Earthquake (1974)

When Los Angeles is hit by a major earthquake, it’s up to a few brave heroes to save as many lives as possible. This film performs the standard disaster-film trick of setting up several diverse characters in different places before the incident kicks off. We get to know them a little, and then we get to see how they fare when everything goes wrong. It works because it actually makes us care.

The drama is fairly compelling. On a couple of occasions it lapses into sensationalism – most notably when a lift plunges in its shaft and animated drops of blood superimposed on the screen indicate that everyone in it died. But the film is generally impressive in terms of the special effects of the time (a bursting dam, burning buildings, semi-collapsed structures) and it successfully conveys the huge scale of the disaster. It feels “real” in a way that The Poseidon Adventure never does. 

Charlton Heston is the former sporting hero who has to save work colleagues and his father-in-law. Geneviève Bujold is the young mum who Heston has fallen for. Will he save her or his semi-estranged wife (an oddly unconvincing Ava Gardner)? George Kennedy plays a tough, cynical cop who proves decent enough to do the right thing. Richard Roundtree is a motorcycle stunt driver whose potential is never quite realised in the plot. (I kept expecting him to have to leap across a crack in the ground or cycle through a ring of fire, but his story just peters out.) There are also roles for Victoria Principal (of Dallas fame), who is nearly the victim of a machine-gunning predator, and Walther Matthau, who gets to be a comedy drunk. It’s not clear why they felt the need for comedy in a fairly serious film.

Gripping and suspenseful, this is well worth seeing.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Another masterpiece directed (and also written) by Sofia Coppola. It’s a gentle drama with comic elements. Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is in Tokyo to film a whiskey advert. He meets a young college graduate called Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson). They are both experiencing marital problems and get time alone in their hotel rooms to reflect on them. Bob’s wife faxes him home decor suggestions and posts him carpet samples, while Charlotte’s husband (Giovanni Ribisi) is an absent, immature photographer. Feeling alien, lonely and disorientated in a culture they don’t understand, the two develop a deep connection that goes beyond casual friendship. 

The film is poignant and touching. There are glimmers of romance between the pair, but it’s to the film’s huge credit that it resists that obvious option and instead focuses on the two characters and their far less predictable kind of relationship. Murray and Johansson each give the performance of a lifetime, perfectly handling the empathy and restraint evident in the sensitive script. 

Coppola creates a strange and lovely atmosphere, understanding that what goes unsaid can be more potent than the words actually uttered, and each successive scene builds upon that. By the end, you feel profoundly engaged with these characters in a way that doesn’t usually happen when you watch a film. 

There are too many perfect scenes to mention, but my favourite is the karaoke episode. Charlotte sings “Brass in Pocket” (The Pretenders) and Bob sings “More Than This” (Roxy Music). In each case, they seem to be using the song to communicate something to each other. 

A really special film. One of the very best.

True Lies (1994)

Action comedy thriller that cleverly pastiches the James Bond series, with a lot of added humour. James Cameron directs, handling a potentially complex plot extremely lucidly. He also indulges his usual tic for lots of white and blue backlighting.

Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) works as a secret agent for the Omega Sector intelligence agency. His wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) knows nothing about this and believes he’s a dull computer salesman. When Harry suspects her of having an affair, he contrives an elaborate scheme to fulfil her desperate desire for adventure and excitement but ends up accidentally dragging her into a dangerous terrorist plot led by Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik). 

The film balances witty observation with genuinely exciting action. Discussing the villain, one of the teams says “They call him the Sand Spider.” “Why?” asks the head of Omega Sector (played by Charlton Heaton). “Probably because it sounds scary,” is the response. 

The ending is one of the most spectacular action sequences I have seen (Cameron is incredibly skilled at this), and the Harrier jump-jet sequence at the climax is absolutely heart-stopping.

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.

Somewhere (2010)

Drama directed by Sofia Coppola, the brilliant talent behind Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides. 

Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a famous actor living at Los Angeles hotel the Chateau Marmont. Recovering from an injury, he seems detached and numb. Plus, he’s receiving aggressive texts and it seems that his car is being followed. When he unexpectedly has to look after his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) for several days, his world begins to change. 

Like Coppola’s other modern classics, this is all about the characters and their relationships rather than the plot. She’s not afraid to let silences stretch, or to let scenes unfold at their own pace, and the film feels much more “real” as a result. 

Music once again plays a big part, with expertly chosen tracks often playing out in full because they fit the mood or tone so well. 

I like the fact that Somewhere is of no recognisable genre. It hints at evolving into a sort of thriller, but cleverly dismisses those elements and keeps the focus on the evolving father-and-daughter dynamics. A real treat.

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.

Anywhere but Here (1999)

Impulsive, restless Adele August (Susan Sarandon) drags her teenage daughter Ann (Natalie Portman) from Bay City, Wisconsin, to Beverly Hills, California, to begin a new life. It soon becomes clear that Ann is the more sensible of the pair, and her resentment builds as she considers the friends and family she’s been forced to leave behind. 

The film begins with a road trip and I would have liked more of that, but ultimately it’s not about their travels. The focus is primarily on the mother-daughter relationship and how that develops under increasingly strained circumstances. There are a few laughs, too, which emerge from a strong, character-driven script. 

Sarandon sparkles as the maddening but hugely appealing Adele. Portman gives a performance that unlike other films (Star Wars prequels, Garden State), suggests she’s a pretty solid actor who hasn’t always chosen the right roles. 

The conclusion is satisfying and emotional without being mawkish.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

The SS Poseidon is sailing from New York to Athens when an underwater earthquake creates a huge wave that turns the ship over. A small group of passengers do their best to survive, despite the water coming in and the fires breaking out.

