The Yearling (1946)

Sentimental family drama has a slightly harder edge than you might expect

Director: Clarence Brown

Cast: Gregory Peck (Ezra ‘Penny’ Baxter), Jane Wyman (Ora Baxter), Claude Jarman Jnr (Jody), Chill Wills (Buck Forrester), Clem Bevan (Pa Forrester), Margaret Wycherly (Ma Forrester), Henry Travers (Mr Boyles), Forrest Tucker (Lem Forrester)

Based on a beloved best-seller, The Yearling is set in the Florida farmlands of 1878 where the Baxter family is struggling to make ends meet in tough conditions. Pa Ezra (Gregory Peck) and Ma Ora Baxter (Jane Wyman) have already buried at least two children, which has made Ma prevent herself from getting too close to their 12-year-old son Jody (Claude Jarmon Jnr). Jody has the love of his decent Pa, but his heart needs filling. He finds some of that missing love when he adopts Flag, an orphaned fawn. But a yearling isn’t the best house guest for a farm…

There is something very reassuring on the surface about The Yearling, a seemingly cosy film where the Baxter’s literally call each other Ma and Pa and are hard-working, honest Christian types. However, Clarence Brown’s film mixes sentiment with just enough bitter realism to make for a harder-edged experience than you might expect. That seeps through no matter how much the film is wrapped in gorgeous technicolour. The Oscar winning photography by Arthur Arling, Charles Rosher and Leonard Smith is full of gorgeous skylines and striking warm reddish firelight glows in huts, skilfully mixing locations and studio, all washed down with Herbert Stothart’s richly romantic score.

But it’s often the case films about children and animals are as much tragedies about an absence of love as they are about the sweetness of a child’s bond with one of God’s creatures. That’s certainly the case with The Yearling, a beloved family film that is more hard-hitting than you might expect, not least in the shocking ending of Jody and Flag’s friendship that traumatised generations. The real reason for Jody’s unbreakable love for this wild animal is knowing he’s been effectively rejected by his distant mother who has bottled up her emotions so tightly, only her husband knows how much she cares.

Jane Wyman is arguably the finest part of the film – and one of the easiest to overlook. Wyman’s Ora is beaten down by years of grinding work, relentless poverty and the never-ending blows of child-loss. She can seem humourless and sour, her contribution to a night of family storytelling being a flat, fact-filled statement. Wyman isn’t afraid to make her feel like a strict, hard-to-love mother who constantly corrects Jody. But there are hints throughout, from her quiet delight at the gift of fabric to her anxiety when Pa plans to take their son bear hunting, that lets us know this is a woman of great emotion, terrified to let it show. It’s a tough line to walk, but Wyman does it really well.

But you can still understand why young Jody is wary of her – and why he is invested in his relationship with his father. This father is of course Peck, in a role tailor-made for the most decent and unimpeachable of Hollywood’s leading men (even if the patrician Peck is not your first thought for a farmer). Manly but in touch with his feelings, doting but still a firm dad, He can talk to Jody about life but still stare into the middle distance with a mix of grandiosity and sober mannerism with grounded decency and gentleness. He even has a little touch of naughtiness, willingly misleading a bull-headed neighbour on the value of useless dog without once telling a lie about its qualities.

Arguably The Yearling would work better if both Jody’s parents were distant. It would make even clearer the emotional hole in his life that, like his sickly friend Fodderwig, he fills with creatures who are less complex than human beings. But much of the first hour focuses instead on Jody’s life on the farm, learning the ropes alongside his ever patient Pa. And there are lot of ropes: from managing feeble crops, to building fences and hunting. It’s also not exactly safe – something you realise clearly on watching the surprisingly ferocious bear-dog fight Brown stages (I was relieved, and also surprised, Animal Rights gave this the thumbs up) or Pa going to desperate measures to save himself from a snake bite.

Which all serves as a reminder that wild animals and farmland don’t go well together. Possibly because the deer was apparently such a nightmare to shoot – wild animals apparently don’t take direction – there is no attempt to anthropomorphise Flag. It’s clear from the start that, no matter how much this fawn follows Jody around, he’s a liability. One of the first thing Flag does is drink the carefully collected cows milk. As he gets older he tramples or eats crops and no matter how hard Jody slaves on fences and other means to try and stop Flag. This is the hardened realism under The Yearling’s romance.

Of course, Pa never should have allowed Jody to keep the animal in the first place. Ma certainly never would, but that’s probably why Pa does. It’s only storing up trouble for a sensitive boy. Jody is a caring boy who treats people with kindness, but also strikes out when he feels he is treated poorly (he even throws a stone at the daughter of the trading store who mocks his nervous affection). A more challenging film than The Yearling may well have pushed us to recognise the lack of human complexity in Flag is probably the main attraction to Jody, but you can still pick that up.

Claude Jarmon Jnr does a decent job as this young child, even if Clarence Brown lets him breakdown into tear-soaked blubbing once too often (even Peck later mocked the film as the one where “the kid cried too much”). But The Yearling is good at depicting the innocence of childhood, where every day is an adventure and a trusted Pa can make everything turn out well. Learning that the world is not exactly like that is the focus of The Yearling’s closing act, and while its answers are generally fairly simplistic and lean towards reassuring, they are delivered with a certain satisfying emotional heft.

It’s part of what makes it such an iconic family film. Because sometimes the ones that stick with us are the tough coming-of-age tales that start with the magic of childhood adventures and end with unbearable sacrifices on the way to cathartic emotional discoveries. The Yearling has a lot of this, probably why it’s been such a reliable crowd pleaser for decades.

A View to a Kill (1985)

Possibly the worst film of the entire franchise, not helped by Moore’s being well and truly past it

Director: John Glen

Cast: Roger Moore (James Bond), Christopher Walken (Max Zorin), Tanya Roberts (Stacey Sutton), Grace Jones (May Day), Patrick Macnee (Sir Godfrey Tibbett), Patrick Bauchay (Scarpine), Willoughby Gray (Dr Karl Mortner), David Yip (Chuck Lee), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Robert Brown (M), Walter Gotell (General Gogol), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Geoffrey Keen (Minister), Manning Redwood (Bob Conley), Alison Doody (Jenny Flex), Papillon Soo Soo (Pan Ho), Fiona Fullerton (Pola Ivanova)

After watching A View to a Kill Roger Moore declared he probably should have stopped after Octopussy (others would say For Your Eyes Only would have been even better). He’s not wrong. Putting aside the whole question of age (of which more later) A View to a Kill is one of the worst outings Bond ever had on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A blatant Goldfinger rip-off, it’s full of the sort of ridiculousness Moore made his own but with plenty of the sort of violent rough-and-tumble the other action stars of the 80s were doing. It manages to be neither remotely funny or particularly exciting.

