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Far and Away (1992)   I have to give due credit to popular Hollywood (alleged) freemason Little Ronnie Howard here. His martialling of the demands for scale in Far and Away is leaps and bounds beyond his rather pitiful floundering over a would-be franchise in Willow a few years earlier. That doesn’t make Far and Away any good, of course, not when its anchored by the resistible antics of poor-boy Tom and rich-girl Nicole, but it’s easy to see this as a test run for the voluminously more successful doomed period romance with Oirish hues Titanic. That one had a

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)   A return visit to a movie can sometimes be a sobering reminder that one initially respected a picture rather than really rated it.  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one such, where I expressed admiration for David Fincher’s achievement – of course, it was Fincher, wasn’t it? – but have struggled since to locate what exactly it was about it I held in high regard. Now, it’s quite obvious. If I held it in high regard, even nominally, it was because it was made to be held in high regard. It

Ryan’s Daughter (1970)   The one that knocked David Lean of his epic perch and left him licking his wounds – and, in the course of which, failing to get The Bounty off the ground – for more than a decade. The best you can say of Ryan’s Daughter is that there are compensations. Compensations for the title character resisting audience identification and sympathy, largely because Robert Bolt and Lean have failed to give Sarah Miles sufficient breadth of character to instil the same. As such, I don’t think she’s especially to blame – “The role requires a star” said

Babylon (2022)   “Fin de cinema”? So states one of Babylon’s final montage of clips depicting the expanse of Hollywood’s century-plus output, and there is a sense that Damien Chazelle’s picture – a resounding flop – which shines a light on La La Land’s depraved underbelly, is sounding a death knell. As a Hollywood White Hat, previously responsible for oblique Moon landing movie First Man, Chazelle’s message is presumably the thing, but Paramount surely hoped for a marginally more enthusiastic reception. At least the French love it. I was mixed, but more because he fails us with his main characters

White Noise (2022)   The main topic of conversation with regard to White Noise – if there’s any conversation at all, as the noise has mostly been crickets, if that – is its absurd price tag. Just another dubiously overinflated budget for a Netflix picture, of course (I still can’t get over The Irishman costing as much as $250m and the de-aging being that atrocious). This kind of thing simply isn’t in Noah Baumbach’s frame of reference; the $100m spent is four times anything he’s sniffed at previously. There are sequences here – notably during the mid-section – that clearly

The Mind Benders (1963)   As lurid titles go, The Mind Benders takes some beating. Certainly, in comparison to its actual content. Indeed, this is pretty much a kitchen-sink Altered States, or Doctor in The Flotation Tank, as Dirk Bogarde’s Doctor Henry Longman goes where Doctor John Lilly’s highly dodge MKUltra experiments went before him. However, rather than regressing to primitive man, in all the deliriously OTT glory only Ken Russell could deliver, Basil Dearden delivers a tale of ruthlessly implemented domestic tribulation and strife. On that score, The Mind Benders is quite effective, but it’s ultimately rather uneven, navigating

Excalibur (1981)   John Boorman’s Excalibur is a work of fearless magnificence, utterly unyielding to concerns it might be held up for ridicule due to its unstinting embrace of every fully-fledged flight of Arthurian legend. And it has been. You’re probably equally likely to find those who love it for its romantic-mythic excesses – Zack Snyder, although don’t hold that against it – as those who mercilessly mock the same. In some respects, the tack is all the more surprising, as it comes in the wake of Monty Python and the Holy Grail; every time a limb is chopped off

The Fabelmans (2022)   Dead man directing. One might choose to appraise The Fabelmans in several different ways. The first is as quite a proficient movie, given the auteur it’s credited to is no longer with us. The second would be that whoever did direct it (presumably in a Berg clone suit) has doggedly followed the anaemic “autobiographical” model of many a moviemaker who mistakenly believed their formative experiences held some degree of wider fascination for audiences, not to mention dramatic import. Occasionally, just occasionally, such assumptions prove justified: Hope and Glory. More often, we get an aroma of Roma.

Fear and Desire (1953)   Kubrick’s disinherited first feature, a “bumbling amateur film exercise”. Albeit, at a shade over an hour, Fear and Desire is really closer to an extended short. The through line to the director’s later war screeds is evident here, but with its overblown philosophising, you’d wouldn’t be far wrong assuming the picture was a lost Malick student film. It’s a curio, then, no more than that, and while some will attempt to reclaim Fear and Desire as an early example of Kubrick’s genius – you can find it on YouTube, where a prize comment has been

A Matter of WHO (1961)   A peculiarly positioned comedy-drama from Don Chaffey (Jason and the Argonauts) and starring the incomparable Terry-Thomas. Essentially, it’s a propaganda flick for the World Health Organisation and their global “beneficence” – you know, at the vanguard of laying the ground work for the New World Order and all, along with the UN – while simultaneously expounding the fearsome attributes of Pasteur germ theory. Bechamp must have been turning in his grave. He’s doubtless been extremely restless over the last century. Apparently, A Matter of WHO was conceived as a straight thriller before T-T came

The Forgiven (2021)   By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)   The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is beloved by so many of the cinematic firmament’s luminaries – Stanley Kubrick, Sam Raimi, , Paul Thomas Anderson and who knows maybe also WS, Vince Gilligan, Spike Lee, Daniel Day Lewis; Oliver Stone was going to remake it – not to mention those anteriorly influential Stone Roses, that it seems foolhardy to suggest it isn’t quite all that. There’s no faulting the performances – a career best Humphrey Bogart, with director John Huston’s dad Walter stealing the movie from under him – but the greed-is-bad theme

Around the World in 80 Days (1956)   Around the World in 80 Days gets a bad rap. You’ll even hear it cited as one of the all-time worst Best Picture Oscar winners. Which is patently absurd, if you’ve ever had the misfortune to endure A Beautiful Mind. Or Nomadland. Or Oliver! It is, however, undeniably guilty of spectacle-first filmmaking, not so much due to the eager procession of cameos littering every port of call made by Phileas Fogg as the idea that simply visiting said port and lingering there, dramatically engaged or more probably not, would be sufficient. Perhaps it was, in some cases,

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)   The most striking aspect of Anatomy of a Murder on revisit is how atypical it is of the courtroom drama/thriller, even six-decades-plus after it broke new ground. Studio wisdom would dictate you can’t have such an incendiary case and not include whodunnit; it would be anathema to audience expectations. And yet, for Otto Preminger’s picture, the ambiguity of motive, perspective and moral judgement are precisely the point – “the apparent fallibility of the human factor in jurisprudence” as Wiki puts it – occasionally to the extent that one feels one is being lectured, rather than watching a dramatisation. Indeed, Nick

The Full Monty (1997)   There are certainly much less respectable examples of the modern British dramedy, but that doesn’t mean The Full Monty had any business being Best Picture Oscar nominated. It certainly isn’t in the same class – ahem – as earlier awards darling Four Weddings and a Funeral, even if it made even greater waves at the box office. And that’s what this is about, really: showing the Oscar doesn’t stuffily need to be oozing respect and refinement from every pore. Besides, if you want to pick a movie that really had no business being in contention that year, look no further

The Right Stuff (1983)   While it certainly more than fulfils the function of a NASA-propaganda picture – as in, it affirms the legitimacy of their activities – The Right Stuff escapes the designation of rote testament reserved for Ron Howard’s later Apollo 13. Partly because it has such a distinctive personality and attitude. Partly too because of the way it has found its through line. Which isn’t so much the “wow” of the Space Race and those picked to be a part of it, as it is the personification of that titular quality in someone who wasn’t even in the Mercury programme: Chuck Yaeger

The Northman (2022)   Tarzan the Eric Northman. Robert Eggers’ “authentic” Viking flick is a pagan-chic melange of exploitation splatter and grisly characterisation, designed to impress upon us just how uncivilised things were back then. But also kind of great, right? Because people were freer and more instinctive and more aligned with the old gods. And shit. Eggers’ pictures, with their unhealthily heathen hues, appear to be an embrace/warning of the madness and ecstasy that comes with such release. Surely no right-minded person would wish to end up like Robert Pattison in The Lighthouse, nor Alexander Skarsgård here, even if they were

Fat Man and Little Boy aka Shadow Makers (1989)   The Manhattan Project is currently Hollywood currency once more, on account of a highly-prized – by bidding studios – Chris Nolan project that hopes it will be a goldmine simply based on the director’s past credits. Not, perhaps, an outrageous assumption, but studios would have been wise to look to Dunkirk’s performance and then halve it when agreeing to the budget. On the face of it, Oppenheimer’s a prestige Oscar-grab by Nolan, one that sees him once again scouting the terrain of perception and reality as he reinforces the dominant paradigm. If

In the Name of the Father (1993)   The trouble with the Troubles is that they tend to make for rather dreary, respectable, eggshell-treading fare. Unless, of course, they’re entering into full-blown genre territory (Hidden Agenda, ’71; there’s a film to be made about the funding of the various paramilitary organisations and their infiltration, but that puts you squarely in the kind of terrorism territory Hollywood wouldn’t want to touch). Barring the odd, unfathomable decision to make a Fiddy Cent movie, Jim Sheridan has mostly spent his cinematic career charting the Irish experience in various forms and settings, several of which

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)   Something of a surprise, in that a movie made immediately subsequent to the concerted propaganda onslaught of WWII should be as open as it is to the lasting effects of conflict on those involved. There’s undoubtedly a degree of rhetoric in The Best Years of Our Lives, both in terms of boosting the prospects for veterans and extolling a “just” war, but William Wyler’s film (yet another Sam Goldwyn awards darling) treads its terrain with frequent care and attention, and it’s easy to see why this appeared on Oliver Stone’s All-Time Top 10

Apollo 13 (1995)   The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo

Chinatown (1974)   One of the most poured-over classics, with even a recent book (The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson) devoted to its undiminished lustre. Consequently, it can be more interesting to trawl rare divergent takes on such hallowed pictures. Not that Chinatown doesn’t deserve its rep, but the chorus of approval can drown out any other consideration, yielding a wash of rather vanilla views (look at The Godfathers I & II, and III – uniform in their yay, yay, nay consensus). Those who did offer an objection, did so on the basis of execution rather than content. Gene Siskel complained about Polanski’s direction: “The opening

Mildred Pierce (1945)   Is Mildred Pierce really a film noir? Sure, its framing device revolves around murder, and there’s crime – it’s adapted from a 1941 James Cain novel, after all – and requisite black-and-white cinematography, but at its core, this is really melodrama. The picture’s genre specifics are evidently a well-thumbed subject for discussion, so I’m rather late to the table on that score. All I know for certain is, there’s only so much of Veda (Ann Blyth) being a right little spoiled cow to pushover mum Mildred (Joan Crawford) I can take before I’m longing for Bogey to show up and