I was curious to see this film, which I had often heard about. It’s trashier than I expected. There’s a shabby made-for-TV quality to it, and it has none of the big-budget grandeur of disaster classics such as The Towering Inferno. The characters are absurdly diverse “types”, including:
• a rogue preacher (Gene Hackman)
• an angry, bad-tempered cop (Ernest Borgnine) and his ex-prostitute wife (Stella Stevens)
• a gee-whiz American kid (Eric Shea) and his older sister (Pamela Sue Martin)
• a woman given no other function than to be “a fat lady” (Shelley Winters) and her thinner husband Jack Albertson (Grandpa Joe in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory)
• a nervous singer (Carol Lynley) whose band of beardy blokes doesn’t make it
• a kindly, injured waiter (Roddy McDowall)
• an absurd-looking runner (he jogs like a parody of a Carry On character), who’s too shy to have any luck with women (Red Buttons)

Meanwhile, Leslie Nielsen plays the captain. After seeing him in Airplane! and The Naked Gun, it’s strange to see him in a straight role: I kept waiting for the gags that never arrived.

The concept is good, but it’s poorly executed and poorly written. There’s a lack of dramatic tension. Too much of the film becomes a logistical challenge of getting a group of people past an obstacle or from one room to another. The ship is meant to be upside down most of the time, but it rarely looks that way. You only see it in close-up, and the lack of contextual shots mean that what you do see looks like a set. It made me respect the action sequences in James Cameron’s Titanic even more than I did already. 

Character-wise, there are sections that are unintentionally comical – ridiculous, even. Often, one person is speaking and everyone else is holding a strange facial expression, such is the lack of dynamism in the group scenes. There’s a lot of unnecessary shouting, too. And you can tell when someone’s about to die because of the conversation they have beforehand. 

Gene Hackman makes the most of the sub-standard material, but he can only do so much. 

All these points aside, it’s entertaining enough.

Anna Karenina (2012)

When I first saw this lavish Joe Wright/Tom Stoppard adaptation of the Tolstoy novel, at the cinema in 2012, I wasn’t sure what to make of it at all. The radical decision to stage many of the scenes in a theatre set means that you never know quite what to believe – is the action really taking place or is it a stylised manifestation of a character’s feelings? On second viewing, I began to see it as a masterpiece that deliberately pulls apart the “reality” it constructs – perhaps to suggest that everything we do is a sort of fiction. It has a lot of fun with this – for example, switching from footage of a real train to a toy train and seeming to delight in the fact that it’s obviously a miniature model. In another scene, a letter is torn up and thrown into the air. The pieces keep falling because they have become snowflakes. Sometimes a door or window on the stage opens to another place entirely. There’s a sort of Escher logic to it, and you wonder how on Earth they planned it all so cleverly.  

The danger is that such a stylised approach might limit the film’s emotional impact, but if anything it works the other way, elevating simple scenes into works of art that magnify the characters’ situations. It would presumably have been so much easier to make the film as a standard costumer, but instead it operates on a higher level. 

Keira Knightley is appealing and convincing in the title role. Jude Law looks nothing like himself as her rigidly controlling husband. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays the dangerous, icily charming Count Vronsky, who Anna has a devastating affair with. The love story is expertly told. There’s a parallel tale of what happens when passion and freedom conflict with social conformity. Should you follow your heart or do what’s expected of you by your peers and your class? For Anna, of course, neither option works out well.

Gregory’s Girl (1980)

An absolutely lovely comedy directed by Bill Forsyth, the talent behind Local Hero and several other great films.

Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) is a schoolboy who is part of the hopeless school football team in a small Scottish town. When the pretty, athletic Dorothy (Dee Hepburn) joins the team, he is instantly smitten. But although he doesn’t know it yet, it’s her Susan (the wonderful Clare Grogan) who truly likes him.

John Gordon Sinclair captures the awkwardness of being a teenager better than anyone else ever has. He’s hilarious in his good-natured but gawky, fumbling attempts to be with the girl he thinks he loves. He’s helped by his little sister Madeline (the remarkably composed Allison Forster), who is much more mature and worldly wise than he is.

Every character is so well drawn. The script is rich enough that each of Gregory’s friends is developed as a fully rounded individual. Plus, so many little details have the ring of truth about them that you can’t help recognising your own youth in these experiences.

There’s a gentle sweetness to this film that makes it timeless. You will never see anything more charming or romantic. And as it works round to its very satisfying conclusion, you realise you have been smiling for the full 90 minutes.

The Sheltering Sky (1990)

John Malkovich was annoying in Deepwater Horizon and Dangerous Liaisons, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was just the roles, I reasoned. But no, he’s equally annoying and repulsive in this film too. I have an almost animal dislike of his voice, his face and even his walk.

It’s the 1940s. Kit Moresby (Debra Winger) and her husband Port (Malkovich) are travelling in northern Africa. They are accompanied by their friend Tunner (Campbell Scott) and repeatedly encounter an eccentric English mother and son (Jill Bennett and Timothy Spall), who add little to the narrative.

As various episodes unfold and relationships become strained, you wonder what the point of their trip is. The couple clearly get little pleasure from travelling or from each other, and this makes for a film that feels uncomfortably slow and unrewarding. As their situation worsens you begin to sympathise with Kit, but every scene feels ponderous. A crossing-the-desert-by-camel interlude is needlessly drawn out, possibly just as an excuse to show off the admittedly remarkable scenery. Period detail and local authenticity are repeatedly prioritised over pace or momentum.

It’s based on the classic novel by Paul Bowles, who awkwardly narrates some of the action (not even reading his lines very well) and who has a pointless cameo as an elderly man in a café. His part, like so many things about the film, just doesn’t work.

Teen Wolf (1985)

Highly enjoyable comedy starring Michael J. Fox as a teenager who transforms into a werewolf. I was expecting the story to be about his struggle to conceal his true identity, but the brilliance of the plot comes from the fact that everyone he knows simply accepts his transformation, which makes him a better basketball player, a better dancer and a cooler guy all round. Suddenly he’s not average anymore. In fact, he does so well as a wolf that he then has to prove himself as...himself.

There are plenty of surreal and witty moments, but it’s also a standard American school comedy-drama with all the usual loyal friends, jealous enemies, feuding girlfriends and grudge-bearing teachers. Michael J. Fox is always easy to relate to and easy to like. There’s just something about him.

