Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

The sequel to Elizabeth is both trashier and more entertaining than that first film. Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush successfully reprise their roles as the queen and her spymaster. And again Shekhar Kapur directs, shooting several scenes from overhead for no apparent reason.

It’s very “loose” with the facts. Why make up events when the real story is so interesting? And if you do invent a new plot, make sure it works. You see an assassination attempt on the queen that was foiled because Anthony Babington (Eddie Redmayne) didn’t have bullets in his gun, but this failure is never explained. Had Walsingham removed the bullets? Was Babington just careless? In reality, he was just one of the plotters and he never pointed a gun at her. So they invented this plot strand only to leave it unresolved.

The other big flaw is Clive Owen as Sir Walter Rayleigh. His motivations are unclear. Is he there to impregnate the queen’s handmaiden (Bess Throckmorton, played by Abbie Cornish) or does he have some deep connection with the queen herself? Or, given his made-up importance in defeating the Spanish Armada, was it all “for England”? Again, bearing in mind that the truth has been embellished, the least they could have done is to make his character work. There’s a “Sunday night TV” quality about him, and I kept thinking of David Essex in some old programme or other.

These points aside, it’s an enjoyable romp. And Cate Blanchett is always worth watching.

Elizabeth (1998)

Biopic of Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) detailing her ascendance to the throne and the various challenges to it that she overcame. It also details the workings of her inner circle and her private life alongside the progression of her public face as she fends off an endless stream of potential suitors and ultimately becomes the “virgin queen” of legend.

Cate Blanchett has a commanding presence in the title role, while Geoffrey Rush has menacing charisma as her adviser and spymaster Francis Walsingham. The all-star cast also includes Lily Allen, Richard Attenborough, Kathy Burke, Eric Cantona, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Fiennes and John Gielgud. And Daniel Craig shows up as a murdering monk.

It’s enjoyable, even if it does sometimes lack context. You will get more out of it if you know your history.

Shekhar Kapur’s direction was sometimes conspicuous. He has a thing for overhead shots and these were used too often.

Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

Francis Ford Coppola’s astonishing film deserves all the acclaim it has received. Set during the Vietnam War, but not really about the conflict as such, it details a mission by Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) to locate and kill a rogue officer named Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz has built an entire religion around himself and is seen as a threat to US forces. The story picks up on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

It’s a stunning piece of cinema. The visuals are remarkable – again and again I was left wondering how something was filmed and how it could look so realistic.

The acting is terrific. Sheen is great as the troubled captain becoming obsessed with tracking down Kurtz. Robert Duvall is fascinatingly bonkers as the lieutenant colonel who just wants to go surfing, despite the explosions going off around him that he doesn’t even seem to notice. His scenes have rightly become iconic, from “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” to the moments when his men blast out Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” from their helicopters as they invade the Viet Cong.

The soundtrack is also remarkable: I love the spooky electronic sounds that so perfectly set the ominous tone of the trip upriver.

You get to see a young Harrison Ford as Colonel G. Lucas – a nod to George Lucas, who nearly ended up directing the film. Thank goodness he didn’t. And Dennis Hopper plays a photojournalist who has been inducted into Kurtz’s cult.

I haven’t seen the original 1979 edit of the film so I can’t tell how different the Redux version is. But you can see that certain scenes – such as meeting the French colonials – weren’t needed for narrative purposes. That said, I do like the way they further enrich the experience of the film. It’s so rich and compelling that there’s space for additional material.

Certainly the best war film I have seen. It hammers home the point that no one is left undamaged by conflict.

Sylvia (2003)

Engaging biopic of Sylvia Plath, mainly focusing on her relationship with Ted Hughes and the decline of her mental health. Gwyneth Paltrow is fairly strong as the American writer in the lead role. Daniel Craig is pretty good as her famous husband except that the Yorkshire accent tends to come and go and it’s difficult to see “James Bond” as a poet. Also, both film-stars are too good-looking to seem like struggling writers.

It’s appropriately grim and grimy in its depiction of England in the early 1960s. Everything seems dimly lit and rather grubby.

I like the way the film presents poetry as such a powerful force. The scenes in which they read out their work and are urged by their friends to do it even faster help to position it as a raw and vital pursuit that’s full of life and energy.

Hughes emerges as a major contributing factor in the depression that led to Plath’s suicide. I don’t know how fair or accurate that is, but the film certainly took Sylvia’s side.

As the story leads to its inevitable conclusion you are left feeling sorry for this young woman who simply needed help (the kindly neighbour played by Michael Gambon wasn’t enough) and for the two children she left behind.

Boyhood (2014)

Dazzling drama written and directed by Richard Linklater (who also made the excellent Before... films). It was filmed across 12 years, so you see a family literally growing and growing older before your eyes. It’s uncanny and very powerful.

Ellar Coltrane plays the boy, who we get to know at various points from ages six to 18. Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) is his smart, pushy sister. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke play their divorced parents, trying their best in life and love and finding that just as difficult as we all do. All four of them turn in stunningly believable performances.

It’s very touching indeed – heartbreaking, funny and enthralling. There are so many threads and it’s an incredibly rich narrative, although never complicated. Each time-snapshot segment works like a short story in its own right, but then we leap forward a few weeks, months or years and see how each episode feeds into the next.

I can’t imagine how a project this ambitious could have been planned and executed so skilfully, but Linklater pulls it off.