Cry Macho (2021)   I wouldn’t have credited the director of the very good Richard Jewell with late onset senility, but I can find little other explanation for his disastrous central casting decision, one that destroys any chance Cry Macho has for credibility or dramatic integrity. Towering hubris, perhaps, of the kind that saw Clint, in his previous starring vehicle (The Mule) proving ever-so satisfying and virile while servicing a couple of hookers. That, at least, was a mere interlude. Here we’re supposed to believe Marta (Natalia Traven, about fifty) is so desperate for companionship, she’d see a ninety-year old man as a prize

Belfast (2021)   I wasn’t expecting that. I may have to retract my assessment that Sir Ken is one of the worst directors under the firmament. There’s no doubting his responsibility for the steaming pile that is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and I wouldn’t wish to go to the opposite of extreme of suggesting Belfast is some kind of small miracle, but it is, for the most part, a model of restraint and well-wrought performances. Almost as if, when faced with something personal, Branagh was ironically able to get out of its way. Cynicism is due Belfast, however. It’s a modest little movie, calibrated, with its black-and-white

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)   The meticulous slightness of Driving Miss Daisy is precisely the reason it proved so lauded, and also why it presented a prime Best Picture Oscar pick: a feel-good, social-conscience-led flick for audiences who might not normally spare your standard Hollywood dross a glance. One for those who appreciate the typical Judi Dench feature, basically. While I’m hesitant to get behind anything Spike Lee, as Hollywood’s self-appointed race-relations arbiter, spouts, this was a year when he actually did deliver the goods, a genuinely decent movie – definitely a rarity for Lee – addressing the issues head-on that Driving Miss Daisy approaches in

The Color of Money (1986)   I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money, however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He

The Little Foxes (1941)   A handsomely mounted Southern melodrama that competed for Best Picture Oscar with such luminaries as Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York and How Green Was My Valley, The Little Foxes has rather faded from view over the years, yet it still has much to offer… if you can get past the godawful wall-to-wall soundtrack (I’m hesitant to call it a score, as that would suggest some kind of legitimate intent). This is yet another of the extraordinarily prolific, awards-piquing combinations of William Wyler and Sam Goldwyn that included Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); without Goldwyn, Wyler also had The Letter (1940), with

The Apartment (1960)   Billy Wilder’s romcom delivered the genre that rare Best Picture Oscar winner. Albeit, The Apartment amounts to a rather grim (now) PG-rated scenario, one rife with adultery, attempted suicide, prostitution of the soul and subjective thereof of the body. And yet, it’s also, finally, rather sweet, so salving the darker passages and evidencing the director’s expertly judged balancing act. Time Out’s Tom Milne suggested the ending was a cop out (“boy forgives girl and all’s well”). But really, what other ending did the audience or central characters deserve? Dobisch: Listen, Baxter. We made you, we can break you. That soft

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)   Now this, this is much closer to the “godawful Oscar-winning schmaltz” Time Out labelled its predecessor Going My Way. Albeit, The Bells of St. Mary’s went home empty handed on the night of the 18th Academy Awards (it received the most nominations of the contenders: eight including Best Picture). Instead, voters chose The Lost Weekend’s sobering tale of an alcoholic’s bender over Leo McCarey’s cockles-warming repeat of Bing Crosby being a thoroughly decent priest (I know, right?) The public were more in the mood for the schmaltz, however, with The Bells of St. Mary’s proving the biggest hit of the year by some

Going My Way (1944)   Bing Crosby was winningly self-effacing when he accepted the Best Actor Oscar for his easy-going Father (Chuck) O’Malley in Going My Way: “This is the only country where an old broken-down crooner can win an Oscar for acting. It shows that everybody in this country has a chance to succeed”. One might construe he doesn’t think everybody deserves to from that, and certainly, Time Out’s Adrian Turner didn’t hold back when blasting this “godawful Oscar-winning schmaltz”. I wouldn’t go nearly that far, but it is overly enamoured of its own sanctified intentions, to the extent of almost flatulent self-indulgence,

Cocktail (1988)   When Tarantino claims the 1980s (and 1950s) as the worst movie decade, I’m inclined to invite him to shut his butt down. But should he then flourish Cocktail as Exhibit A, I’d be forced to admit he has a point. Cocktail is a horrifying, malignant piece of dreck, a testament to the efficacy of persuasive star power on a blithely rapt and undiscerning audience. Not only is it morally vacuous, it’s dramatically inert. And it relies on Tom’s toothy charms to a degree that would have any sensitive soul rushed to the A&E suffering from toxic shock (Tom’s most recently displayed toothy charms

The Father (2020)   I was in no great rush to see The Father, expecting it to be it to be something of an ordeal in the manner of that lavishly overpraised euthanasia-fest Amour. As with the previous Oscars, though, the Best Picture nominee I saw last turned out to be the best of the bunch. In that case, Parasite, its very title beckoning the psychic global warfare sprouting shoots all around it, would win the top prize. The Father, in a year of disappointing nominees, had to settle for Best Actor. Ant’s good, naturally, but I was most impressed with the unpandering manner in

Squid Game (2021)   Once in a blue moon, Netflix does deliver something worth one’s time, purely as an exception that proves the rule. Inevitably, however, the level of attention and praise heaped on Squid Game is disproportionate to both its merit and originality. At its core, Hwang Dong-hyuk’s series, riffing as it does on a range of influences, from Battle Royale (one he cited), to Big Brother (itself predicated on individuals’ capacities for selfishness and turning on one another), to Utopia (the discordantly perky soundtrack and day-glow colour scheme, as carnage and violence erupts all around), is really very familiar and its targets – capitalism, huh? – disappointingly prosaic.

Dead End (1937)   In case you doubted it, there was never a monopoly on Denzel making all the painfully stagey movie adaptations of plays. Less still their getting rafts of Oscar nominations. It’s impossible to watch a certain kind of movie – or play, at any rate – without the Coen Brothers’ classic Barton Fink coming to mind, and its title character waxing “lyrical” about a tenement building on the Lower East Side, and the smell of fish, amid copious earnest moralising and an overwhelming air of self-importance. Which is Dead End all over. Like Barton Fink’s fish, it stinks. Drina: I know that house

Broadcast News (1987)   I enjoyed Broadcast News when I first saw it in the 1980s. I think the things I enjoyed about it then – the well-drawn characters, in particular the dry, superior tone of Albert Brooks – are the things I still enjoy about it. And yet, there’s a lingering negative quality I was also vaguely conscious of at the time, one that carries through, of something shapeless about the picture in style and plotting, almost like a TV show (even the title is almost wilfully vanilla, nondescript). Which is perhaps appropriate for its setting. But there’s also something else.

The Color Purple (1985)   In which the ’berg attempts to prove he’s a grownup. In a sense, this is the equivalent of the fourteen-year-old taking up smoking cigarettes and drinking beer to impress the older kids. The New Republic reports the view expressed by Salamishah Tillet in In Search of The Color Purple that the protests and criticisms of the film furthering “an image of Black men as violent and sexually aggressive” ultimately scuppered its chances at the Oscars, where it received eleven nominations but won not a single statuette. That may well have been a factor, the Academy being nothing if not

Richard Jewell (2019)   Clint Eastwood’s unfussy, no-frills approach to directing rarely lends itself to great movies. Rarely, he happens upon a dynamite script (Unforgiven) and the rest is gravy, but more often, deficiencies present in the material and casting tend to be exposed unflatteringly for all to see. Plus, the idea of a proactive editor seems entirely foreign to his being. Richard Jewell could certainly have done with about twenty minutes shaved off it, but that aside, this is that surprisingly strong late – very late – period Eastwood picture, one that finds the reliably angry old Republican taking an axe

Cleopatra (1963)   Bloated, ungainly and rambling, but not without compensations. Perhaps the most sobering aspect to Cleopatra’s preposterous profligacy is that, just occasionally, it advances an engagingly louche performance or rash of sparkling dialogue, offering a glimpse of what might have been had all its ducks been in a row. Such moments in no way makes up for the four hours the movie takes up, but they ensure it’s a less arid journey than, say, The Ten Commandments. One might have reasonably assumed Cleo’s disastrous excess put the kibosh on epics for a while, given their propensity for budgets spiralling way beyond

The Quiet Man (1952)   The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well, less Anglophile than Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity. Michaeleen: Saints preserve us, what do they feed you Irishmen on in

The English Patient (1996)   I like The English Patient. In contrast to Elaine Benes. I’m more likely to concur with Seinfeld’s disrespectful attitude to Schindler’s List, actually. Any movie sacred cow is game for assault, of course, although Seinfeld granting permission to voice loathing for this one seems particularly unwarranted. The pantheon of lousy Oscar winners more deserving of opprobrium is immense; the winners either side of The English Patient, for example. But yes, I can see that some would find it boring. I can see some would find a David Lean film boring too, with which this is commonly identified. In places, Anthony Minghella

Roar (1981)   Copious quantities of humans were harmed in the making of this movie. Roar is an extraordinary achievement. If you want to put it that way. An act of a deranged mind. Of lunacy. The tale never learned of assuming a wild, vicious animal is going to be nice to you. Which it may well be. Until it isn’t (unless, of course, you’re Anastasia of the Ringing Cedars). The making-of documentary from a few years back (Roar: The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made) even flaunted the picture’s gory excesses in its poster campaign, revelling in the gruesome gashes, mauls, scars

The Molly Maguires (1970)   The undercover cop is a dramatic evergreen, but it typically finds him infiltrating a mob organisation (Donnie Brasco, The Departed). Which means that, whatever rumblings of snitch-iness, concomitant paranoia and feelings of betrayal there may be, the lines are nevertheless drawn quite clearly on the criminality front. The Molly Maguires at least ostensibly finds its protagonist infiltrating an Irish secret society out to bring justice for the workers. However, where violence is concerned, there’s rarely room for moral high ground. It’s an interesting picture, but one ultimately more enamoured with soaking in its grey-area stew than driven storytelling.