This film came out a month after Back to the Future, when Foxmania was at its height, so it couldn’t really fail. It made $80 million from a budget of just $1.2 million. It certainly doesn’t look expensive (much of it takes place on a basketball court), but that gives it a kind of immediacy too. With the exception of one Beach Boys hit, the pop soundtrack was seemingly commissioned especially for the film – third-rate MTV rockers and clunky ballads that are perfect for this particular story. Some of the songs are played in their entirety, giving the whole thing the feel of an extended promo video.

It’s silly, but gloriously so. It doesn’t get bogged down in explaining the wolf origins or even attempt to make sense of them, and is all the better for that.

A truly entertaining and satisfying 92 minutes.

Airplane! (1980)

Spoof disaster film that’s extremely funny. As with others in this series (see also The Naked Gun), no joke is considered too silly or too childish to be worth making. And there are a lot of them, too – a relentless sequence of gags – so I was laughing almost continuously.

The “plot” is almost irrelevant (mostly it’s just an excuse for the jokes), but it details how veteran fighter pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) and his air-hostess girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagerty) have to safely land a plane after the crew and passengers suffer food poisoning on a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. To complicate matters, Striker is “troubled” by his war experiences, and has a “drink problem” (he can’t locate his mouth when he raises his glass). Plus, Elaine has just broken up with him and he’s trying to win her back.

Leslie Nielsen is easy to love as the hopeless Dr. Rumack. In fact, the entire cast is superb. There is so much rich comic detail that you could watch it again and again.

What Lies Beneath (2000)

Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her husband Norman (Harrison Ford) appear to have an ideal marriage and an ideal home. But the strain starts to show when Claire becomes convinced that their neighbour has murdered his wife. She also begins to observe spooky goings-on in her Vermont home, garden and lake. Norman encourages her to seek psychiatric help, but the weird events begin to escalate and it soon transpires that their marriage isn’t the fairytale story we might have imagined.

Director Robert Zemeckis does an excellent job with this Hitchcockian supernatural thriller. He’s masterful at storytelling (see Cast Away and the Back to the Future trilogy) and proves equally adept at building suspense. It’s genuinely frightening in places, not least because of the clever and claustrophobic way certain shots are framed.

The two leads are as good as ever, and Pfeiffer in particular builds a character you can easily believe in and relate to. There’s a major twist in the second half that changes everything, and both actors adapt their roles perfectly to make it work.

After an increasingly tense plot development, the pay off of the climax is extremely exciting. It’s real edge-of-the-seat stuff.

Limitless (2011)

Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is struggling with motivation in his work (he’s a writer) and relationships (his girlfriend Lindy, played by Abbie Cornish, has dumped him). Then he’s offered a “smart drug” named NZT-48 that unleashes and focuses the full potential of his brain, and his fortunes are radically transformed. Of course there’s a downside to taking it, as well as it bringing him into a world of ruthless people determined to get hold of the substance.

The film depicts the drug's brain-enhancing capabilities perfectly, cleverly visualising an explosion of sensory awareness: colours become brighter, vision becomes clearer, thoughts become more coherent. It makes you wish your brain was smarter and sharper. It also makes you crave some very strong coffee. There’s an excellent scene in which Eddie is attacked by a gang of thugs, and is able to fend them all off by recalling everything he’s ever watched or read about fighting – from Bruce Lee films to discussions on daytime TV.

The visuals are tricksy in places, showing you the world from Eddie’s drug-altered point of view – the endlessly telescoping street views are another nice touch – but that tricksy element works because it’s a film about perception.

Robert De Niro plays tycoon Carl Van Loon, who our anti-hero ends up working with. There's also a sub-plot about a murder that may or may not have taken place under the influence of NZT-48.

It’s an exciting, tightly plotted thriller. You never quite know where it’s going. And, contrary to my expectations, the ending manages to satisfy.

The Horse Whisperer (1998)

Epic weepie. When Grace (a teenage Scarlett Johansson) and her horse Pilgrim are badly injured in a riding accident, Grace’s mother Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas) drives them across America from New York to Montana to meet the gifted cowboy Tom Booker (Robert Redford). Magic ensues as the animal, Grace and Annie are all touched in different ways by Tom’s special healing qualities.

It’s a long, slow-burner at 170 minutes but it needs to be because it’s partly about the adjustment to a slower, more relaxed way of life. There’s an urban vs. rural thing going on, as well as a simple love story. Does Annie want to give up her hectic city life with the husband (Sam Neill) she’s not sure she loves? Or does she want to hook up with the country cowboy whose “whispering” has had such powerful effects on her and her daughter?

If there’s a criticism, it’s that Robert Redford – director as well as star – idealises himself in the role. He’s too good to be true: a super-sensitive genius with horses, but also wonderful with kids. He likes classical music and he’s full of wisdom. And despite being outdoors all day while working with animals, his jeans never get muddy. It’s very telling that the plot of the film deviates from that of the source novel, which offers a more complex set of events. If he could have allowed himself just one character flaw (short temper/heavy drinker, etc), he would have been so much more believable. Instead, he’s somewhat sanitised along with the plot.

Kristin Scott Thomas is intended to be unappealingly uptight and she succeeds a little too well in that, being downright unbearable for the first half of the story.

Overall, it’s worth watching for the huge landscapes and the gradual unfolding of several sets of relationships. I felt engaged, but not particularly moved.

The Killing (1956)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, this is a brilliantly tense crime thriller. An elaborate racetrack robbery has been planned by ex-con Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden). Each of his team has a part to play before they can split the $2 million they aim to steal. But it all goes off the rails when one of the gang (Elisha Cook Jr.) tells his wife (Marie Windsor) about the plan and she tries to double-cross him by bringing her lover into the arrangement.

Although he’s a crook, Johnny seems so reasonable and easy to like that you find yourself rooting for him and hoping that he can escape with the money and his beloved Fay (Coleen Gray).