Bond (Roger Moore) is roped into investigate dodgy goings on in Zorin Industries, run by grinning psychopath Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), aided by his terrifyingly tough girlfriend and chief henchwoman May Day (Grace Jones). Zorin, it turns out, is planning a dastardly plan to sink Silicon Valley (wait a minute: Max all is forgiven!) by blowing a hole in the San Andreas fault. From Paris to San Francisco, Bond is on the trail to foil this scheme, helped and hindered (mostly the latter) by oil heir Stacey (Tanya Roberts).

The elephant in the room of course is Roger Moore’s age. It’s genuinely jaw-dropping to think Moore was younger when he made this film than Tom Cruise was when he made his final Mission: Impossible. Moore looks like a gun-toting Methuselah, the most active part of his lined and winkled face being his immortal arched eyebrow. A film with more courage or wit would have lampshaded this – though of course Bond was never going to go full on “I’m too old for this shit”. There is something insanely icky at watching this ageing lothario take to bed a ludicrously young glamourous agent in the film’s prologue (sliding into the sheets of their mini-sub’s bed, he looks like a dirty old man) or, for that matter, Stacey (so much younger than him, he cooks her a post-fight quiche omelette to sooth her nerve, like a loving uncle). As for when he beds Grace Jones… Genuinely it’s the only point in the film you feel worried about his safety.

On top of this, you can’t help but wonder how much work Moore did on this film. He clearly never visited the Arctic, where the films skiing action entre takes place: a stunt-double zooms around the glaciers, while Moore pops up to raise an eyebrow in close-ups in front of a blue screen. It’s painfully obvious to see the stunt men take over all the driving and a large portion of the fighting (Glen probably deserves some sort of medal for framing so much of this action to not show Bond’s face). His horse-riding sequence is obviously Moore on a hobby horse (to be fair, it’s the same for Walken), while his stunt doubles climb around a fire truck ladder on a racing truck in San Francisco.

It’s all even more painfully in-your-face, because the costume designers clearly decided to dress Moore like a man thirty years younger to disguise his creaking joints. Tank tops and leather jackets? Even when he was in his 20s, Moore (a polo shirt or suit guy) would have looked ridiculous in this garb. They even throw in Patrick Macnee as an even older action star (he might as well be called John Unsteady). At one point these two dress up in dark leather jackets to raid a warehouse, theming look like two lost granddads trying to brazen out a tough Friday night on the town after the pubs have closed.

It’s particularly noticeable how doddering Moore is when he’s constantly being compared to the energetic youngsters he’s up against. Grace Jones is of course a lean strip of muscle and macho attitude. She may not be the greatest actor in the world – her range rarely stretches beyond ‘angry’ – but she sure can kick, punch and throw. Similarly, Christopher Walken lets his signature staccato delivery rip under a mop of blond hair and a wild-eyed grin. Zorin is a demented Nazi genetic experiment – like the wet dream of the baddies in The Boys from Brazil (he even has a Mengele-style daddy in Willoughby Gray’s monocle-clad scientist) – who throws himself into judo and action sequences with a sweaty-browed enthusiasm Moore could never match.

Zorin is possibly one of the meanest, most psychotic villains in Bond films. So much so, he sometimes feels a little out of place in the comic world of Moore’s Bond films. (Rather like everything in Moonraker being double-taking pigeons until a woman gets ripped apart by dogs). View to a Kill gives us goofy gags such as a bizarre Poirot parody (with the ludicrous name Achille Aubergine which is stupid rather than funny) who gets knocked off by a poisonous model butterfly (don’t ask) during a high society dinner. Then later it’s happy to give us a prolonged sequence of Walken machine-gunning underlings at point blank range while giggling like a schoolboy. That’s how far A View to a Kill can ying and yang.

It’s blatant Goldfinger rip-off is most obvious in its virtual replay (but less than half as good) of the villain’s briefing of his crony’s scene (right down to a flunky saying he’ll have no part of this madness and getting instantly dispatched), but it’s there throughout. Substitute horse-racing for golf, Silicon Valley for Fort Knox, a zeppelin for a bi-plane, throw in a last-minute bomb foiling and various offed side-kicks in cars and you’ve got Connery’s calling card. With the exception that Stacey Sutton is no Pussy Galore. A tiresome, whining and terminally stupid character (in a Bond Girl low point she fails to hear a slow-moving zeppelin noisily approaching her from behind) with whom Moore has no charisma (and, in fact, barely seems to like).

A View to a Kill stumbles through our geriatric lead tagging in and out with stunt-men, bumbling through set-pieces that never quite click into place, such as the otherworldly lack of danger to anything. How can a chase up the Eiffel Tower feel so dull? A car chase through San Francisco feel like it’s just killing screentime? Jokes rarely land, the villains feel like they are in a different film, the tone never seems consistent and most of it makes no real sense. It’s not really Moore’s fault – frankly, even a Connery or Craig couldn’t have saved this from being a pretty bad film. But it doesn’t change the fact that the only memorable thing about this that’s good is a knock-out Duran Duran song.

Superman II (1980)

An odd mish-mash of styles and strange jumps in logic make this a less successful sequel

Director: Richard Lester

Cast: Christopher Reeve (Clark Kent/Superman), Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor), Ned Beatty (Otis), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), Sarah Douglas (Ursa), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Jack O’Halloran (Non), Valerie Perrine (Eve Teschmacher), Maria Schell (Vond-Ah), Terence Stamp (General Zod), Susannah York (Lara), Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), EG Marshall (President), Clifton James (Sheriff)

Superman started with Brando’s Jor-El condemning Kryptonian criminals General Zod (Terence Stamp) and his sidekicks Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O’Halloran) to ‘living death’ in the Phantom Zone. Decades later, Superman (Christopher Reeve) accidentally releases them by deflecting a Parisian Hydrogen bomb into space. They arrive on Earth with the same powers as Superman, hell bent on revenge. Unfortunately, Superman is unaware of this, whiling away time in the Fortress of Solitude with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) who has learned his identity. Sacrificing his powers to live a normal life, how will he stop the world’s population “kneeling before Zod”.

Superman II was to be filmed simultaneously with Superman. At least that was the idea. But as producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind’s tenuous control of finances spun further and further out of control, efforts refocused on finishing the first one. When that was a hit, work was due to re-start on Part 2. That’s where the trouble began. The Salkind’s relationship with director Richard Donner was already heavily on the rocks. Further disputes over the tone of the sequel – Donner claimed he wanted a serious film and that the Salkinds wanted a kid-friendly, gag-heavy chortle – led to Donner’s sudden sacking and replacement with the Salkind’s favourite director, Richard Lester.