The Ten Commandments (1956)   Stodge of biblical proportions. Sometimes during The Ten Commandments, you’ll feel like you’re spending those forty interminable years in the wilderness yourself (luckily consisting of no more than a line of narration in this four-hour epic). The common response to Cecil B DeMille’s final grand spectacle is that it’s overblown, old-style entertainment, worthwhile in spite of its delusions of importance and reverence. Unfortunately, however, the movie is more often dramatically stolid, even to the extent of presenting actual tableaux, and sometimes with accompanying narration at that. The picture obviously did the trick – audiences flocked to

On the Waterfront (1954)   Commonly celebrated for one of the all-time great performances in one of the all-time great films, On the Waterfront has never done a whole lot for me. It’s never been a contender for my all-time Top 100, let alone Top 10. It may have heralded a magnificent new wave of realist cinema at the time, a harbinger for the beating down of taboos to come, but Eli Kazan’s tale of a noble informant exposing waterfront racketeering is extraordinary creaky in its theatricality, especially so for a picture made almost entirely on location. And Brando’s wow performance is

Only Two Can Play (1962)   There aren’t very many occasions when Peter Sellers immersed himself in “proper” characters, as opposed to caricatures or sketches. Probably because, in such instances, he had too little foliage behind which to conceal himself. Mostly, these were straight roles (Mr. Topaze, Hoffman, The Blockhouse), but there’s also this, a curiosity of a kitchen-sink comedy from Launder and Gilliat. Only Two Can Play’s far from the top of their game, an adaption of Kingsley Amis’ second (published) novel That Uncertain Feeling – his first, Lucky Jim, had earlier been made by the Boulting Brothers – but it’s an interesting performance from

Love Story (1970)   There are some movies you studiously avoid but sense that, in the fulness of time, you owe it to yourself to see, just to confirm the uninformed opinion you already have on them. Mamma Mia’s one, and someday, perhaps when the world has awoken anew as a transhumanist paradise, I may brave those infernal waters. Love Story’s another, a movie that has become the very cliché of the woefully clichéd chick flick. It’s everything I expected and less, but it has the undeniable redeeming quality of being mercifully short. That may be because there’s miniscule plot to speak

From Here to Eternity (1953)   Which is more famous, Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr making out in the surf in From Here to Eternity or Airplane! spoofing the same? It’s an iconic scene – both of them – in a Best Picture Oscar winner – only one of them – stuffed to the rafters with iconic actors. But Academy acclaim is no guarantee of quality. Just ask A Beautiful Mind. From Here to Eternity is both frustrating and fascinating for what it can and cannot do per the restrictive codes of the 1950s, creaky at times but never less than compelling. There are many movies of

Nomadland (2020)   This is dreadful slop, less appealing even than the contents of Frances McDormand’s poop bucket. I’d heard some criticism of Nomadland along the lines of Frances “as Fern” interviewing homeless types for two hours, but I doubted that could the sum of its parts. But no, that really is the Best Picture Oscar-winner’s patronising, self-congratulatory and entirely unconvincing remit. There’s an essential dissonance as soon as the film attempts to bridge these divides: the genuine dissolute and the feted millionaire thespian directed by a billionaire’s, sorry multimillionaire’s, daughter in the service of a grossly opportunistic project. And to what end? Why,

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)   Several movies in contention for this year’s Oscars concern individuals or groups of individuals targeted by the intolerant or outright diabolical State. It’s an area guaranteed to stir passions and engender indignation – the Woke Oscars have to do their globalist bit – which makes it all the stranger how lacking in urgency these offerings are. The Trial of the Chicago 7, for all its sugar-coated Aaron Sorkin gloss, knows how to push the necessary buttons, but both The United States vs. Billie Holiday and Judas and the Black Messiah are left stranded, dramatic beached whales oblivious to

The Dig (2021)   An account of the greatest archaeological find Britain would know until Professor Horner opened the barrow at Devil’s End. And should you scoff at such “fiction”, that’s nothing on this adaptation of John Preston’s 2007 novel concerning the Sutton Hoo excavations of the late 1930s. The Dig, as is the onus of any compelling fictional account, takes liberties with the source material, but the erring from the straight and narrow in this case is less an issue than the shift in focus from characters and elements successfully established during the first hour. Ralph Fiennes’ earthy excavator Basil Brown

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)   A danger with fashioning Oscar bait is that it can be instantly called out for undisguised cynicism and thus immediately ignored. That appears to be the fate of Hillbilly Elegy, in which Ron Howard further evidences his journeyman “versatility” with a tale of rednecks – sorry, mountainfolk – and their trials and tribulations. Well, apart from regular nominee Glenn Close and her prosthetic ankle tits. JD: You’re a shitty mom, and so are you. I reference the redneck slur intentionally; it’s implicit in this adaptation of JD Vance’s 2016 memoir that his recall for a summer internship interview

One Night in Miami… (2020)   “Inspired by true events” is a very loose term, invariably closer to “totally made up” than “Based on a true story”. In the case of One Night in Miami…, the veracity of a legendary encounter between Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke is probably more akin to Nicolas Roeg’s unlikely meet cute between Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Joe DiMaggio and Joseph McCarthy in Insignificance. Because while X and Clay were certainly sharing celebrations on the night in question, the only other definite is that Brown and Cooke were at the same hotel. Malcolm

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)   Is there any point making a movie from a play if you’re unable to overcome its essential staginess? At their best, even confined productions can fire on all cylinders – 12 Angry Men, Glengarry Glen Ross – but a director without the necessary acumen, or perhaps motivation, may be left high and dry. George C Wolfe comes from the theatre but has a decade and a half of film direction behind him, yet it never feels as if he has a firm grip on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Ma Rainey: They don’t care nothin’ about me. All they want

Casablanca (1942)   I’m not sure, way back when, that I went away from my first viewing of Casablanca recognising it as the all-time classic for which it is so acclaimed. Perhaps it was just too hallowed to be viewed with unprejudiced eyes. I enjoyed it well enough, but my reaction wasn’t comparable to first sight of the similarly lauded Citizen Kane. And as Humphrey Bogart movies went, I was much more persuaded by The Maltese Falcon. Nevertheless, subsequent visits have served only to elevate its status and confirm the hype was right. You can see very clearly that Casablanca was just another studio picture

Marnie (1964)   Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early-80s. Only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

The Razor’s Edge (1984)   I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting,

One by One (2014)   This first came on my radar last year, loosely labelled as “the film that got Rik Mayall killed” (although he managed to shoot another first). And more particularly, noting its importance as a portent of current times. I didn’t bite until now, as I didn’t think it sounded much cop. And… It is certainly topical, I’ll give One by One that. Unfortunately, however, it falls into the great yawning trap awaiting all dramatised polemics: being both patronising and preachy. And not very dramatic. It’s very rare that such approaches do work – JFK (1991) is an obvious exception –

The Wrong Man (1956)   I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man. He told Hitch “your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes 2.16: The Blue Carbuncle   The final episode of the 1960s BBC Sherlock Holmes series. It ran between 1964 and 1968 across two seasons, first with Douglas Wilmer and then Peter Cushing (Nigel Stock provided a sense of continuity, appearing as Watson throughout). Cushing played Holmes eight years earlier in Hammer’s full-blooded The Hound of the Baskervilles, of course, but this series is a decidedly less atmospheric affair, as might be expected of the less exotically budget BBC. Certainly, if the meagre seven surviving episodes are testaments. Rather than the lavish location work and film stock of

Mank (2020)   David Fincher probably deserves due credit for doing right by dad and getting Jack’s screenplay into production. Even if it rather waywardly took him more than two decades. Perhaps the length of time is a clue, because for all the meticulousness of Mank’s production, there’s negligible sense that Fincher’s fired up by the material. Indeed, you’re likely to come away from this rather flaccid picture convinced that what Citizen Kane needed wasn’t so much a nostalgically positioned sled as a headless corpse. Or any tell-tale Fincherian sign of murderous despair. Because Mank isn’t really very good. If you’re going to

Under Capricorn (1949)   Under Capricorn remains one of Hitchcock’s most under-the-radar films, particular so considering it comes just before his most feted, populist period. An independent picture and an adaptation of Helen Simpson’s 1937 novel, it became a massive flop; Truffaut suggested that many of Hitch’s admirers regarded it as his very best work, but I think a citation would definitely be needed on that one (apart from Cahier du Cinemavoting it one of the ten greatest movies of all time in 1958, suffering no doubt from an especially pseudish malaise). Like many of the directors’ films where you can’t

The Paradine Case (1947)   Hitchcock wasn’t very positive about The Paradine Case, his second collaboration with Gregory Peck, but I think he’s a little harsh on a picture that, if it doesn’t quite come together dramatically, nevertheless maintains interest on the basis of its skewed take on the courtroom drama. Peck’s defence counsel falls for his client, Alida Valli’s accused (of murder), while wife Ann Todd wilts dependably and masochistically on the side-lines. Hitch seemed hung up on his ideal version, understandably so, since he suffered so many mandates from producer David O Selznick, not least screenplay rewrites (having been

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)   If The Trial of the Chicago 7 feels like the kind of fare that might once have been prestige Oscar bait, that’s probably because it was intended to be. Doubtless accompanied by numerous speeches about how its subject matter is more relevant than ever. And maybe Paramount and DreamWorks, after more than a decade of development hell, hoped it still had a shot. Maybe, in a year with as little competition as this, it does. The picture finished up on Netflix, of course, which is a good fit for Aaron Sorkin’s lightweight but engaging

The Skin Game (1931)   Hitchcock grapples with a melodrama concerning feuding families. However, rather than a proto-Dallas affair, The Skin Game is very much concerned with class and culture clash. An adaptation of John The Forsythe Saga Galsworthy’s play (previously made into a film in 1921), it pits landed gentry the Hillcrists against upstart businessman Hornblower and his clan, with Hornblower intent on ruining their rural idyll. There’s a moral to this tale; no good can come from the dirty tricks and underhand tactics that ensue when all-out war is declared. This is the “skin game” of the title, and it feels like far

Downhill (1927)   Hitchcock had no problem throwing Ivor Novello under a bus for this one (of the source material, Down Hill, by Novello and Constance Collier, under the nom de plume Julian L’Estrange, he said “It was done as a series of sketches. It was a rather poor play” and “the dialogue was pretty dreadful in spots”). Downhill makes for an overlong, plodding melodrama concerning unjustly expelled school boy Roddy (Novello), who embarks on a bleak but instructive rite of passage before finally having his world righted, Job-like. At least, that’s how I, and I’m sure most people, read it. Time Out’s

The Pleasure Garden (1925)   (Hitchcock’s first credit as director, and his account of the production difficulties, as related to François Truffaut, is by and large more pleasurable than The Pleasure Garden itself. The Italian location shoot involved the confiscation of undeclared film stock, having to recast a key role, and borrowing money from the star when Hitch ran out of the stuff. The picture owes its title to the name of the theatre where lead character Patsy (Virginia Valli) is employed as a chorus girl. She makes friends with new arrival Jill (Carmelita Geraghty), who secures a part in the show

Greed (2019)   Michael Winterbottom’s relationship with Steve Coogan extends back nearly two decades and has seen them essay biographical subjects Tony Wilson and Paul Raymond amid semi-regular Trips, although their best collaboration probably remains Tristam Shandy adaptation A Cock and Bull Story. Winterbottom’s nothing if not prolific – I count fifteen dramatic features since 2000 – which guarantees that occasionally he hits a bullseye. More frequently, his work is merely reliably, diligently “okay”. He’s also a singularly political filmmaker and the problem with Greed, a satirical biography of Sir Philip Green by another name, is that he just has too many targets he wants to throw