I really liked the narration by Art Gilmore, which describes events in parallel and employs clever time shifts. You find out what was happening concurrently and sometimes what happened just before the scene you are witnessing. The film is brilliantly shot, too, with elaborate use of shadows and light to create atmosphere.

The Graduate (1967)

Classic romantic comedy-drama directed by Mike Nichols and adapted from the 1963 novel by Charles Webb. It was the most successful film of 1967.

Dustin Hoffman stars as the graduate of the title. He returns to his family’s California home after completing his college degree but is uncomfortable with his parents’ expectations for him. He’s bored, too, and begins an affair with one of their friends (Anne Bancroft). This becomes more complicated when he then starts to fall for her daughter (Katharine Ross).

It’s an intelligent script that satirises the wealthy middle-class lifestyles of the time and makes the most of the social awkwardness Hoffman delivers so well.

The music, by Simon & Garfunkel, is extremely pretty and somehow suits the narrative perfectly, even though only ‘Mrs. Robinson’ was specifically written for the film.

I always liked the closing seconds, which are downbeat and not at all what you might have expected.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

This was critically savaged and/or ignored at the time of release. In his one-star Guardian review, Peter Bradshaw wrote: “You will have had handfuls of wet sand in your swimsuit less irritating than this supremely irritating romantic dramedy.” But I liked the title and the concept – in three weeks the Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid. As society breaks down, everyone has to address the question of how they use the time they have left.

Penny (Keira Knightley) and Dodge (Steve Carell) are neighbours in the same apartment block. When looting and rioting hits their street, they take off together on what turns out to be a sort of road trip. They are opposites in many ways – she’s English, he’s American; she’s 28, he’s middle-aged; she’s giddily naive, he’s reliable, worldly and wise – but inevitably they begin to fall for each other as their time runs out. The blossoming love story points at bigger questions: what really matters in these extreme circumstances? Why does it matter? Who should you spend your last few hours with? Friends and family? A lover? Or a random stranger in the new climate of anything-goes lawlessness?

I can see why Peter Bradshaw was irritated, but I think Keira Knightley’s scatty, free-spirited persona is deliberately annoying. She needs to be, initially, because the film is partly about her character’s progression to maturity as she finally meets someone she really cares about.

One thing fails to ring true, though. She’s supposed to be a music fan and she saves a selection of records from her apartment during the riot. (There are prominent displays of LPs by Herb Alpert, John Cale, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Scott Walker at various points in the film.) But there’s something oddly unconvincing about K.K. as a record buyer, even given the faddishness of vinyl in younger consumers. She even self-consciously says: “I love records. You really have to take care of vinyl.”

It’s not a masterpiece – it could certainly have been funnier, and some of the scenes could have worked better – but it seems more relevant than ever during these dark times of a global pandemic. And despite the unevenness, I was both moved and amused.

Darling (1965)

Julie Christie stars as Diana Scott, a young model who doesn’t know what she wants from life. She leaves her husband to be with a literary interviewer (Dirk Bogarde), only to find herself soon becoming involved with an advertising executive (Laurence Harvey), who may be able to boost her career, and then with an Italian prince (José Luis de Villalonga), who will transform her into royalty. Each of these relationships fails her in some way, and the film is deliberately ambiguous about whether she is using these men or they are using her.

It’s visually striking and the music by John Danworth adds a further dimension. It’s unpredictable, too, rather than simply opting for cosy kitchen-sink Englishness – such as when a party in Paris proves to be a transgressive experience featuring unsettling identity games.

Julie Christie is excellent as the young dreamer who is deeply confused. The film is all the more effective and engaging as a character portrait because it doesn’t seek to moralise.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Extremely sophisticated comedy-drama. John Cusack plays a paid assassin who returns to his hometown to attend a school reunion and to meet up with the girlfriend (Minnie Driver) he abandoned a decade previously. When old friends and colleagues ask what he does for a living, he tells them he’s a professional killer and they think he’s joking. But he is finally maturing and beginning to question his “moral flexibility” – despite having one more job to do. Meanwhile, a rival assassin played by Dan Akyroyd intends to finish him off.

The humour is of the very blackest sort and the film balances the laughs and the tension with such expertise that it works. Supporting characters such as his terrified therapist Dr. Oatman (Alan Arkin) and his assistant Marcella (John’s sister, Joan Cusack) add further depth and wit.

Original music is by Joe Strummer and there’s also an excellent 1980s indie-pop soundtrack (Specials, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure) in line with the “reunion” theme.

Hugely entertaining, and it makes you think too.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

James Cameron’s follow-up to his 1984 classic pulls off the unlikely feat of matching that film. It’s a much higher budget, but the spirit of it is very similar.

John Connor (Edward Furlong), who the original Terminator failed to prevent being born, is now a 10-year-old child. His mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), is confined to a mental institution because no one believed her tales of tech-monsters from the future and impending global meltdown. In the present day of the film, two further Terminators are sent to kill John Connor. In a neat twist, there is a “bad” Terminator (T-1000) played by Robert Patrick and a good one played by Arnold Schwarzenegger (the villain of the first film). In another twist, the T-1000 is way more advanced. He has shape-shifting abilities – a liquid-metal chameleon able to take the form of anyone he wants to impersonate. As if all this wasn’t enough, Sarah and John have to prevent the technological advances that will lead to the future nuclear conflict that Skynet will use to dominate the planet.

It sounds complicated, but the storytelling is lucid and easy to follow. Tonally, it’s all over the place – there’s extreme gun violence but there are also attempts at humour, such as a young boy (who wears a Public Enemy T-shirt throughout) trying to teach a machine to smile. I rather liked that oddness.

Still not sure whether Linda Hamilton can act, but she gets the job done. Arnie is more impressive as a cold machine than he is when he goes for warmth or comedy.

Further films would follow. The third, fourth and fifth episodes were rendered invalid by the sixth, which claimed to be a direct sequel to Terminator 2 and which essentially erased the timelines of the interim sequels. But given the subject matter, you can just about accept all of them as alternative timelines set in motion by different yet related events.

