The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Extremely uneven spaghetti western. Sergio Leone directs and makes beautiful landscapes look even more beautiful. Ennio Morricone’s music is iconic and haunting. And Clint Eastwood is as magnetic as ever. But the tone of the film is really odd, and sometimes scenes intended to be slightly “comedic” simply fall flat. In particular, Eli Wallach (the “ugly”) seems strange with his sneering and grimacing. Plus, there’s a sadistic thread that runs through it. Deliberate moral ambiguity, perhaps. 

It’s more ambitious than A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More (with which it’s often grouped as a loose trilogy), with an ongoing, parallel narrative about the US Civil War. There are spectacular battle scenes involving a huge number of extras. It’s unclear whether you are supposed to take it as an anti-war film, or whether it’s again being morally ambiguous on purpose. 

On the plus side, Lee Van Cleef (the “bad”) is charismatic as “Angel Eyes”. But the dubbed voices used for all of the actors – even the English-speaking ones – remain a barrier that prevents it from ever seeming even remotely real.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Awkward, hugely disappointing, almost childish biopic of Queen. The story has been dumbed down and sanitised (hardly anyone seems to drink or take drugs) and other than Freddie Mercury – whose bisexuality is touched upon – none of the characters have any depth whatsoever. The dialogue is poor. Some of the scenes are like a Spinal Tap-esque parody sketch. You keep waiting for the punchline, but it never arrives. You wouldn’t know from this film that they were an interesting group at all. The songs remain remarkable, and it’s always nice to hear them again, but even the scene showing the group pulling together “Bohemian Rhapsody” falls flat. We get the nuts and bolts of them recording the piano part, the guitar part, the harmonies and so on, but there’s nothing about how something so unusual was composed or what inspired it. 

Freddie Mercury is rendered without subtlety by Rami Malek. He somehow overplays the flamboyance while forgetting the all-important charisma. There are too many scenes showing his cats, and I like cats. 

By the time the film climaxes at the 1985 Live Aid show it appears to have completely given up with the various plot threads. Instead, it contrives to go out on a high note without having to resolve anything. 

Ultimately, you wonder why this film got made and who it was made for. There’s no real story to reveal, because the basics of their story is already so universally known. I was left wishing I had seen a comprehensive Queen documentary with concert footage and interview clips. That would have been so much more engaging.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Adaptation of John O’Brien’s novel, written and directed by Mike Figgis. 

Nicolas Cage is perfectly cast as an alcoholic who leaves Hollywood and travels to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. He meets a prostitute (Elisabeth Shue), who is also at a low ebb. (It certainly isn’t Pretty Woman.) 

The film suggests the possibility that the couple might somehow save each other from their fates, but it’s also intelligent enough not to present any easy solutions. It’s harrowing and heartbreaking to watch the situation unfold.

Cage and Shue are both stunning. I was completely convinced by them, together and apart. Their relationship is complex but believable, and the film follows it through to its logical conclusion without sentimentality or compromise.

Hope and Glory (1987)

Written, produced and directed by John Boorman, this is a poignant and gently hilarious view of wartime as seen through the eyes of a young boy. 

When Britain declares war on Germany on 1st September 1939, everything changes for Billy Rowan (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) and his family. His father Clive (David Hayman) signs up, leaving his mother Grace (Sarah Miles) struggling to come to terms with her new circumstances. Meanwhile, his older sister Dawn (Sammi Davis) gets involved with a Canadian soldier (Jean-Marc Barr). For Billy, the war is a thrilling adventure that excites and troubles him at the same time. 

The details are beautifully observed. Billy joins a gang of boys who go through the bomb wreckage taking delight in breaking things. His grandfather (Ian Bannen) is appealingly eccentric, and his role in a game of cricket is one of the highlights. Most moving is probably the moment when one of the children loses a parent in the bombings, only for the other children to leap on this piece of information as valuable gossip/currency to exchange. It seems inevitable that the film is semi-autobiographical. I especially like the way it presents the strange freedoms that the war offers – suddenly the old rules no longer apply – but doesn’t sentimentalise or romanticise the horrors either. 

As good a film about WWII and its effects as any I have seen.

Yesterday (2019)

Comedy drama written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle.

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling singer who – owing to a mysterious electrical event it’s best not to ask too many questions about – suddenly finds himself in a world in which no one has heard of The Beatles. In fact, it appears that they never existed. He begins performing their songs, is recognised as a genius, and swiftly finds himself on the path to fame and fortune. But there are problems. He’s clearly not cut out for the life of a rock star – especially one whose success is built on a lie. And he also happens to be in love with his friend and former manager Ellie (Lily James).

It’s a sweet and touching story. The songs are wonderful, too, as you’d expect. The joy of the film is that through people’s stunned reactions it feels as if you get to hear The Beatles’ songs for the first time.

Patel and James are extremely endearing. You are rooting for them from the very beginning, able to identify with the pair in every scene.

Ed Sheeran appears as himself and is a feasible enough character in his own right rather than merely a walk-on famous-person role. Kate McKinnon is also fairly strong as Jack's ruthless new manager, who makes no secret of her desire to make a fortune out of the singer.

