Café Society (2016)

Engaging comedy-drama written and directed by Woody Allen. 

It’s the 1930s. Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) goes to Hollywood and gets a job working for his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell). He falls in love with Phil’s secretary Veronica/Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), not realising that she’s already dating someone else – a married man Bobby knows all too well…

The various plot threads play out in a satisfying manner. The film is a slow-burning romance that sensitively explores the “what ifs” of love. 

It’s a fairly low-key film. There are some funny moments, often relating to Bobby’s gangster brother Ben (Corey Stoll). It’s good at showing the contrast between the cultures of California and New York. As always, Woody Allen does an expert job with the nuts and bolts of storytelling, pacing, characterisation and dialogue. 

Kristen Stewart is absolutely spot on as the much-in-demand and conflicted Vonnie.

Still Alice (2014)

Moving drama starring Julianne Moore as a brilliant professor of linguistics who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's at the age of 50. 

The film focuses on her struggle with the disease, and also on the relationships with her insensitive, career-focused husband (Alec Baldwin) and three grown-up children. There’s particular emphasis on her daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart), who initially seems the most estranged but who then gives up the most to care for her mother. 

Moore is fantastic, as always. It’s difficult to imagine anyone else playing this role with more empathy. I could believe her totally. Stewart is also nuanced and sensitive, and the scenes with the pair together are by far the most affecting.

If there’s a failing it’s that the family’s life of privilege is never really in question. The crisis of the disease would be an altogether different outcome for someone who wasn’t successful, wealthy or beautiful, but – this being a film – those options are not even considered.

The Runaways (2010)

Highly entertaining biopic of the 1970s all-girl rock band adapted from Cherie Currie’s autobiography (Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway). It charts their rise to fame, aided by producer Kim Fowley (here played flamboyantly by Michael Shannon) and the group’s inevitable decline into drug hell and internal bickering. Visually and musically, it’s spot-on. Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart paint sympathetic portraits of Cherie Currie and Joan Jett respectively, and it’s their relationship that forms the heart of the story. Oddly, guitarist Lita Ford has been completely minimised to just a few lines. 

Like their records, it’s brash and loud – full of vitality and not especially subtle. But the storytelling is strong and the characters are convincing. I felt it skipped across events somewhat – you’d never guess from watching this that they recorded four albums – but perhaps that’s inevitable when a band’s career is squeezed down to a time that’s roughly equivalent to one of their gigs. 

The only slight criticism is that the seedier 1970s locations don't look dirty or grungy enough. Everything’s a little too clean – even when Joan Jett urinates on a guitar backstage. And the girls look like film stars (because they are) rather than ordinary kids in an extraordinary situation.

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.