To say the style of these two didn’t mesh would be an understatement. Donner was all about making the high-blown and ridiculous feel full of po-faced seriousness (you could say self-importance). Richard Lester, on the other hand, was the man who turned Juggernaut, a film about a murderous bomber, into a work-place black comedy. Any film that used an odd combination of both man’s material was probably doomed to be a Frankenstein’s monster, neither one thing or another.

That’s pretty much what Superman II is. In many ways, with Lester taking over 75% of the way through – and then looping back and re-shooting several scenes to ensure he had directed over 60% of the film and guarantee (after Donner refused to take any credit) that the film would have someone as a credited director – it’s a miracle it makes any sense at all. As it is, the tone varies wildly at times from scene-to-scene: a prat fall gets followed by a death, a romantic riff by a mortal threat. From it’s Parisian opening with its incompetent bombers (one of whom is played by Richard Griffiths of all people), through to its goofy comedy as villains trash a mid-Western town, each set piece is two thirds drama to one third farce. In addition, the long break in filming means the actor’s appearance switches and changes frequently and important plot developments suddenly spring out of nowhere.

A lot of that came from contract disputes. Original top-billed star Marlon Brando was suing the Salkinds, convinced they were stiffing him on his 11.75% box office share from Superman. Since Brando was entitled to the same share of this film if he appeared in it, every single frame of him was cut. Which would have been fine – if Brando’s Jor-El hadn’t been pivotal to a de-powered Superman regaining his powers. Lester had already re-shot several Fortress of Solitude scenes with the more amenable (and cheaper) Susannah York taking over as tutoring hologram. Clearly, they ran out-of-time – or just didn’t think anyone would care enough – about also getting her to reshoot a scene to take the place of the last vestige of Jor-El in the Fortress’ computer erasing itself to restore Clark’s powers. Instead, Clark just gets them back off-camera, no problem.

There are touches of this throughout the film. Hackman had refused to return after Donner’s firing, his scenes all too obviously finished by a stand-in with his back to the camera while another actor gives a nearly-but-not-quite impersonation of Hackman on the soundtrack. Several times scenes with Hackman suddenly stop, which feels odd – and then you realise they were impossible to finish. It also means poor Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine also fade into the background or disappear (presumably because it would have been hard to do her scenes with the camera fixed behind a double’s back).

The thrown-together madness of the film can be seen in the bizarre story. Zod’s entire time on Earth seems to take place more-or-less in real time: arriving, terrorising a small town, capturing the White House. Meanwhile, Clark and Lois romance at Niagara Falls on a very poorly explained journalistic sting operation (including an embarrassing pre-fame Antony Sher as a lascivious hotel bellboy) and retire to the Fortress for a night of passion, a depowering and then travel from the North Pole to America (by boat and car presumably!), presumably all in the same day. You can’t blame the staff at the diner they stop at being flabbergasted at how many world-shattering events they’ve missed.

As to be expected, Donner’s grand, Fordian vision is sacrificed to Lester’s love for sight gags. Donner sure wouldn’t have used Zod and crew creating a mighty wind to blow away a Metropolis mob as an opportunity for ice cream cones, wigs and hen-picked husbands clutching telephones to be swept away. Throughout, people are forever crashing into puntastic advertising boardings or (a classic Lester touch) letting loose little muttered asides we only half catch. He even ropes in Clifton James to repeat his JW Pepper from James Bond performance in all but name.

That final Metropolis fight is still impressive in places, despite its obvious sound-stage setting – it’s important to remember it’s the first time anything like this was ever attempted on screen. The actors work hard to maintain a sense of menace and danger from our villains, despite the odd dorky moment. One decision that works extremely well, is Stamp’s underplaying of Zod as a perpetually unimpressed aristocrat, almost immediately bored by his God-like powers. By not straining hard for laughs, Stamp is frequently the funniest thing in the film (and its most memorable performer).

Reeve and Kidder do their best, but the film gives them considerably less to play with. Largely because their relationship feels very rushed, Clark’s decision to de-power himself coming almost from nowhere and lacking any real explanation for why it’s necessary, and neither the script or character being quite nimble enough to not make both Clark and Lois’ reaction to his being duffed up in a bar fight feel like two people who suddenly feel like in losing Superman they’ve got the raw end of the deal.

Superman II powers itself on with a dorky sense of energy, but really it’s a bizarre hotchpotch of the grand and mighty and the ludicrous and silly, that frequently tries to put both in the same scene at the same time. Not surprisingly, it means a film that’s half Donner and half Lester ends up feeling much worse than if it had been made alone by either one of them. Which is not to say either of those films would have any good either.

Masters of the Universe (2026)

Catnip to fans (like me) but honestly a tonal mess of a film with just enough fun to almost work

Director: Travis Knight

Cast: Nicholas Galitzine (Adam/He-Man), Camila Mendes (Teela), Idris Elba (Duncan/Man-At-Arms), Jared Leto (Skeletor), Alison Brie (Evil-Lyn), Kirstin Wiig (Roberto), James Purefoy (King Randor), Charlotte Riley (Queen Marlena), Morenca Baccarin (Sorceress), Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson (Fisto), Jon Xue Zhang (Ram-Man), Sam C. Wilson (Trap Jaw), Sasheer Zamata (Suzie), Christian Vunipoa (Huessein)

When I was very young I loved He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I had almost every toy, watched every cartoon, seen the live-action movie – I even continued watching the Further Adventures which took He-Man into space. So, I think its fair to say I am the exact target market for Masters of the Universe: a middle-aged man who hasn’t really grown up, who wants to soak in childhood nostalgia. On several of those scores, I can’t be disappointed with Masters of the Universe, even while recognising this is a deeply flawed film, with far less to entertain the non-fan.

Anyway, Adam (growing up to be Nicholas Galitzine) is the Prince of Eternia, who fled via a sword-of-power wormhole, to Earth after his planet was conquered by the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto). After losing the sword and being stranded on our world for 15 years, earning a crust as a sensitive ear in HR, Adam tells anyone who will listen he is actually a Prince from a far-flung world. When he finds the sword, he is rescued by old friend Teela (Camila Mendes) and taken back to Eternia where he finds the remains of the Eternia’s mightiest heroes struggling in the resistance to Skeletor. But perhaps Adam is the chosen one, who by the power of (Castle) Greyskull will become the mighty hero to defeat Skeletor?

Spoilers: of course he is. I’ll repeat, for the fan, there is so much to like about Masters of the Universe. First and foremost, the loving detail the characters have been bought to life, in all the bright primary colours and demented designs of the original. Did I ever imagine a world where I would see a live action film with a blue skinned Trapjaw with a green face, pinkish helmet and jaw and a mechanical arm that can turn into a hook or canon? Heck no, but I’m all for it.

