’s an intelligent film with no easy answers. It works as a romantic comedy, but it’s the least formulaic example of that genre I can imagine. 

It leaves you with a lot to think about, not least whether the OCD community think it’s a fair portrayal of that condition.

Ghost Town (2008)

Ricky Gervais stars as Bertram Pincus, a mean-spirited English dentist in New York who briefly “dies” on the operating table. When he recovers, he’s suddenly able to see the spirits of dead people. Not only that, but these spirits also want him to communicate with their living friends and relatives to resolve a matter that’s keeping each of them in spiritual limbo. Pincus is pushed by dead businessman Frank (Greg Kinnear) to break up a relationship between his Egyptologist widow Gwen (Téa Leoni) and a pompous human-rights lawyer (Billy Campbell). But inevitably he begins to fall in love with her. 

It’s not a bad premise at all, but the problem is that it’s simply not very funny for the first half. It improves considerably in the second half as the surreal ghost story resolves into a romantic comedy. But throughout the story, Gervais seems somewhat miscast and he’s far less funny when he’s reading other people’s lines. 

Kristen Wiig is entertaining as a surgeon who’s preoccupied with her fake tan, and the brief scenes with her tend to come alive. 

The film works round to a satisfying conclusion despite some annoying music (romantic scenes are more affecting with instrumental tracks than with someone singing “earnestly”), but it’s uneven and could have been so much better.