Sweet Charity (1969)

Musical directed by Bob Fosse and written by Neil Simon, adapted from the stage musical. 

Shirley MacLaine plays Charity, a dancer who dreams of falling in love. She’s unlucky with a thief and a film star, but then she gets trapped in a lift with the nervous Oscar Lindquist (John McMartin), who she eventually comes to believe really loves her. 

It’s extremely unusual. It's big on colour, with the bright pinks and purples of the Batman TV series. There's a bizarre, bolted-on psychedelic interlude featuring Sammy Davis Jr. And there's an intriguing use of stills amid the action. 

I was disappointed with the ending, and it was interesting to find an alternative – and superior – conclusion as one of the DVD extras.

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.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) works at Life magazine as a “negative assets manager”. His world is humdrum but he daydreams incredible and heroic scenarios, often involving a colleague he has a crush on. When the magazine is threatened with closure and their jobs are endangered, Walter needs to locate a missing photographic negative for the image that will feature on the magazine’s final front cover. This takes him on a journey to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan in search of a photojournalist (Sean Penn), as his actual existence becomes as remarkable as his fantasy life. 

Stiller is charming as the “dull” worker who inevitably becomes a rugged hero. Kristen Wiig is hugely appealing as the woman he falls for (and she even gets to sing him David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”). Shirley MacLaine is a nicely rounded character as his mother. 

This rousing film is funny in places (such as Stiller’s ongoing conversation with a dating agency) and heartwarming in others (you root for him to keep his job and win over the girl). Often it looks like a mobile-phone advert (vivid colours, exotic locations, emotive music), but oddly that works because the idealised escapism of unreality is a central theme. 

It’s unusual, rewarding and refreshing.

Steel Magnolias (1989)

Moving comedy-drama adapted from Robert Harling’s play. Indeed, it works very much as a theatrical piece with long, set scenes and acts. The story concerns six women in a small Louisiana town and examines how their lives interact. At the heart of it is a mother–daughter relationship. There are laughs and tears aplenty. Dolly Parton is a natural as the local beautician. Daryl Hannah proves she really can act as the timid newcomer who gets religion. Julia Roberts is the just-married daughter battling severe diabetes and Sally Field is her endlessly worried mother. Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis are also just right for their parts as older members of the community. The male characters (including Sam Shepard as Dolly Parton’s distant husband) are deliberately played down, allowing the film to keep its focus on the six women. Things are slow to get going and I didn’t think I was enjoying it, but matters improve when the narrative kicks in and ultimately works round to an emotional and satisfying conclusion.