Every single character has been bought to the screen like they’ve literally been ripped from the pages of my old comics, and given a steroids boost (although Skeletor’s old toys were as ripped as this). Not only that, but the film brings us obscure heroes like Moss Man (exactly what you’d expect) and Mechaneck (whose weapon is an extending mechanical neck). My hat guys. You can’t deny the love clearly there: so many of the cast and crew have talked about their deep-rooted affection for it (if I was a famous actor, I’d have loved to be in this). It’s strangely heart-warming.

But with my more critical grown-up head on – the one that isn’t bashing the action figures – is Masters of the Universe a mess? Yes, 100%. A fun mess for sure. Some decent laughs. Nicholas Galitzine is charmingly endearing as the gentle Adam. Camila Mendes revels in playing the film’s real tough guy, the good at almost everything Teela. Jared Leto has never been more enjoyable than as Skeletor, walking a tight rope between making the character absurdly pathetic and deeply horrible. It bounds along with real pace. As it should, since you can see much of its visual design, use of rock music and strongly tongue-in-cheek affectionate mockery is ripped straight from Thor: Ragnorak (you feel like its desperately trying to be a remake).

But thematically, it’s all over the shop. You feel the push-me-pull-me of different writing crews during the film’s tortuous production. It wants to explore questions of toxic masculinity and true strength coming from within. But does so ham-fistedly. For starters, the idea that Adam’s true powers come from his HR trained empathy is rendered hard to take seriously since (a) the film rips the piss out of HR speak every chance it gets, (b) Adam sounds ridiculous and uncertain and fails every single time he tries to defuse a conflict and (c) all his problems are solved through super strength. Not a single dilemma is resolved through negotiation or compromise.

Toxic masculinity coverage is also all over the shop. James Purefoy is presented as the model appalling dad, eternally disappointed in his sensitive son… until the film judderingly changes gear and tries to present this as well-meaning tough-love. Idris Elba’s Duncan collapses into a decade of drunken self-pity after his cocky self-assurance is torn apart. Does he get out of this spiral by acceptance or humility? No, he gets over it by blasting the hell out of stuff. Adam’s flatmate’s hiding his love of romcoms should be perfect for this but is only ever a punchline. Even Fisto’s masculine dismissal of Adam gets no blow back (the suggestion he’s full of cowardly bluster is similarly dismissed by the finale reaffirming he’s tough and therefore a hero).

Which makes the film’s moral (just like the cartoon, it ends with one!) feel pretty empty. Adam doesn’t even learn from his first brutally ill-thought out, violent attack on Skeletor’s HQ, which only succeeds in hurting people he cares for, that anger and pride are dangerous. He also quickly gets over his endearing squeamishness about ripping arms off androids or gunning down goons. Struggling to get out here is an idea of He-Man as still being the same sensitive twelve-year old – but it’s constantly cancelled out by the film needing He-Man to flex his muscles and skewer goons to the wall. A better film would have given He-Man his powers much later or explicitly have him earn them through demonstrating the qualities the film is pretending its praising (communication, honesty, sensitivity) rather than in his willingness to give a punch a go.

I could probably go on. I enjoyed the film. I did. But it’s sort of observed the arcs of Thor and Thor: Ragnorak, mixed it with some of the charm of Travis Knight’s Bumblebee, but still ended up completely missing the points it’s claiming to be making. And no amount of nostalgia-bait character design or (I can’t believe I’m typing this, even before news leaked he might have the same attitude to women as his character) fun from Leto or charm from Galitzine really makes up the difference.

De Gaulle: Parts 1 and 2 (2026)

Old fashioned but energetic and engaging WW2 biopic with a fabulous central performance

Cast: Antonin Baudry

Cast: Simon Abkarian (Charles de Gaulle), Niels Schneider (Philippe Leclerc), Thierry Lhermitte (Henri Giraud), Karim Leklou (Blazej), Simon Russell Beale (Winston Churchill), Campbell Scott (Franklin D Roosevelt), Matthieu Kassovitz (Admiral Darlan), Benoît Magimel (Marie-Pierre Koenig), Félix Kysyl (Jean Moulin), Loïc Corbery (René Pleven), Florian Lesiuer (Fernand), Anamaria Vartolomei (Livia), Pip Torrens (General Montgomery), Daniel Betts (Dwight D Eisenhower), Tom Mison (Anthony Eden), Stephen Campbell Moore (Harold Macmillan), Anthony Calf (Anthony Spears)

In 1940 France was in ruins. Crushed in weeks by the Nazi war machine, occupied and run by a collaborating government, its army defeated, morale crushed and future open to question. Should the ragged remains of its army fight on or not? The overwhelming consensus seemed to be no. Hundreds of commanders, willingly or not, aligned with Marshal Petain’s Vichy government, on paper the only thing with a claim to being the legal government. It was not a view shared by Charles de Gaulle (Simon Abkarian), newly minted as a French General and determined, against all logic, to carry on fighting.

By doing so, he became a national hero. But that was very, very far from being a foregone conclusion. Something that comes out loud and clear in Antonin Baudry’s reassuringly old-fashioned slice of military biography, handsomely filmed on an epic canvas. De Gaulle doesn’t shirk at all in showing how frequently De Gaulle’s building of the Free French and gaining recognition as a legitimate ally was a Don Quixote like quest. De Gaulle is even given a Sancho Pansa: Blazej a Polish plumber recruited as loyal aide (an invented character, designed to subvert a negative French stereotype). It perhaps could only have been achieved by someone as relentlessly focused, committed, uncompromising and shrewdly cunning like Le General. Truly right-man-right-place.

Across its two parts (and over five hours) De Gaulle mixes an atmospheric look at the back-room struggles for power in the Free French – the anti-Petain French forces being rive with conflicting agendas and awash with Johnny-come-latelies and Nazi-sympathisers who smell the way the wind is blowing – with well-shot and edited WW2 battle sequences. The latter have the added advantage of being less well-known (outside France) battles: Bir Hakeim (1942) and Ksar Ghilane (1943). Both showpiece heroic against-all-odds stands by the French against overwhelming German forces. They both also serve as a clear indication of the extreme lengths the Free French had to go to both their worth. Near suicidal acts of courage, with a heavy cost, essential to establish their moral and political force.

De Gaulle himself is absent from the battlefield, but very much engaged in a long-running struggle to build a Free French movement. From arriving in England, he meets obstinacy and defeatism. De Gaulle is very good at showing how this organisation is slowly and painfully built, almost a recruit at a time. The very qualities that will make De Gaulle such a powerful figure later – stubbornness, bluntness and unbending determination – frequently put-off supporters (there is a great expectation-defying scene where De Gaulle gives a hilariously blunt recruitment speech to captured French naval men, who respond by almost to a man refusing). Most of Part 1 covers the incremental steps of turning the Free French from a room of believers, to an actual military force that’s part military movie, part caper (with De Gaulle and co smuggled over African borders). So well does the film stress the difficulty, that each step forward is enormously satisfying.