Gilda (1946)

Rita Hayworth is hugely charismatic in the title role of this noir-ish melodrama. Glenn Ford is the small-time gambler she shares a love/hate past with, while George Macready plays the sinister new husband who tells her “Hate is the only thing that has ever warmed me”. (His best “friend” is a dagger-tipped cane.) It’s an intense love triangle set against a backdrop of the wealthy Argentinean underworld.

The script is perfect, with characters often cleverly conveying double meanings in their lines.

Hayworth singing “Put the Blame on Mame” in a slinky black dress is seductive and almost disturbingly magnetic.

Carol (2015)

Compelling drama set in the 1950s and adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt.

Carol is going through a divorce and becomes besotted with a young female shop assistant. The two become friends and then more than friends. After Carol is denied custody of her daughter over Christmas, the pair take off on a road trip. But Carol’s estranged husband has other ideas...

Cate Blanchett is mesmerising in the lead role, making every glance or smile or gesture count. Rooney Mara is perfectly cast as the slightly awkward object of her desires. It’s both romantic and uneasy.

Todd Haynes’ film is beautifully shot, with several moments filmed through glass or given a dreamy, luxurious quality. Despite that, it functions as a gritty drama.

Diana (2013)

Unfairly savaged biopic of the Princess of Wales, dealing with the last two years of her life. During this time she gave the famous BBC interview that spilled the beans on the royal family and how unhappy she’d been. This was also the period in which she had an intense relationship with heart surgeon Hasrat Khan, and their love story forms the main narrative thread.

Naomi Watts is believable as Diana, expertly replicating mannerisms such as the eyelash flutter and tilt of the head. She successfully depicts a ludicrously famous icon who is both insecure and cocky, willing to play with her position of power. Naveen Andrews is charismatic as her lover. And as a love story it works well. On the down side, the character of Dodi Fayed (her new boyfriend, who died with her in the Paris underpass on 31st August 1997) is entirely undeveloped. He barely gets a line of dialogue.

Critics were right to point out that there's a “Sunday night TV drama” aspect to it – mainly visually. It lacks “cinematic” qualities and doesn’t give off the lavish feel you would expect from a story about a princess. But it certainly doesn’t deserve the trashing it received.

Diana was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. I realise I’m in a tiny minority by far preferring this film to his more celebrated Downfall.

Frantic (1988)

Tense, constantly gripping thriller directed by Roman Polanski. Harrison Ford plays an American doctor in Paris whose wife is kidnapped from their hotel. In the absence of any help from the police or the US embassy he sets out to find her himself, aided only by a pretty young drug smuggler called Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner).

It’s a taut and exciting narrative, with the mystery steadily deepening as Ford's character begins to learn what’s happening. There are moments of black humour, too, as his situation becomes more and more dire. The scene in which he scrabbles around on a slippery rooftop is a highlight.

Music is by Ennio Morricone, excellently judged as ever, with additional tracks by Grace Jones.

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

Spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone and with music by Ennio Morricone. Clint Eastwood, the “man with no name”, rolls into town and discovers two warring family factions. He cleverly plays them off against each other, initiating a cycle of escalating violence.

The film is entertaining and enjoyable, despite the major distraction of all the dialogue (including Clint’s) being dubbed on afterwards. It’s visually striking and surprisingly gory for the time. Eastwood is effortlessly stylish as the poncho-wearing gunslinger, even after being badly beaten up.

Bullitt (1968)

Steve McQueen is detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt, tasked with protecting a witness for US Senator Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn). But of course things don’t go to plan. McQueen, as usual in his films, looks good and is a powerfully brooding presence without having to say much. He rarely seems to spark off other characters, and he never gets much dialogue.

I liked Jacqueline Bisset as his girlfriend Cathy and wished she had been in it more.

It’s a nice drama with a spectacular car chase in the streets of San Francisco, but the ending is oddly flat and disappointing with nothing really resolved. I understand that they wanted to keep it downbeat, but it felt very unsatisfactory.

The Longest Day (1962)

At 178 minutes, this war epic is aptly named. It’s painfully slow: almost an hour goes by before a shot is fired. A D-Day drama with an all-star cast (42 international stars, according to the cover text), it tries to be panoramic in scope and ends up disjointed and unfocused. There are way too many characters in too many locations. Indeed, new people are being introduced (with title cards) pretty much all the way through. Weirder still, some of the big names – such as Richard Burton – are hardly in it at all. John Wayne is miscast: simply too clumsily wooden and ponderous to be credible as a lieutenant colonel. Meanwhile, the Germans are presented as bumbling and stupid, when clearly they were far from that. But the film is so keen to work as simplistic propaganda that it has no interest in humanising the enemy or even crediting them with tactical skills. It’s self-conscious about its propaganda, too. There are several jarring moments when characters tell each other that this day will go down in history and never be forgotten. The film should show rather than tell. There’s not a hint of moral ambiguity. As such it turns dynamic world-changing events into something surprisingly dull.

Dune (1984)

Famous for being a head-scrambler, David Lynch’s version of the Frank Herbert sci-fi epic is obtuse but fascinating. On my first viewing, many years ago, I found it confusing. Now, having read the novel, I found it made a lot more sense.

There’s a lot going on: the rivalry between two noble houses for control of Arakis (a.k.a. Dune), the mysterious spice (a consciousness-expanding drug), the huge sand worms, the blue glowing eyes of the Fremen, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood of women and their use of telepathy, and The Voice, the Weirding Ways, and the rise of a new messiah...