Fun and rewarding.

Drive (2011)

A disturbing thriller.

Ryan Gosling plays a getaway driver who becomes mixed up in a crime involving the husband of his neighbour (Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan respectively). After a brooding, menacing start, it turns very, very violent indeed. Gosling seems superbly intense in the lead, initially, but his character development takes him down a path that means you can no longer identify with him.

I found the violence somewhat gratuitous. I know that violence was in many ways the subject of the film, but a couple of the scenes were horrifically drawn out in a way that they really didn’t need to be. It was difficult to know what I was supposed to take away from it.

On the plus side, the driving sequences were exciting and the locations were well chosen. Gosling and Mulligan had a certain chemistry, too. There are echoes of Taxi Driver, but it doesn’t have the consistent logic or magnetic pull of that masterpiece.

Pretty Woman (1990)

Excellent romance starring Richard Gere as a ruthless businessman and Julia Roberts as the prostitute he initially hires and ultimately falls for. 

I’d heard a lot about this film but somehow never seen it until now. And what a gem it is. Gere’s acting seems to have improved exponentially since An Officer and a Gentleman. He has real presence. And Roberts has an effortless charm. Together, they have plenty of chemistry. 

The story is simple but expertly told. It’s subtle, too, where it could have been obvious: Gere’s transformation is slow and realistically gradual, rather than a character U-turn. 

There are two criticisms I would make. Firstly, it idealises Vivian's profession. She makes one reference to men always hitting her, but it gives little impression of the true dangers of her work. Secondly, it has the usual tropes of US 80s/90s films in that upward mobility is presented as the only real option to aspire towards.

Those points aside, it’s a pleasure to watch.

Oblivion (2013)

Derivative, shallow sci-fi starring Tom Cruise. I probably wouldn’t have bought this DVD, but I watched it because I found it being given away on a wall. 

The plot is rather confused, but Google usefully summarises it as follows: “Jack Harper, a drone repairman stationed on Earth that has been ravaged by war with extraterrestrials, questions his identity after rescuing the woman who keeps appearing in his dreams.”

That woman is Olga Kurylenko, who, like Cruise, hardly gets any dialogue at all. Another barely filled-in, completely thrown-away character is played by Morgan Freeman, who struggles to convey the grizzled leader of a band of human survivors. 

There are so many things wrong with Oblivion:

• As usual, Tom Cruise is a good-at-everything action-hero dullard who manages to save the world single-handedly. It’s Top Gun all over again. 

• In the absence of dialogue – or any kind of personality – Tom spends much of the film staring moodily yet conveying little emotion.

• Almost every element is borrowed from another sci-fi film. 

• We visit the remains of what used to be New York, but it’s nothing but lush, clean and green vistas. Where’s all the rubble and filth? Could it be transformed that thoroughly in just 60 years?

• There are plot holes aplenty. Best not to ask many questions. 

• Attempts to be “philosophical” end up hollow and self-conscious. 

• When we finally meet the alien presence, it’s a huge let-down. 

• The title has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the film. It's like they wanted a high-impact, single-word title, but all of the relevant words had already been taken.

Passchendaele (2008)

Gruelling depiction of two battles in 1917. Paul Gross wrote, produced and directed, as well as starring as Canadian soldier Michael Dunne. 

The middle section details a love story involving Dunne and a nurse called Sarah (Caroline Dhavernas). Their relationship is complicated by her troubled brother David (Joe Dinicol), who Dunne vows to protect. The narrative wrestles with notions of responsibility and duty set against the redemptive possibilities offered by love. 

It’s moving and harrowing. The film faithfully depicts the gruesome mud bath/bloodbath that saw 5,000 soldiers killed in 16 days, and the battle scenes look all too real. Only one thing doesn’t quite convince: you can see sunny skies in the background, even though it’s permanently raining. I wondered if that was an aesthetic choice, but the “making-of” feature on the DVD confirms that it was filmed in Canada and that the “rain” was just water being sprayed over the set.

It’s Complicated (2009)

Rom-com with little rom and and even less com. It’s not even very complicated.

Divorcee Jane (Meryl Streep) begins an “affair” with her own ex-husband (Alec Baldwin). But she’s also drawn to the architect she hired to make her huge home even bigger (Steve Martin). 

The film is directed by Nancy Meyers, who was responsible for Something’s Gotta Give, and very much follows the formula of that earlier film. But whereas that was just about salvaged by the talents of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, this film has to survive on the abilities of Streep alone. Baldwin is oddly repulsive (it’s not clear how much of that is intentional), while Martin seems bland and underwritten. 

These smug, wealthy people are difficult to like. That’s not helped by the shallow way the film addresses a potentially interesting web of relationships. But it’s not a story about how people actually are. Instead, it seems to be an aspirational exercise about how you too can be wealthy, have a huge home, have lots of friends, be loved by everyone and have a top-quality job that’s both well-paid and endlessly rewarding. 

There’s a bottom line of watchability with Streep, but that’s not enough this time.