De Gaulle suggests the main advantage its subject had was Winston Churchill recognising the prickly maverick as a kindred spirit. De Gaulle’s main relationship – awash with arguments as it is – is the love-hate bromance between De Gaulle and the British leader. Francophile Churchill – talking in an easy if stilted French – sees a lot to respect in another leader taking a stand when all seems lost. Excellently played by Simon Russell Beale, Churchill is a mass of realpolitik and teary sentimentality, backing De Gaulle when no-one else will, then frequently demanding he be cut lose in favour of a more pliant leader. But De Gaulle returns time and again to the sentimental affection and respect between the two, for all their vast differences.

You can’t say the same for De Gaulle and Roosevelt. Interestingly, if De Gaulle has a villain its the US President. Sure, the Germans are enemies on the battlefield – and brutal occupiers and torturers in Occupied France – but they are mostly anonymous or glimpsed only through dust-filled binoculars on battlefields. It’s the De Gaulle-loathing Roosevelt, played with self-satisfied superiority by Campbell Scott, who becomes the face of every obstacle in the way of a Free France, depicted as planning to turn the country into a US-occupied colony (a real plan, that never advanced as far as it is shown here).

Roosevelt backs a wave of alternative leaders, from collaborationist Admiral Darlan (Matthieu Kassovitz, suitably arrogant and two-faced) to the deferential General Giraud (Thierry Lhermitte, brilliantly using bluffness to hide how out of his depth he is). He excludes De Gaulle from decisions and refuses to work with him. De Gaulle is keen to show other Americans – noticeably Eisenhower – unhappy with this. But it’s a sign of current Euro-US relations that De Gaulle presents the Americans more as obstacles than crucial allies. (De Gaulle also shows many of the Free French’s most effective soldiers are Africans from their colonies – all of them, to a man, banned from D-Day thanks to American segregationist policies).

De Gaulle runs a parallel storyline of the growth of resistance movements in France. It does this with surprising nimbleness, seeing the development through the eyes of two young idealists: Fernand (Florain Lesier) and the Jewish Livia (Anamaria Vartolomei). At first, both these characters feel like representative figures – it’s one of Part 1’s neatest tricks to reveal Fernand is in fact very much real with a crucial role to play in world events. Livia, very well played by Vartolomei, represents a host of brave women caught up in the tensions and terrors of the resistance. The resistance itself, like the rest of the Free French, is a hard-won battle to form, fought by Félix Kysyl’s Jean Moulin (a very much real hero of the French resistance) – like De Gaulle a stoic but determined man, willing to take risks to save France’s honour. These sequences – from early student protests met with hard-handed Petain responses to the growth of networks and tense rooftop escapes from the Gestapo – have a palpable tension.

But the heart of De Gaulle is the general himself. It’s lucky the film has landed such a perfect actor for the role. Simon Abkarian not only looks a great deal like this ram-rod military man, but also brilliantly mixes De Gaulle’s utter self-belief and domineering refusal to compromise with small moments of doubt. Abkarian’s fantastic performance has just enough humanity to keep us rooting for him. De Gaulle charts the subtle developments of his political skills – from the imperious man of the start of Part 1 who alienates as many as he wins over, to Part 2 balancing his stubbornness with wily politicking and weaponizing of his unassailable reputation.

One of De Gaulle’s key insights is that the battle for France was as much – if not more – about deciding who would represent the country, as much as it was defeating the occupying forces. If France was led by non-entities or those (like Darlan) tarred by working with Germans, its place on the world-stage post-war would have been a very different one. De Gaulle also understands that presenting unjust against-the-odds battles (both military and political) very quickly leads us to admire and root for the heroes struggling to do the right thing.

It may be, in many ways, an old-fashioned film, carefully laying out events and focused on a grand canvas of the war, rather than recent trends for biographies to focus on single, representative events in detail. There are, as a result, scenes where characters essentially tell each other news to keep the plot going. It’s easy to see spiritual similarities with Patton, another epic biopic of a prickly figure with a messianic complex (although De Gaulle is far less ambiguous about its lead). But De Gaulle tells a story that, certainly outside France, is far fresher and less familiar.

And it manages to make the struggle to win France’s freedom and honour constantly on a knife-edge. Either on the battlefield or in the committee room, the odds never favour De Gaulle. Desperate punts are made, some of which fail spectacularly. Humiliations are frequent. But they make the success sweeter. It’s that – and Abkarian’s excellent recreation of the future French icon – that makes De Gaulle such a satisfying watch. I’d be fascinated in seeing a sequel, covering De Gaulle’s post-war French leadership, (De Gaulle pointedly states at one point he has recognised the UK will always favour the US over Europe, a neat wink at his later political positions). But for now, this is an old-fashioned, grand WW2 epic that tells a less familiar story with a great deal of energy.

Pressure (2026)

Solid, slightly old-fashioned war film with good performances among some familiar beats

Director: Anthony Maras

Cast: Andrew Scott (Group Captain Dr James Stagg), Brendan Fraser (General Dwight D Eisenhower), Kerry Condon (Lt. Kay Summersby), Chris Messina (Colonel Irving P Krick), Damian Lewis (General Bernard Montgomery), Con O’Neill (Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory), Robert Portal (Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey)

If you think your job is tough, imagine dealing with what’s on Dr James Stagg’s (Andrew Scott) plate. Plucked from his heavily pregnant wife in June 1944, Stagg – the RAF’s top meteorologist – is summoned to a top-secret military HQ in the British countryside. The Allies are planning D-Day for June 5^th (there’s a plot clue, history buffs) and Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) needs a forecast for those choppy channel seas. His pet US forecaster Colonel Krick (Chris Messina) says it will be fine, music to the ears of gung-ho General Montgomery (Damain Lewis). But the meticulous and stubborn Stagg believes otherwise. Atmospheric pressures are going to ratchet up into a storm, as much as interpersonal pressure is going to set sparks flying.

Adapted from a play by David Haig (who’s made a career playing the sort of poorly social-skilled seeming stuffed shirts Stagg represents), Pressure is solidly entertaining, a tight, old-fashioned war movie with a neat, theatrical structure that doesn’t re-invent the wheel but spins it well. It also interestingly drills down into parts of war mechanics people don’t dwell on: how sometimes battle outcomes depend on dull logistically problems, rather than on the guts and glory of soldiers.