The Personal History of David Copperfield  (2019)   To go by Mark Kermode’s Twitter rant a few weeks back, anyone who doesn’t see eye to eye with him on Armando Iannucci’s decision to adopt a “colour-blind” approach in casting his David Copperfield adaptation is a closet racist (or a not-so-closet one). Actually, no. They’re “whingebagging closet-racist asshats” (guaranteed to get the Twitterati upvotes, that one). Now, some of those objecting to Iannucci’s approach may well fit that description, but Kermode’s stance is as excessive as slapping five stars on what is, at best, a fitfully enjoyable adaptation of Dickens’ favourite of his novels. Iannucci’s

Bombshell (2019)   Reactions to Bombshell from some quarters of the online community are perhaps more interesting to analyse than the film itself, which is, after all, a fairly straightforward telling of the Roger Ailes sexual harassment case, just with the inevitable post-The Big Short-style stylistic tailoring seeking to make potentially unappealing material easily digestible. On one level, then, it’s yet another unwanted – as in, audiences aren’t going to show up for it; The Big Short was a one-off – back-slapping Hollywood dive into current affairs. On another, it’s dealing with an area that would evoke immediate sympathy for the parties involved, were

The Two Popes (2019)   Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes joke, in which he dropped The Two Popes onto a list of the year’s films about paedophiles, rather preceded the picture’s Oscar prospects (three nominations), but also rather encapsulated the conversation currently synonymous with the forever tainted Roman Catholic church; it’s the first thing anyone thinks of. And let’s face it, Jonathan Pryce’s unamused response to the gag could have been similarly reserved for the fate of his respected but neglected film. More people will have heard Ricky’s joke than will surely ever see the movie. Which, aside from a couple of solid

Jack Frost (1998)   Horrifying variant on The Santa Clause, in which no one believes a kid, Charlie (Joseph Cross), when he claims his dad has transformed into a hallmark of Christmas. Horrifying because, while Tim Allen probably isn’t anyone’s idea of a perfect Santa, Michael Keaton definitely does not make a good snowman, even as rendered by ILM and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. There’s also the small detail that Troy Miller, a TV comedy director drafted in at short notice, appears to have zero aptitude for the material. Or movies generally. I sensed he much preferred shooting the band footage we see

Field of Dreams (1989)   There’s a near-Frank Darabont quality to Phil Alden Robinson producing such a beloved feature and then subsequently offering not all that much of note. But Darabont, at least, was in the same ballpark as The Shawshank Redemption with The Green Mile. Sneakers is good fun, The Sum of All Our Fears was a decent-sized success, but nothing since has come close to his sophomore directorial effort in terms of quality. You might put that down to the source material, WP Kinsella’s 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, but the captivating magical-realist balance hit by Field of Dreams is a deceptively difficult one to strike, and the biggest

Marriage Story (2019)   I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing

Capote (2005)   Another (relatively) recent Best Picture Oscar nominee I missed first time round, and then subsequently didn’t really feel very compelled to chase up. Perhaps it was the vying Truman Capote pics (I’ve also yet to see Infamous) putting me off, or possibly just being underwhelmed by everything Oscar that year (which hasn’t changed). I can certainly see why the late Philip Seymour Hoffman received the Best Actor award for Capote, though, since the eccentrically mannered title character is precisely the kind of studied, showy performance the Academy laps up. Hoffman duly holds the attention, as does Catherine Keener, contrastingly

The Blind Side (2009)   I’ve found my way to seeing most Best Picture Oscar nominees of the last four decades or so, but failing to get round to The Blind Side never seemed like a particularly glaring blind spot. Nominated during the first year of the Academy’s (re-)expanded slate, this aspirational sports drama was commonly seen as filler to make up numbers for the ten slots (and commonly cited a couple of years later as a reason ten was thenpegged as a maximum rather than a quota). If I say it’s a John Lee Hancock film, that should tell you all

Le Mans ’66 aka Ford v Ferrari (2019)   I didn’t have any great expectations for this one, partly because motor-sport-related movies tend to be merely serviceable, by dint of marrying the grinding metal to elementary melodrama (to frequent audience apathy). Partly because James Mangold has never truly risen above the status of a competent journeyman. Yes, I know he gets all those raves for Logan, but Wolverine’s last round struck me as both overly derivative and in need of a couple more rewrites. Or maybe a couple less. Le Mans ’66 might be his most satisfying movie, however, which isn’t to say

The Defiant Ones (1958)   The progenitor of the buddy movie – most notably, 48 Hrs took the template and freshened it up, with laughs rather than social commentary emphasising the racial divide – The Defiant Ones certainly couldn’t be called subtle in its conceit. But that upfront quality is key to its success… and Best Picture Oscar nomination; the Academy still loves to be led by the nose with regard to issue-based material. Fugitives from a prison truck mishap, Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) and Joker Jackson (Tony Curtis) attempt to outrun the pursuing posse, heading for a train that promises to take them to safety.

The Bounty (1984)   How different might David Lean’s late career have been, had Ryan’s Daughter not been so eviscerated, and his confidence with it? Certainly, we know about his post-A Passage to India projects (Empire of the Sun, Nostromo), but there were fourteen intervening years during which he surely might have squeezed out two or three additional features. The notable one that got away was, like Empire of the Sun, actually made: The Bounty. But by Roger Donaldson, after Lean eventually dropped out. And the resulting picture is, as you might expect, merely okay, notable for a fine Anthony Hopkins performance as Bligh (Lean’s choice),

Schindler’s List (1993)   Such is the status of Schindler’s List, it all but defies criticism; it’s the worthiest of all the many worthy Best Picture Oscar winners, a film noble of purpose and sensitive in the treatment and depiction of the Holocaust as the backdrop to one man’s redemption. There is much to appreciate in Steven Spielberg’s film. But it is still a Steven Spielberg film. From a director whose driving impulse is the manufacture of popcorn entertainments, not intellectual introspection. Which means it’s a film that, for all its “virtuous” features, is made to manipulate its audience in the manner of any of

The Laundromat (2019)   Steven Soderbergh’s flair for cinematic mediocrity continues with this attempt at The Big Short-style topicality, taking aim at the Panama Papers but ending up with a mostly blunt satire, one eager to show how the offshore system negatively impacts the average – and also the not-so-average – person but at the expense of really digging in to how it facilitates the turning of the broader capitalist world (it is, after all based on Jake Bernstein’s  Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite). As per Traffic and Contagion, Soderbergh illustrates his big idea via

Elmer Gantry (1960)   Richard Brooks was something of an Oscar regular by the time he made Elmer Gantry. The Blackboard Jungle, The Brothers Karamazov and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had all garnered attention; he’d continue to keep that up during the ‘60s. Gantry receiving the nominations it did (five, including Best Picture), feels like a surprise in some ways, though: that the Academy would recognise material so overtly critical of religion, or by implication, through broadsiding those treating it like a business. That may partly be because its source material dates back to Sinclair Lewis’ 1927 novel, so there’s a literary pedigree,

The Longest Day (1962)   It certainly felt like it. Three interminable hours that even playing “spot the star cameo” couldn’t relieve. It’s salient to note that both this and A Bridge Too Far were based on epic accounts of epic wartime operations by Cornelius Ryan, but whereas William Goldman managed to turn the latter into a surprisingly remarkable screenplay and Richard Attenborough into a surprisingly good film, here Ryan, adapting himself (with additional material credited to four other writers), induces mostly lethargy. He never finds an effective means to thread the various incidents and beachheads and responses together into a coherent

Inglourious Basterds (2009)   His staunchest fans would doubtless claim Tarantino has never taken a wrong step, but for me, his post-Pulp Fiction output had been either not quite as satisfying (Jackie Brown), empty spectacle (the Kill Bills) or wretched (Death Proof). It wasn’t until Inglourious Basterds that he recovered his mojo, revelling in an alternate World War II where Adolf didn’t just lose but also got machine gunned to death in a movie theatre showing a warmly received Goebbels-produced propaganda film. It may not be his masterpiece – as Aldo Raines refers to the swastika engraved on “Jew hunter” Hans Landa’s forehead, and

Welcome to Marwen (2018)   The latest flop from Robert Zemeckis isn’t, fortunately, as dramatically inert as Allied (surely one of the most soporific films of the twenty-first century) but it’s just as guided by its director’s curious obsession – having got over his hideous motion-capture phase – with choosing material on the basis of whatever effects innovations he can bring to the table, whether they merit it or not. As evidenced by Welcome to Marwen, if you’re working by that methodology, it shouldn’t be a surprise when your storytelling suffers, again and again and again. Which is to say, while both Flight and The Walk had

American Beauty (1999)   As is often the case with the Best Picture Oscar, a backlash against a deemed undeserved reward has grown steadily in the years since American Beauty’s win. The film is now often identified as symptomatic of a strain of cinematic indulgence focussing on the affluent middle classes’ first-world problems. Worse, it showcases a problematic protagonist with a Lolita-fixation towards his daughter’s best friend (imagine its chances of getting made, let alone getting near the podium in the #MeToo era). Some have even suggested it “mercifully” represents a world that no longer exists (as a pre-9/11 movie), as if such hyperbole

The Insider (1999)   The Insider was the 1999 Best Picture Oscar nominee that didn’t. Do any business, that is. Which is, more often than not, a major mark against it getting the big prize. It can happen (2009, and there was a string of them from 2014-2016), but aside from brief, self-congratulatory “we care about art first” vibes, it generally does nothing for the ceremony’s profile, or the confidence of the industry that is its bread and butter. The Insider lacked the easy accessibility of the other nominees – supernatural affairs, wafer-thin melodramas or middle-class suburbanite satires. It didn’t even brandish a truly headlines-shattering

The Green Mile (1999)   There’s something very satisfying about the unhurried confidence of the storytelling in Frank Darabont’s two prison-set Stephen King adaptations (I’m less beholden to supermarket sweep The Mist). It’s sure, measured and precise, certain the journey you’re being taken on justifies the (indulgent) time spent, without the need for flashy visuals or ornate twists (the twists there are feel entirely germane – with a notable exception – as if they could only be that way). But. The Green Mile has reasonably come under scrutiny for its reliance on – or to be more precise, building its foundation on –

The Cider House Rules (1999)   Miramax’s big Oscar contender of 1999 made its finalist appearance largely by default, after hopes for The Talented Mr Ripley bottomed out. The studio had gone great guns during the previous few years, taking both The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love to the top prize and even securing Roberto Benigni Best Actor. But suddenly, things didn’t look so bright, and the result was this: a film that put a whole new spin on the – to all intents and purposes – inconsequential nominee vying for the main award. The studio would repeat the trick to almost exactly the same

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)   It’s often the case that industry-shaking flops aren’t nearly the travesties they appeared to be before the dust had settled, and so it is with The Bonfire of the Vanities. The adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s ultra-cynical bestseller is still the largely toothless, apologetically broad-brush comedy – I’d hesitate to call it a satire in its reconfigured form – it was when first savaged by critics nearly thirty years ago, but taken for what it is, that is, removed from the long shadow of Wolfe’s novel, it’s actually fairly serviceable star-stuffed affair. Certainly, one that