Papillon (1973)

An epic adaptation of Henri Charrière’s autobiographical novel, with Steve McQueen starring as the author and Dustin Hoffman playing his friend and companion.

It’s compelling and fairly downbeat, although it possibly suffers from trying to squeeze a huge book into 150 minutes of screen time. So much happens. Papillon's time in a prison in French Guiana includes two brutal spells in solitary confinement. The first is of two years, and we are shown in detail how devastating that experience is for him. The second spell lasts for five years, and this is not shown at all – a brilliant decision that serves to underscore the unimaginable horror of battling starvation and madness for so long a time. We also see his various incredible escape experiences, which involve lepers, nuns, island tribespeople and a raft made of coconuts.

Given his rivalry with Paul Newman, it’s tempting to see this as McQueen’s attempt to “do a Cool Hand Luke” – a Cooler Hand Luke, perhaps? – and it’s certainly a role with depth to it. The extremes of suffering he is expected to depict make for more of a soul-searching performance than usual. As usual, though, he hardly has any dialogue. It’s rare that you ever see a McQueen character deep in conversation.

Distinctive and memorable, it’s an odd film that stays with you.

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

The third and final film in the reboot series significantly escalates the drama of the first two (Rise of... and Dawn of...), ramping it up to apocalyptic levels while retaining sharp focus and intelligence.

Apes and humans are now at war, with “Caesar” (Andy Serkis) and his companions being hunted down by army forces to determine the dominant species on Earth. These soldiers are led by Colonel J. Wesley McCullough (Woody Harrelson), a crazed messiah-like figure clearly modelled along the lines of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. (Oddly enough, the film makes that connection explicit with graffiti in a tunnel that reads “Ape-pocalyse now”.) The showdown intensifies when the apes are enslaved and a rival human faction comes to the military facility to attack the Colonel and his men.

It’s an emotional story with a surprisingly satisfying ending. I had no idea how it could be resolved, but director Matt Reeves pulled it off as he did with the previous instalment.

As with the rest of the trilogy, this film asks profound questions about human behaviour. It repeatedly shows the apes as being more compassionate than the destructive humans intent on their self-defeating struggle for power. There’s a disturbing brutality for a “12”-certificate film, made all the more affecting because the CGI apes seem so uncannily real.

At a key moment close to the resolution, Caesar finds himself in a position to obliterate the Colonel but acts more “humanely” than any of the humans. It’s a sobering message for all of us that animals might actually be more sophisticated than we like to believe we are.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Excellent crime drama with a refreshing visual flair.

Steve McQueen is a wealthy Boston playboy who masterminds elaborate bank robberies for his own amusement, rather than because he needs the money. I like the manic laughter he emits on a few occasions. Faye Dunaway plays the independent insurance investigator who knows that he did it but – while attempting to find proof – begins to fall for his charms. It’s a deliberately ambiguous romance. Can they trust each other? Is she just doing her job or is she in love with him? And does he love her in return? We don’t know and it’s unclear whether they do either.

There’s a brilliant scene in which the couple play chess. It works on both a literal and metaphorical level, with each trying to outwit the other. It’s also a sort of seduction, with hands and eyes sublimating sensual presence as the game unfolds.

There’s an unusual, stylish use of split-screen techniques. Sometimes these are used to convey multiple action scenes occurring simultaneously. At other times they are purely a visual effect, used for artistic reasons only.

The music was composed by Michel Legrand and the hit song “The Windmills of Your Mind” – somehow perfect for the film – was recorded by Noel Harrison.

In typical Steve McQueen style, he’s cast in such a way that he’s once again the elegant and effortlessly cool loner. You do wonder how he might have fared in a less flattering role.

A superb remake came out in 1999.

Rebecca (1940)

Stunningly dramatic Alfred Hitchcock drama adapted from the Daphne du Maurier novel.

A young woman (Joan Fontaine) meets a widower (Laurence Olivier) and they marry after a whirlwind romance. But when they return to his mansion in Cornwall, they find that the shadow of his dead wife Rebecca still haunts everyone who came into contact with her. Then there’s the sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who has a dangerous obsession, and Rebecca’s lover Favell (George Sanders), intent on seeing her death investigated as a murder.

In typical Hitchcock style, the tension builds to almost unbearable levels. The film is noirish and verges on horror in places. Unusual framing and camera angles help to unnerve and unsettle.

Fontaine is wonderful as the woman trying to come to grips with a new life as a married woman who can never live up to her predecessor. Olivier is intense but could be more so. He doesn’t quite have the presence his reputation would suggest.

It’s perfectly paced and dynamic to the moment of the shocking conclusion.

Ghostbusters II (1989)

A sequel that doesn’t disappoint. Following the events shown in the first film, the Ghostbusters have been sued for property damage, put out of business and forced to work as party entertainers for uninterested children. But then their old friend Dana Barrett sees her baby’s pram being wheeled into traffic by mysterious forces, and at the art gallery where she works a painting comes alive with the spirit of a 16th-century tyrant named Vigo the Carpathian. Meanwhile, a river of pink goo now runs beneath the city. After five years in obscurity, the gang reunite to face this new menace.

It’s slightly less packed with laughs than the 1984 film, but only slightly. The main cast are all superb and the writing by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis is excellent. The snivelling head of the art gallery (Peter MacNicol as Janosz Poha) is too annoying to be pleasurable to watch, but when Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Sigourney Weaver are on screen together everything clicks and comes to life. Rick Moranis and Annie Potts reprise their roles as accountant Louis Tully and secretary Janine Melnitz respectively, but this time they become an item.

There’s a nice theme about the soul of New York City, which has become corrupted but which recovers enough to defeat evil. As with the original film, it’s a feel-good story that’s also intelligent and funny.

Letter to Brezhnev (1985)

Extremely charming comedy-drama about two young women from Kirkby. Elaine (Alexandra Pigg) and Teresa (Margi Clarke) go for a night out in Liverpool in search of love and adventure, and for once actually encounter it in the form of two Russian sailors.

