Beneath the slapstick humour there’s a real tragedy about a desperate, childless pair and the lengths they will go to to make a family.
Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter are superb in the key roles. You feel Hunter's longing and completely identify with her, despite the criminality of their actions. It’s just a shame that the usual Coen brothers grotesques appear (John Goodman features as an escaped convict), turning this into a sort of farcical black comedy and robbing it of poignancy.
The clunkily named Will Freeman (Hugh Grant) is a moneyed-up consumer who lives a selfish life alone, protecting himself from commitments. He begins preying on single mothers in order to find a date (a quite disturbing trait that the film seems OK with) and ends up making friends with a 12-year-old boy with a suicidal mum (Toni Collette). The boy/man relationship, inevitably, teaches him to be less selfish and ultimately helps him to find a meaningful romance – with Rachel Weisz.
Hugh Grant is as appealing as always but the big problem is the boy, Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), who is both unconvincing as a character and oddly difficult to like. Several elements in the story lack the all-important ring of truth. In particular, it’s never explained why Will is so disengaged from society. Is he depressed? Why? What’s the unresolved issue with his father that’s briefly alluded to but never explored? The script is too shallow to get inside these questions and make the characters three-dimensional and “real”. It seems like a fifth-rate imitation of a Richard Curtis film.
The soundtrack is by Badly Drawn Boy and works well.
Tom Hanks plays a middle-aged man who loses his job and goes to college to educate himself. There, he develops a friendship with a much younger woman (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and also with his teacher (Julia Roberts). Both of these relationships transform him. Before long, he’s riding a scooter with a gang, wearing more fashionable clothes and sporting a less fusty haircut.
It’s odd because the tone is so unusual. Parts of it are like a gentle drama. There’s subtle wit, but it doesn’t really emerge until the second half – and even then there are few laughs. Also, there are elements of the story that simply don’t ring true.
But Hanks and Roberts are appealing and you find yourself rooting for them to get together, so the film must be doing something right. I found myself liking it a lot, despite not thinking it quite worked.
Kevin Costner plays an ex-Secret Service agent hired to protect a singer named Rachel (Whitney Houston).
Unfortunately the plot is full of holes, the characters lack motivations for their actions, and the acting is mostly terrible. Gary Kemp is particularly awkward as Whitney’s brash English publicist. Houston is oddly unlikeable throughout. The film would have worked better if you could relate to her. Only Costner impresses.
The plotting is leaden and you can see the twists before they arrive. I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about but I couldn’t. And to add insult to injury you have to hear Whitney murdering Dolly Parton’s once-beautiful “I Will Always Love You”.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos takes this volatile situation and mines it for maximum drama and the blackest comedy. It's both horrifying and very funny. Shots are framed from odd angles, so that even someone walking down a corridor carries a sense of menace. There's also a highly effective soundtrack that uses elements of drones and ambient noise to build atmosphere – sometimes disturbingly so.
The acting from all three leads is first-rate, with Colman, Weisz and Stone delivering performances of a lifetime. You can totally believe all of them.
It's a sharp, intelligent and innovative film that should be treasured.
It works because it seems so incredibly real. That’s partly because of the low budget and partly because of the high quality of the actors and the script. The songs are perfectly suited to the story, too. Irglová is particularly compelling. She conveys so much depth in her facial expressions alone. And her shy, understated dialogue has the ring of truth – for example, a scene in which they discuss a final meeting that she declines: “We’d just hanky panky if I come now…And that would be nice…Very interesting.”
It’s full of surprising, funny and revealing moments like this. And it’s emotionally rich and open without resorting to sentimentality or standard “love story” tropes.
It was later adapted into a stage play, which I saw performed in London, but the film feels more fresh and original.
An inept private eye (Ryan Gosling) and a brutal enforcer (Russell Crowe) investigate a missing girl in late-1970s Los Angeles.
It’s a strange film. The humour is as dark as it gets, with an uneasy violence behind it. Crowe’s character seems equally capable of cold-blooded murder and compassion, and that makes for an awkward mix – probably deliberately so. The emotional development, based around Gosling’s relationship with his teenage daughter, cones across as shallow and unconvincing.
