The Two Faces of January (2014)

Directed by Hossein Amini, this is an absolutely stunning thriller adapted from the 1964 novel by Patricia Highsmith. 

It’s 1962. American con artist Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst) are holidaying in Greece, when MacFarland’s criminal past catches up with him. Desperate and needing to flee, the couple team up with Rydal Keener (Oscar Isaac), an American tour guide who himself is a conman, albeit on a far smaller scale. But Rydal’s motivations are ambiguous – he has designs on Colette, while seeing Chester as a reminder of the father he recently lost. 

The exciting plot consistently ramps up the tension as the fortunes of the three become more and more entangled. 

It’s brilliantly directed: every shot is expertly framed for maximise the drama. 

The soundtrack by Alberto Iglesias is uncannily well suited to the action. 

It’s an admirably short film at 97 minutes: taut and perfectly paced.

Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

Drama set in the early 1950s, directed by Mike Newell.

A free-thinking art teacher named Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) starts working at a private school where women are trained to be good wives who will obey their husbands. Watson encourages them to think beyond those boundaries and question the roles that have been selected for them. 

It’s nearly brilliant. The four main students are excellently played by Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Stiles and Ginnifer Goodwin. Roberts is somehow less convincing – a rather po-faced character, drawn in the broadest strokes. Also, Roberts somehow seems like she’s from the 1990s rather than the 1950s, so you can never quite believe in her. It’s almost like a time travel film in which she’s a social visionary from the future who comes to enlighten the girls of the past.

The film makes lots of points about social roles but it’s just too simplistic to carry any real weight. Instead, it ends up being a rather wishy-washy compromise about doing what’s right and following your heart. 

Tori Amos has a cameo as a wedding singer. Juliet Stevenson has an intriguing role as a rebellious lesbian, but she’s cast out of the school and the film too early.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Very sharp, very funny mockumentary about a beauty pageant in the small town of Mount Rose, Minnesota. 

Every member of the cast is outstanding. Kirsten Dunst is the sweet Amber Arkins, who wants to follow in the footsteps of her hero Diane Sawyer. Ellen Barkin plays Amber's mother, and Allison Janney is her mother’s friend. Kirsty Alley plays the head of the pageant’s organising committee and a former winner of the same competition. Meanwhile, her daughter (Denise Richards) may or may not be killing off her rival contestants.  

Surprisingly, the film wasn't a success. It’s in the style of This Is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, but it has a savage black humour and intelligence of its own.

Bachelorette (2012)

So-called comedy that didn’t make me laugh even once.

Three friends who seem to have nothing in common (Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan and Isla Fisher) plan a pre-wedding party for their school pal Becky (Rebel Wilson), formerly known as “Pigface” because of her weight. Then they accidentally ruin her dress and have a night of silly adventures while trying to fix it. Yes, it really is as unfunny as that sounds. 

Writer and director Leslye Headland, adapted Bachelorette from a play, but it’s difficult to see how such weak material could have worked on stage. The characters are cruel and unengaging, vain and unlikeable. Maybe it’s meant to be titillating that they take so much cocaine, but they are too annoying to seem anything other than shallow and poorly drawn. That goes for the vacuous, self-obsessed male characters they interact with too. 

I was especially disappointed with Dunst and Fisher, who usually impress in their other films.

Hidden Figures (2016)

Based on a true story, Hidden Figures focuses on three female mathematicians who worked for NASA during the Space Race. Despite their brilliance as individuals, their careers were stifled as a result of racial prejudice and segregation.

Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe star alongside Kevin Costner, who portrays the director of the Space Task Group. Meanwhile, Kirsten Dunst is oddly cast as an unsympathetic supervisor.

The film combines their stories with that of the space race itself, bringing to life the nail-biting events of John Glenn’s first American orbital spaceflight. 

There's no getting away from the seriousness of the subject matter, but there are funny and tender moments too.

Wimbledon (2004)

Peter Colt (Paul Bettany) is a British tennis player on the way down. Then he meets and falls for up-and-coming American Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst) and suddenly his game improves. But Lizzie’s father (Sam Neill) doesn’t want her focus changed, so tries to put a stop to the affair. 