There’s plenty of sharp wit, and tough, fast-talking Clarke is especially funny. There’s also some subtle social commentary: times are hard in Liverpool. Unemployment is high as Thatcher’s influence is increasingly being felt. It’s an unvarnished, unsentimental portrait of a city struggling with poverty.

Like classic kitchen-sink narratives such as Billy Liar and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, it draws on the juxtaposition between humdrum working lives in the town where you grew up and the dreams of moving on to bigger and better things in the world beyond. It’s extremely moving and the closing scenes are unexpectedly satisfying.

Only one complaint: the shot-on-videotape film quality was poor and fuzzy.

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Directed by Stephen Frears, this is an adaptation of the 1985 play of the 1782 novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos set in pre-Revolution France. Glenn Close and John Malkovich play a pair of scheming socialites who use and abuse human relationships for their own sadistic ends, ultimately destroying the lives of everyone they meddle with.

The all-star cast includes Peter Capaldi, Michelle Pfeiffer, Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman, but for various reasons, the film simply doesn’t work. The entire plot hinges on John Malkovich’a character being so charming and irresistible that Close, Pfeiffer and Thurman all want to throw themselves at him. But instead of charming, he’s quite incredibly creepy – in fact, downright repulsive. He’s supposedly full of passion, but his seductions seem clinical – almost a technical matter he has to apply himself to.

Another problem is that Close and Malkovich are almost cartoonish in their pantomime-villain love of cruelty. Maybe that works in a French novel written hundreds of years ago, but it seems overwrought and silly when brought to the screen in this way.

Malkovich’s character blackmails and manipulates people into sleeping with him in a way that is aggressively predatory. Could it have been made in the “Me Too” era? Certainly, it’s particularly uncomfortable to watch in a post-Weinstein context.

On the plus side, Glenn Close acts well. She’s given little depth (we could have done with some wider context of who she is and how she got there), but she does “evil villain” as well as anyone. Indeed, some of her facial expressions and mannerisms are spot-on for a nasty piece of work barely able to contain her delight at ruining others. But ultimately Dangerous Liaisons feels one-dimensional and oddly uninvolving. Even the victims of the arch-manipulators (such as the wronged lover played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who I generally always like) are difficult to care about.

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Excellent drama starring James Cagney as Eddie Bartlett, a World War I veteran who turns to crime during Prohibition. He’s in love with a young singer who wrote to him during the war (Priscilla Lane) and ends up in business with another ruthless veteran (Humphrey Bogart) he cannot trust. As gang culture escalates, so do Eddie’s problems. Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a happy ending.

Cagney is excellent as the gangster who can’t make the girl he loves love him back. Lane is endearing and seems incredibly young as his would-be sweetheart. Gladys George is particularly convincing as Panama Smith, a cabaret club hostess and Eddie’s one true friend. Like her, you end up rooting for Eddie – despite everything – rather than moralising about his life choices.

The film covers a lot of ground, moving from the end of WWI to the early 1930s. Newsreel footage shows the changes in America that directly affect the characters. And while there’s an epic sweep, and plenty happens, it never feels slow or laboured because the pacing is so well judged.

The Go-Between (1971)

Brilliantly evocative and resonant adaptation of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Dominic Guard is Leo, the 12-year-old spending the summer of 1990 with the Maudsley family in their large Norfolk country house. He finds himself becoming a go-between for Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) and Ted Burgess (Alan Bates), the local farmer she’s secretly having an affair with.

Like the book, it focuses on issues of social inequality. Marian’s affair transgresses class boundaries and is therefore taboo. It also probes into sexuality and how naive young Leo’s own consciousness of adult relationships is crippled by the way he is used to facilitate a union he cannot understand.

Julie Christie is excellent as the charming-but-manipulative Marian. Edward Fox is also strong as the posh-but-dull Hugh, unable to compete with the “savagery” of Ted.

The hot summer is expertly conveyed and you can feel the heat building to the inevitable storm that marks the climax. As child actors go, Guard is right up there (he was also in Picnic at Hanging Rock). The music, by Michel Legrand, is perfectly judged – sometimes lovely, often foreboding.

With the vivid way it’s shot and soundtracked, at times it has the feel of a horror film. But the horror turns out to be an emotional one. Rather than manifesting itself in sudden scares, it’s a terror that echoes down through the decades.

Ghostbusters (1984)

This supernatural comedy is close to perfect. There’s so much that’s great about it. The three main characters – Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler – are terrifically well drawn, and Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis play them perfectly. The theme tune by Ray Parker Jr. is memorable and distinctive. The visuals are superb for the time, rendering neon ectoplasmic ghosts that gobble down plates of sausages and “slime” their victims. The run-down “Ecto-1” car (a converted hearse) is iconic. Sigourney Weaver seems effortlessly seductive and sophisticated as Dana Barrett, the woman possessed by an evil spirit and who Venkman falls for. Rick Moranis provides endearing slapstick as a nerdy accountant taken over by a demon. There’s an evident love of New York that permeates almost every frame. It’s a quirky film that’s unlike anything else. And, giving hope to all of us, its heroes are not glamorous or good-looking. They are flawed humans you can laugh with and relate to. A masterpiece.

The Sure Thing (1985)

Sweet teen romance directed by Rob Reiner.

Classmates Walter “Gib” Gibson (John Cusack) and Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga) take a road trip from their New England college to Los Angeles. Gib (spontaneous but sloppy) is being fixed up with a “sure thing” – a girl who will definitely sleep with him – while Alison (a super-organised but stuffy academic) is meeting her extremely dull boyfriend. But the trip doesn’t go to plan and inevitably the bickering pair end up falling for each other, despite or because of all their differences.

It’s a fairly dialogue-heavy story, which is to be applauded, with lots of funny moments. Both of the leads are easy to like. It’s much smarter than teen films such as Pretty in Pink or St. Elmo’s Fire, and there’s something genuinely endearing about their stumbling relationship. It works as a road movie, too, although we don’t see enough of America as they cross it.