The party section was especially well done, and the action is expertly presented, but overall – despite some genuine laughs – it’s little too slick to fully engage. And off-puttingly, a tubby Crowe looks uncannily like John Goodman throughout.
Nicolas Cage plays Memphis Raines, who has to save his brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) from dangerous gangsters by stealing 50 cars in one night. He’s helped by his old criminal pals (who of course are all good guys really) and his old flame (an awkwardly awful Angelina Jolie).
It’s extremely silly, but – unlike the original – it has a proper plot and characters with motivations and interactions, even if those characters (like villain Christopher Eccleston) are ridiculous. There’s even a script, albeit one that might have been written by a 12-year-old boy.
The lighting is conspicuously styled with lots of blue and yellow shades, and while that might be atmospheric it makes the film less “realistic”. The original looked far more real, mainly because it was built around actual footage of real situations.
What holds it all together and makes it worth seeing (once) is Nicolas Cage, who has a bottom-line charisma and presence.
Samuel J. Jackson plays Doyle Gipson, an insurance salesman and recovering alcoholic fighting for custody of his children. Ben Affleck plays Gavin Banek, a lawyer engaged in shady dealings in the firm of his father-in-law (Sydney Pollack). The two men’s lives collide, literally, when they have a minor road crash in New York. This event sets in motion a sequence of escalating dramas, giving them both the worst day of their lives.
It’s extremely powerful because it engages on a moral level, exploring what happens to reasonable people in unreasonable situations. Jackson and Affleck are at their best. The supporting characters, including Gipson's wife Valerie (Kim Staunton) and his AA sponsor (William Hurt), are also excellently drawn.
I couldn’t imagine how the ending could satisfy, but somehow they pulled it off.
It’s quirky and unusual. Some of the narrative is handled in a slightly tricksy manner, but it works because it’s from Oliver’s perspective.
There’s a huge emotional range. It’s funny and sad. It’s realist and also fantastic. Not really like anything else I've seen.
Clint Eastwood plays Frank Morris, who plans to escape from the maximum-security prison island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.
It’s tense and atmospheric, but also compassionate. Eastwood doesn’t say much, as usual, but he conveys a lot with his eyes and face. Patrick McGoohan plays the sadistic warden.
It’s based on a true story, making it more fascinating. And I really like the open-ended nature of the ending.
William Thacker (Hugh Grant) works in a travel bookshop in Notting Hill. One day a famous actress (played by Julia Roberts) walks in. They begin an unlikely romance, but fame and other matters complicate their relationship.
It’s a sweet and funny love story. Grant and Roberts are both excellent. As with other Curtis narratives, a bunch of friends and relatives act as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting on the action and helping to move it along. These are all excellent in their own right.
Grant is particularly appealing in this role. He seems so relaxed and at ease that his scenes are just a pleasure to watch.
Rhys Ifans is a little too silly as his flatmate, and you cannot believe that someone as sensitive and gentle as Thacker would like or tolerate him.
Also on the down side, there’s conspicuous product placement. And the music (Boyzone, Ronan Keating) is often terrible enough to take you out of the story.
But ultimately it’s slick and charming. The characters come alive and the romance is touching.
Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, a detective trying to track down and capture the gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). Lucas has made his fortune by smuggling heroin into the USA on military planes servicing the Vietnam War.
The historical context is interesting and the film gets better as it progresses, but I found that the first half dragged. Crowe is always captivating, but Washington doesn’t boast the kind of charisma that his character would surely have needed to be such a powerful and controlling figure.
Not up to Ridley Scott’s usual levels of skilled storytelling.
It’s a powerful drama. To the credit of director Robert Benton, it’s not really about the end of a marriage. It’s more about the parent–child relationship and how that is affected by a divorce.
Hoffman is his usual mannered, nervy persona with little self-awareness. You can see hints of his autistic Rain Man character in all his roles and this one is no exception. Streep's character is undeveloped – the main flaw of the film. It would have been good to see more of it from her point of view, but she's denied much screen time, which limits her character development.
It’s adapted from the stage play, in which Collins also starred, and you can see how well it would have worked before an audience – especially as she constantly breaks the fourth wall. In places it’s simply a monologue in which she talks about her life.
What makes the feel so affecting is how real she seems as a character and how universal her predicament is. It’s handled with great sensitivity and wit.