This is a surprisingly entertaining film, with some funny lines. Bettany and Dunst have real chemistry. It’s also quite exciting and dramatic in terms of the tennis itself – even though I don’t much care for the sport. As Colt moves up through the tournament it actually gets quite exciting. I like the way we “hear” his thoughts – all his self-doubts and hopes mixed up in a chaotic interior monologue. It’s also nice to see former champions John McEnroe and Chris Evert playing themselves as commentators, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is likeable as Colt’s friend Dieter. 

On the downside, the thread regarding Colt’s parents (whose failing marriage is rekindled by their son’s changing fortunes) isn’t really necessary and his mum and dad (Eleanor Bron and Bernard Hill) seem silly and oddly unconvincing. 

But overall it’s a charming story, excellently told.

Elizabethtown (2005)

Slightly awkward comedy-drama directed by Cameron Crowe. 

Drewe (Orlando Bloom) works as a designer for a shoe company and somehow manages to lose them nearly a billion dollars. His boss (Alec Baldwin) fires him. About to commit suicide, Drew learns that his father has died. He travels to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to arrange the funeral, and reconnects with friends and family. He also meets and falls in love with Claire (Kirsten Dunst), who gives him a reason to live. 

It’s all very odd. There’s a strong performance from Susan Sarandon (as Drew’s mother), who brings the family together with a funny and moving speech at the funeral, but Bloom himself is weak and cannot carry the lead role. Unable to convince you that he’s suicidal, he’s extremely dull to watch – a problematic vacuum at the very centre of the film. Dunst is as magnetic and charming as ever, and it’s worth watching just to see her, but it was difficult to understand what her sparkly character would like about someone so featureless. 

Some of the humour falls a little flat. Also, there’s too much music (a lot of it by Tom Petty) as almost every scene seems to be punctuated by a “moody” rock song. That worked in Almost Famous, because it was about the music world, but it’s merely intrusive here. Sometimes less is more. 

Roger Ebert claims that Claire is actually an angel and not to be taken too literally. Certainly the story is a salvation saga and there are themes of life/death, being doomed/redeemed and so on. Maybe that’s the case, but this additional layer doesn’t make the film more vital or entertaining. It needs more laughs and a credible male lead. Plus, the whole business about the shoe company seems random and misjudged. There are no insights into that industry nor why Drew might have been working in it.

An actor who looks like Loudon Wainwright turns out to be the actual Loudon Wainwright.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

A man and woman undergo special treatment to have their painful memories of each other erased so that they can forget the suffering they endured when their relationship broke down. But, mid-procedure, the man realises he’s making a mistake and tries to hang on to what remains of his precious recollections of the person he still loves. 

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are endearing in the lead roles, and their opposites-attract romance is offbeat and believable. What spoils the film is that the visual representation of memory – much of the story takes place in Jim Carrey’s mind – seems gimmicky and over-stylised. I appreciate that they were looking for a cinematic style that could resemble the way memories appear to us, but the fast-cut visuals are so full-on and relentless that they get in the way of the story. It could have been a far stronger film if the narrative and the editing allowed for some slower scenes that gave us the space to get to know the couple better. Indeed, the rare moments when they are simply talking or enjoying being together make up the best parts of the story. 

Oddly enough, a sub-plot about the boss of the company offering memory removal (Tom Wilkinson) and a woman who works for him (Kirsten Dunst) is better handled because it unfolds at a more natural pace. 

It’s so nearly brilliant, but the execution gets in the way. It’s a shame because the idea is a great one, and it enables the film to consider all sorts of ethical and even spiritual issues about identity and how much our pasts define who we are.

On the Road (2012)

It was never going to be easy to film Jack Kerouac’s 1957 masterpiece, which isn't really a novel at all, but Walter Salles has a solid bash at it. Wisely, he sticks to the source material as closely as possible, focusing on certain key episodes from an already disjointed narrative.

