Blood Work (2002)

Enjoyable thriller starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. 

The plot features a retired FBI agent attempting to catch a killer. The twist is that he is suffering heart problems, which make it even more difficult.

Eastwood is great, as always. In fact, this could have worked as the next Dirty Harry film, although the main character is perhaps too compassionate to be Callahan. 

There are strong female characters – notably Anjelica Huston as Dr. Bonnie Fox. Jeff Daniels also co-stars.

Because of Winn-Dixie (2005)

A charming film that’s superficially for children but which actually has a far wider appeal. 

A 10-year-old American girl named Opal Buloni (AnnaSophia Robb) has just moved to a new small town with her preacher father (Jeff Daniels), while trying to accept the loss of her mother. She struggles to make friends and to fit in – until she adopts a stray dog, who changes her life. She, in turn, transforms the lives of the people in the neighbourhood.

It’s surprisingly touching, and not only because of the cute, shaggy dog. The film builds a strong sense of place, and the friends that Opal makes – the librarian (Eva Marie Saint), the ex-con running the pet shop (Dave Matthews) and a blind lady who the local ruffians call a “witch” (Cicely Tyson) – seem real and three-dimensional.

Robb is among the more watchable child actors I have seen. She’s sweet without being annoying, and cheekily funny without seeming contrived. There are no irksome “stage school” mannerisms.

Jeff Daniels is great, too. In some ways it’s a similar role to the one he played in Fly Away Home. He seems to be an expert at playing dads of girls who lost their mothers.

Fly Away Home (1996)

Heartwarming drama.

A girl (Anna Paquin) loses her mother in a car crash and goes to live with her inventor father (Jeff Daniels) in rural Canada. After some of his land is bulldozed by developers, Amy rescues several abandoned goose eggs and nurtures the geese to adulthood. Ultimately, she uses a microlight plane to teach the birds to migrate south. 

Remarkably, this is based on true events. 

It’s an ecological drama that could have ended up cutesy and trite but for the fact that it also addresses bereavement and family relationships.

The flying scenes are stunning and you can’t see how they were filmed.

Heartburn (1986)

Adapted by Nora Ephron from her own novel, this is a slightly disappointing drama about the ups and downs of a relationship. Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson play Rachel and Mark, and the film focuses on the couple's story from first meeting, through marrying, having children and facing up to Mark’s history of infidelity. 

There's some intriguing casting. Stockard Channing seems underused as a friend (she's too charismatic to be given such a minor part). Jeff Daniels is credible as Rachel’s editor. In his first film role, Kevin Spacey plays a thief on the subway.

Split between New York and Washington, D.C., the bittersweet narrative has comic moments but isn’t a comedy as such – despite what’s presented on the DVD box.

Carly Simon provides the theme song in “Coming Around Again”, which also recurs as “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. 

It’s not quite as engaging as you might hope. Streep and Nicholson are always excellent, but it could have been sharper, more poignant and more funny.

Looper (2012)

Sci-fi mind-scrambler that involves time travel and telekinesis. Retired assassin Joe (Bruce Willis) is sent back from 2074 to 2044 to be killed by his younger self (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). But of course things don’t go to plan. 

It’s an intriguing premise but the first half of the film gets a little bogged down in explaining the complicated "rules". It improves in the second half, when farm woman Sara (Emily Blunt) appears as the love interest for the younger of the two Joes. She is also the mother of a boy who will grown up to be an evil future ganglord if the course of events is not disrupted. 

It’s best if you don’t ask too many questions about the time travel aspects of the story. There are some exciting moments, but the film didn’t make me care about any of the characters. It was difficult to believe that Joseph Gordon-Levitt would ever become Bruce Willis, so different were the two actors in terms of charisma. Gordon-Levitt seems to have barely any character at all. I'm no fan of Willis, but he does at least bring a basic presence to his scenes.

On the plus side, it’s not every day that you hear Richard and Linda Thompson’s "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" on a soundtrack.

The Hours (2002)

The lives of three women from different eras form intriguing parallels. In Richmond in the 1920s, we see Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) writing Mrs Dalloway and dealing with suicidal thoughts. In 1950s California, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) reads Mrs Dalloway and faces her own fears and insecurities. And in New York in 2001, Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) wrestles with her feelings for an old flame who is dying of AIDS. 