There are also roles for Joanna Lumley, Alison Steadman and Julia McKenzie.
Although the scenes of England in the 1980s look horribly dated, the writing is so sharp that this remains a timeless gem.
The sets are often inspired – in particular, the camera trickery that brings to life a series of impossible Escher-like staircases – and some of the puppets are highly inventive. But the aesthetics are ugly and parts of the plot seem stilted or disjointed. It’s less than a sum of its parts. The script went through multiple rewrites and it’s fascinating to see glimpses of plot threads that were either cut or left undeveloped.
Bowie seems uncomfortably miscast, lost in the labyrinth of his mid-1980s career. Even when he gets to sing, he’s performing some of his weakest material – so Labyrinth doesn’t work as a musical either. He should have been more extreme – nastier and funnier, hamming it up like a pantomime villain. Instead, it’s an oddly tepid performance.
Beyond those points it’s difficult to say why it ends up being a bit of an awkward mess – albeit an enjoyable mess. Indeed, it’s nearly brilliant, but the difference between nearly brilliant and actually brilliant turns out to be a huge one.
There’s a strong thread of political satire, but you have to wade through some crude and deliberately uncomfortable material confronting racial and gender prejudices.
There are enough genuinely funny lines that it just about works, but Baron Cohen delights in walking a tightrope when it comes to taste and you will either find that intriguing or just off-putting.
It’s an exciting romp, blending action-thriller and sci- fi. The “futuristic” sets are generally impressive and the pace never lets up. Script-wise it’s fairly underwhelming, but then you probably wouldn’t watch it for the dialogue.
Ernest Borgnine plays an irritating cabbie, while Harry Dean Stanton plays an engineer nicknamed "Brain".
Director John Carpenter provides the music himself, and it’s pretty good.
Russell Crowe plays a Washington Globe journalist investigating a series of deaths that are linked to his friend, a congressman (Ben Affleck).
It’s an exciting drama that touches on a lot of themes. There’s political and corporate corruption. There’s also a celebration of old-school news reporting, with a nice platonic relationship between the experienced journalist and the young recruit (Rachel McAdams), who represents the world of blogs and digital news.
Crowe is as good as ever, but all of the main actors are excellent. Helen Mirren is the tough newspaper boss who is to Crowe what Judi Dench’s M was to Daniel Craig’s James Bond. Jeff Daniels is a Congressman with secrets. Robin Wright plays the politician’s wife, who has a “history” with Crowe.
Director Kevin Macdonald had previously made films about mountaineering disaster, Mick Jagger and the 1972 Munich Olympics, and you can see a certain documentary style applied to this fiction too.
Only the generic, interchangeable title lets it down.
When a wealthy playboy named Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson) crashes his speedboat, he is saved by use of a resuscitator belonging to nearby Dr. Phillips. But the doctor himself requires it at the same time and dies as a result. Merrick falls in love with the doctor’s widow, Helen (Jane Wyman), and tries to change the course of his life through acts of kindness and generosity to her and others.
There’s a strong (heavy-handed) message promoting Christianity. One character, Edward Randolph (Otto Kruger) even takes on a God-like role, offering spiritual guidance and saintly encouragement.
It’s a strange film because the main plot thread hinges on Helen going blind and not being able to see that the kindly gent helping her is the same man who inadvertently led to her husband’s death. I thought it was working up to a big moment “reveal” of his true identity, but when it arrives that moment is thrown away and completely peters out.
Odd as it is being sold an advert for the Christian life, it’s worth watching for the strong performances by Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. The former in particular has charisma.
Directed by Sydney Pollack, it’s a smart and sensitive thriller that’s very nicely shot. Kidman and Penn are both excellently drawn characters and their relationship is subtle and nuanced. Catherine Keener is great as Penn’s professional partner, but doesn’t get given enough lines.
The plot is complicated and there might be a few loose ends. For example, the phrase that the interpreter overhears doesn’t make sense in the light of what ultimately takes place. But that doesn't spoil an excellent thriller.
Sci-fi comedy.
The cast of a TV show that's very similar to Star Trek find themselves in a real-life space adventure when their episodes are intercepted by aliens who regard them as “historical documents”.
Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman are all superb as the faded celebrity actors who are required to become their fictional counterparts.