The Fifth Element (1997)

I hated this film. I don’t think it’s rubbish, necessarily (I’m sure it turned out the way director Luc Besson intended), but I hated it. It’s irritating on so many levels: the aesthetic is ugly, the characters are completely uninteresting and even the sci-fi elements lack the all-important “wow” factor. Bruce Willis runs around in a vest, shooting a lot and looking like he’d rather be in a different sort of film. Gary Oldman hams it up as a daft villain. And Milla Jovovich plays a sort of super-human “perfect” woman with orange hair. 

It has some of the pantomime silliness of Flash Gordon, but absolutely none of the charm. And it steals from Blade Runner (there’s Vangelis-like music at one point, and Jovovich seems modelled on Daryl Hannah’s Pris at others), but it has none of that film’s vision or innovation. It’s played for comedy, but it’s never funny. It falls flat. The crass talk-show host Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker) is just embarrassing – possibly the most annoying film character I’ve ever encountered. 

Absolutely nothing about this film appeals.

Spellbound (1945)

Alfred Hitchcock thriller that unfortunately doesn’t rank up there with his best work. 

The new head of Green Manors, a Vermont-based mental asylum (Gregory Peck) turns out to be an imposter and possibly a dangerous killer. But psychoanalyst Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) falls in love with him and wants to unpick the mysteries of his past to clear his name.

It’s stylish and visually intriguing, like all of Hitchcock’s work. There’s plenty of tension and excitement, too, but the plot suffers because it hinges – somewhat ridiculously – on the interpretation of a dream. The dream itself was devised by Salvador Dalí and is full of that artist’s familiar imagery. 

Peck seems a little wooden, but Bergman is terrific.

Sleepers (1996)

Four friends growing up in New York in the 1960s end up in a youth detention centre, where they are brutalised by the staff. We then meet them again, 13 years later, in 1981, and find out how those harrowing experiences have defined every aspect of their adult lives. 

The first half is compelling. Director Barry Levinson brilliantly sets the scene and evokes both time and place perfectly. But in the second half, the film seems to lose its way. A lengthy courtroom segment takes the focus away from the themes of friendship and community that initially made the film so watchable. And something about that plot – the convoluted account of a faked legal hearing – just doesn’t ring true. 

The cast is excellent, with memorable performances by Robert De Niro (reliably brilliant as a priest who befriends the boys), Minnie Driver (who falls in love with three of them), Dustin Hoffman (an alcoholic lawyer) and Kevin Bacon (one of the abusive staff at the Wilkinson Home for Boys). Brad Pitt is less convincing as the grown-up version of Michael Sullivan. 

There’s overbearing music by John Williams. 

The film is often disturbing, as you’d imagine from the subject matter – and all the more so because the 1995 novel it’s drawn from (by Lorenzo Carcaterra) is semi-autobiographical. It makes some profound points about how cruelty shapes and damages us, but somehow it still misses the mark.

Fair Game (2010)

Superb thriller. Adapted from the memoirs of the two protagonists, it tells the story of CIA operative Valerie Plane and her diplomat husband Joseph C. Wilson. The pair were responsible for exposing the US government’s fabrication of the evidence about Weapons of Mass Destruction that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. 

Naomi Watts and Sean Penn deliver remarkably convincing performances in the lead roles. There’s the political saga, but also the story of their marriage and family, and the strain that these events put on them. 

I admire the realism of it, such as the way that every scene featuring the couple’s children had them constantly asking questions and demanding attention. I also respect the film for delving into the moral ambiguities of the topic – should you tell the truth even if it puts loved ones at risk? – and not providing any simplistic answers.

Heat (1995)

Cop tries to catch criminal gang causing havoc in Los Angeles. Al Pacino is the cop. Robert De Niro leads the gang. 

Heat is a complex film that introduces multiple threads. At its worst it’s in danger of becoming an episode of Miami Vice or even The A-Team. At its best, it’s like a cut-price Scorsese imitation, albeit without the elegance and sophistication. The script is reasonable enough, but there are casting problems. Val Kilmer is jarringly woeful as one of the gang members. Furthermore, the gang guys have no chemistry whatsoever. Even De Niro seems to be struggling a little with the material. Plus, some of the music is intrusive. And the threads about the stand-in getaway driver and Natalie Portman as a troubled teen could both have been removed in the interests of tightening up the narrative.

On the plus side – and it's a big plus – Pacino rises to the challenge of his role and is every bit as cool as usual. The scenes featuring him and his wife (Diane Venora) are convincing, and there’s a depth to him that the other characters lack.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

Remarkable drama that seems to consist of several films elegantly woven into one. It begins with a story about motorcycle stunt rider (excellently portrayed by Ryan Gosling), whose discovery that he has a son with his ex-girlfriend (a passable Eva Mendes) leads him into a spate of bank robberies. That, in turn, introduces a story about the cop (superb-as-ever Bradley Cooper) who tries to apprehend him. The consequences of their brief meeting ripple out across the years and affect the lives of several others. 

I love the way the film keeps surprising you with its various sideways turns. It’s also encouraging that rather than simply glorifying guns, there's an intelligent exploration of the ethics around them.

Bradley Cooper perfectly conveys a good man who makes mistakes that will always trouble him.

This is a multi-part tale that never sacrifices clarity to realise its ambition.

