The Weatherman (2005)

Extremely downbeat drama with flashes of comedy. 

Nicolas Cage plays a TV weatherman having problems with his dying father (Michael Caine), estranged wife (Hope Davis) and unhappy children. He’s also having a sort of midlife crisis, and members of the public who recognise him keep throwing junk food at him. 

It’s whimsical and engaging but you wish it was funnier. Michael Caine’s dodgy American accent is a distraction. Cage and Davis are both excellent, however, and the film gains gravitas as it progresses. 

It’s a deeply sad story. Cage’s character seems such a nice guy that you’re completely on his side even as everything seems to go wrong around him.

Arlington Road (1999)

Conspiracy thriller directed by Mark Pellington. 

Jeff Bridges is a widowed college professor who begins investigating his suspicious neighbours (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack), who appear to be mixed up in a terrorist plot. It’s tense and fairly gripping but sadly goes completely off the rails towards the end. Once the big twist is revealed, very little of the story seems credible. There are simply too many coincidences and assumptions for things to have worked out the way Tim Robbins’ character planned. I felt cheated and quite angry. 

It’s a shame, because there are lots of good things about the film. Bridges is compelling and as watchable as always. There is an excellent jump scare, brilliantly framed. And I like Hope Davis, as the professor’s former graduate student.

Proof (2005)

Excellent drama, directed by John Madden and adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by David Auburn. 

A brilliant mathematician, Robert Llewellyn (Anthony Hopkins), suffered mental problems and has recently died. His daughter Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) – also a genius with numbers – appears to suffer a similar condition. She has been caring for him in his troubled final years. After Robert’s death, Catherine’s controlling sister (Hope Davis) arrives from New York and tries to organise her. Meanwhile, Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a former graduate student of Robert’s who wants to go through his papers and find out if he left anything else of worth.

All four characters are brilliantly drawn and portrayed. The dialogue is plausible. 

The “troubled maths genius” trope recalls Ron Howard’s 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, but there’s strong enough acting and a compelling enough premise to make this well worth watching.

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.