The special effects, impressive in 1984, now look clunky and almost quaint. But the epic vision of the storytelling shines through.

Kyle MacLachlan is compelling as Paul Atreides. Kenneth McMillan is convincingly nasty as the obese, disfigured Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Sting has a small part as a demented assassin.

In a way it’s a total mess, but it’s a glorious mess. It tries to achieve so much and doesn’t always succeed. But in terms of its scope and ambition, there’s nothing else quite like it.

Octopussy (1983)

“That’ll keep you in curry for a few weeks, won't it?” James Bond tells an Indian man, after handing him some money. This creaking Roger Moore film shows Bond badly in need of a re-think. As well as the usual racism and sexism, it’s largely played as a comic caper. Bond impersonates Tarzan at one point and dresses up as a circus clown for the dramatic bomb-defusing climax. Not only that, but in the countdown to detonation he wastes vital minutes applying the face paint. But even the “serious” parts are ludicrous. Bond drives a horse box with a fake “back end of a horse” that springs up to allow a small jet plane to unfold. He gets involved in an egg-related scam, with too much attention given to rare Faberge antiques. He travels across water in a fake plastic crocodile. He flies with Q into a hilltop palace using a Union Jack hot-air balloon. He dresses up in an ape costume. And so on.

On the plus side, Maude Adams is strong in the title role even if it’s unclear how much of a villain she really is. On the down side, Louis Jourdan is merely passable as an exiled Afghan prince and Steven Berkoff is utterly appalling as the cartoonish Soviet general Orlov.

You might hope this was it for Roger Moore as Bond, but he survived for one further film (A View to a Kill) – despite looking a little too old and weary for the role.

Skyfall (2012)

The third Daniel Craig Bond film is not only his best, but also the best Bond film overall. Directed by Sam Mendes, it’s pretty much perfect. The witty and dry dialogue is so much stronger than in previous episodes. And it’s visually stunning. The opening sequence (before the mind-bending titles over the Adele song) is a stunning piece of extended action in Istanbul involving a car chase through a crowded market, a shoot-out, a motorbike chase over rooftops, an absurd episode involving an excavator, a fight on the roof of a moving train, and, most dramatically, Bond being shot “dead”.

I’ve heard fans say that this film humanises Bond too much, with his family backstory and the “psychological” dimension, but for me that only makes it better. There’s even the first hint of homoeroticism in a Bond film. The villain teases him, only for 007 to counter “What makes you think this is my first time?”

It’s ideally cast, introducing the new Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) plus the new Chairman of Intelligence (Ralph Fiennes) and an impressively nasty villain called Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Rory Kinnear resumes his role as Bill Tanner, getting the part just right. And Judi Dench is wonderful as M. When she starts reading a poem by Tennyson as Bond runs through the London streets to save her (the film is also a British tourism brochure), it’s deeply stirring stuff.

Centurion (2010)

It’s 117 AD and a Roman centurion in Scotland (Michael Fassbender) has enraged the local Picts. When one of his men kills the Pict leader’s son, the Picts – led by a mute warrior savage called Etain (Olga Kurylenko) – vow to hunt down the remaining Romans.

It’s an exciting drama and the script is fine, but there’s an absurd amount of blood and gore to the point that it’s distracting and almost fetishistic. This also makes the film look trashier than it is.

As in Prometheus and Alien Covenant, Fassbender is strong in the main role and is the best thing about the film. I also liked the kindly witch (Imogen Poots) who cares for him.

The superior 2011 film The Eagle is set about 20 years later and could almost have been designed as a sequel.

Dunkirk (2017)

Stunningly dramatic war film. There’s no let up in the tension, made more extreme by Hans Zimmer’s remarkable music, which – brilliantly – is sometimes indistinguishable from the sound effects. A few things stop it being a masterpiece. The fragmented timelines of the three story threads (it’s a Christopher Nolan film, like the muddled Inception) make it slightly difficult to follow – especially since you cannot easily tell which (masked) Spitfire pilot is which. There’s very little dialogue, so you’re reliant on visual signposting. The characters aren’t as developed as they would be in the superior 1917. Also, the aspect ratio keeps changing, which can be distracting. And I just can’t get along with Kenneth Branagh, whose Commander Bolton has to be a really nice guy as well as a super-tough naval hero.

These gripes aside, it’s incredibly exciting from start to finish. It captures the mad panic of war, if not the blood, guts and pain. But that image of the doomed Spitfire, completely out of fuel and slowly losing height over the coastline, is one that will stay with me.

1984 (1984)

Grim, grey, grisly retelling of the George Orwell novel. John Hurt is Winston Smith. Suzanna Hamilton plays his illicit lover Julia. And Richard Burton is the sinister O’Brien.

While it’s expertly done, it’s difficult to appreciate something so unrelentingly pessimistic – especially during a global crisis. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take away from it. Yes, totalitarianism is bad. And yes, there are many parallels with the modern world – especially in these dark days of Donald Trump, when “truth” has been devalued.

The Eurythmics recorded the soundtrack, but hardly any of that music is in the film.

Junior Bonner (1972)

Charming Sam Peckinpah film about a rodeo rider (Steve McQueen) hoping to make his fortune while juggling family problems. My copy came free with a newspaper a few years ago.

It’s shot in a remarkable way that juxtaposes fast, feel-good country tunes with insanely dangerous horse and bull manoeuvres.