Ad Astra (2019)

Brad Pitt stars in an existential sci-fi mind-bender. He’s an astronaut who leaves Earth in search of his father (Tommy Lee Jones), who is fixated on seeking intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But that search has deadly repercussions for Earth and needs to be stopped.

The film asks intelligent questions about what’s important in life. It looks remarkably “realistic”, and there are moments of great beauty – especially around Jupiter. Pitt has never particularly impressed me with his acting, but he’s excellent here. He conveys the desperately lonely experience of being on your own in the vastness of space. 

Liv Tyler and Donald Sutherland play supporting roles.

Dirty Harry (1971)

Crime thriller directed by Don Segal. Clint Eastwood is at his best as the monosyllabic San Francisco cop who takes the law into his own hands to defeat a crazed murderer. 

The locations are perfectly chosen. Eastwood is effortlessly cool. The soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin is entirely suitable for the action but also works in its own right. The night scenes are atmospheric and suspenseful. And the psychopath Scorpio played by Andy Robinson is convincingly mad. 

Four sequels would follow.

The Hours (2002)

The lives of three women from different eras form intriguing parallels. In Richmond in the 1920s, we see Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) writing Mrs Dalloway and dealing with suicidal thoughts. In 1950s California, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) reads Mrs Dalloway and faces her own fears and insecurities. And in New York in 2001, Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) wrestles with her feelings for an old flame who is dying of AIDS. 

Kidman, Moore and Streep are all fantastic in emotionally complex and challenging roles. Kidman looks absolutely nothing like herself – it’s difficult to believe it’s her – owing to a prosthetic nose. 

There are also strong performances from Miranda Richardson, Jeff Daniels and Ed Harris. 

In many ways it’s a depressing film, and it deals with painful topics. But it also addresses the value of life. 

Intense, sweeping, music by Philip Glass adds emotional depth.

Sea of Love (1989)

Brilliant, noirish thriller. Al Pacino is a New York cop investigating a series of murders. But unfortunately he’s falling in love with the main suspect. 

Pacino is effortlessly and endlessly charming in the main role. Ellen Barkin plays his girlfriend and handles the nuances well. Is she or isn’t she the killer? Even John Goodman, usually guaranteed to ruin a film, judges it about right as Detective Sherman Touhey.

A couple of plot holes keep it from being perfect. There’s something not quite tied up about the “Sea of Love” single that the killer plays – and Ellen Barkin’s relationship with the song. Also, the attempt on Pacino’s life comes too late in relation to the killer’s attacks on previous victims. Why does the killer wait so long to strike?

Those points aside, it’s hugely enjoyable.

Raging Bull (1980)

Martin Scorsese directs Robert De Niro again. This time, De Niro plays real-life boxer Jake LaMotta in an adaptation of the latter’s 1970 memoir. It works as a biopic, tracing his career and personal life from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s. 

It’s beautifully shot in black and white. 

Joe Pesci is superb as LaMotta’s brother and trainer. Brilliantly, we never find out whether he’s having an affair with the boxer’s wife (Cathy Moriarty) or whether this is merely LaMotta’s jealousy and paranoia.

It’s brutally violent and every one of those punches looks like it really hurts. It’s excellently shot, in that sense. Being totally “method” about it, De Niro famously gained weight to depict LaMotta in his later years.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

A man and woman undergo special treatment to have their painful memories of each other erased so that they can forget the suffering they endured when their relationship broke down. But, mid-procedure, the man realises he’s making a mistake and tries to hang on to what remains of his precious recollections of the person he still loves. 

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are endearing in the lead roles, and their opposites-attract romance is offbeat and believable. What spoils the film is that the visual representation of memory – much of the story takes place in Jim Carrey’s mind – seems gimmicky and over-stylised. I appreciate that they were looking for a cinematic style that could resemble the way memories appear to us, but the fast-cut visuals are so full-on and relentless that they get in the way of the story. It could have been a far stronger film if the narrative and the editing allowed for some slower scenes that gave us the space to get to know the couple better. Indeed, the rare moments when they are simply talking or enjoying being together make up the best parts of the story. 

Oddly enough, a sub-plot about the boss of the company offering memory removal (Tom Wilkinson) and a woman who works for him (Kirsten Dunst) is better handled because it unfolds at a more natural pace. 

It’s so nearly brilliant, but the execution gets in the way. It’s a shame because the idea is a great one, and it enables the film to consider all sorts of ethical and even spiritual issues about identity and how much our pasts define who we are.

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

Zack Mayo (Richard Gere) is training to be a naval officer. Debra Winger plays his girlfriend Paula. They both take their clothes off a fair bit, but – beyond a detailed look at the training itself – there’s not a great deal more going on until the drama suddenly ramps up for the closing minutes. 

Winger is one of the strongest actresses of this era, but she isn’t really given enough to get her teeth into. Likewise Gere, who is perfectly acceptable. More impressive than either of them is Louis Gossett Jr. as the drill instructor who teaches Zack discipline. 

It’s entertaining and the final third certainly pulls you in as the sub-plots about the secondary couple (Sid and Lynette) are developed. It would have been stronger if Zack’s father had either been made more of or ditched entirely. And a few laughs would have helped. 