It works as both a satire and an example of a sci-fi story. It's silly and in places very funny.
A boy is given a small, furry creature for Christmas. But his new pet spawns further little cuties that become a lot less appealing when they then transform into mischievous, giggling little monsters.
It’s a clever film that works as a sort of fairy tale and also as a homage to previous monster films, many of which are seen on TVs in the background of this film.
It’s inventive how each gremlin is given its own identity, and the scene in which they take over an entire cinema is an imaginative delight.
Plot-wise, it only works because no one ever asks what species the creatures are or seems especially surprised to see such a remarkable life-form. But it's not really about the plot. It's more of an excuse to cram as many different gremlin scenarios as possible into 106 minutes and it achieves this in a way that's hugely entertaining.
Baffling Steven Spielberg comedy-drama. Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, an Eastern European man who ends up stuck in J.F.K. airport when his country suffers a coup and war breaks out. Unable to return there or to gain access to New York City, he begins a frustrating, surreal life within the airport itself.
It dabbles with romantic comedy when he falls for an air hostess (Catherine Zeta-Jones). He also has to deal with the Acting Field Commissioner (Stanley Tucci), who wants to get rid of him. In the meantime he becomes a sort of celebrity among the airport staff, which include Diego Luna, Kumar Pallana and Zoë Saldaña.
The big flaw of the film is that Stanley Tucci’s fixation with removing Viktor is never really explained. Surely a man that busy would have too many other important things to do. Another problem is that the romance plot fizzles out and a more sentimental quest to honour his father’s wishes takes over. Worse than that, there’s a big loose end relating to the way Stanley Tucci threatens to get rid of Viktor’s friends. Also, John Williams’ soupy music is too prominent.
Despite all of this, Hanks is excellent and the premise is intriguing and unusual. It’s just a shame that Spielberg somehow lost his way in the second half.
Brilliant satire of violence and corporate power by Paul Verhoeven, who would later direct the equally superb Starship Troopers. It’s a simple story – dead cop is brought back to life in cybernetic form to fight crime. But he also begins to recall his human life and feelings.
Peter Weller is excellent in the lead role, as is Nancy Allen as his cop partner. It's to the film's great credit that it develops the pair’s relationship without going down the obvious "romance" route.
It’s exciting, and also funny, with the blackest humour imaginable – cheerfully brutal. As the narrative evolves it becomes increasingly compassionate and surprisingly emotional.
Jack Nicholson stars as McMurphy, who is committed to a mental hospital after faking insanity. There, he disrupts the routine maintained by the controlling Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) and gives the other patients a sense of liberation through his freewheeling attitude and irreverent humour.
It’s incredibly moving. As a human drama it is heartbreaking. It also tackles themes of power, identity and freedom, but in a subtle and sometimes darkly amusing way.
The in-mates, played by actors including Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito, are fully fleshed-out characters in their own right, adding real depth to the drama. Will Sampson has huge presence as the "Chief", who pretends to be deaf and dumb. Brad Dourif is superb playing the frail, stuttering Billy Bibbit, whose fears are exploited with devastating consequences. And Jack Nicholson is almost supernaturally potent in the lead role. You cannot take your eyes off him.
The songs are strong and it’s visually remarkable. Plus, Hugh Jackman is likeable in the central role – even if his character is given an almost Jesus-like level of idealisation. Michelle Williams is less impressive as his wife, mainly because she isn’t fleshed out as a character. You could argue that it’s emotionally shallow, but penetrating psychological drama is not what this film is about. Instead, it’s a big, loud, fast-moving in-your-face spectacle.
Adapted from the Thomas Harris novel, it’s a psychological thriller with more intelligence than your standard film from that genre. Trainee FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) tries to capture a serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) with the help of another killer, who is living out his life in prison – Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter (Anthony Hopkins).
Director Jonathan Demme’s masterstroke is to make it as much about the Starling/Lector relationship as it is about solving the case. He develops both characters brilliantly, sometimes filming them face-on for added intensity – without making it look like a tricksy fourth-wall device. Lector is a talented psychiatrist with the uncanny ability to get inside people’s heads, and Hopkins captures that quality with perfect menace. He plays the character as a refined gentleman who just happens to like eating people. Foster also gives the performance of a lifetime, being forced to confront the fears from her childhood alongside the very real terrors of her new job.
