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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

White Christmas (1954)   White Christmas is one of those beloved Christmas “classics” that gets its prescribed seasonal screening(s), but I doubt most people have watched all the way through. I certainly hadn’t. Having remedied that, I’m very doubtful you’ll have gained anything by giving it your full attention, rather than having it on the background while you put your decorations up. And then wondering, when you do occasionally give it your attention, why it’s still on and nothing of consequence whatsoever appears to have happened. It seems Paramount couldn’t get Fred Astaire back with Bing Crosby following Holiday Inn, so eventually

Call Me by Your Name (2017)   Critically lauded but curiously unaffecting endeavour on the parts of director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter James Ivory. Call Me by Your Name, an ’80s Italy-set summer romance was surely intended to captivate through making us privy to the passions between Timothee Chalamet’s seventeen-year-old Elio and Armie Hammer’s 24-year-old Oliver, a grad student working with Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg). But the relationship is singularly devoid of chemistry and intensity, leaving actors going through the motions of infatuation. More than that, however, and it appears to be something of a prejudicial minefield to debate the matter,

Time after Time (1979)   It seems as if every even half-successful science-fiction movie has spawned at least a failed TV version at some point. I haven’t seen Time after Time’s spin-off, but I’m unsurprised its premise didn’t successfully lend itself to an ongoing series format. Indeed, by the time the credits roll on Nicholas Meyer’s directorial debut, I felt he’d run into the limits of his (Karl Alexander’s) idea. Time after Time’s faux-Victoriana contrasted with late-twentieth century San Francisco provides the missing link between Meyer’s prior Sherlock Holmes pastiches and his later contributions to Star Trek. You can see his love for literature

True Romance (1993)   The track record for others adapting Tarantino’s early screenplays isn’t so hot – the prosecution offers Natural Born Killers and From Dusk till Dawn – but Tony Scott’s envisioning of True Romance, made before the director went stratospheric with Pulp Fiction and after Quentin politely turned Tony down when he made it known how much he’d like to direct Reservoir Dogs himself, is nigh on perfect. Scott ironed the director’s tricksy structure into something linear and brought with it an upbeat ending, because he knew that, if you’re onboard with Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette), you don’t need bells and whistles and foisted

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)   Barry Jenkins’ follow up to Moonlight is the kind of fare usually lapped up by the awards circuit. Which isn’t to suggest Jenkins was necessarily setting out to make it a double on Oscar night, but rather that If Beale Street Could Talk is achingly self-conscious in its awareness of its worth and responsibility. You can tell, right from the off and the over explanation of the opening titles – of how James Baldwin intended Beale Street to represent the universality of the black American experience – that this is going to be a little-seen stodge, the

West Side Story (1961)   Why the hell is Spielberg remaking this? Does he somehow think that, from on high in his Hollywood ivory tower, he has the keen insight to imbue some of the realism lacking in the Robert Wise/ Jerome Robbins Best Picture Oscar winner (I mean, it is a musical)? Or that, with today’s marginally keener eye for ethnicity-appropriate casting – if you aren’t Ridley Scott – this alone is good enough reason to retread ground where there’s no earthly justification (this at least appears to be part of it; that and he loved it as a teen, the soft-headed

Neither the Sea nor the Sand aka The Exorcism of Hugh (1972)   A Jersey-set (the Channel Island, that is) curio based on actor and news reader Gordon Honeycombe’s first novel, for which he also furnished the screenplay, Neither the Sea nor the Sand makes for an unlikely zombie movie. Not in the ravenous-for-flesh sense, but the more traditional revivified empty shell. Indeed, going in knowing nothing – provided you haven’t been spoiled by the alternative and misleading title The Exorcism of Hugh – you’d have no inkling that anything supernatural’s in store for almost half the running time. While the sudden shift in

The Big Sick (2017)   The Big Sick wasn’t the big hit many expected. Tipped as a summer sleeper, it merely performed respectably (on a low budget, so that was okay). But then, with a title suggesting the worst excesses of now passé gross-out comedy, what did Amazon and Lionsgate (who picked it up following Sundance) expect? It isn’t that at all – by which I mean, vomit-related – of course, and is in fact a rather sweet culture-clash comedy with a you-couldn’t-make-it-up coma thrown in – the actual big sick –  based on the experiences of comedian Kumail Nanjiani in dating

Me Before You (2016)   Me Before You makes for a surprisingly not insufferable tragi-romance, although that’s largely down to the winning performances of Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin. An adaption of Jojo Moyles’ novel of the same name, by Moyles herself and directed by Thea Sharrock, this tale of a quadriplegic bent on going through with assisted suicide suffers from the combination of tackling difficult subject matter but making it accessible, with the result that it ends up being just another tearjerker. Part of the problem is that debut feature director Sharrock has diligently thumbed through the Romcom 101 rule book for