The soundtrack is a little intrusive at times. One of the love scenes has what sounds like lift music playing all the way through it. At the end we get the big hit song, “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.

Taxi Driver (1976)

A masterpiece. Robert De Niro is utterly transfixing as Travis Bickle, a New York cabbie who becomes obsessed with cleaning up the city – whatever the cost. 

Cybil Shepherd and Jodie Foster are excellent as Betsy (the campaign volunteer for a presidential candidate) and Iris (a child prostitute), while Harvey Keitel is suitably creepy as Iris’s long-haired pimp. 

It’s beautifully filmed: you could freeze almost any frame and make a poster of it. And Martin Scorsese’s subtle handling of tension was never better judged. 

The original score by Bernard Herrmann makes a compelling, noirish film even more so. 

You can interpret it as a film about PTSD or a story about isolation and loneliness. 

Disturbingly, this classic was an influence on John Hinckley Jr., who in 1981 attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in order to impress Jodie Foster.

Terms of Endearment (1983)

Melodrama with moments of comedy. 

Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger play a mother and daughter who share an intense connection. We follow the evolution of that relationship, along with their couplings with Jack Nicholson and Jeff Daniels respectively. Then the plot takes a sideways turn and everything becomes a lot more serious. 

What makes this an absolute gem is the quality of the acting. All four leads are remarkable, but MacLaine and Winger are quite extraordinary. They convey such a strong sense of personality for their complex, fully rounded characters that it’s difficult to imagine they aren’t real people.

Mean Streets (1973)

Brilliant drama by Martin Scorsese. Harvey Keitel plays Charlie Cappa, a small-time criminal in New York who gets into trouble because his friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) owes money and is something of a loose cannon. 

De Niro is fantastic: genuinely unpredictable and hugely watchable. Keitel is sympathetic: you can relate to him because he seems to want to do the right thing, but he’s out of his depth. His epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) is also likeable and convincing. 

While it’s a lower-budget, earlier film than most of the classics in his catalogue, Scorsese’s usual tricks and tics are all in place: the wall-to-wall use of music (including Phil Spector hits and the Rolling Stones), the distinctive dialogue and framing of shots, and the expert ramping up of dramatic tension.

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

Remarkable adaptation of the popular stage musical by Norman Jewison, shot in a way that still seems fresh and lively. There are so many good things about this film...

The songs are strong and memorable. Plus, they work with and within the narrative. They aren’t merely irrelevant add-ons, as is often the case in lesser musicals. 

Topol’s warm, well-rounded character is extremely watchable. It's difficult to imagine anyone else filling the part so well or being so funny. He’s rolling his eyes and fourth-walling it constantly. And the device of him talking to God offers a useful way for him to directly address the audience and bring us into his inner world. 

Even when the film embraces dream sequences, it works.

Julie & Julia (2009)

Nora Ephron’s comedy-drama tells the story of two cooks:

• in the 1950s, we follow the fortunes of Julia Child, an eccentric American, who popularised French cuisine in the USA. 

• in the early 2000s, we see New Yorker Julie Powell being inspired by Child’s book to cook all of its 524 recipes in just one year – and blog about the experience. 

It’s a curious biopic in that neither of the women meet. Nor are their individual stories especially noteworthy. But the way the film alternates between their two lives really works. 

Meryl Streep effectively captures Child’s manner. I thought she was hamming it up ludicrously, but a look at archive footage of Child reveals that her strange exclamations and lurching around are an accurate impersonation. Only the accent (not American enough) slightly lets it down. Amy Adams is extremely charming, giving off a vulnerability and emotional depth that makes it very easy to identify with her. 

Stanley Tucci, and Chris Messina play the two husbands. The former is especially strong as the diplomat continually being relocated. It’s refreshing that his love for Childs is so pure and uncomplicated.

The Notebook (2004)

Summer 1940: a young couple meet at a South Carolina carnival and begin an intense relationship. She’s from a wealthy family and her parents don’t want her associating with “trash” in the form of this poor lumberyard worker. 

Present day: an old man reads a romance story to an old woman with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. Inevitably, we soon twig that they are the same couple and that the notebook he reads from is her journal. 

There are quite a few problems with this flashback device:

• despite being asked to accept this contrivance, I never once believed it was the same couple.

• more troublingly, the Alzheimer’s plot simply doesn’t work. It’s never explained how Allie can remember the story Noah is telling her, nor who she thinks he is for the majority of the time (i.e., when she’s forgotten he’s her husband). 

• the “miracle” ending is, frankly, ludicrous. 

The highly watchable scenes with the younger version of the couple seem to have greater emotional intelligence, almost as if two different films have been bolted together. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams have a degree of chemistry together, and they exchange some good lines about the complexity of relationships that confirm this isn’t merely a dumb script. Plus, Joan Allen and Sam Shepard convince as Allie’s mother and Noah’s father. 

There’s a sweetness to the summer romance and you do find yourself rooting for the young couple. But it could have been a far better film if we’d left them in the past.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

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

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

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

It’s unusual, rewarding and refreshing.