It’s a nice touch that you see a film poster for Reiner’s own This Is Spinal Tap in someone’s bedroom.

Headhunters (2011)

The highest-grossing Norwegian film ever is a brilliantly tense thriller about a corporate headhunter (Aksel Hennie as Roger Brown) who leads a secret life as an art thief. When Roger meets Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), the owner of a Rubens painting worth tens of millions, he decides to steal it – even though Greve is an ex-military specialist in tracking people. The plot quickly escalates via a series of remarkable twists and turns, and Roger’s life spirals out of control.

Sometimes it seems far-fetched, but the storytelling is handled so well done that the narrative totally works. At other times it seems to toy with a strange sense of humour – the blackest imaginable – such as when Roger takes off in a farm vehicle with a dead dog impaled on the front of it, or when he has to bury himself in human sewage to avoid being detected.

The drama is remarkable, but it also manages to be a love story of sorts. And the film cleverly plays with the hero/anti-hero conundrum. You find yourself rooting for Roger, despite everything he’s done.

Visually, it’s a little underwhelming. You wonder what a director such as Denis Villeneuve might have done with the same scenarios, but the thrills are such that it doesn’t matter at all.

I first saw this in the cinema, and a woman next to me was literally squirming in her seat with horror and delight at the unrelenting escape/pursuit scenario. At the end, I asked if she was OK and we laughed about how it was so ridiculously exciting.

Sicario (2015)

Tense drug thriller starring Emily Blunt as an FBI agent who gets mixed up in a Mexican gang war beyond her comprehension. Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin play the assassin and CIA agent she finds herself working with. In fact, she soon learns that she’s simply being used to grant legal authority to their actions.

It’s brutally violent and makes for uncomfortable watching. The two male leads are convincingly ruthless, but Blunt seems an odd choice and is slightly awkward as tough-but-sensitive Kate Macer – although that awkwardness may well be the point.

Director Denis Villeneuve gives even the grittiest scenes a panoramic lavishness, as he did in Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.

You are left despairing at the drug wars – a problem that only seems to escalate over time – and this grim, super-realist film is easier to admire than to enjoy.

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Extremely enjoyable and ultimately very moving prison drama starring Paul Newman as the ridiculously charismatic lead. Rarely will you see an actor with such presence on screen.

Locked up for a petty offence, war veteran Lucas “Luke” Jackson joins a road chain gang. He refuses to behave like the other men (including Harry Dean Stanton as Tramp), but slowly earns their respect with his liberated, nonconformist outlook. There’s a painful and emblematic scene in which he boxes against the leader of the men (George Kennedy as “Dragline”) and is repeatedly knocked down. But such is his strength of mind that he gets up again and again. Another remarkable interlude features the prisoners betting on whether Luke can eat 50 eggs in an hour and Luke then carrying out the challenge. It’s surreal and hilarious.

The second half of the film introduces a more serious tone. Luke tries to escape and the prison guards try to break his spirit. The narrative becomes richer and sadder as the essence of his personality – and even his humanity – is steadily eroded.

A remarkable soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin adds further depth to an extremely affecting story.

Grease 2 (1982)

“Grease is still the word,” claims the extremely lame slogan. Couldn’t they have come up with a new one?

Grease 2 is ridiculed as being a turkey, but if you approach it with low expectations and forget about the original masterpiece it’s actually a fairly enjoyable teen musical. It’s now 1961 and Rydell High School is opening for a new term. The T-Birds and the Pink Ladies are still the top gangs of boys and girls within the school caste system, albeit with entirely different members. English newcomer Michael (Maxwell Caulfield) falls for Samantha (Michelle Pfeiffer), but she tells him she’s only interested in cool biker types. To woo her, he then becomes one – keeping his true identity secret – and she doesn’t realise that the greaser hunk she’s attracted to is the same sensitive academic who helped her with her Hamlet essay...

There are lots of things wrong with this film. The chronology feels odd (the term flashes past within 90 minutes) and the script doesn’t sparkle. Musically and lyrically, the songs simply aren’t in the same league as those in the 1978 original and there’s a harshness and lack of warmth about them. One kicks off during a biology lesson, with the whole class singing about reproduction. Another takes place in a nuclear bunker, with the guy urging the girl he’s trying to seduce that they “do it for America”. In fact, there’s a lot about nuclear fears and John F. Kennedy – a political context that was absent but not missed last time around.

A handful of the actors from the first film reprise their roles. Didi Conn returns as Frenchy (but isn’t given a role), Eve Arden is once again Principal McGee, while Sid Caesar is still the sports coach, and so on. But it badly lacks the charisma of a John Travolta or a Stockard Channing. There simply isn’t anyone with real star quality.

For all its faults, there are plenty of plus points. Patricia Birch’s choreography is dynamic, as it was in the first film. The story is possibly more credible because it doesn’t end with a fairground ride taking off into space. There are some laughs. Michelle Pfeiffer is easy to like in the main role, even though she’s clearly no Olivia Newton-John. And trashy teen dramas full of youthful exuberance are always fun if you are in the mood. 

Hideous Kinky (1998)

It’s 1972 and Julia (Kate Winslet) has gone to live in Morocco with her two young children. She leaves behind her old relationship and hopes to “discover herself”. She becomes involved with a kindly drifter named Bilal (Saïd Taghmaoui), who turns out to be more complicated than he seems.

Winslet is strong as the endearingly naive and earnestly questing young mother. Bella Riza and Carrie Mullan are excellent as the precocious children able to cut through their mother’s hippy-dippy aspirations and speak the truth. They are among the most impressive child actors I’ve seen.

It’s a plot that seems to unfold sideways in almost unrelated episodes, so you can never guess what will happen next. Adapted from Esther Freud’s novel, itself autobiographical, it benefits from seeming “real” because the events it depicts actually took place.