The climax, in which Starling is stalked by Buffalo Bill in total darkness while he wears night-vision goggles – accompanied by The Fall’s “Hip Priest” on the soundtrack – is as hypnotic and chilling as cinema ever gets.
It’s a fascinating film because of the way it presents Neil Diamond. Is he credible as a rock star? Not really, but he does have undeniable on-stage charisma. It's not a musical in the Singing in the Rain sense, but it does feature lots of him singing on stage.
My DVD is incredibly grainy and low-res. Probably the film has been remastered since, but the version I have is almost unwatchable.
It’s taut if trashy, and it keeps you engaged. Russo and Sinese are watchable, as always, but Gibson is oddly overwrought. It’s partly the character – he plays a loose cannon reckless enough to take the ransom process off-piste and gamble his son’s life in the process – but it’s partly just his odd acting.
There’s a sort of theme about macho behaviour, with the two male characters trying to dominate each other, but it’s not entirely believable. Gibson simply isn’t convincing as a dad or husband, and he has remarkably little chemistry with Russo. In fact, his character comes across as a total weirdo. (What kind of parent thinks he knows more about kidnap strategy than the FBI?) A plot thread about him having lied to his wife promised to take the film in a more interesting direction – i.e., with the criminal exploiting their divisions to play the couple off against one another – but strangely that possibility isn’t explored beyond an initial hint. Also, it fails my standard test of a film’s quality in that the minor characters are cardboard cut-outs instead of being developed and given their own motivations.
Slow-motion action sequences are never a good sign in a thriller, and there are too many here. I also found the black-and-white treatment applied to the closing moments a little naff and unnecessary.
Ron Howard is usually a dependable director, but you can’t help feeling that this one somehow got away from him.
It’s sort of exciting despite never bothering much with a script or any fresh ideas. The characters are fairly one-dimensional and it’s arguably quite racist, too. There are visual and thematic hints of Apocalypse Now, but without any of the sophistication or flair of that film. And when Arnie has to show emotions – as this plot demands – not very much happens.
Roberts is remarkable in this role – she makes every moment of every scene count. It’s such a vivid and entirely believable performance that it's difficult to imagine anyone else doing it better. Albert Finney is excellent, too. He plays her boss, a lawyer nearing retirement, whose cynicism is challenged by Erin’s refreshingly unorthodox approach.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, it looks good too. He really captures the beauty of the dusty California landscapes that contain an ugly secret. It’s a long film, but every detail matters and contributes something to the unfolding drama. Character and story are kept central throughout.
A retired jewel thief (Cary Grant) living on the French Riviera has to track down a new “cat” burglar whose crimes are being wrongly attributed to him. Grace Kelly plays the young woman he romances along the way.
It’s not as exciting as Hitchcock’s best films, despite the rooftop drama at the climax. There’s jarringly odd lighting, too, with super-bright studio shots and less-bright location shots often clashing when edited together in the same scenes. It seems unfair to criticise these technical limitations, but the juxtaposition is striking enough to jolt you out of the narrative again and again.
Grant and Kelly have a certain easy charm, but for some reason the whole thing seems a little lacking.
Thriller about a group of con artists (led by Edward Burns) who get mixed up with a creepy crime boss called The King (Dustin Hoffman) and plan an elaborate banking scam.
James Foley’s direction is flashy and a little tricksy, but the story – although complex – is a good one. Also, the acting is uniformly strong. Paul Giamatti and Rachel Weisz are both effective as members of the con team, while Andy García is convincing-but-underused as Special Agent Gunther Butan.
The plotting can be difficult to keep up with, but it just about holds together if you don’t ask too many “But what if…” questions about timing and motivation.
It’s shot in an inventive way, with the use of mirrors and reflections, plus strange angles and vantage points. There’s a great scene in which a drugged Peck weaves in and out of motorway traffic, with the film rendering his altered perception.
The problem is that it’s just not very entertaining. The parts played for comedy simply aren’t funny. The script is poor, and – other than Peck and Loren – the acting is woeful. Worst of all, the villain (played by a hammy Alan Badel) is absolutely awful.
Would I watch it again? Absolutely not.