The highlight is a surreal extended barroom brawl that gets out of hand while Junior quietly gets to know his new girlfriend Charmagne (Barbara Leigh). The scene is given a weirdly trippy feel with dubby sound effects mingling with the country band playing in the room – another striking juxtaposition.

The quirky narrative keeps you guessing until the end. Will Junior’s alcoholic dad get back with his mother? Or will he realise his dream of moving to Australia? And will Junior win the big prize money by lasting eight seconds on the most terrifying bull? And will he get the girl?

The ending isn’t obvious at all, but it is satisfying.

Chinatown (1974)

Highly watchable Roman Polanski crime thriller starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. The former plays Jake Gittes, a private investigator. The latter plays Evelyn Mulwray, who is suspected of killing her husband.

The plot unfolds slowly and luxuriously. The L.A. locations look stunning, and it’s one of those films that can be paused at any moment to reveal an image striking enough to work as a poster. There’s a spacious quality to the pace and style of the storytelling that’s missing from so much modern cinema. It’s a film you want to live in.

And Nicholson – one of the most charismatic people to ever walk the Earth – is transfixing.

Breathless (1960)

Unusual French drama written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Petty criminal Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) goes on the run after killing a policeman. In Paris he stays with an American (Jean Seberg as Patricia Franchini) and the film explores their strange relationship as the net tightens around him.

It’s more of a character study than a conventional crime thriller, and one extended scene in Patricia’s flat goes on and on – almost as if the film takes place in real time.

I’m not sure you’re meant to like the characters at all, so it’s difficult to warm to, but the edgy energy of the film is striking.

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Heartbreaking drama about bereavement and grief. Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is mourning his brother when he learns he’s been named as the guardian of his 16-year-old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges). But Lee has his own grief he never came to terms with – his children died in a house fire as a result of his own actions and his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) subsequently left him.

Told in partial flashback and set in bleak Maine winter scenery, it’s a desperately sad story with no easy answers about anything.

The acting is uniformly superb and the music, from Albinoni to Bob Dylan, is perfectly chosen for each scene. It’s masterful in its emotionally harrowing realism, but it’s not something to watch if you are feeling fragile.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Rob Reiner’s masterpiece is one of the funniest films ever made. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer are hilarious as the British heavy metal band on tour in the USA. As ticket sales fall and their popularity wanes, tensions grow. 

The songs are extremely well observed – from “Big Bottom” to “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” – and the detailed observations of rock-star behaviour are absolutely spot on. Every lyric and posture is perfectly judged. The facial expressions alone are priceless, perfectly capturing the pomposity of selfish rock stars living in a bubble and expecting to be worshipped for whatever they do – see the scene in which Nigel Tufnel complains about the sandwiches, for example. 

It’s a mark of the film’s brilliance that so many lines of dialogue – from “turning it up to 11” to “documentary or, if you will, rockumentary” – have entered the language. 

St. Elmo’s Fire (1985)

Fascinatingly 1980s “Brat Pack” drama about seven friends who have just graduated. They are about to embark upon adult lives, and they drink and smoke excessively while attempting to navigate their tangled relationships.

It’s possibly the template for Friends, but without the jokes and the strong writing. In fact, there’s something rather unappealing about the film’s self-consciousness.

Morally, it seems quite confused and the troubles encountered by these wealthy, spoiled kids – what we’d now call “first-world problems” – don’t seem especially important.

There’s a completely flawed thread about one of them (Emilio Estevez as Kirby) becoming obsessed with a medical student (Andie MacDowell). Something in the execution of this plot simply doesn’t ring true. It would have been a tighter storyline if he’d been infatuated with one of his six friends, pulling the focus back into the main group.

The seven main actors get equal billing in the credits (named alphabetically), which suggests there were ego and/or payment disputes in the background, but some of them are stronger than others. Demi Moore is probably the most credible as the cocaine-addicted party girl. Rob Lowe is hard to believe as the thrill-seeking, sax-playing Billy, who somehow had time to have a wife and child already. I also don’t believe Judd Nelson’s character would have liked Andrew McCarthy’s character, or that glamorous yuppie played by Ally Sheedy would have had time for earnest, frumpy girl played by Mare Winningham.

While there are some good lines (the script is better than it might have been), it’s ultimately as immature and shallow as its characters.

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Superb drama. Robert Dupea is a moody, troubled drifter who runs away from commitment. When he learns that his father is unwell he travels back to his family home where he’s presented with truths about himself and his relationships that he has been trying to evade all his life.

This film is perfectly cast. Jack Nicholson is mesmerising in the main role. Karen Black is brilliant as Rayette, his waitress girlfriend – a Tammy Wynette fan he’s embarrassed by because she’s of a lower class than his musically gifted, well-educated family. Particularly strong is Lois Smith as Robert’s pianist sister Partita.

Issues of social status and identity slowly unfold, but there are moments of humour too. There’s a wonderful scene in which Robert picks up two hitchhikers. One of them (played by Helena Kallianiotes) is obsessed by dirt and talks about nothing else. The other, her friend, is played by a young Toni Basil. This has nothing to do with the plot but adds so much in terms of character. I love the fact that films of this era had the freedom to develop their writing in this way. Likewise, the climactic father-and-son scene offers no simple solutions or resolutions as it would if Five Easy Pieces had been made today.