And what could be more ploddingly everyday than the weather? It’s easy to forget how what a punishing exercise in planning and organisation D-Day was. Ferrying hundreds of thousands of men and equipment about a hundred miles across the channel was not exactly a casual swim. Throw in that it was taking place in a country notorious for its hellishly unpredictable weather and you have a nightmare in hand. Opening with the blood-filled waters of the aftermath of training op disaster Operation Tiger, carried out in April 1944, Pressure makes clear the cost of error. And it’s etched into the face of Fraser’s Eisenhower, as he walks past hundreds of bodies caught in a a nightmare of friendly fire fuck-ups after a communications breakdown.

Avoiding that is what getting the right forecast is all about. It’s the pressure hanging over Stagg: a pressure made worse by Stagg being quite open about forecasting being, essentially, a sort of educated guess. You can track weather patterns, prevailing winds, pressure build-ups – but it can all dissipate in a few hours. All you really have to go on is expertise and experience. Pressure shows that’s where Stagg, with a lifetime of studying the UK’s moody weather comes into his own. And has the advantage over Colonel Krick, obsessed with past weather patterns that, in Stagg’s eyes, are as useful as using a coin toss a year ago to predict a coin toss today.

Problem is, Stagg is not exactly the easiest person to get on with. Andrew Scott is a very good at showing how Stagg’s professional exactitude and no-nonsense focus comes across as cold-fish distance. Certainly when compared to the piano-playing, all-singing, all-dancing Krick (Stagg, in a fit of strait-laced professionalism, removes the piano from their office once he has taken over). He’s constantly prickly and awkward with his staff, ignoring small talk his refuses to play any interpersonal games. Which comes across as domineering, almost maverick behaviour. Stagg’s here for a job and saves his warmth for his beloved wife – he’s introduced cooking her breakfast, making sure she gets their egg ration, a neat indication he’s a warmer man than we might otherwise think.

Scott also brilliantly makes clear he’s a man who cares deeply, both about his job and the lives entrusted to him. And, as such, even though it’s not going to make him popular he will not buckle down and deliver the optimistic forecast his superiors expect. This leads into several of the films finest sequences, where Pressure really comes to bear: heated exchanges between Stagg and Eisenhower and the allied commanders – the stormiest of which seeing an under-pressure Stagg, worried about his pregnant wife, unbuttoned and tieless, finally letting rip on forecasting not being a popularity contest but a science in which he’s the expert.

Rightly, he doesn’t want to see drowned bodies on the beaches of Normandy. Feelings he shares, under all the distant authority, with Brendan Fraser’s Eisenhower. Fraser’s sensitivity and sense of doubt (much is made of his lack of experience – a bit odd, considering the real Eisenhower had already been C-in-C of the amphibious landing on Sicily, making him the most experienced man in the whole allied army) probably isn’t a good fit for the real Eisenhower, but is for this film’s sympathetic version of him. Fraser does a good line in creating a man working overtime under the burden of so many lives on his shoulders.

He’s aided in this by trusted expert factotum Kay Summersby, played with warmth and heart by Kerry Condon. Its Summersby who quietly keeps the base running and is on hand for pep-talks with Stagg or late-night whiskies with Ike. These may be fairly predictable opportunities for character beats, but Condon does a great job as a role part audience surrogate, part heart of the movie. While it’s interesting to see a major film still so coyly dance around the high likelihood that the real Ike and Kay were more than just colleagues (its hinted at heavily with their closeness and use of first names), it still adds further humanity to the film.

Pressure is a solid, well-made, old-fashioned film that goes by in an interesting and enjoyable 100 minutes. It relies a little heavily on manufactured personal crisis for a bit of pressure too far (has Stagg’s wife been killed in an air raid in hospital?), and its solid, reliable plotting and pacing can feel a little by the numbers. But it has good actors and while its theatrical roots are clear it delivers a few well-handled speeches and dialogues that entertain and inform. It’s destined for a long life on bank holiday TV.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

Charming and likeable Marvel action film with a genuine heart at its centre

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Cast: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Zendaya (MJ), Sadie Sink (Jean Grey), Jacob Batalon (Ned Leeds), Jon Bernthal (Frank Castle/Punisher), Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova/Black Widow), Tramell Tillman (Bill Metzger), Marisa Tomei (May Parker), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk), Michael Mando (Marc Gargan/Scorpion), Naomi Watts (EV), Oliva Booth-Ford (Sara Grey)

It’s been four years since Spider-Man: No Way Home and they’ve been tough for Peter Parker (Tom Holland). After the entire world were magically forced to forget him (in order, of course, to save the multiverse!), Parker has spent those years dedicated to the idea that with ‘great power comes great responsibility’. While also obsessively maintaining his anonymity to avoid anyone being put at risk by knowing him, his only contact with former girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) via cyber-stalking. He’s terribly lonely beneath his wise-cracking cheeriness. Peter’s life starts to shake up when his spider powers begin to alarmingly mutate and grow in strength just as a mysterious antagonist (Sadie Sink) with the power to control minds and an agenda against the government Department of Damage Control pops up.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in many ways a very hard reset of the MCU’s Spider-Man. Before this, the friendly-neighbourhood spider-man was awash with friends who knew exactly who he was. He lived in comfort and had the backing of Tony Stark’s unlimited cheque book. Brand New Day takes him closer to the classic image: low on resources, lives in a beat-up apartment, fights crime on the streets of New York, has no friends and relies on his own ingenuity to build his equipment. It really is a Brand New Day.

It also gives a great opportunity for Tom Holland to flex his muscles (in more ways than one). Holland is as witty, charming, sweet and decent as ever, but his new isolated Spider-man is sadder, more maladjusted and awkward and (above all) deeply and desperately lonely. He talks endlessly to an AI companion, chats with friendly professionalism to cops he works with, dodges any chit-chat from his neighbours and seems to do nothing but fight crime. Holland is really good at showing the fractured, desperate loneliness Peter is feeling under his enthusiasm. These feelings come pouring out of him as he sits endlessly re-watching Ned’s Instagram live-streams or assures anyone who asks that he’s absolutely fine.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is also very endearing because Holland and Zendaya are extremely likeable, very talented actors you easily invest in. It’s very hard in Brand New Day not to want Peter to tell MJ everything and for her memories to come flooding back, especially because Zendaya is very good at subtly implying MJ ‘knows’ something is missing in her life but can’t put her finger on it. Not surprisingly they have fabulous chemistry. When the film finally does bring them together, Holland’s sudden pained emotion followed his buttoned-up attempt to hide what he’s feeling is genuinely affecting, as is Zendaya’s polite, honest but uncertain responses.

The compellingly personal story between these highly likeable characters – who we have already followed across three movies – powers the movie’s emotional high spots. As does the equally affecting friendship between Peter and Ned. Perhaps’s Brand New Day’s best sequence just involves the three of these characters and a Lego set, a little touch of normality and simple joy that feels particularly affecting considering how much we’ve seen Peter’s loneliness. (It’s also rather nice that Brand New Day implies at points that the bonds of lifetime friendship may be the strongest love there is).