The Mosquito Coast (1986)   How different things might have been, had The Mosquito Coast been a hit. Its failure evidently chastened Harrison Ford, who was still opining half a decade later that it was his only film that hadn’t made its money back. For a spell there, with two phenomenal franchises to his name and his star power entrenched by the success of Witness, he felt confident enough to mix things up a little, to put his name to the Peter Weir project that had fallen through due to lack of funding/Jack Nicholson, to work with an out-of-favour European director (in Frantic for Polanski,

A Few Good Men (1992)   Aaron Sorkin has penned a few good scripts in his time, but A Few Good Men, despite being inspired by an actual incident (one related to him by his sister, an army lawyer on a case at the time), falls squarely into the realm of watchable but formulaic. I’m not sure I’d revisited the entire movie since seeing it at the cinema, but my reaction is largely the same: that it’s about as impressively mounted and star-studded as Hollywood gets, but it’s ultimately a rather empty courtroom drama. Roger Ebert summed it up well at the time

Million Dollar Baby (2004)   I’d like to be able to say it was beyond me how Clint’s misery-porn fest hoodwinked critics and the Academy alike, leading to his second Best Picture and Director double Oscar win. Such feting would naturally lead you to assume Million Dollar Baby was in the same league as Unforgiven. Really, it has more in common with The Mule, only the latter is likeably lightweight and nonchalant in its aspirations. This picture has buckled beneath the burden of self-appointed weighty themes and profound musings, which only serve to highlight how crass and manipulative it is. After I first

Lost Horizon (1937)   Frank Capra’s adaptation of James Goodbye, Mr Chips Hilton’s novel has a potent legacy, not least through helping to popularise the name Shangri-La (Roosevelt named the later renamed Camp David retreat after it) and a wholly lambasted musical remake in the ’70s. The Lost Horizon production spiralled out of control and took some time to make its money back, but it still ultimately continued Capra’s hot streak, duly garnering a Best Picture nomination. With hindsight, while one wouldn’t call it a folly, it does betray the unvarnished privilege that has given form to its utopian vision, and one can even muster a

Regarding Henry (1991)   How did the Golden Razzies miss this one? Regarding Henry is the kind of wretched miscalculation that kills careers, but somehow screenwriter JJ Abrams (a tender twenty-five at the time, and earning his first solo credit) rebounded unscathed; even his cameo unaccountably did him no discernible damage! Albeit, it would be the end of the decade before he was really making inroads, and on TV at that. Perhaps he got away with it because the prime culprit, the one who comes out with half-a-dozen eggs on his face, is hubristic star Harrison Ford, believing he could have a

Quiz Show (1994)   Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale, in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets), but it lacks that something

Forrest Gump (1994)   There was a time when I’d have made a case for, if not greatness, then Forrest Gump’s unjust dismissal from conversations regarding its merits. To an extent, I still would. Just not nearly so fervently. There’s simply too much going on in the picture to conclude that the manner in which it has generally been received is the end of the story. Tarantino, magnanimous in the face of Oscar defeat, wasn’t entirely wrong when he suggested to Robert Zemeckis that his was, effectively, a subversive movie. Its problem, however, is that it wants to have its cake

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)   The zeitgeist Best Picture Oscar winner is prone to falling from grace like no other. Often, they’re films with notable acting performances but themes that tend to appear antiquated or even slightly offensive in hindsight. Few extol the virtues of American Beauty the way they did twenty years ago, and Kramer vs. Kramer isn’t quite seen as exemplifying a sensitive and balanced examination of the fallout of divorce on children and their parents the way it was in 1980. It remains a compelling film for the performances, but it’s difficult not to view it, despite the ameliorating effect of

Miss Sloane (2016)   John Madden’s name as director might be a clue that this exploration of the world of political lobbying isn’t going to be altogether successful; one might give a pass to his inoffensive pensioner pictures (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel) but otherwise, he hasn’t delivered a truly satisfying feature since the Oscar glory that (rightly) greeted Shakespeare in Love. As usual, he’s only as serviceable as his screenplay, and this one is all sorts of uneven. Jessica Chastain’s title character is a too-familiar cliché, the workaholic career woman with no time for relationships (she hires male

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018)   The unloved and neglected Jungle Book movie that wasn’t Disney’s, Jungle Book: Origins was originally pegged for a 2016 release before being pushed to last year, then this, and then offloaded by Warner Bros onto Netflix. During which time, the title changed to Mowgli: Tales from the Jungle Book, then Mowgli, and finally Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. The assumption is usually that the loser out of vying projects – and going from competing with a near-$1bn-grossing box office titan to effectively straight-to-video is the definition of a loser – is by its nature inferior. But Andy Serkis’ movie is a much

First Reformed (2017)   This uneven at best Roman Catholic – I know, it concerns a protestant church, but who are we trying to kid? – eco-guilt picture from Paul Schrader that has been hailed as his best in years. Which it probably is, but these things are relative. Schrader has made, for the first hour or so, a reasonably engrossing study of faith, doubt and despair, but his choices after that, particularly during the last half hour, undo much of the effort. As one of Hollywood’s go-to practising Catholics (step forward also Marty) it should be no surprise that

Phantom Thread (2017)   Perhaps surprisingly not the lowest grossing of last year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees (that was Call Me by Your Name) but certainly the one with the least buzz as a genuine contender, subjected as Phantom Thread was to a range of views from masterpiece (the critics) to drudge (a fair selection of general viewers). The mixed reaction wasn’t so very far from Paul Thomas Anderson’s earlier The Master, and one suspects the nomination was more to do with the golden glow of Daniel Day-Lewis in his first role in half a decade (and last ever, if he’s to be believed) than mass

A Star is Born (2018)   A shoe-in for Best Picture Oscar? Perhaps not, since it will have to beat at very least Roma and First Man to claim the prize, but this latest version of A Star is Born still comes laden with more acclaim than the previous three versions put together (and that’s with a Best Picture nod for the 1937 original). While the film doesn’t quite reach the consistent heights suggested by the majority of critics, who have evacuated their adjectival bowels lavishing it with superlatives, it’s undoubtedly a remarkably well-made, commendably acted piece. And perhaps even more notably, it only rarely feels like its

Braveheart (1995)   In the cases of some Best Picture Oscar winners, it’s difficult to conceive the precise conflation of circumstances that compelled Academy members to plumb for a particular contender. So it is with Mel’s ridiculous medieval martyrdom epic. My objections to Braveheart, however, aren’t based on its presumed historical inaccuracies, be it the woad, the plaid, the facts of William Wallace’s life, or the Battle of Stirling Bridge not taking place on a bridge; with the biopic (in its loosest sense), fidelity tends to fall away as a source of vexation or contention, if the overriding content passes muster.

American Gangster (2007)   Is this the most rote of all Ridley Scott’s movies? I know, there’s serious competition, particularly in his post-Gladiator workhorse mode. On first viewing, there’s a temptation to forgive American Gangster its slackness and shocking lack of internal tension, on the basis of the embarrassment of names and faces attached. That wears very thin very quickly upon revisit. Even the then-Scott talisman of Russell Crowe and the usually reliable Denzel Washington seem cast adrift in this true-life-but-not-all-that-much-really-to-be-honest period piece concerning drug dealer Frank Lucas. The picture took seven years to get made, during which time it went from Ridders

A Good Year (2006)   I oughtn’t really to like A Good Year. And, kind of, I don’t. But I kind of do too. Despite entirely floundering on a number of levels that should entirely incapacitate it on the starting line, it’s probably the most likeable, personable movie Ridley Scott has made in the past two decades. Which doesn’t make it very good, but it’s very evident he actually had something invested in what he was directing for a change. Top of the list of things that don’t work – since he’s in almost every scene – is Russell Crowe playing,

Lady Bird (2017)   You can see the Noah Baumbach influence on Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, with whom she collaborated on Frances Ha; an intimate, lo-fi, post-Woody Allen (as in, post-feted, respected Woody Allen) dramedy canvas that has traditionally been the New Yorker’s milieu. But as an adopted, spiritual New Yorker, I suspect Gerwig honourably qualifies, even as Lady Bird is a love letter/nostalgia trip to her home city of Sacramento. As such, Saoirse Ronan is very much playing Gerwig in 2002, or her thereabouts that period; Gerwig has said that nothing that happens in the movie actually happened to her “but it has

The Post (2017)   The Post might be Steven Spielberg’s most prestige-lite filmmaking endeavour yet, a tick-box exercise that doesn’t do a whole lot wrong (until the last twenty minutes, at any rate), but feels like it has no true reason to be, and no real inspiration behind it (other than the evident boy-with-his-trains thrill of showing the workings of a good old-fashioned printing floor). Spielberg can churn these worthy, earnest based-on-real-events tales out, and they’ve been his bread and butter in fishing for critical and peer approval since the mid-80s, but they’ve only served to underline a mind that prioritises

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)   Sydney Lumet’s 1974 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express could scarcely be called the pinnacle of his career, but (Sir) Kenneth Branagh’s latest version of Agatha Christie’s (probably) best known novel (in the world) invites new-found appreciation of its merits. Ken’s film is a bauble, and like much of his work in cinema, it’s big and showy and overblown and empty. You need to fill that space with something, but unfortunately, neither his Poirot nor Michael Green’s screenplay does the job. His Mr Poirot, then. I commented of Albert Finney’s (Oscar nominated) incarnation that it

Hidden Figures (2016)   The second biggest hit (worldwide) out of this year’s Oscar nominees, Hidden Figures seems to have stuck around in theatres the longest, perhaps because of its “educational” content. This tale of NASA’s black female mathematicians is the kind of movie minds instantly go to when looking for an example of palatable Oscar fluff (see also A Beautiful Mind): socially progressive but entirely without a spine. The kind of movie you come away from thinking all is good with the world, as we’re all heading in the right direction. It’s banal, aspirational and inoffensive (unless you find its very inoffensiveness

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)   The final entry in John Hughes’ teen cycle – after this he’d be away with the adults and moppets, and making an untold fortune from criminal slapstick – is also his most patently ridiculous. And no, I’m not forgetting Weird Science. Not because of its unconvincing class commentary, although that doesn’t help, but because only one of its teenage leads was under 25 when the movie came out, and none of them were Michael J Fox, thirty-passing-for-fifteen types. That all counts towards its abundant charm, though; it’s almost as if Some Kind of Wonderful is intentionally coded

Detroit (2017)   A film about black people made by white people for white people. That’s the common charge levelled at Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow’s account of the 1967 Algier Motel incident. And it’s difficult to argue against the assessment. One might also add, “the majority of whom aren’t going to be interested in seeing it anyway, unless it gets some Oscar buzz, and even then”. Then, one might similarly doubt who Bigelow’s last few movies were for, exactly, since they seemed primarily designed to cement her status as a serious, politically-astute filmmaker who now shirks all that genre nonsense of her