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

This romantic comedy directed by Rob Reiner isn’t up to his usual standards. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan play the mutually attracted New Yorkers intent on staying just friends. There are some funny moments, but others fall flat. Billy Crystal emerges as difficult to like. I know that’s meant to be part of the character, but the problem is that I kept disliking him even after we were supposed to believe he had finally stopped being shallow and grown up.

Meg Ryan is as charming as ever and makes acting seem very natural. In particular, her crying scene – in which he hands her tissues and she tosses them over her shoulder – is brilliantly done. Carrie Fisher plays their friend (comically named Marie Fisher) and is also excellent. But overall, something was missing – chemistry, perhaps. Or maybe it’s just not believable enough.

Nora Ephron would go on to write funnier Meg Ryan films – Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998).

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Slightly childish melodrama set in a Welsh mining village circa 1900. A local man, played by Roddy McDowall as a child, recalls his childhood growing up in a strict family united by their strong faith and work ethic. There’s life, death, forbidden romance, singing and (inevitably) mine-based tragedy.

While all of the dramatic elements in themselves are engrossing, there’s something extremely stilted about the way the film is made. There’s almost an am-dram quality to it. Not only can you see where the set ends and the painted backdrop begins, but there’s also a slowness and an unreal quality to most of the scenes. It clearly wasn’t filmed in Wales, either. The California sun beats down on the cast, and some of the accents are utterly absurd – often sounding Indian, Irish or even Dutch.

While it’s not exactly a great film, or even a good one, Maureen O’Hara is loveable as Angharad Morgan and Walter Pidgeon is impressive as the tormented priest in love with her. This romance is a thread running through the film and is far more interesting than the narrator’s digressions into authoritarian family life and awkward schooling.

Unresolved threads:
• Huw being in love with Bronwyn. Did he ever tell her or do anything about it?
• Huw being inexplicably unable to walk after falling in some cold water, then miraculously being able to walk again. How?
• Huw being bullied at school and learning to fight. Did his colleagues accept him?
• The school teacher being beaten up. What happened next? Were there really no repercussions?
• The invitation for the choir to sing before the queen? Did they ever do it?
• Two of the brothers going off to America. Were they ever heard from again?
• Two other brothers leaving home. Were they ever heard from again?
• Nasty deacon. Did he get his comeuppance?
• Angharad’s unexplained divorce. What happened?
...and most of all...
• Angharad and the priest. Did they get together or not?!

Some Like It Hot (1959)

An absolutely wonderful comedy classic. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are the musicians who have to impersonate women to escape Prohibition-era gangsters. Marilyn Monroe is the singer and ukulele player in the all-girl band they join in order to flee Chicago.

It’s very, very funny and the slapstick is perfectly timed. Curtis and Lemmon make it work because they through themselves so completely into pretending to be women. The most amusing moment is probably the sequence on the train after lights-out when an absurd number of girls cram themselves into Jerry's tiny bunk for a secret party.

Monroe is perfect as Sugar Kane. There are stories of her being unable to remember her lines on set, but her performance is so natural and charming that it’s hard to believe.

Downfall (2004)

Harrowing account of Hitler’s final days in the Berlin bunker at the end of World War II. It’s presented from the perspective of his young secretary – one of the few people in his inner circle who survived, and whose account we are expected to trust.

There’s an appropriately depressing green/grey bleakness to the visuals, and the story is even bleaker. There are many suicides and you also witness a mother poisoning her children. In many ways I regret watching it, however brilliantly it was made.

There’s plenty of moral ambiguity, too. Hitler and his inner circle are humanised (which for many, I’m sure, was controversial), but the film struggles with the same problem as any work of art that tackles these events – how to make sense of something that simply makes no sense.

Bruno Ganz is all too believable as Hitler. Alexandra Maria Lara is perfect as the wide-eyed young Traudl Junge, who ends up working for him. Downfall cannot resolve the moral ambiguity of her seeming to be an innocent who didn’t know what was going on. That's difficult to believe. I’m also not sure it was a wise artistic decision to bookend the film with footage of the real-life Junge talking about what happened. A documentary might have been more successful than this slightly awkward mixture of a reimagining and actual interview footage.

Zulu (1964)

Fascinating war film documenting the Battle of Rorke’s Drift between British soldiers and the native Zulu warriors in 1879. Michael Caine and Stanley Baker are superb as the rival lieutenants co-ordinating the defence.

It’s a quirky tale with unusual humour and extremely well-drawn characters. Shot using the Super Technirama 70, it certainly has an unusually vivid quality. The most affecting scene shows a Zulu war chant competing with a Welsh choir in a battle not only of armies but also of cultures.

For a film in which so many people die, it’s surprisingly ungory. But despite the “clean” killings, it doesn’t in any way cheapen the loss of life. And while it doesn’t moralise, it does raise issues of the ethics of war.

The Way We Were (1973)

Romantic drama starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. They play completely opposite characters who fall in love but struggle to reconcile their differences. This occurs against a backdrop of American history from the late 1930s through to the late 1960s or early 1970s, and it weaves in such events as the news of Wallis Simpson marrying Edward VIII and the death of Roosevelt in 1945. The political drama culminates in a violent incident at the height of McCarthyism.

The film is engrossing and sophisticated, and the two stars are terrific. Streisand in particular really shines. What lets it down slightly is the plot: it was hard to understand why the couple ever got together when Redford never seemed to show much fondness for Babs and her militant idealism. Was he really just cold-hearted? Or was there another reason why he seemed so distant? The actors have great chemistry together but the idea of their characters as a couple never quite rings true.