Although there’s some excitement in the ticking-clock countdown to the planned assassination at 5pm, the performances are mainly wooden and/or half-baked. Sinatra has a definite magnetism and out-performs everyone else, but there’s a B-movie feel that it cannot rise above.
It’s mostly interesting for its attitudes. Ellen (Nancy Gates) wants to prevent her son playing with a toy gun, but her boyfriend, the sheriff (Sterling Hayden) tells her “Stop being a woman!” Shocking stuff. The “moral” seems to be that guns are great – unless a psychopath happens to get hold of one – and that masculinity is incomplete without them.
The most remarkable aspect of the film is explained by Wikipedia: “Sinatra asked United Artists to withdraw Suddenly from circulation because he heard the rumor that Lee Harvey Oswald had seen it before shooting President Kennedy. According to Hollywood legend, Sinatra bought up all remaining copies of Suddenly and had them destroyed, but this was not true.”
It tackles issues including religion, class, social mobility, gender roles and the state of New York in the 1970s, but never in a heavy-handed manner.
Both incredibly dramatic and desperately sad, in some ways it’s a New York version of the sort of stories told in Billy Liar and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – a young man tries to rise above his background to make his way in the world while negative forces conspire to keep him down.
Looking like a young Luke Skywalker, Eric Stolz is Keith, a sensitive artist and mechanic from a blue-collar background in suburban Los Angeles. Keith resists his father’s wishes to send him to college. Mary Stuart Masterson is Watts, his tomboy best friend who loves drumming and who has been secretly in love with Keith for years. And then there’s Lea Thompson as Amanda Jones, the girl Keith thinks he’s in love with. But nasty guy Hardy Jenns (Craig Sheffer) has other ideas about who Amanda should be dating.
It's hugely entertaining and very charming. The storytelling is superb. The three leads are all spot-on. It’s extremely earnest and it takes itself very seriously, which seems absolutely the right approach because that’s how teenagers are too. It’s romantic and silly at the same time. The usual 1980s preoccupations with social mobility dominate, alongside some morals about being your own true self rather than being fake with others.
Note: the names Keith, Watts and Amanda Jones are all Rolling Stones references. Presumably the drumming gimmick was also added in reference to Charlie Watts.
I haven’t enjoyed a "youth" film this much since Teen Wolf.
Adapted from the novel by Scott Turow, this film is directed – slowly and unremarkably – by Alan J. Pakula. The two leads are strong but it’s a little flat overall. Worse than that, the motivation of the killer is muddled and there are loose ends that mean the plot doesn’t really work.
There’s a greeny/brown, turgid quality to the visuals. Overall, it’s surprisingly workmanlike and unrewarding. Yet somehow it made $200 million.
Would I watch it again? No.
It’s a harrowing drama that’s brilliantly done. Both of the stars are entirely believable. You can feel their love for one another and their pain when things go wrong. Rachel Weisz is also excellent as the child’s actual mother.
The landscapes look beautiful, with a special kind of light. The music, by Alexandre Desplat, is fitting for a story that’s – at various points – romantic, moving and emotional.
Nicole Kidman stars as Christine, a woman who lost her memory 10 years ago. Each morning her husband Ben (Colin Firth) has to tell her who she is and what happened to her, because she can’t remember anything from before the last time she slept. What trauma caused her to forget everything? Why is Ben concealing certain facts? And what are the motives of the neuroscientist (Mark Strong) who offers to help her without Ben’s knowledge?
It’s an intriguing premise – somewhere between Memento and Groundhog Day. Plot-wise there were some questionable aspects. Why doesn’t Christine simply keep a notebook and add information as she learns it? There’s a digital camera (supplied by the neuroscientist), but how does it get new batteries? What stops its memory from filling up? And how are the photos on the wall explained once the big twist has been revealed?
On the plus side, the English landscapes (such as Greenwich Park) look better than they usually do in films.
It’s a fast-paced thriller that’s a little trashy but nevertheless exciting. A surprising number of helicopters feature, with James Bond-like copter chases providing some of the action. Unlike Contagion, it’s not especially illuminating in regard to the Covid-19 pandemic. The focus is more on the military response to the problem rather than individuals’ experience of it.
Script-wise it could have been stronger, but there’s so much happening, so quickly, that you don’t really notice.