Another Year (2010)

This heartbreaking domestic drama by Mike Leigh focuses on a fundamentally decent but rather self-satisfied suburban English couple, Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), and their various relationships. We get to know Gerri’s troubled work colleague Mary (Lesley Manville), Tom’s unhealthy, unhappy old friend Ken (Peter Wight), Tom’s widowed brother Ronnie (David Bradley) and their son Joe (Oliver Maitman). 

Although there are flashes of humour, a bleak thread of tragedy runs through it. Lesley Manville’s acting is astonishing as she expertly conveys a lonely desperation. It’s very rare that you see a performance that seems so incredibly real. Every facial expression counts. Even the way she holds her wine glass (there’s a lot of wine in this film) serves as a reflection of her inner suffering.

The Post (2017)

I’m not much of a Spielberg fan, as documented elsewhere, but I bought this without realising he was involved. 

It tells the story of how the Washington Post acquired and published the Pentagon Papers, which incriminated the US government in their handling of the Vietnam War. Meryl Streep plays Katharine Graham, who owns the newspaper. Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradlee, its editor. 

Hanks is terrific, giving one of his most convincing performances. I really believed in his character, rather than merely thinking “there goes Tom Hanks again” (as is usually the case). Streep was less impressive, perhaps because there’s too much of Graham being weakly indecisive in the first half before she suddenly finds her mojo and seems to become a different character in the second. In reality, it surely can’t have been that straightforward or simplistic. Likewise, the connection to Watergate at the very end seems abruptly and conveniently bolted on, while other threads are left dangling. What happened to Daniel Ellsberg (played by Matthew Rhys), who first leaked the papers? And what happened to Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), the Secretary of Defense, who was friends with Graham at the time of the leak?

The Post is interesting because of the historical moments it alludes to, but it’s difficult to accept it as an accurate account of events. And there’s something mannered and stilted about the way it’s filmed that prevents it ever becoming truly engrossing.

Something’s Gotta Give (2003)

Silly but amiable rom-com directed by Nancy Meyers. 

Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) is a womaniser in his sixties who only dates women half his age. Then he meets his girlfriend’s mother, the successful playwright Erica Barry (Diane Keaton), and discovers a deeper connection that surprises him. 

Keanu Reeves is passable but underdeveloped as the doctor who also falls for Keaton. Frances McDormand is oddly underused as Keaton’s sister. And Amanda Peet is the weak link as Keaton’s daughter, with a narrative arc that’s all over the place. For example, she’s distraught to learn that her father (Paul Michael Glaser) intends to remarry, but then this is never mentioned again. Indeed, Glaser’s character seems to have been pretty much edited out of the film – or never written into it in the first place. 

In some ways it’s as formulaic as its title, with daft slapstick and several improbable moments. But Nicholson and Keaton are such pros at this kind of thing that they make the most of the flimsy material and it ends up being highly watchable.

The Ice Storm (1997)

Superb drama directed by Ang Lee and adapted from Rick Moody’s novel. It details the interwoven fortunes of two neighbouring families in Connecticut across the Thanksgiving weekend of 1973. They are members of the wealthy middle-class, with designer homes and seemingly everything they could wish for, but somehow they have lost their way.

The cast is superb. Kevin Kline plays Ben Hood, a father of two who’s having an affair with his friend and neighbour’s wife (Sigourney Weaver). Bored and restless, the two couples have troubled children too – perhaps unsurprisingly. Everything comes to a head on one dramatic, frozen night, as the fractures in their marriages and issues relating to the children’s insecurities seem to point towards a horrifying and inevitable conclusion.

It’s harrowing stuff – more so than I remembered from seeing it at the cinema in 1997. 

Another disturbing thought: in 2021 we are as far from 1997 as 1997 was from 1973.

Funny Lady (1975)

Barbra Streisand is charming and endearing as Fanny Brice in this colourful sequel to Funny Girl (1968). I preferred it to that earlier film, as it seems looser and more playful. Brice is struggling to get over her marriage to Nick (Omar Sharif), but falls in love with impresario Billy Rose (James Caan).

There’s plenty of comedy and the script is sharp. The interplay between Streisand and Caan is especially watchable, even if you can never quite believe in their romance. Then again, that may be the point: these characters are rivals rather than soulmates.

The film slightly loses its way in the second half, becoming more of a conventional musical. The point at which Barbra sings from a small biplane is just ludicrous. Likewise, her attempt to sabotage a theatrical rehearsal in a swimming pool by clowning around in the water doesn’t really work as a scene or ring true with the story we’ve started to believe. Another oddity is Roddy McDowall cast as her gay friend Bobby. He hangs around and doesn’t say much in a way that suggests the film doesn’t need him at all.

But at her best, Streisand is hugely charismatic and when she gets a chance to really act – as she does in a few scenes – the results are impressive.

Frances Ha (2012)

Directed by Noah Baumbach, this is a poignant comedy-drama about friendship, growing up and loneliness.

Greta Gerwig stars as a 27-year-old New Yorker trying to find her way in life. We follow Frances as she flits between jobs and apartments, unsure of what she should do with herself. The common threads are her wish to be a dancer and her unconditional love for her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). 