Sam Riley plays Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s semi-fictionalised version of himself), chasing experiences, intensity and worldly wisdom as he travels back and forth across the USA in the late 1940s. Like everyone else in the story, he’s obsessed with Dean Moriarty (played by Garrett Hedlund and a fictional version of Neal Cassady), who seems to live wilder and more freely than anyone. 

The film has some – but perhaps not enough – of the book’s restless energy. The character of Carlo Marx (played by Tom Sturridge and a fictional version of Allen Ginsberg) may be the best representation of Kerouac’s endless hunger for life.

Kristen Stewart is excellent as Marylou, given more prominence here than in the book. Kirsten Dunst is always strong and she’s believable as Dean’s neglected wife Camille. Amy Adams has a cameo as Jane, wife of Old Bull Lee (fictionalised version of William Burroughs), and Bull Lee himself is played by Viggo Mortensen. These are all wise casting decisions. 

Despite lots of impressive elements I found this adaptation somehow unsatisfying, perhaps because the book meant a lot to me. Ultimately, it just made me want to read the book again.

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

The first film by Sofia Coppola is a hypnotic piece of work that adapts the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. It tells the story of the five Lisbon daughters, and the suicides that destroy their family. Consciously or otherwise it seems to echo Picnic at Hanging Rock – another mystery about disappearing girls – and in places it evokes the same hazy, dreamy atmosphere. Like that story, it’s as much about the after-effects of the key events as it is about what actually happens, as the girls enter the dreams and inner lives of those who knew them. 

Coppola also brings subtle, dry wit into the story, which is impressive given the macabre subject matter. One scene has the strict religious mother trying to burn the girls’ vinyl records (Kiss, Aerosmith, etc) only to nearly choke everyone with the toxic fumes they produce. 

There are clever, tricksy moments that shouldn’t work but somehow do anyway. At one point, an eye “twinkle” is added when Lux (Kirsten Dunst) smiles. At another point, we see “through” Lux’s dress to reveal that she’s written her new boyfriend’s name on her underwear. 

It also works as a teen story, and scenes such as the Homecoming ball – or the romantic moments when the boys and girls play each other records down the phone – would have been compelling as a youth drama in their own right, even without the disturbing undercurrents. 

James Woods and Kathleen Turner are excellent as the parents struggling to comprehend the nightmarish situation that grips their family, while Kirsten Dunst is especially strong as the most outgoing of the daughters.  

At the heart of the film is a mystery: the five girls are an enigma that the film wisely doesn’t even try to explain. And the eerie ambience is perfectly captured by Air’s original soundtrack. 

Trivia: it’s set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, just like Grosse Pointe Blank.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

A stunningly vivid masterpiece written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Kirsten Dunst is absolutely excellent in the title role. It begins with her portraying the 14-year-old Archduchess of Austria being sent to marry the Dauphin of France (Jason Schwartzman), who would become Louis XVI. It ends during the French Revolution, with the royal couple being taken away from the Palace of Versailles to be executed. Admirably it doesn’t need to show those grisly last moments because the suggestion of them is powerful enough.

The film presents a surprisingly sympathetic and non-judgemental portrait of a young woman in an impossible situation, while skilfully building up the wider context that led to her downfall.

Visually, it’s remarkable. There’s a vivid quality to the colours and every scene could be freeze-framed as a poster. It’s richly sumptuous without merely looking pretty.

In keeping with Marie Antoinette’s “unconventional” ways, the film has an urgency that’s boosted by the prominent new-wave and post-punk soundtrack (Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bow Wow Wow, Adam & The Ants, The Cure, New Order, The Strokes). This refreshing, edgy vitality really brings it alive. It’s about as far from the stilted, fusty tropes of a Merchant Ivory-type costumer as it’s possible to get.

Steve Coogan judges it perfectly as Austrian diplomat Florimond Claude, comte de Mercy-Argenteau. Marianne Faithfull has gravitas as Empress Maria-Theresa. Rose Byrne is terrific as the garrulous Yolande de Polastron, Duchess of Polignac.

It’s a joy from start to finish.