This is a taut action thriller directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who also made 2014’s Non-Stop. In fact, it’s quite similar in many ways: Neeson confined to a speeding vehicle while needing to solve a mystery to save his own life – and the lives of others.
It’s both silly and exciting, and it keeps you guessing to the end. Sam Neill is underused as a police chief, and Elizabeth McGovern is underused as MacCauley’s wife.
Neeson looks really old. He was about 65 at the time, and seems increasingly unlikely as an action hero by this point. But he does have charisma and there’s something compelling about watching him yet again work his way out of a fix.
Helen Hunt is absolutely superb as the cafe waitress that Nicholson falls in love with but is unable to articulate his feelings towards. Her three-dimensional character seems entirely real. Less convincingly Greg Kinnear plays Melvin’s gay artist neighbour, who Melvin slowly begins to accept and like – despite all his prejudices.
It’s an intelligent film with no easy answers. It works as a romantic comedy, but it’s the least formulaic example of that genre I can imagine.
It leaves you with a lot to think about, not least whether the OCD community think it’s a fair portrayal of that condition.
It was also baffling that the same song (“Love Is All Around”) had to be revived from an earlier Richard Curtis film: Four Weddings and a Funeral. Maybe it was a self-referential joke, but couldn't they just have come up with another love song? There’s no shortage.
I admire the ambition, and there were some genuinely funny moments, but it ended up being a sprawling mess. Woody Allen could have done much more with the raw material and handled the complex storytelling with greater skill.
Sharon Stone plays a woman who has just got out of prison and returned to see her gangster boyfriend (Jeremy Northam) in New York. But one of his henchmen has just shot dead a family, leaving only a seven-year-old boy alive. Gloria grows attached to the child and tries to save him – and herself – from a life of crime.
It’s a touching and funny story. Both Gloria and the boy have a brash, smart-talking exterior that masks their true vulnerability, and they bring out the best in each other.
Directed by Sidney Lumet, it’s lively and exciting but also full of unsentimental warmth and charm. The script is sharp, and Stone gets some witty lines. She’s magnetic and highly convincing. Jean-Luke Figueroa is superb for a child actor, too, simultaneously expressing toughness and fragility.
Gloria lost money and was critically panned – perhaps because people were more fond of the 1980 film it remade. It deserves more credit, though, as it’s hugely enjoyable.
Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) gains extraordinary mental and physical abilities when the full capacity of her brain is unleashed by a wonder drug. Unfortunately, a bunch of South Korean gangsters want to kill her. Morgan Freeman, meanwhile, plays a well-meaning scientist who tries to help her.
The plot, which includes dinosaurs and time travel, only works if you go along with the premise that unlocking brain power would essentially make you a superhero. And as with superhero films, it suffers from a problem – that is, once anything is possible, nothing really works as drama. Someone who can do anything is no longer a protagonist you can relate to.
The main draw is the visual flair that director Luc Besson brings. It looks imaginative and psychedelic even if it makes little real sense. There’s also a lot of violence that we could probably have done without.
A far stronger film on a similar topic is Limitless (2011), which not only keeps to its own “rules” but also creates engaging characters you can actually relate to.
During World War II, Operation Market Garden was an Allied operation that took place in September 1944. It aimed to secure key river crossings, enabling a route from the Netherlands into northern Germany – culminating with the strategically vital Arnhem bridge.
That real-life saga is brought to life with mixed results. Unfortunately, at nearly three hours it’s excessively drawn out. The film gets off to a very slow start, too, and it’s a full 52 minutes until the first shot is fired. There are a lot of characters and plenty of time is used up introducing them and generally setting the scene. It’s an extreme example of the all-star cast, cramming in key roles for Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliott, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan O'Neal, Laurence Olivier and Robert Redford. The ensemble approach works reasonably enough and it adds scope, but it does mean you don’t get to know – or care about – any particular individual very well.
Despite the jaunty music at times and the sense that for the posh Brits it’s all just a jolly jape, there’s a strong message about the brutality of war and the film doesn’t hold back from showing the realities of injury and death.
It’s superior to the likes of The Great Escape and The Longest Day, although still oddly unsatisfying. It fails to convey why these battles are so important or to provide a wider context of how they fit into the war.