It’s charming and often very funny, but deeply melancholy too. It’s shot in black and white, and the street scenes of New York (and briefly Paris) look stunning. There’s a wonderful scene in which she runs across the streets to the sounds of “Modern Love” by David Bowie. 

It seems to be highly influenced by Woody Allen (see Annie Hall and Manhattan), but it has greater emotional depth. Gerwig is incredibly believable and endearing.

Unlike so many films, Frances Ha stayed with me for quite a while afterwards.

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Federico Fellini’s startling, iconic drama seems hugely innovative in terms of structure and subject matter. 

Rather than one linear plot, we see a series of connected episodes. Brilliantly, these episodes dovetail with the fact that the protagonist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) is a journalist. We observe what he observes across a few days and nights living and working in Rome. 

The section starring Anita Ekberg as the Swedish-American film star Sylvia (including the famous moment at the Trevi Fountain) is especially vivid. 

Its commentary on the invasive role of the media and paparazzi (the word itself comes from this film’s character Paparazzo, played by Walter Santesso) seems ahead of its time. 

It can be interpreted many ways. There are flashes of surreal humour and darker undercurrents – sometimes cleverly combined, such as a segment dedicated to a sighting of the Madonna by two children.

There’s also an appearance by Nico, looking younger and more radiant than you ever thought she could.

The Doors (1991)

I like The Doors (the group) and have always been curious about how they would be portrayed on film. Unfortunately, Oliver Stone’s “impressionistic” biopic of Jim Morrison (which shouldn’t really be called The Doors at all) is a bit of a disaster. 

Val Kilmer emulates Morrison’s bodily movements fairly well, and radiates a certain “rock star” charisma. I like Meg Ryan as his girlfriend, too, and she may be the best thing in the film. But in terms of a script, neither of these actors have anything to get their teeth into. There’s very little dialogue in general, and there’s way too much Doors music crammed into every scene. Even the courtroom moment, which was potentially an interesting change of pace and tone, is drowned out by more Doors on the soundtrack. The result is a complete lack of dramatic tension. 

I don’t mind it being deeply pretentious – what’s wrong with being pretentious? (as Brian Eno asked) – but I do mind it being lazy, clichéd filmmaking. The Doors offers an almost childish version of “the 1960s”. A scene featuring Andy Warhol and Nico is cartoonishly shoddy. Plus, there’s little sense of the group’s career arc. 

Ultimately, Oliver Stone seems to be too in love with Jim Morrison and his myth to even attempt to present a rounded portrait of him.

Goodfellas (1990)

Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy is a beautifully filmed masterpiece. Unlike Casino, it’s presented from the perspective of a character that you can relate to. Through Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), we see inside the world of the mafia and – crucially – why it initially seems so appealing. 

It’s about many things; the mafia, obviously, but also family, marriage and changing times in the USA.

Scorsese manages to pull off certain effects (freeze frames, a tiny bit of fourth-wall speaking to camera at the end) without it ever seeming tricksy. The characters seem entirely real. It’s also improbably funny – see Joe Pesci’s character's relationship with his mother (played by Scorsese’s own mother), or the obsession with food (Henry asking his brother to keep stirring the sauce as his life’s falling apart). And Robert De Niro is at his very best.

Although it’s multilayered, it’s also superbly lucid storytelling. You know what’s going on and why, even as the film constantly surprises you. Fantastic music choices too.

Donnie Darko (2001)

Richard Kelly’s deeply enigmatic, fascinating film straddles psychological thriller and horror-tinged mind-bender. Donnie is a troubled teenager who encounters a creature in a rabbit costume. This creature tells him that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. As that countdown progresses, he continues to visit the boy and advise him on his actions, which become increasingly extreme. 

Meditations on the nature of time, reality and identity are set against the backdrop of an American suburb. The film develops several other strands: Patrick Swayze is the too-good-to-be-true motivational speaker Jim Cunningham, who has a polarising effect on the town, while Drew Barrymore is a school teacher too open-minded for the culture of the school. There’s also lots about Donnie’s family, who love him without understanding him. 

The ending can be taken multiple ways and I’m not sure you’re even meant to fully “understand” it. Instead, you are left with a glimpse into a powerful, multilayered world beneath or behind the one we take for granted. 

Jake Gyllenhaal is superb as the main character. His face has to convey menace, fear, amusement and confusion, and does so brilliantly. Katharine Ross is excellent as Donnie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lillian Thurman. But, as with all great films, there’s not a single performance that could be improved upon.

Casino (1995)

Lengthy, sometimes dense and extremely violent Martin Scorsese crime thriller. 

Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci play mafia men sent from Chicago to Las Vegas, scamming money off a casino’s profits for the bosses back home. They become rivals and enemies, which is a problem because Pesci’s character is essentially a psychopath. Meanwhile, Sharon Stone is an ex-prostitute who marries De Niro but is still attached to her pimp boyfriend played by James Woods.

It’s similar to Goodfellas in terms of subject matter and tone, but that film is far more appealing because it has a character you can relate to. There’s no one in Casino that you can identify with at all. Also, the violence is really disturbing – especially the head-in-a-vice and buried-alive scenes. I’m not sure I will ever get those images out of my mind.