Silence (2016)   Martin Scorsese has now met the Pope, so I guess the thirty-year slog to make Silence was all worthwhile. I’m dubious that he’d have been granted an audience with his venerable holiness off the back of The Last Temptation of Christ, but then you never know with this one, not even quite how nefarious he may or may not be compared to his predecessors. In the documentary attached to the Blu-ray, Scorsese mulls of the material (based on Shusaka Endo’s 1966 novel, previously adapted in 1971), that “Everyone’s right and everyone’s wrong”. For the shoguns, the burgeoning trend towards Christianity

Penda’s Fen (1974)   Confession time: I wasn’t even aware Penda’s Fen existed before reading a recent Fortean Times piece on haunted childhoods of the ’70s: curious in itself, as Play for Today wasn’t exactly teatime, Basil Brush and Doctor Who, viewing (I guess they’re taking in inquisitive teenagers). But it’s very easy to see why the piece, directed by Alan Clarke from a teleplay by David Rudkin, had an impact on impressionable young minds. It’s just the sort of fare, with its open countryside and occult undertones, that proves indelible, in the manner of Children of the Stones or The Owl Service (or Alan Garner generally). That, and simply the way that

Thelma & Louise (1991)   The stuff of a thousand spoofs, I’ve always had the lurking feeling Thelma & Louise lent itself to such treatment so immediately because Ridley Scott fashioned a film expressly intent on mythmaking. And also that, in the absence of readily available alternatives in populist, female empowerment cinema, the picture was seized on as instant classic, when Callie Khouri’s screenplay is a little too schematic for that, and Scott too transparent in his influences. As such, the positives in Thelma & Louise’s enduring legacy rest most heavily on the Best Actress Oscar-nominated performances of its leads. In terms of

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)   I suspect, if I hadn’t been ignorant of the story of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee selling secrets to the Soviets during the ’70s, I’d have found The Falcon and the Snowman less engaging than I did. Which is to say that John Schlesinger’s film has all the right ingredients to be riveting, including a particularly camera-hogging performance from Sean Penn (as Lee), but it’s curiously lacking in narrative drive. Only fitfully does it channel the motives of its protagonists and their ensuing paranoia. As such, the movie makes a decent primer on the

Captain Fantastic (2016)   Matt Ross based his screenplay for Captain Fantastic partly on his experiences being brought up in alternative communities, so it’s a shame that doesn’t feed into a more grounded, rounded viewing experience. He’s lucky he has Viggo Mortensen (as patriarch Ben) to anchor a picture constantly miring itself in overblown positions and entrenched conflicts, but even he, Oscar nominated as he was for his performance, can’t salvage the third act from unsustainable melodramatics. Ross etches out Ben’s discipline with due consistency, but it’s all a bit rich. Yes, these kids could be so ridiculously capable, multi-lingual, faultlessly able to receive,

Paterson (2016)   Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time*. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus

Moonlight (2016)   How quickly can you tell if a Best Picture Oscar winner is one for the ages? As often as not, they’re consigned disposable, crowd-pleaser status (The King’s Speech, The Artist, Argo) or branded with the opprobrious idea that a plain underserving movie got garlanded (A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Crash). And, as often as not, there are pressing concerns dictating the choices the Academy members made on any given occasion, over and above what they simply thought was straight-up best (not to mention, in recent years, the skew of the tier-system ballot coming into play). I have but one film left to

Full Metal Jacket (1987)   If there’s a problem with appreciating the oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick, it’s that the true zealots will claim every single one of his pictures as a goddam masterpiece (well, maybe not Killer’s Kiss). I can’t quite get behind that. Every single one may be meticulously crafted, but there are rocky patches and suspect decisions made in at least a handful of them. Full Metal Jacket is something of a masterpiece when set against the other Nam flick released in a similar time frame, certainly. Or rather, its first half is. The first half of Full Metal Jacket can stand proud against anything

Manchester by the Sea (2016)   Unlike his soporific brother, Best Actor Oscar winner Casey Affleck doesn’t really suit playing normal people. Or especially likeable people, come to that. He isn’t an actor toward whom you tend to feel much in the way of empathy, which makes his performance in Manchester by the Sea all the more impressive. Lee Chandler’s is entirely shutdown, his emotional facility so deeply buried that he can no longer connect to it. Does that mean Affleck deserved the win? Aside from Brie Larson being unconvinced? In terms of the art, sure (as to whether the allegations against

Norma Rae (1979)   What a dreary cartload of issue-led laboriousness. Worthy subjects may make for worthy movies (or they may not), but there’s absolutely no guarantee they’ll make interesting ones. And when you attach Martin Ritt to them (post-60s, at any rate), you’re almost guaranteed a comatose result. Norma Rae is one of those pictures that would be entirely, rather than just mostly, forgotten, if it weren’t for it bagging Sally Field an Oscar for playing the title character. And it isn’t even that “You really like me!” Oscar either. If you want to make starchy political subject matter riveting, give

Money Monster (2016)   Although Money Monster was directed by Jodie Foster, it bears all the hallmarks of George Clooney’s faux-70s political filmmaking sensibilities. I say faux, because they’re political-lite in every aspect, which makes this movie possibly more irritating than if it were just your bog-standard, shameless Hollywood spectacle. One-part post-Financial Crisis commentary and one-part Network-style exploration of the pervasive influence of the im/amoral media circus, it ends up as neither of those things, failing even to lay sufficient groundwork to sacrifice its intentions to standard thriller plotting and emotional pay-offs. It’s resolutely spineless, basically. For a while there, I was all

G.I. Jane (1997)   In the late ’60s, Pauline Kael wrote a piece bemoaning (she was quite good at bemoaning) the state of US movie companies with regard to how they were turning to England for directors. She commented, “The English can write and they can act… but they can’t direct movies”. She proceeded with a list of examples, honourably exempting Hitchcock and Carol Reed (but unforgivably omitting Michael Powell). It admittedly included a string of fair comments, but also rather unjustly picked on several lights of the comedy genre, as if that was ever, anywhere, with very rare exceptions,

In the Heart of the Sea (2015)   I guess one fortunate side effect of In the Heart of the Sea’s (and, while we’re about it, Ben-Hur’s) box office failure is that there’s precious little chance that Timur Bekmambetov will get the chance to embark on his much wished for Moby Dick remake any time soon. In the Heart of the Sea is a Little Ronnie Howard film, which means it’s about as functional and journeyman an account of the true life tale that inspired Herman Melville’s massive beast of a novel as you could get. Apart from the cinematography, that is. Anthony Dod Mantel has

The Swimmer (1968)   Metaphorical interrogation of the dissolution of the American Dream (or “Death of a Salesman in swim trunks” as star Burt Lancaster called it), in which Ned Merrill (Lancaster) takes it upon himself to swim home through a trail of swimming pools across a well-off Connecticut suburb, his sunny disposish gradually turning darker and less carefree as the journey continues. It’s a picture that impresses thematically more than it does stylistically, but is anchored by a compellingly out-of-touch performance from its star. Who, on a purely facile level, was in remarkable shape when he made the picture

The Elephant Man (1980)   It seems to be the current curse of the fledgling talented director that a much-feted indie debut leads to wooing by Hollywood and subsequent, if not dissipation, then diluting of talent, as distinctiveness and individuality are drained away and homogenised. Four decades ago, David Lynch was someone who took exactly that path, transiting from one of the all-time cult movies to the most darling of respected genres, the period piece. And then he went and made a hugely-budgeted sci-fi blockbuster. Clearly, it was career curtains for the one-time auteur. I won’t come on to Dune just yet,

The Dressmaker (2015)   A gleefully warped, jet black comedy from Jocelyn Moorhouse, one that, for the most part, manages to juggle its potentially jarring shifts in tone and plot. The Dressmaker is a revenge drama, a murder mystery, a comedy of small-town jealousies and a morality play concerning dark secrets, in which Kate Winslet’s pariah arrives home and, like a vindictive version of Juliette Binoche in Chocolat, transforms lives through her special gift of seamstressing. But Moorhouse’s approach is closer to Joe Dante’s The ’Burbs, such that the outback settlement of Dungatar is populated by larger-than-life grotesques and crazies, and is fuelled by

Brooklyn  (2015)   Sweet, well-observed little picture that dun well, as Saiorse Ronan emigrates from Ireland (take a wild stab where) in the early ’50s, discovers a whole new world, then rediscovers a whole old world, entailing conflicting emotions over the romantic entanglements each brings. Ronan entirely deserved her Best Actress Oscar nomination, assuredly navigating potentially tricky trajectory for Eilis Lacy such that, in the third act, her errant behaviour is never less than understandable. This is, after all, a picture all about the lustre of familiar shores, in which a rather wonderfully cast Jim Broadbent comforts Eilis early on

Missing (1982)   After seeing The Verdict a couple of months ago, and musing that it might be my personal choice for the Best Picture Oscar out of the 1982 nominees, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the lot. One of which, Missing, I hadn’t seen before. I was aware of the regard in which it was held, of course, as a feature of genuine political content that even elicited angry denials from the US State Department over its allegations of US involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup that saw General Pinochet topple the (democratically-elected, but socialist, so fair game) President

Macbeth (2015)   I don’t know quite what was going on in Justin Kurzel’s head, but it wasn’t anything good. How do you turn Macbeth, the most visceral and succinct of Shakespeare’s tragedies, into something so dull, fractured and disengaged? He leaves the play hollow, disembowelled, inducing us to contemplate an edit suite’s worth of tinted colour washes, random isolated “artistic” shots and disconnected actors staring into space. Perhaps we have reached the point where any slightly different take on the Bard gets an automatic free pass, or a commendation even, but this one certainly shouldn’t. Kurzel appears so set on

The Second Civil War (1997)   This satire of a White House in crisis mode, as Ohio threatens cessation from the United States, was originally to have been directed by Levinson. Who made the same year’s intermittently effective Wag the Dog. Intermittently effective also describes Joe Dante’s HBO movie, which offers occasionally sharp and never-more-topical things to say about the buzz issues of immigration, personal sovereignty and media manipulation yet finds itself rather inert dramatically, when it needs to be propulsive. It may be that Dante was the wrong guy for the task, or simply that the means of making this

Coming Home (1978)   Coming Home arrived at the tail end of a remarkably prolific decade for director Hal Ashby, one now better remembered for birthing the careers of renowned wunderkinds like Spielberg, Lucas and De Palma (like Robert Altman, Ashby was a good decade older than many of his ’70s peers). The film received considerable Oscar attention, winning Jane Fonda her second Oscar and Jon Voight his first (unlikely to be repeated, unless he experiences some kind of political epiphany and recants his outspoken Republican ways). But, unlike competing and ultimately victorious fellow ‘Nam picture The Deer Hunter, it has sunk