Kidman, Moore and Streep are all fantastic in emotionally complex and challenging roles. Kidman looks absolutely nothing like herself – it’s difficult to believe it’s her – owing to a prosthetic nose. 

There are also strong performances from Miranda Richardson, Jeff Daniels and Ed Harris. 

In many ways it’s a depressing film, and it deals with painful topics. But it also addresses the value of life. 

Intense, sweeping, music by Philip Glass adds emotional depth.

Terms of Endearment (1983)

Melodrama with moments of comedy. 

Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger play a mother and daughter who share an intense connection. We follow the evolution of that relationship, along with their couplings with Jack Nicholson and Jeff Daniels respectively. Then the plot takes a sideways turn and everything becomes a lot more serious. 

What makes this an absolute gem is the quality of the acting. All four leads are remarkable, but MacLaine and Winger are quite extraordinary. They convey such a strong sense of personality for their complex, fully rounded characters that it’s difficult to imagine they aren’t real people.

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

The title says it all. An absolutely stupid film that ends up being very funny. Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels play two of the most infantile people imaginable. But they are well-meaning, too, and care about each other. They become accidentally involved in a crime involving the kidnap of the husband of an heiress (Lauren Holly) and leave a trail of destruction in their wake while attempting to travel to Aspen (it’s a sort of road movie) in order to return a suitcase full of money.

It works because the humour is kind. You laugh at their absurdity and vulnerability. I’ve never been a fan of crass jokes about toilets, but these characters are so well drawn that even the “laxative overdose” scene is compelling.

Stupid as they are, you root for them because you recognise a little of yourself in their daftness and because it’s difficult to resist the warmth of their friendship.

Speed (1994)

Terrific action thriller. The concept is simple: a Los Angeles city bus is armed with a bomb that will detonate if the vehicle’s speed dips below 50 mph. Cute, funny Sandra Bullock is the passenger who becomes the heroic driver. Keanu Reeves is the cop jumping aboard the bus to save her and the other passengers while trying to defeat the crazed villain (Dennis Hopper). He’s helped by fellow cop Jeff Daniels, who is as reliably watchable as ever.

With exceptional pacing, the film ramps up the tension from the start and somehow sustains it for 111 minutes.

Some of the dialogue is weak, with a silly Bond-like quip about death that could have been skipped, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s so full-on in terms of excitement that you are swept away by the rush of energy. And the blossoming romance story is developed just enough to make you engage with the characters. It’s telling, though, that only Reeves is shown on the DVD cover, despite Bullock being every bit as integral to the film.

The Martian (2015)

A sci-fi disaster/survival masterpiece based on Andy Weir's gripping 2011 novel. This is an incredible film – dramatic and terrifying, but also surprisingly funny and moving. 

Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is stranded alone on Mars when a vicious storm forces his mission to be aborted and the rest of the crew have to abandon him in their escape. Much of the story details Watney’s attempts to stay alive on the planet by drawing on his resourcefulness and extraordinary positivity. He manages to extend his survival time by farming potatoes. Another major thread covers the NASA rescue plans being debated and prepared on Earth. Meanwhile, the original mission crew (with Jessica Chastain as the commander) are in transit back home when the opportunity to turn around and save Watney becomes a possibility...

There’s so much that’s great about The Martian:

• It looks amazing, like most of Ridley Scott's work. Those vast, red Martian landscapes are striking and seem incredibly real. 

• The music is perfectly chosen (Watney is stranded with a load of disco classics) and is expertly matched to various scenes. The collage segments set to David Bowie’s "Starman" and Abba’s "Waterloo" are among the absolute highlights of the film. 

• The casting is excellent: Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kristen Wiig are all ideal in their parts. Every character counts, and so does every line of dialogue.

• The drama is perfectly paced, building to an unbearable tension in the final moments. But despite that I found myself smiling or laughing for quite a lot of the 141-minute running time. 

One other thought: it's interesting that so many of the best films of the past few years – Arrival, Gravity, Moon, Passengers and this one – have all been sci-fi.