Last Orders (2001)

Written and directed by Fred Schepisi, this is a disappointing adaptation of Graeme Swift‘s Booker Prize-winning novel. 

When Alex (Michael Caine) dies, his friends and son honour his final wishes by travelling to Margate to scatter his ashes from the end of the pier. In undertaking this journey, they consider their memories of him and their feelings for each other, past and present.

Somehow, what works beautifully on the page fails to translate to the screen.

Graeme Swift's elegant weaving together of different times and places makes perfect sense in a written context. But filmed, the multiple time frames and young/old juxtapositions seem clunky. Plus, the cheesy music by Paul Grabowsky is jarring and inappropriate. 

Helen Mirren is solid as Jack’s wife Amy. Ray Winstone, Bob Hoskins and Tom Courtenay just do what they always do.

Flood (2007)

Disaster film. 

A storm surge causes flooding and mass destruction in London. Robert Carlyle has to save the city with the help of his estranged father (Tom Courtenay) and his estranged wife (Jessalyn Gilsig). 

It’s nice to see familiar locations such as the Thames Barrier, but unfortunately – despite moments of genuinely gripping drama – parts of the film are unintentionally funny. There’s something oddly stilted and false about the whole thing, with a TV-like quality to the way it’s filmed and directed. It’s like an extended episode of Casualty. Nigel Planer is especially awkward as a guilt-ridden forecaster for the Met Office.

Enjoyably daft as it is, you're left wondering how the film attracted so many relatively big names. David Suchet, Joanne Whalley and Tom Hardy also pop up with varying levels of success.

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

Romantic drama set during and just after World War II.

The “Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” is an informal book club set up by a small group of people on Guernsey during the Nazi occupation. A London-based writer, Juliet (Lily James) begins a correspondence with one of them that leads to her visiting the island. As she slowly becomes drawn into their way of life, she also learns about their secrets. 

It’s a hugely entertaining drama. Some of the reviews, such as Peter Bradshaw’s for The Guardian, dismissed it as twee fluff, but there’s more grit there than you might imagine. There’s certainly human pain and suffering. (Then again, Bradshaw gave five stars to the truly awful Inside Llewyn Davis, so what does he know?)

The performances are superb. Lily James is as charming and lovable as ever. Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtney convey depth as two of the older members of the group. Katherine Parkinson exudes charm as the slightly scatty Isola Pribby, and Michiel Huisman has rugged appeal as the kindly pig farmer Dawsey Adams. 

A lot of little sub-plots add further depth and texture, although a fair amount has been cut from the novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows to make it work on screen – leading to a couple of loose ends.

I was reminded of Local Hero at times – visitor from afar falls in love with a small coastal village and its way of life. And while it doesn’t have the laughs of that film, it’s similarly heartwarming.

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

David Lean’s adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel is a lavish but disjointed epic that grinds on for 200 minutes. Omar Sharif stars as the doctor of the title, who falls in love with young Lara Antipova (Julie Christie). The film takes in World War I, the Russian revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War with a plot that’s too meandering to summarise neatly. Sometimes it races through events briskly, while at other times it appears to linger on scenes that don’t warrant being stretched out – a problem with pacing. 

On the plus side, the colours are rich and the all-star cast is uniformly excellent. It’s nice to see Julie Christie and Tom Courtenay back together again two years after Billy Liar, even if they don’t have much chemistry this time around. Omar Sharif is charismatic, with twinkling eyes and an undeniable presence, while Alec Guinness has a certain authority as the doctor’s brother. Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger and Ralph Richardson are all compelling, too.

On the down side, sometimes the narrative signposting is muddled. For example, when Lara cannot find her husband after the battle, we assume he’s dead but she neither mourns him nor asks about him. It’s simply not clear how she feels or how we’re meant to respond. I wondered if this was because the plot had to be condensed to work as a film, but if that’s the case maybe it could have added some simple explanatory sentences to bridge chunks of narrative that had to be cut. And if that is the reason, it’s ironic that they still ended up with such an incredibly long film (it takes up both sides of a DVD) that often feels slow and cumbersome.

Billy Liar (1963)

The hilarious yet heartbreaking story of a young man who lives in his imagination to escape the pressures and tedium of his daily existence. Billy Fisher simply isn’t ready for the sensible, grown-up world that surrounds him. Caught up in a web of his own fabricated stories, he has promised to marry three different girls and has managed to “lose” the calendars he was meant to post out for his undertaker employer.

It’s an unbeatable character study and Tom Courtenay is spellbinding in the main role. Julie Christie is wonderful as Liz, the most free-spirited and modern of his three sweethearts. Leonard Rossiter and Rodney Bewes are excellent as his bods (Mr. Shadrack) and friend/colleague (Arthur Crabtree) respectively. I usually dislike fantasy scenes in films (they ruined 9 to 5, for example), but here they are integral and work especially well. Billy machine-gunning the people who enrage him is an extremely vivid depiction of his inner world. There’s so much humour and intelligence in the script (adapted by Keith Waterhouse from his own novel), and real poignancy builds as the single-day plot unravels. A masterpiece, pretty much. Watching this again after seeing Cemetery Junction, I realise just how much that film borrows from this one.