The Verdict (1982)   Sidney Lumet’s return to the legal arena, with results every bit as compelling as 12 Angry Men a quarter of a century earlier. This time the focus is on the lawyer, in the form of Paul Newman’s washed-up ambulance chaser Frank Galvin, given a case that finally matters to him. In less capable hands, The Verdict could easily have resorted to a punch-the-air piece of Hollywood cheese, but, thanks to Lumet’s earthy instincts and a sharp, unsentimental screenplay from David Mamet, this redemption tale is one of the genre’s very best. And it could easily have been otherwise. The Verdict went through several line-ups

The Big Short (2015)   Adam McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ 2010 book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is fuelled as much by admiration as indignation. Not for what this collection of speculators achieved (triggering the 2007 financial crisis, from whence nothing will e’er be the same again, no matter how hard we try to kid ourselves), but for their perceptiveness and acumen. The movie inhabits similar territory to the ruinous financial tomfoolery we saw in The Wolf of Wall Street – highlighting the absence of any semblance of a moral or ethical component within capitalism – albeit it is demonstrably more

12 Angry Men (1957)   Sidney Lumet’s seminal jury drama, initially broadcast as a TV play, then adapted to stage, and only then to the movies, was a box office disappointment, as many a classic has been. Henry Fonda’s angelically-suited architect gradually chips away at an otherwise unanimous guilty verdict, to the particular annoyance of Lee J Cobb’s combustible businessman. It would be difficult to argue that Reginald Rose’s screenplay isn’t on the schematic side, a parade of conveniently placed insights, speculations and turns of persuasion, but, crucially, it is dramatically satisfying for all that; vital, impassioned and fundamentally sincere

Bridge of Spies (2015)   I’ve grown rather used to solid rather than spectacular Steven Spielberg fare of late, the consequence of a consummate craftsman who can never quite resist the urge to impress base sentiment on material that needs less, not more, of his predilections. As such, Bridge of Spies is a near miss, frequently gripping and engrossing but resistant to a chillier, more distanced approach that might have benefited its fact-based, Cold War setting. The director’s last unqualified successes came with back-to-back 2002 pictures Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can. Since then he has made several movies (notably the also fact-based Munich and Lincoln)

Child 44 (2015)   I’m unable to attest to the quality of Tom Rob Smith’s best-selling airport novel of the same name, but Child 44 carries with it the sort of sterling cast that screams “prestige adaptation”. Certainly, that’s what I hoped for, despite the resoundingly scathing reviews. Unfortunately, they aren’t wrong. Maybe the actors were somehow hoodwinked into signing up, as this movie is a woeful piece of unmitigated pulp, its potential drowned in an unwieldy plot (one that seems to forget what it’s supposed to be about half the time) and directed with the same indiscriminatingly flashy eye that actually

Jack the Ripper (1988)   Euston Films’ production marking the hundredth anniversary of the Jack the Ripper murders was a prestige piece. It brought Michael Caine to the small screen (and a Golden Globe, two years after his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters and a year after narrowly missing a Best Supporting Actor Razzie win for Jaws: The Revenge) and garnered huge ratings. Its liberal helping of suspects and royal intrigue ensured it was a must see, and I well recall being gripped over the course of its three-hour span, desperate to find out who the Ripper really

A Most Violent Year (2014)   A most misleading title, such that one might expect this to be the tale of a hoodlum doing hoodlum-type things. It’s closer to the anti-that, as Oscar Isaac’s ’80s entrepreneur, working in a corrupt business but avoiding mobster tactics, finds his resources and nerves tested when all around beginning applying pressure. J. C. Chandor’s film is an immaculately crafted piece, one that slowly ratchets up the pressure while ensuring you’re never quite sure direction it’s going to head in next. One of Chandor’s achievements here is fashioning a protagonist whom we initially believe is

The Leftovers Season Two: Episodes 1-6   You don’t hear many people talking about The Leftovers, less still raving about it. It would be nigh on a miracle that it was commissioned for a second run, if not for the fact that HBO generally look kindlier on the prospects for fledging fare than the networks (but not John from Cincinnati, alas). The Season Two partial reboot’s change of setting has enabled the continuation of the show’s most vital elements and characters, and indeed introduced new ones just as arresting. If it’s disappointing that some of the first season’s better characters have fallen by

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)   The immediate question that springs to mind with Exodus: Gods and Kings is “Who is this for?” The core audience for a Biblical epic is surely the hallowed Christian ticket, one that promises potential rewards on a vast scale (The Passion of the Christ). So why make a movie where the Old Testament protagonist’s communication with God is implied to be all in his own head, and where God’s interventions – at least in part – are serviced with “feasible” scientific explanations? Noah also went off message, and had a God who was profoundly silent (not surprising from

Boyhood (2014)   Richard Linklater’s one-time shoe-in Best Picture winner went from being early favourite to also-ran as the initial wow factor of its logistical achievement subsided. Making a film at intervals over a twelve-year period is indeed quite something, but more impressive is how it achieves its storytelling goals seamlessly and subtly. It has no earthly need to be nearly three hours long, yet it never becomes a chore to watch, despite its young protagonist having resoundingly uneventful formative years. The drama occurs on the periphery, as do Linklater’s less measured indulgences. This is where you can hear the

Enemy (2013)   If Enemy is anything to go by, Denis Villeneuve is an ideal choice to direct Blade Runner 2 in the place of Ridley Scott. Not because he has the auterish visual sense of Scott at his zenith, because he has an equally incontinent grasp of narrative. The excuse of Enemy, which its defenders would likely summon, is that, as an exploration of its protagonist(s)’s subconscious, a formally coherent plot can be thrown out the window. Unfortunately, that leaves the film open to anything and everything and leaves the viewer with a shrug of “Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter”. Enemy does have a lot

Chef (2014)   It’s quite understandable that reviewers have highlighted the perceived autobiographical elements of Jon Favreau’s Chef, the story of a successful man in his chosen field brought low by the critics. After rosy responses to Zathura , Elf and Iron Man, Favreau’s lustre was tarnished by back-to-back underwhelmers Iron Man II and Cowboys and Aliens. Following the line of thought that his Chef character in is commentary and payback for this doesn’t really follow, however, not unless Favreau wants us to believe those who brought him low are a sobering force of good. Whatever his intentions, the retreat into a small personal movie has done Favs the world of

Fruitvale Station (2013)   Ryan Coogler’s debut is a laudably intentioned account of the events at Fruitvale BART station on New Year 2009, in which 22-year-old Oscar Grant III was fatally shot by a police officer while under restraint. The injustice was greeted with quite understandable outrage, leading to protests and rioting. The majority of Rylan Coogler’s film is a low-key affair, however, tracing Oscar’s final fateful day and sketching in his background, family, and pressing concerns. Fruitvale Station really comes into its dramatic own depicting the lead-up to his death (deemed manslaughter by the judge), in which the police’s customary lack of

Whiplash (2014)   Damien Chazelle’s awards season darling (in particular for its best supporting actor Oscar shoe-in) arrives laden with expectations beyond its own modest means. That it’s unable to meet them shouldn’t necessarily mark this out as typical of darlings of such ceremonies, where voters are seduced by surface detail, or an idea rather than actual quality. Whiplash wears its love and understanding of music on its sleeve, whereas, for example, science whizz flicks The Theory of Everything and The Intimidation Game are left looking tone deaf in respect of their own specialised subjects. Where the film flounders is redirecting a tale that unfolds, in

Eureka (1983)   Nicolas Roeg’s fascinating, flawed follow-up to Bad Timing is much under-appreciated. It came after a run of critical darlings, but heralded output during the rest of the 1980s that would generally be regarded as mixed (while also representing his most prolific period). A tale of greed, obsession, and jealousy, Eureka finds the director applying his typically distinctive insights into time, subjective experience, the enduring external world, sex, and death to a screenplay that isn’t quite sure if it can take such weight. One could imagine a much more linear take on this (based on real events) story, which may be why

Dean Spanley (2008)   There is such a profusion of average, respectable – but immaculately made – British period drama held up for instant adulation, it’s hardly surprising that, when something truly worthy of acclaim comes along, it should be singularly ignored. To be fair, Dean Spanley was well liked by critics upon its release, but its subsequent impact has proved disappointingly slight. Based on Lord Dunsany’s 1939 novella, My Talks with Dean Spanley, our narrator relates how the titular Dean’s imbibification of a moderate quantity of Imperial Tokay (“too syrupy”, is the conclusion reached by both members of the Fisk family regarding this

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)   It’s a Wonderful Life is an unassailable classic, held up as an embodiment of true spirit of Christmas and a testament to all that is good and decent and indomitable in humanity. It deserves its status, even awash with unabashed sentimentality that, for once, actually seems fitting. But, with the reams of plaudits aimed at Frank Capra’s most enduring film, it is also worth playing devil’s advocate for a moment or two. One can construe a number of not nearly so life-affirming undercurrents lurking within it, both intentional and unintentional on the part of its

Heaven is for Real (2014)   It would be churlish to complain about a Christian movie selling Jesus, something Heaven is for Real (fo’ sho’; Heaven is 4 Real might have been a better title) has at the forefront of its mind. And critiquing its take on Near Death Experiences (“NDEs”), from a rationalist/atheist perspective, would be talking to the hand, as it would be for any who who avow a spiritual dimension to a subject that some would reduce to mere brain chemistry (what’s surprising is that an atheist who isn’t a Dawkins-type zealot would waste their time setting it straight at all).