Whiteout (2009)

Disappointing thriller set in Antarctica. A strangely uncharismatic Kate Beckinsale is a US marshal investigating a homicide that turns out to be linked to a Russian cargo plane that crashed in 1957.

The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is an interesting location for a drama, and there’s a definite sense of tension when you see the ice-pick killer on the loose in a blizzard.

But the film suffers from a weak script and an oddly anticlimactic ending. A potentially intriguing sub-plot about chemical weapons fizzles out entirely. And the big “unveiling” of the real villain happens too late: if the viewer could see it coming, why couldn’t Kate Beckinsale?

Wind River (2017)

Tense, gripping thriller set in the snowy wastes of Wyoming. A body is found and an inexperienced FBI agent is sent to investigate (Elizabeth Olsen as Jane Banner). She’s helped by hunter/tracker Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), who knows the land and who has had his own personal tragedy very similar to the one he becomes involved in.

It’s atmospheric and surprisingly scary. And there’s a wider point being made about the treatment of native American people. The saddest line in the film comes when Martin Hanson (Gil Birmingham) is wearing his traditional “death face” make-up and becomes disheartened and self-conscious about it, saying that there’s no one left to teach him how to do apply it properly.

My only criticism is that quite a bit of the dialogue is muttered or murmured in a way that’s difficult to decipher. But this is a brilliant film.

The Naked Gun (1988)

Satisfyingly silly slapstick. It’s a satire of James Bond, TV cop shows and Chandleresque detective stories. Leslie Nielson is lovable as the utterly buffoonish Frank Drebin and Priscilla Presley is excellent as his girlfriend. The jokes are extremely childish and basic, and all the more funny for it. Some of the baseball references passed me by, but that in no way reduced the enjoyment.

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson (2016)

Reasonably engrossing saga of the true-life events of 15th January 2009, when Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed a damaged Airbus A320 in New York’s Hudson river after both engines failed. The film intercuts the story of that day with flashback scenes and details of the aftermath in which Sully is subjected to a public hearing. The National Transportation Safety Board questions his decision not to return to LaGuardia airport, despite the fact that he's being widely celebrated as a hero who saved all 155 lives on board. He has to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, the sudden adoration of the public and the threat of seeing his career and reputation in ruins.

Tom Hanks takes the lead role and is his usual blandly competent-but-unremarkable self. Laura Linney is rather weak as his wife, stuck at home worrying and not given much of a role. Ironically, Sully’s actual wife is tougher, more glamorous and more charismatic – as can be seen in the DVD-extra documentary.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Stanley Kubrick’s film about marines in the Vietnam War is very uneven. The first section, detailing the marines’ training with their drill instructor, is compelling and blackly funny. R. Lee Ermey is fantastic as the terrifyingly tough sergeant and it’s worth watching if only for the call-and-response marching songs.

The second part of the film is less involving, despite being set in the war itself. This is mainly because we haven’t been introduced to most of the characters and therefore don’t especially care about them. The battle sequences are brutal and extremely well-filmed.

Matthew Modine is fine in the lead role as Private J.T. “Joker” Davis, from whose point of view the film is presented, but in terms of narrative arc and characters you can empathise with there’s still something missing.

She’s Having a Baby (1988)

Romantic sort-of comedy-drama about a young couple (Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern) who get married and eventually embark on parenthood. It’s a strange film. There are several dream sequences/magic-realist interludes that don’t add a great deal (and which possibly confuse the narrative), although the scene in which a street of all-American dads mow their lawns in stylised formation is effective satire that would have been critically applauded if Dennis Potter had shot it.

The lead actors are OK if not spectacular in the two key roles, but the main problem with the film is that it doesn’t establish their relationship and what they mean to each other – until it’s too late. We meet them on their wedding day with Alec Baldwin trying to talk a nervous Kevin Bacon out of getting married because he doesn’t want to lose his best friend (this seems like a homo-erotic sub-plot, but the film is so muddled that you can’t be sure). It would have been far better to start with an establishing scene – a romantic walk along the beach, or whatever – that shows how the couple really feel about each other. Instead, it leaps into themes of social conformity and how Americans are expected to behave. When Kristy secretly stops taking the pill in order to get pregnant it comes as a total surprise because the character is so underwritten that we don’t know how she feels about anything, let alone contraception and parenting. And then it becomes a different sort of film in the last 45 minutes. John Hughes juggles many themes (peer pressure, our role in society, masculinity, etc.), but doesn’t satisfactorily address any of them.

It’s difficult to know who this film is for. Was it made for female Bacon fans (he’s topless a lot of the time)? And if so, how are they meant to feel about the women in the story?

Greed (2019)

Anything directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan is worth watching – see also Twenty-Four Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story or The Trip.

Wiki politely calls this “A satire on wealth, centred around a billionaire high-street fashion mogul’s 60th birthday on the Greek island Mykonos.” Others have suggested it is based on the life and career of Philip Green. Arrogant, ruthless and teeth-whitened, Steve Coogan is utterly convincing as the brusque bully in the lead role – Sir Richard “Greedy” McCreadie – as is Isla Fisher as his ex-wife. David Mitchell is perhaps too shy and indecisive as the biographer, although it makes sense that someone more ruthless would be denied access to such a controlling figure. 