The use of music was a little excessive. Countless great songs are jammed in, which is fun, but sometimes it's at the expense of light and shade. I craved a little more space.

De Niro is as good as ever, but it remains a flawed film that seems like it could have been a masterpiece and somehow didn’t turn out that way.

A Star Is Born (1954)

Problematic yet enjoyable melodrama starring Judy Garland and James Mason. He’s Norman Maine, a successful actor with a drink problem. She’s Esther Blodgett, an up-and-coming singer. He makes her famous and they get married, but both of those life changes quickly become complicated. 

There are several odd things about it. Certain scenes have been lost and are represented on the DVD simply by on-set stills backed by the original audio. It’s very difficult to absorb these parts as part of the narrative. 

Also, Judy Garland’s fame as a singer means that the film-makers took every opportunity to cram in more of her singing. The extended “film within a film” interlude doesn’t really work, but it could have done if they’d simply cut back to Norman and Esther’s reactions as they watched the show from the theatre. 

Too little happens in the first hour: her talent and his drinking are established in the very first scene, then there’s a lot of filler before that story is picked up again. It’s oddly unbelievable as a romance, and there's very little chemistry between the pair.

On the plus side, the two leads are superb. Mason has just the right mixture of charismatic appeal and troubled “dark side”. You can see and feel his pain as his character declines. And it’s extremely colourful and vivid, with a particular emphasis on red and pink shades. But I was surprised to find that overall it was far less compelling than the Gaga/Cooper remake.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Highly likeable crime comedy. 

Eddie Murphy stars as the endlessly cool, magnetic Axel Foley, a Detroit cop investigating his friend’s shooting. His enquiries take him to a Beverly Hills art dealer who turns out to be dealing in other things too. Steven Berkoff is genuinely menacing as the villain, which is a surprise because he was so awful as General Orlov in Octopussy.

There are a lot of laughs, but it still works as a thriller. Murphy’s presence is so powerful that he’s just a pleasure to watch, and the film has wisely been constructed around his huge, warm personality. It’s worth seeing just to hear his laugh.

The theme tune, “Axel F” by Harold Faltermeyer, keeps popping up and is a welcome inclusion.

Water (1985)

Michael Caine plays the Governor of the (fictional) Caribbean island of Cascara. The generally quiet, happy life on this remote British colony is interrupted when it’s discovered that there’s a potentially lucrative natural supply of mineral water beneath the ground. Suddenly, everyone from US oil magnates and the British Prime Minister (Maureen Lipman as Margaret Thatcher) to Cuban guerrillas and a French water business want a stake in Cascara’s future. 

The cast features many actors known from TV roles, including Billy Connolly, Leonard Rossiter (in his final performance), Fulton Mackay, Ruby Wax and Fred “Herman Munster” Gwynne. 

I’m not a fan of Connolly, but thankfully he’s fairly restrained in this part – partly because his character has vowed to communicate only via song. On the down side, there’s a long, cringeworthy scene in which he plays on stage with a band including George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton. Half of the Beatles and the world’s most famous living guitarist, and all they could come up with was a snug, dreary, tepid mess. 

That aside, it’s a playful, good-natured comedy that’s both intelligent and very silly. I like the way the various plot threads come together. At its best it recalls a less subtle and sophisticated version of Local Hero, particularly for the strong sense of community it develops.

Trading Places (1983)

John Landis comedy starring Dan Aykroyd as Winthorpe, a wealthy commodities broker, and Eddie Murphy as Valentine, a poor street hustler. The social positions of these diametrically opposed individuals are switched because of a wager – hence the clever pun in the title. Valentine rises up in the firm while Winthorpe becomes a down-and-out. This cruel bet is staged by the Duke brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche), who own the business and treat their employees as mere playthings. 

Denholm Elliott is the smart butler who is initially in on the scam, but who then helps Winthorpe and Valentine to outwit the Dukes. Jamie Lee Curtis is a “hooker with a heart of gold” character who helps Winthorpe when no one else will.

It turns briefly ludicrous when we get to the gorilla episode, but otherwise the plot plays out in a very satisfying way – until the ending. I was slightly disappointed that when our heroes get their own back, they merely enjoy their millions. They don’t do anything to reject the privilege, injustice and racism that determined their fortunes. Instead, Trading Places takes a lazier path and observes the usual 1980s film tropes in praise of upward mobility. 

That point aside, it’s sharp and funny. And all of the leads are superb.

Shiner (2000)

Tough Brit crime thriller about a boxing promoter, Billy “Shiner” Simpson (Michael Caine), whose fortunes are hanging in the balance. Billy has gambled his (and his daughters’) financial future on a match that happens to feature his own son, the “Golden Boy”, against a tough US fighter. And his son is absolutely terrified.

A gritty, violent drama that quickly escalates into something harrowing, Shiner tackles issues of class, the meaning of family, and American versus British ways of life. It also works as a sort of Shakespearean tragedy.

The film was poorly received and that’s a great shame because Caine is stunning in the lead role – completely convincing as a tough guy whose life is beginning to unravel.