Wake in Fright (1971)   Ted Kotcheff’s sweltering outback drama is positioned at the very beginning of the Australian new wave. Like Walkabout, it finds a non-Antipodean filmmaker casting a perceptive eye over the country, its baked mores and behaviours. Yet while both films base themselves on the contrasts between disparate values, tonally they couldn’t be more different. Nicolas Roeg’s study sets his characters against greater forces of nature and the tentative meeting of disparate cultures. Kothceff’s film is narrower in focus but no less insightful. While Roeg’s picture is mostly elegiac in tone Wake in Fright is rough and ready, its content

Tracks (2013)   A young woman’s journey of self-discovery across the Outback. It’s a description that could be aptly applied to Walkabout, but it also fits this oft attempted – but hitherto unsuccessfully, can you imagine the Julia Roberts version without shuddering? – adaptation of Robyn Davidson’s novel. Tracks is a very different Bactrian to Nicolas Roeg’s classic rites of passage tale, and takes a literal, methodical approach to its trek. Surprisingly, this staunch linearity (how else would one depict a quest, one might ask), so typical of the biographical movie, is not a drawback; John Curran’s film unfolds measuredly, slowly weaving its

The Double (2013)   I didn’t quite feel the unreserved raves Richard Ayoade’s directorial debut Submarine received, but I liked it well enough and could see it carried across his idiosyncratic sense of humour – albeit in more overtly dark and twisted form – from his funny man persona. Most impressively, also was a fully formed technical confidence and filmmaking craft. His follow-up, based on Dostoyevsky’s novella, reinforces those opinions but its decidedly the lesser beast. It is at once a keenly stylised piece of world building and underwhelming in terms of personality. We’ve seen this story before, many, many times. And

The Leftovers Season One: Part 1   (Episodes 1-5) I’m a sucker for punishment, I guess. I can’t resist the Lindelof Lure, that now renowned storytelling style in which a screenwriter (first name Damon) entices viewers to watch his TV shows (or movies) by dropping in choice mysteries, and themes and ideas of a phenomenally and spiritually nebulous order. The weekly fix is addictive, while the promise of an ultimate hit, the pay-off to it all, never arrives. I should have learnt after Lost, of course. All those promises of a planned-out story came to nothing, unless the plan was just

Philomena (2013)   The Oscars’ current dose of Anglophilia can likely be traced back to success of Chariots of Fire and the posture of celebrating English (British) Heritage, but with a twist. The ingredients of Empire may be reclaimed just so long as there’s a fleeting acknowledgment of past lapses. Sumptuous period trappings present older, better eras to hearken back to, but with a twinge of implicit criticism that the mores and values of the day may not have been all that snazzy. Conscience is relived sufficiently to permit the viewer a good wallow in past hues while tutting sagely at the

Fearless  (1993)   Hollywood tends to make a hash of any exploration of existential or spiritual themes. The urge towards the simplistic, the treacly or the mawkishly uplifting, without appropriate filtering or insight, usually overpowers even the best intentions. Rarely, a movie comes along that makes good on its potential and then, more than likely, it gets completely ignored. Such a fate befell Fearless, Peter Weir’s plane crash survivor-angst film, despite roundly positive critical notices. For some reason audiences were willing to see a ruby team turn cannibal in Alive, but this was a turn-off? Yet invariably anyone who has seen Fearless speaks of it in

Noah (2014)   Given the amount of discussion it has heralded, the talk of how it is difficult, how it doesn’t take the course of your average Hollywood blockbuster, and how it may offend those of a Biblical persuasion (no small deal when the mighty dollar is at stake and this group is surely envisaged as the film’s bread-and-butter audience), I expected Noah to be a much more interesting film than it is. Particularly given director Darren Aronofsky’s previous pictures, not all of them masterpieces but everyone thought provoking and resonant. Here he takes a couple of chapters of The Bible and expands them

The Monuments Men (2014)   How do you end up making a movie with a cast and premise this good so goddamn boring? I had hopes for The Monuments Men, based on both those good solid reasons; it was in my films to see for both 2013 and this year, even though I should have heeded the warning signs when the release date was delayed. After all, it couldn’t be anything but at very least entertaining. Could it? Unfortunately, this is George Clooney the director in complete disarray, clueless over to how to string a plot together (with co-writer and frequent

Nebraska (2013)   There’s a feeling of structural familiarity pervading Alexander Payne’s latest film. As a storyteller, he appears to favour the road trip as a means of exploring character, understandably so as the linear narrative does all the heavy lifting. Even though his films are laced with irony (often at the expense of the lead), his protagonist(s) is usually on some kind of emotional journey. It is here that Nebraska doesn’t quite follow the expected course. Bruce Dern’s Woody Grant experiences no great realisations or dramatic catharsis. For all the broadness of the events and people encountered on the old man’s

To the Wonder (2012)   Terrence Malick’s latest rumination falls considerably short of post-career comeback triumphs The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Accordingly, it has more in common with his 2005 Pocahontas tale The New World; a visually resplendent piece of work (as are all his films) but one that fails to resonate. Maybe it’s all in the casting, despite the evidence that his actors are somewhat superfluous to his goals. The number that have ended up on his cutting room floor is legendary, although it says as much about their unabated desire to work with a legend as his capacity

JFK (1991)   (Director’s Cut) Oliver Stone’s best work comes from a passionate desire to tell a story, having something he really wants to say and needs to get out of his system. Lapses in taste and judgement accompany even his strongest pictures, lurching imbalances, but his strengths more than counterweight them. Given the right material, he has the ability of a consummate storyteller and a master craftsman. JFK, his “alternative myth to the Warren Commission”, remains his high-water mark. It’s an extraordinary piece of work, one that operates both as a polemic designed to pull apart the veracity of the

All the President’s Men (1976)   It’s fairly routine to find that films lavished with awards ceremony attention really aren’t all that. So many factors go into lining them up, including studio politics, publicity and fashion, that the true gems are often left out in the cold. On some occasions all the attention is thoroughly deserved, however. All the President’s Men lost out to Rocky for Best Picture Oscar; an uplifting crowd-pleaser beat an unrepentantly low key, densely plotted and talky political thriller. But Alan J. Pakula’s film had already won the major victory; it turned a literate, uncompromising account of a resolutely unsexy

Mud (2012)   Matthew McConaughey’s screen rebirth continues apace in this engaging, consummately scripted slow-burn thriller from Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter). Mud finds two young protagonists in a scenario that invokes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But Nichols isn’t interested in merely making a straightforward boys’ adventure yarn; his is a rites of passage tale, one where the first stirrings of young love must vie with the harsh realisation that mutual affection may not endure. It’s a theme that reverberates through his characters, both young and old. Nichols allows his narrative to unfold at a languorous pace, and the Southern backdrop sometimes recalls

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)   It’s usually a clear warning sign when the Oscars embrace a heart-warming or uplifting tale of triumph over adversity. The results often tend to simplify issues, reduce themes to their most facile, and bang out notes that just don’t ring true. While it is always welcome to see independent movies get nominated, it can’t escape notice that when they do (Little Miss Sunshine), their trajectory is invariably one of punch-the-air uplifting overpowering sadness or misery. Which is no bad thing in theory; life-affirmatory sentiments are grand things. The downside is that, if these

Family Business (1989)   Part of the fun of Connery in his late career bloom is watching him parry with his younger co-stars. Sometimes his opponents pull their weight (Ford, Costner), at others they stumble and fall (Harmon, Gere). Seeing him opposite Dustin Hoffman, the effect is less straightforward. It’s not so much that Hoffman is seven years younger yet playing Connery’s son that’s disorientating (although it does seem like a stretch, particularly since at no point does Dustin ask “Are you sure you’re my dad?”) It’s that you’re conscious of the clash of acting styles, and at no point

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)   Peter Ustinov is my favourite incarnation of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, for much the same reason that Margaret Rutherford is my favourite Miss Marple. Their renditions of the characters bring the warmth and sparkle of their own personalities to the parts. In the case of Poirot, in particular, I’ve never much cared for David Suchet’s “definitive” portrayal (Joan Hickson’s Marple is a different matter). But in Sidney Lumet’s big screen version of her most famous tale (well, probably), neither of the main suspects is in the frame.  Rather, the unlikely choice of Albert

One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942)   Noel Coward went on to employ most of the crew from this Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film, following a set visit that mightily impressed him (including editor David Lean and cinematographer Ronald Neame). He’d have been better to just ask Powell to direct In Which We Serve, which is both stagey and mannered; it hasn’t aged nearly as well as Aircraft, the first production from P&P’s The Archers production company. The Archers was formed as a result of a bet between Powell and cinema mogul Arthur Rank, who informed the director that the

Thirteen Days (2000)   Kevin Costner’s desire to return to the era that proved so fruitful nearly a decade earlier with JFK was understandable, and the Cuban Missile Crisis is a subject replete with so many opportunities for drama and tension that it would take some very clumsy hands to mess it up. It’s ironic, then, that the least effective aspect of the film is Costner himself. Which is not to say that he gives a poor performance. This is a typical Costner role, one that echoes the courageous family man type audiences have already seen several times (in the likes of The

White Mischief (1987)   There is surely a great film to be made from the incident that precipitated the demise of Kenya’s “Happy Valley” set, but White Mischief misses the boat. Here is a murder mystery amidst against a backdrop of supreme aristocratic decadence, so why is all so tame and respectful? Michael Radford has to take the lion’s share of the blame as director and co-author of the screenplay. He injects the film with all the vigour of a TV movie (apologies to DP Roger Deakins), with only the occasional spillage of bare breasts or murmur of discreet outrage to indicate

Argo (2012)   With hindsight, it’s probably easy to make a case for Argo’s Best Picture win; sympathy with Affleck for his director nom snub, fatigue with the dry worthiness of frontrunner Lincoln, the unlikely scenario of a movie that can present Hollywood as a hero. It’s certainly no bar to recognition that Argo isn’t a great movie. It has a great premise, no doubt about that, of the “so far-fetched it has to be true” variety. But it drifts too far into “sexing-up” the material, which ultimately distances it from the best movies of the era that it is trying to ape. Which

Amour (2012)   Michael Haneke’s latest topped many critics’ “Best of the Year” lists and managed the unlikely feat of not one but two Best Picture Oscar nominations, so it must be pretty damn good. Well, no doubt as an indication of my philistine tendencies, I didn’t find Amour either profound or insightful. I’m sure many of the reasons it has been so acclaimed are the very ones that left me nonplussed. It could certainly be shown as “prep” work on what to expect for anyone with a deteriorating relative (well, minus a few significant plot details). But it’s this painstaking deliberation

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)   Did Sydney Pollack’s film about a Depression Era dance marathon inspire Derek and Clive’s Non-Stop Dancer sketch (“I said, “All right, you non-stop dancer, start dancing”)? It would be perversely appropriate if it did, as They Shoot Horse, Don’t They? is Hollywood cinema at its most banal and self-important. Its characters wear their pain on their sleeves and the film does the same with a subtext so blatant it could only have come from an era when a strong message could be mistaken for depth. It’s 1932, and a selection of hopefuls assemble under a big top

Silkwood (1983)   Mike Nichol’s film about union activist Karen Silkwood, who died under suspicious circumstances in a car accident in 1974, remains a powerful piece of work; even more so in the wake of Fukushima. If we transpose the microcosm of employees of a nuclear plant, who would rather look the other way in favour of a pay cheque, to the macrocosm of a world dependent on an energy source that could spell our destruction (just don’t think about it and, if you do, be reassured by the pronouncements of “experts” on how safe it all is; and if

Sophie’s Choice (1982)   Alan J Pakula’s Holocaust drama presumes its own importance but doesn’t pause to consider the almost wholly turgid result. Yes, the central scene (which provides the title) is powerful. But it is unable to justify the entire film; indeed, there is a strong disconnect between the indulgent thespian antics of the US sections and the flashbacks to Poland. It could be that William Styron’s novel explores its themes more successfully but this adaptation consistently flies its colours as a literary construct, employing several layers of unnecessary artifice when the premise is potent enough. There’s the decision