There’s an excellent soundtrack – Canned Heat, Richie Havens, Nick Drake, Incredible String Band – that brings 1972 alive. The colours are rich and vital, making it even more pleasurable to watch.

The Reader (2008)

Intriguing and moving drama. In Berlin in 1958, 15-year-old Michael (David Kross) begins a brief, passionate love affair with 36-year-old tram conductor Hanna (Kate Winslet) that will come to haunt his entire life. Fast-forwarding to 1966, Michael is now a law student who gets to observe a trial of female SS guards who allowed 300 Jewish women to burn to death while locked in a church. He is horrified to see that Hanna is one of the accused women.

The film asks questions about morality and identity. One of the law students suggests that everyone in Germany is complicit in these crimes, and not just those in the court, but The Reader doesn’t try to offer any simplistic answers.

With his usual skill and elegance, Ralph Fiennes plays the older Michael. Bruno Ganz (who was Hitler in Downfall) plays a Holocaust survivor who teaches law), while Alexandra Maria Lara (Hitler's secretary in Downfall) gives evidence in court.

Directed by Stephen Daldry and written by David Hare, it’s a hugely powerful story that gains gravitas as it speeds through the decades towards the present.

Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Trashy, unrewarding hybrid of two sci-fi/horror franchises. The Wiki one-liner reads: ”scientists are caught in the crossfire of an ancient battle between Aliens and Predators as they attempt to escape a bygone pyramid”, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. There’s a lot of monster action, but very little suspense.

It’s let down by a terribly lazy script. Characters waste valuable moments stopping what they are doing in order to tell the aliens things like “Die, you ugly son of a bitch!” before firing at them.

It also suffers from an often nonsensical plot:
1. Why do the predators need to turn invisible when they are already deadly assassins? And if they are such high-tech beings, why is their invisibility only partial?
2. The motive of Weyland (Lance Henriksen) is never really explained. Did he just want to discover something “important” before he died? I was expecting a far more sinister motive involving world domination, but he turns out to be a disappointingly ordinary billionaire.
3. The Italian archaeologist (Raoul Bova) is able to glance at alien artefacts once and suddenly know all there is to know about them – leading to some unintentionally funny, laugh-out-loud moments.
4. The Scottish chemical engineer (Ewen Bremner) never stops going on about his kids, leading you to think he has to survive to be reunited with them – but he doesn’t and isn’t.
5. The heroine (Sanaa Lathan) is somehow able to make friends with a dreadlocked predator, even though they use humans for sacrificial purposes.
6. They are meant to be in Antarctica, but the humans can wander around without coats.

On the plus side, I did like the sliding, interlocking jigsaw pieces of the pyramid, which rearrange themselves every 10 minutes. This idea – a neat one – may have been “borrowed” for The Maze Runner (2014).

The aliens – gooey and nasty – are probably the best thing about the film, but the colour scheme, in which aliens, predators and the pyramid itself are all the same grey-black, makes everything less interesting to look at.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

A sequel to the 1982 masterpiece, set 30 years later. Ryan Gosling plays K, the replicant seeking answers about his origins. It transpires that in one unprecedented instance, a replicant gave birth. That replicant was Rachael from the first film. K’s discovery of this knowledge begins a quest that ultimately leads him to Deckard (Harrison Ford), who he believes to be his father. But the sinister Wallace Corporation also wants to understand replicant breeding for its own ends.

It's visually stunning – possibly even more so than the original – and asks similarly deep philosophical questions about life, identity and memory. For a few reasons, though, Denis Villeneuve's film does not satisfy in the way that Ridley Scott’s does. Firstly, it’s simply too long (163 minutes). Some of the scenes are ponderous and slow. You can sit back to admire the expansive, luxurious quality or you can become infuriated with the glacial pace. The villains (Sylvia Hoeks and Jared Leto) didn’t quite convince. And too much of the film was given over to Gosling’s time with his synthetic “hologram” girlfriend (Ana de Armas). I liked her as a character, but – other than filling in details of how relationships and technology work in 2049 – this plot didn’t really lead anywhere. 

Harrison Ford’s appearance was surprisingly successful. I had feared it would be a tokenistic attempt to drag the star of the original back on screen for the sake of “sequel credibility”, but they wisely built the plot around him – even though he’s barely in it. And unlike in Star Wars Episode VII, where he’s depicted as the same Han Solo except older, with no character development at all, here he seems wiser and not in any way ridiculous.

I’d like to see it again, and on a big screen. With the plot twists now fully understood, I think I could get more out of it on second viewing.

Jaws (1975)

I’ve seen this gem several times now and never tire of it. Steven Spielberg lost his way in later years, but with this film and Duel (1971) he could do no wrong.

There is no way that Jaws deserves its “12” certificate. In the first scene alone you see drug-taking and nudity. Then there’s a fair bit of “threat”, dismemberment, gore and all-out horror.

It’s full of great little details: Roy Scheider’s son copying his gestures at the meal table; that ultra-dramatic on-the-beach shot that zooms in and pans out at the same time; the iconic “shark approaching” music by John Williams; Quint’s war story; “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”; and the grisly fingers-down-the-blackboard moment at the town meeting.

It really kicks off when the three men go to sea to hunt the killer great white. There’s a macho issue going on between the guys, as well as a theme of class: tough-talking fisherman Robert Shaw is less than impressed with college-educated oceanographer Richard Dreyfuss. As the police chief, Roy Scheider somehow strikes a balance between them. Each man’s character is extremely well drawn. Also excellent is Murray Hamilton as the town mayor who prioritses Amity’s lucrative 4th July celebrations over beach safety.

The shark looks incredibly realistic. So convincingly did the film make these creatures look evil that a great disservice was done to the way they are perceived and their subsequent ecological protection.

My only other real criticism is the intrusively jaunty music used in some of the action sequences. In typical Spielberg style, on a couple of occasions he over-eggs the “adventure” aspect and makes the drama seem silly. But the damage is minimal here compared to in his later films.

Those points aside, it’s a masterful study in suspense.