There are several interwoven strands:
• The life of the entrepreneur, from school days to the present.
• The build-up and aftermath of his outlandish, stupidly expensive themed party.
• A look at (mostly dysfunctional) personal relationships: father/son, husband/wife, husband/ex-wife, employer/employee.
• A vain daughter attempting to be the star of her own reality-TV show.
• A biographer attempting to research the life of McCreadie.
• A savage satire on wealth and success.
• A searing condemnation of the way the fashion industry is built on a brutally exploited slave underclass.

It does all this and manages to be funny. There’s high drama, too: I certainly didn’t predict the way the party would end...

At the closing credits, the film presents you with some sobering statistics about the pitiful wages people get paid working in sweatshops.

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Fifth time around for Sean Connery as James Bond.

Pros:

• The definitive Bond villain base, disguised within a volcano and featuring its own railway system and a lethal piraña pool.
• An exciting scene in which Bond pilots the autogyro “Little Nellie” and is attacked by four helicopters.
• Donald Pleasence is creepily convincing as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE.

Cons:

• Plenty of racial stereotyping that culminates in a ludicrous scene in which Bond is made to be “Japanese”.
• Bond: “Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?...Like Peking duck is different from Russian caviar. But I love them both.”
• A slightly tired feel. The Bond formula is well established already by this point and was possibly becoming a bit of a straitjacket.

Stand by Me (1986)

Sweet and touching coming-of-age drama about four American boys who set off along the railway to find the body of a dead child.

There are scares and surprises along the way (an attack dog, nearly being run down by a train, a nasty gang of kids led by Kiefer Sutherland), but the real focus of the story is the relationship between the four boys and what else is going on in their emotional lives.

Gordie (Wil Wheaton) is bereaved after losing a brother he failed to live up to in the eyes of his devastated parents. (As an adult, played by Richard Dreyfuss, he narrates the story he has now turned into a book.) And Chris (River Phoenix) has been written off as a no-hoper. Meanwhile Teddy (Corey Feldman) is not quite right in the head and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) has an older brother in the nasty gang.

It’s a poignant tale about friendship and growing up.

Rob Reiner’s direction is unfussy and perfectly judged, allowing the characters to develop and the story to unfold at just the right pace.

Defiance (2008)

War saga set in Belarus in 1941. It tells the story of the Bielski partisans, who saved Jewish people from the Nazis by hiding in the forest and building a resistance community. It’s also the story of four brothers, played by Daniel Craig, Liev Schreibe, Jamie Bell and George MacKay.

There are harrowing moments, as you might expect, but also unexpected lightness and even romance.

Daniel Craig is as charismatic as ever, even if his accent comes and goes at times.

1917 (2019)

A stunning and emotional WWI film directed by Sam Mendes.

Plot: two young British lance corporals (played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) are sent on a mission to call off an attack that would see the Germans slaughtering 1,600 men.

The scene in which the pair start off by crossing no-man’s land is especially nail-biting.

The music by Thomas Newman is stirring and often terrifying, heightening the tension at all the right moments.

The way it’s shot is remarkable, too, with highly believable extended takes (such as a long walk through the trenches) and no intrusive stylisation.

It’s extremely gripping, and also very moving. The scene in which MacKay stumbles across a French woman and a baby (not her own) sheltering in an abandoned building will stay with me for a while, as will the image of the German plane being shot down and landing where you least expect it to.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Brutal military drama by Ridley Scott that details the US involvement in the 1993 civil war in Somalia.

A UN taskforce is sent into Mogadishu to capture the leader of the militia, Mohamed Farrah Hassan Aidid. It sounds straightforward enough, but the mission goes horribly wrong when a US helicopter is shot down. Chaos ensues, and the Americans seem naive and ill-prepared. You know there isn’t going to be a simple resolution or a happy ending.

The film is extremely violent – sometimes almost unbearably so. In no way does it glamorise war (you see body parts galore), but – perhaps inevitably – it does only show it from the Americans’ perspective.

The ensemble cast has no real star or focal point. This has the benefit of making it about the team rather than any one “hero”.

Being a Ridley Scott film, it looks stunning and the soldiers’ relentless, harrowing experience of being under constant attack is detailed brilliantly.

In the Heart of the Sea (2015)

The whaleship Essex was sunk in 1820 by a large sperm whale. That true story caught the imagination of Herman Melville, who published his masterpiece novel Moby-Dick in 1851. This film, adapted from the book of the same name by Nathaniel Philbrick, tells the story of the Essex in flashback as one of the few survivors of the ship recounts his tale to Melville.

Ron Howard’s direction is vivid and exciting. I’m not quite convinced by Chris “Thor” Hemsworth as Owen Chase. Is it his diction or just his difficulty with mastering the Nantucket accent that makes his garbled speech so hard to understand?

The film is able to sidestep ethical issues about whaling because they didn’t trouble anyone in the 1800s. It can’t avoid the topic of cannibalism, though, although it doesn’t go into the religious justifications for the deed that were referenced in Alive.

The visuals are striking. Often the film looks peculiarly coloured and dream-like. That’s not because the CGI is poor – in fact, it’s incredibly convincing. It’s because some of the scenes are lit in a way that just doesn’t feel “real”. But – given the flashback mechanism – you could argue that this is what vivid memories look like, given their intensity.

It’s a satisfyingly well-told story that never flags.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

There are a few unusual things about this James Bond film. For a start you see the performer of the song in the title sequence – in this case Sheena Easton. Secondly, the film ends with Margaret and Dennis Thatcher taking a phone call from a parrot they believe to be James Bond. Impersonators Janet Brown and John Wells play the pair, and it’s a genuinely funny scene, but it’s certainly not what you expect from a film in this series.