La La Land (2016)   La La Land is very likeable, which is surely why it has been embraced so rapturously, as if it represents the second coming of Gene Kelly. It isn’t that, but it’s backward-looking take on old-school musicals, with a twist of sobriety, has made it seem fresh and distinctive in an increasingly homogenous (mainstream) landscape. It does make me wonder, though, whether director Damien Chazelle has a one-track mind. He can make a film about anything. As long as it involves jazz. And additionally, when positioned alongside Whiplash, it’s suggestive of an unsettlingly uncompromising temperament. Whiplash justified its teacher’s extreme

Passengers (2016)   Maybe it’s appropriate that, amid audience ambivalence in the face of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and semi-outraged critical dismissal, Passengers has been rather overlooked. After all, Morten Tyldum’s previous picture, The Imitation Game, was vastly overrated, and over-feted, a psychologically thin and dramatically crude telling of Alan Turing’s life and work that needs to be compared to a truly barrel-scraping biographical portrait like A Beautiful Mind to come off looking remotely praiseworthy. Here, Tydlum exhibits a similarly glib understanding of his protagonists, but the premise of Passengers nevertheless holds twisted, unsavoury potential. That it fails to succeed in following through – and so the talking point

Allied (2016)   Just what is it that attracts Robert Zemeckis to a movie? Now that his prospects for creating entirely unasked for virtual landscapes have decisively dimmed, that is? The chance to work with accomplished, Oscar-winning or nominated actors on distinguished screenplays delving into intricate and rewarding subject matter? Or the opportunity to ransack the material, seeking some kernel or glimmer of a reason to justify further elaborate experimentation with some new technical trickery he has set his sights on this time? Yes, it’s the latter. Allied is a Notorious-esque WWII tale of romantically-entangled spies and the suspicions that arise, not so

Wild at Heart (1990)   1990 was a banner year for all things David Lynch. In April, Twin Peaks began, exposing him to a far wider audience than he had probably envisaged, and a month later Wild at Heart premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, going on to win the Palme d’Or. Sometimes the recipients of the award are richly deserved, sometimes it’s a case of “What were they thinking?” and certainly, the film was greeted with as many boos as cheers when victory was announced. Controversy followed in its wake, agitating critics over its sex and violence. While I was (and am) a

The Age of Adaline (2015)   I wouldn’t exactly say I had high expectations for The Age of Adaline, but I did think it sounded intriguing, in a The Curious Case of Benjamin Button kind of way. Further, it suggested the sort of fare that might catch the general public’s romantic imaginations. That it all but fizzled at the box office isn’t, alas, the injustice of a bunch of hard-hearted ingrates ignoring a precious pearl but a reflection that the picture, in some fairly fundamental ways, stumbles in its ambitions. Blake Lively is Adaline, a 107-year-old woman who doesn’t look a day over

The Russia House (1990)   The Russia House was greeted with public and critical indifference when it arrived in 1990. It isn’t too difficult to see why. Topical movies often fail to catch a wave that has already been well surfed by the news media. Why would anyone go out to watch a fiction version too (see also the numerous War on Terror themed films of the past decade plus)? Particularly when it’s packaged in a thriller that doesn’t really thrill (and the intrigue is mild at best) and a romance that entirely fizzles. Fred Schepsi’s adaptation of John Le Carré’s

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)   I had no avid desire to see Sam Taylor Johnson’s adaptation of E L Gray’s novel, but I was curious about it – in the same way I am any big hit such as a Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There’s no point pretending to have an opinion on something you haven’t seen. I haven’t read the novel, nor likely will I, but more power to Gray for getting her Twilight fanfic repurposed as erotic fiction; seriously, I don’t get the naysaying there (her prose may be a different matter, but as I say, I haven’t read it). Fifty

The Fault in Our Stars (2014)   Big C chic for teens, The Fault in Our Stars at least begins with admirable intentions. Perhaps setting out its store so forthrightly, that this is not your classic chocolate box movie romance where everything turns out alright in the end, was unwise. Inevitably the picture pitches headlong into another renowned variant on the genre, the doomed love story, where it becomes difficult to distinguish from its bedfellows. If John Hughes had tackled terminal illness, it would probably have ended up resembling this adaption of John Green’s young adult novel. That is, the John Hughes

Warm Bodies (2013)   The idea of a zombie love story sounded so desperate and wrong (as in, a really dumb premise designed as a cash-in), I didn’t give it the time of day until now. Even with the generally positive reviews, it failed to really sway me. So when I say it is a pleasant surprise, it’s not due to lowered expectations but rather because the unlikely angle works really well; Romeo and Juliet by way of Edward Scissorhands with a ready wit (difficult to do when Shaun of the Dead seems like the last word on zomcoms), an affecting romance and a surprisingly original mythology. Nicholas

How I Live Now (2013)   There’s enough genuine grimness in How I Live Now to nominate it as the anti-Young Adult movie. It’s probably no coincidence this is the strongest aspect of the picture, an unvarnished take on (global) conflict and the collapse of society shorn of the cosy fantasy elements of most of its stable mates. Kevin Macdonald’s post-apocalyptic Britain at times conjures the spectre of a teen Children of Men, but that’s more for its iconography (a martial, desolate and dissolute landscape) than actual content.  During its best passages, How I Live Now holds the taut immediacy of plunging into a nightmare tomorrow,