Brand New Day has a lovely beating heart, which means you can let go the fact it’s probably too long and some of its twists and turns are probably neither twisty or turny (in particular, one character is so clearly not what they seem you’ll be hard pressed not to mutter “that’s the villain” the second they appear). Daniel Dustin Cretton directs with zip, even if he fast cuts some of the action so quickly it actually makes it harder to appreciate the loving work that has clearly gone into the fight choreography.

However, like many of the best MCU films, the antagonist (I choose my words carefully) works because they are a neat commentary on the hero. While Peter – who even when visiting Florence Pugh’s Black Widow in a bath house still wears his facemask – lives in isolation repressing his feelings, Sadie Sink’s mind-controlling mystery character is revealed to be desperately searching for a lost loved one. While Peter feels terrified and stressed by his powers – his head throbbing with his super-senses and disgusted by his new found web-shooting skills – Sink revels in her growing strength. And, unlike Peter burying himself in duty, she is willing to put others at risk to heal herself.

Some of Brand New Day’s best sequences are set around Sink’s ability to ‘jump’ her mind from body-to-body within a 30-foot radius. A huge team of actors and dedicated choreographers play the dozens of people inhabited by Sink’s character, and the body language and physicality of these actors is so expertly done you always know, at any point, exactly who is being controlled in any crowd. Combine that with the jerky movements of people’s bodies as Sink’s mind ‘jumps’ in and out of them, and you’ve got some striking soft-psychological horror (especially as the ‘possessed’ have no memory of their actions) that reminded me of devil-possession drama Fallen.

Sadie Sink is very good as this mysterious character (although her name is now public knowledge), full of pain, loss and anger, desperately chasing a clue whose mysterious nature when revealed is chillingly effective. Brand New Day is also supported with a host of fine MCU cameos, especially Jon Bernthal’s Punisher a gruff, sweary, ends-justify-means contrast to Parker (especially as it hilariously points up Parker’s family-friendly refusal to say any naughty words) who, like our hero, is bottles up his loneliness under a moody exterior that doesn’t invite any questions.

Brand New Day really works however, because in Holland and Zendaya it has two very talented actors, playing hugely likeable characters, going through dilemmas that are very relatable, even if one of them can shoot webs from his wrists. It’s that heart which makes Brand New Day so enjoyable. The stakes are winningly personal, which carries so much more impact than special effects laden nonsense. It’s even brave enough to make its final confrontation three people talking. And you get Spider-Man fighting Ninjas. What’s not to like?

Superman (1978)

First of the Superhero genre, a light and gentle film with simple black-and-white morality but very charming

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Christopher Reeve (Clark Kent/Superman), Marlon Brando (Jor-El), Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor), Ned Beatty (Otis), Jackie Cooper (Perry White), Glenn Ford (Jonathan Kent), Trevor Howard (First Elder), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Jack O’Halloran (Non), Valerie Perrine (Eve Teschmacher), Maria Schell (Vond-Ah), Terence Stamp (General Zod), Phyllis Thaxter (Martha Kent), Susannah York (Lara), Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), Sarah Douglas (Ursa), Harry Andrews (Second Elder)

You’ll believe a man can fly! That was Superman’s punchy tagline for one of the first major attempts to bring a comic book hero to the screen. It’s also a landmark in special effects: after all the Man of Steel could fly faster than sound around the world, catch bullets, throw giant objects into space – he was going to need a mega special effects budget to do that. And of course, he would need an epic cinema screen to do it in, something producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind were determined to supply, with no expense spared (or, it seems, controlled) back stage, as a host of top-flight Hollywood hands were bought on board, led by Brando (picking up a record fee and 11% of the gross) for a first act cameo as Superman’s Dad Jor-El.

Superman’s plot tried to balance comic book lore, with some Earth-bound heroics to put our hero through his paces as he gently works out who and what he is. Sent to our world as a baby by his doting parents (Brando and Susannah York) with their world Krypton doomed to destruction, he’s adopted in the Mid-West by the Kents. Growing up and discovering his past, Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) joins the Daily Planet as a plucky, mild-mannered reporter under lead investigator Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) – who he quickly gets a crush on (and who has a crush on Superman). While he saves people left, right and centre, criminal mastermind Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) plans to fracture the San Andreas fault in the most hostile landgrab ever. Can Superman stop him?

Superman is structured into four clear acts and is all about putting into place the sort of thing fans of the comic book would have remembered from back-in-the-day. From the prologue in Krypton (including an extended set-up for the sequel, which was being shot simultaneously), via Clark’s teenage years, his arrival in Metropolis and the final San Andreas fault wrestling of the finale that sees Superman swooping around the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam, every act rolls with heartfelt, comic book thrills from moment to moment. It’s all very light-weight – the villains, for all their dastardly plans, are goofy and any tragedy never really sticks when Superman can fly fast enough to turn back time – but there is also a gloriously old-fashioned innocence and decency about it.

Donner’s film goes for a mix between a David Lean-ish epicness, with sweeping Western vistas, soaring camerawork through the skies and Space Opera grandness, mixed with a screwball His Girl Friday aesthetic at the Daily Planet with Lois Lane as a fast-talking, story-fixated journo (like Rosalind Russell, only with more hanging off the side of dangling helicopters) and Clark Kent as a dopey, aw shucks mix of Gary Cooper and James Stewart. There is a nice screwball romance between Reeve and Kidder and surprisingly the two moods of the film hang together extremely well, aided enormously by John Williams’ epic score, whose fanfares stir just the right level of heroic wonder as Clark spins in phoneboxes from awkward Clark to unstoppable Superman.

It’s also a huge tribute to Christopher Reeve, who is both charmingly light and funny but also hugely endearing. It’s very easy to make someone so gosh darn perfect as Superman rather wearing. After all, the guy is scrupulously polite to everyone, never holds a grudge, always has a nice word to say and is as untainted by temptation as he is unbeatable in any situation. Basically, Superman is a character it’s very easy to get wrong, but Reeve leans into the everyday simplicity and humbleness. Clark Kent is essentially Superman exactly, but with his bashful earnestness dialled up and his resolute bravery carefully concealed. It’s a performance that really works.

It’s also a performance that plays only third fiddle in the billing. Which is to be expected in a Salkind film: these guys loved a big name. After all, they commissioned Mario Puzo to write the script because he was the most famous writer in the world. Donner called that script camp beyond belief (he claimed he didn’t use a word of it), constantly positioning the film in a more serious light. As befitted the high-brow crew, not least Geoffrey Unsworth as photographer. Top billing went to Brando, reading from cue cards as Jor-El, loaning the crystal set and glowing costumes his reputational seal of approval, while a host of classical actors (Howard, Andrews, Schell, York) flit around the edges as loomingly serious heads intoning grandiose lines.