For Your Eyes Only is slightly grittier than the daft Moonraker, and it’s one of the more watchable Roger Moore films.

Topol is easy to like as the nut-guzzling Milos Columbo, while Carole Bouquet is fairly good as Melina Havelock. Julian Glover is the unspectacular villain Aristotle Kristatos. The subplot about Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson), the young ice skater, is somewhat baffling and could have been cut entirely.

The skiing and rock-climbing sequences are fairly exciting, as is the underwater battle in a sunken ship filled with corpses. Also good to see Bond and his girlfriend pottering about in a submersible.

As if all that wasn’t enough, some of the action scenes are accompanied by funky music.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Inspired fusion of sci-fi and western. Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford are the cowboys battling the mysterious aliens who have stolen their people and who want their gold. Daniel Craig is the sole survivor of an abduction and cannot remember any of what happened to him, but he wears one of the aliens’ bracelets, which acts as a superweapon he can use against them. Olivia Wilde plays the blue-eyed girl assisting him and turns out to be not quite what she seems.

The brilliance of the film comes from the fact that it plays it straight. There are no knowing smirks and winks. No self-conscious irony. It’s a proper western in which the enemy just happens to be from another world.

There’s plenty of character development, with a father/son theme running across several relationships. Clichés were avoided and scenes that could have turned corny were sufficiently humanised to work well. I suspected it would “go rubbish” at various points – when the aliens started running around, when the big battle began – but refreshingly it stayed original and watchable to the end.

Surprisingly the film wasn’t a commercial success. Too intelligent? Too unusual? It’s a shame – especially when tripe such as Independence Day (1996) does so well.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Sean Connery’s sixth and final James Bond film (not including 1983’s unofficial Never Say Never Again) is one of the weirdest in the series. The tone is completely different – an uneasy blend of comedy and drama that often falls flat.

On the plus side, Charles Gray is excellent as the icy, ruthless Blofeld. And there’s a dramatic Las Vegas car chase that features the classic “car on its side down an alleyway” sequence. I liked the plot element about a cassette of marching tunes that needs to be switched with a lookalike cassette containing the control codes for a satellite threatening to obliterate cities from space.

On the downside, the daft henchmen Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are neither funny nor sinister and their scenes invariably jar with the rest of the film. And Jill St. John isn’t especially appealing as Tiffany Case.

The second half is stronger (from about the time Bond steals a moon buggy), but it’s unusually low on thrills. Even Bond almost being cremated alive doesn’t quite work because of the way the scene is edited.

I expect I will be singing the Shirley Bassey theme tune to myself for at least a week.

Thunderball (1965)

Sean Connery is James Bond for the fourth time.

SPECTRE steal a military jet and hide it underwater, then retrieve its two nuclear missiles and threaten to blow up Miami.

There are daft things in this film, but it’s still gripping. On the ludicrous front, there’s the fact that Bond is booked into the same health farm as a SPECTRE agent. It’s never explained, so you have to assume it’s just an astonishing coincidence. Then there’s the scene in which Bond escapes with a jet pack, conveniently stashed on a roof. Why did he use it on this one occasion but never before and never after?

I liked Domino (Claudine Auger) and the villain Largo (Adolfo Celi), and the acting was generally above-par.

The lengthy underwater fight scene was surprisingly brutal.

As usual, Bond’s asides when killing people are those of a psychopath.

(In 1983, Connery starred in a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again. This isn't considered an official part of the franchise.)

Dr. No (1962)

First James Bond film. All of the tropes are established:
• “Bond. James Bond.”
• Flirting with Miss Moneypenny
• “Shaken not stirred.”
• Women throwing themselves at him
• Car chases
• Exotic locations
• Mindless henchmen
• Odd, disfigured villain dwelling in lavish base

But there’s also an appealingly low-key quality. No helicopter explosions or dazzling special effects here. And the first half works well as a sort of detective story: an MI6 agent is killed and Sean Connery has to find out why.

The film gets stranger from the moment Ursula Andress emerges from the sea to collect shells. Suddenly it turns into more of an adventure story.

Parts of it are unintentionally comic – see the “dragon” (a tank with a blowtorch) and the nuclear decontamination showers – but overall it’s lively and entertaining enough to keep you hooked.

Road to Perdition (2002)

Crime thriller set in 1931. Tom Hanks plays a mobster out to kill the man (Daniel Craig) who murdered his wife and youngest son. Paul Newman is the father and don who places Mafia loyalties before all else.

Told from the perspective of the mobster’s elder son (played sensitively by Tyler Hoechlin), the film examines both the boy’s relationship with his father and also his immersion into a world of gangland corruption and cold-blooded killing.

Sam Mendes’ direction is a little too stylised – there’s lots of “enigmatic” rain – but the storytelling is nevertheless powerful.

Jude Law is a little unconvincing as the murderous photographer. The character isn’t developed enough to explain why he has a thing about dead bodies. Maybe it makes more sense in the graphic novel from which this is derived.

“Cuddly” Tom Hanks isn’t quite right as Michael Sullivan, but the film cleverly has it both ways: he’s a heartless killer who truly loves his family and therefore comes across as a reasonably nice guy.

These points aside, it’s fairly atmospheric and engrossing.