Music from Another Room (1998)

Extremely unusual romantic comedy. 

It’s 1973. The five-year-old Danny (Cory Buck) is with his father, visiting family friend Grace (Brenda Blethyn). Grace is about to give birth and – bizarrely – Danny helps save the baby by freeing the umbilical cord round its neck. When the baby, Anna, is born he announces that one day he will marry her. Twenty-five years later, Danny (now played by Jude Law) is back in the USA and has a chance meeting with the Swan family. (He would have just decided to visit them, but the writers clearly preferred a far more unlikely scenario.) He sees Anna (Gretchen Mol) and falls in love. But Anna is part of a big, complicated family and about to get engaged to a man she doesn’t really love. 

The film is strange in many ways. The plot doesn’t really ring true, but the members of the family are quirky, well-drawn characters and you are quickly drawn into their world. There’s a blind sister, a suicidal sister and a slightly odd sister. 

There’s a thread about Anna Karenina running through it, and the sisters are named Anna, Karen and Nina accordingly. Some of their stories don’t quite work (the suicidal sister actually shoots her husband and nothing more is said about it). A writer such as Nora Ephron or Woody Allen would have done a better job of neatly tying those threads together. But the film exudes charm and all of the performances are hugely likeable. There are genuinely touching parts and a few laughs too.

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Western. 

Arizona, 1884. Christian Bale plays Dan Evans, a rancher who – desperate for money – takes on a job escorting a dangerous criminal named Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the train that will transport him to Yuma Territorial Prison. There, he will be hung. But Wade is a psychopath with an uncanny intelligence and has other ideas. 

Crowe is absolutely perfect for the role because the plot hinges on the power of his charisma and magnetism. He bewitches those around him and somehow gets inside their minds, like a cowboy version of Hannibal Lector. 

Adapted from a short story by Elmore Leonard and directed by James Mangold, it’s excellently paced and visually impressive. There are strong performances by Ben Foster (as a truly nasty member of Wade’s gang), Logan Lerman (as Evans' teenage son) and Gretchen Mol (as Evans’ wife). Peter Fonda also appears.