The Host (2013)   Given the left-field choices of helmers for some of the Young Adult lit adaptations, you’d think the failures would be more interesting than they are. Then again, Andrew Niccol garnered notices early on as both writer (The Truman Show) and director (Gattaca), but since then his reach has exceeded his grasp. He’s continued to stretch for more cerebral fare but usually ends up botching it. But surely, he could lend a few morsels of food for thought to this attempt at extending Stephanie Meyer’s movie life beyond the Twilight franchise? Well no, not really. Niccol’s previous picture In Time was

First Knight (1995)   Did First Knight start life as a comedy? Obviously, it finished up as one (unintentionally). How did it come by a title that appears to be a bad pun on stagecraft (but with no good reason)? Nigh on every aspect of Jerry Zucker’s follow-up to Ghost is a bust, from the script, to the cast, to the costumes, to (yes) the direction. It’s as if all concerned laboured under the perverse desire to manifest the most horrendous version of Arthurian legend imaginable on a cinema screen. Although, ignore the names Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere and you’d be understandably surprised to learn that

Always (1989)   Spielberg’s only straight remake is as misjudged a piece of genre hopping as 1941, his sole stab at comedy a decade earlier. Except that film at least has a crazy excess, for all its lack of real laughs. Always updated 1943’s A Guy Named Joe) and saw Spielberg dip his toe in the romance genre. You can count the number of times he’s subsequently attempted remakes or romances on one finger. As with laughers, he probably wisely realised love stuff wasn’t his forte. Dabble with both comedy and romance, but in the service of an entirely different genre, and Spielberg could deliver something

Titanic  (1997)   Can there be a clearer example than James Cameron of a film director diminishing creatively as their artistic freedom expands? Technically, his work is as accomplished as ever, and he continues to innovate in the effects field. But his output has become cruder and cruder. The worst thing that could have happened to his ego was topping the most successful film ever (needless to say, not accounting for inflation) with wall-to-wall Oscar glory. Because Titanic is an infantile, vulgar affair, so clumsy in its attempts at depicting heartfelt romance and capturing tragic resonance that you’d be forgiven for thinking

The Lake House (2006)   How many great screen couples are there in modern cinema? Are there any? Hanks and Ryan worked one time only, but twice was too much. Likewise, Roberts and Gere. I’m not sure it’s because audiences don’t want to see stars with chemistry fall for each other all over again. Rather, there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for reunions. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock don’t, at first glance, seem as if they should be joining the ranks of successful movie partnerships. But they have two (well, one-and-a-half) under their belts, and if they continue to

Robin and Marian (1976)   It’s ironic that Russell Crowe was older than Sean Connery is here when he starred in Ridley Scott’s malformed Robin Hood origins tale in 2010. Because Robin and Marian finds the mythic character at the end of the road. This is an elegiac tale of missed opportunities for love and fulfilment. If it never quite becomes the heartfelt meditation it wants to be, that is more down to Richard Lester’s perfunctory direction rather than the sincere performances from an outstanding cast. Robin is well into middle age when the film begins; he and Little John (Nicol Williamson) have followed

Out of Africa (1985)   I did not warm to Out of Africa on my initial viewing, which would probably have been a few years after its theatrical release. It was exactly as the publicity warned, said my cynical side; a shallow-yet-bloated, awards-baiting epic romance. This was little more than a well-dressed period chick flick, the allure of which was easily explained by its lovingly photographed exotic vistas and Robert Redford rehearsing a soothing Timotei advert on Meryl Streep’s distressed locks. That it took Best Picture only seemed like confirmation of it as all-surface and no substance. So, on revisiting the film,

Tristan & Isolde (2006)   Is it Kevin Reynolds’ mission to direct faintly dull period pictures between Kevin Costner collaborations? That seems to be the case, with this, Rapa Nui and, to a lesser extent, The Count of Monte Cristo. Tristan is by far his most soporific film, however, and he is fortunate that his career torpor has been relieved by the Hatfields and McCoys mini-series. Did some less-than-savvy marketing exec think that adding the “+” to the title gave the film some sort of Romeo + Juliet “street” cachet with the kids? That’s the only thing I can come up with (although, it’s unclear which is correct; imdb

Ghost (1990)   As is often the case with the romance genre, no one was predicting Ghost to be the box office sensation it became. Much the same was true of Pretty Woman earlier in that year. There was no hype behind either of them, and the leads didn’t exactly sell tickets. With Woman it was (relatively) unknown Julia Roberts and past-it Richard Gere. Ghost had Patrick Swizzle (okay, I’ll give you Dirty Dancing) and ex brat packer Demi Moore. And then there was the director. One of the guys who made Airplane!? None of the omens were good, but somehow alchemy occurred. Even the Academy wanted in; Ghost was nominated for