Second billing went to Hackman as Lex Luthor who, like Brando, did the film as quickly as possible for a large pile of dollars. He dials up the comic ridiculousness as a foppish Lex Luthor. Not keen on shaving his hair (only briefly does he pop up a bald cap on), Hackman bounces comically exasperated dialogue off dim sidekicks Ned Beatty (even more OTT) and Valerie Perrine (giving good air-head glamour) and channels his inner used car salesman. Luthor of course isn’t really threatening at all – even if he does plan to kill millions – which feels about right for a film as playful and hopeful as this one.

He still causes enough havoc, requiring Superman to repair it with a neat mix of wire-work, model work and impressive miniatures, all put together with plenty of fast pace, awe-inspiring energy. Superman’s real enemy effectively becomes time itself – can he race around the world fast enough to save millions, fix the Fault and fish Lois Lane from deathly peril? – which also works very well for a film that positions the Man of Steel as a champion of decency, democracy and community spirit. Reeve gets a well-played moment of emotional torment in this, before the film settles back into its groove of gentle, crowd-pleasing reassurance that nothing really bad will happen.

Superman isn’t exactly a masterpiece. The flimsy lightness of the plot and it fast paced bounding from event to event makes it feel like a comic serial bought to life, where cause and effect aren’t necessarily important to understand. But it’s got a genuine sense of warmth and gentleness to it that perhaps explains why it made such an impact on those watching it. So much so, that every version of the character that followed on film would share major DNA with Reeve and Donner’s vision. I guess they really did make a whole generation of young filmmakers believe that a man could fly.

Dead End (1937)

Sometimes stagey mix of gangster thrills and downtown drama, with a great Bogart performance

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Sylvia Sidney (Drina Gordon), Joel McCrea (Dave Connell), Humphrey Bogart (Hugh “Baby Face” Martin), Wendy Barrie (Kay Burton), Claire Trevor (Francey), Allen Jenkins (Hunk), Marjorie Main (Mrs Martin), Minor Watson (Mr Griswald), James Burke (Officer Mulligan), Ward Bond (Doorman), The Dead End Kids

Adapted by Lilian Hellman from Sidney Kingsley’s Broadway hit, Dead End starts with a sharp little political point. The slum boroughs of New York on the East River (that dead end is where the city literally stops) sit side-by-side with towering luxury apartment blocks, after the rich worked out those riverside views are too nice to be left to the working classes. It’s led to an awkward world where mega-rich and working poor sit side-by-side, tensions bubbling. A neat political idea Dead End flirts with, but largely avoids delving into, as more dynamic sub plots dominate the film.

The clashes between the rich and poor focus on The Dead End Kids, a gang of tearaways led by Tommy (Billy Halop) whose sister Drina (Sylvia Sidney) despairingly struggles night and day to build a new life for this troublesome teen. Tommy and his gang beat and rob rich boy Philip and Tommy wounds Philip’s father Griswald (Minor Watson): justice and Griswald demands he be found and punished. It’s a plot line that gets squeezed out by the return of gangster “Baby Face” Martin (Humphrey Bogart), looking for some sort of redemption but rubbing up against the consequences of his life of crime and the suspicion of school friend and would-be-architect odd-job-man Dave (Joel McCrea).

It perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that Bogart’s plot dominates the film; after all it’s by far the most dynamic and gripping storyline, powered by the film’s most naturally charismatic performer. Bogart’s meanness comes powering to the fore as Baby Face, a snarling bully with a self-righteous streak of self-pity. He’s living on the run – bizarrely he’s had plastic surgery to change his appearance, although nearly all the locals recognise him immediately – now full of sentimentality about his old life. Baby Face has come back for forgiveness and connection with old bonds, as a cheat to avoid actually making amends for his crimes or changing who he is.

This journey is thoroughly in vain, in a series of compelling scenes that remind you what a masterful director of actors Wyler was. As well as Bogart’s glowering resentment at people not responding as he expects – or disgust at their lives not meeting his romanticised ideals – there are masterful cameos from Marjorie Main and Claire Trevor (Oscar-nominated) as his mother and old girlfriend respectfully. Main can hardly bear to look at Baby Face such is her disgust and disappointment in him. Trevor is fabulous as a world-weary woman who – reading between the Hays Code – is essentially a syphilitic prostitute. As certain that Baby Face will reject her when he works that out – and Bogart’s appalled shock and barely concealed contempt are brilliantly done – as she is that any chance things might change for her is a fantasy, Trevor captures in one brief moment the horror of a life that has been a long drudge of disappointment and pain.

These masterfully done scenes – alongside Bogart’s furious resentment at the world, as he growls at sidekick Hunk played with loyal muscle by Allen Jenkin – build into the film’s dynamically filmed finale as Bogart comprehensively rejects turning his back on crime. Wyler – working to excellent effect with Gregg Toland’s Oscar-nominated cinematography – turns this Dead End borough into a world of noirish expressionist shadows. A chase through sewers and rooftops, is shot in shadows, light bursting through wooden slats or streaming through doorways. It’s fast-paced, punchy and exciting.

It also puts into sharp relief the far soapier and duller plot line revolving around the Dead End Kids. This follows a painfully standard plot of whether the soul of a young boy can be saved. Will Tommy, like Baby Face, hit that metaphorical dead end? The Dead End Kids themselves have a fair bit of energy (repeated off stage – the lads were sacked by the Studio after they spent most of their downtime trashing Studio property). And it’s interesting that the film doesn’t really try and sentimentalise them too much. They’re clearly a gang of bullies, quick to punch, who think nothing of beating anyone up.

It really comes down to how much you respond to this sort of plot and to be honest I found it rather hackneyed. Not helped by Sylvia Sidney, who as Tommy’s sister is given little to do other than continuously burst into tears and beg for mercy from the law after each of Tommy’s misdeeds. Since Dead End concentrates its opening and closing acts on these unpleasant little tykes, with the middle acts so overwhelming denominated by Bogart’s petty criminal, it’s hard not to feel your attention wander a bit.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t a fair bit to like about Dead End. It’s studio location recreation of New York’s rough streets is very impressive in its scale – despite rumours that producer Sam Goldwyn insisted the prop litter by tidied up because no film of his was going to look like a trash can. It does make the setting seem rather theatrical – its Broadway roots can be seen in all doorways for important locations opening up onto the same jetty where the Dead End Kids hang – but also throws open so many opportunities for Toland to cover the set in atmospheric shadows and light.

And the film pulls out several terrific performances – Joel McCrea also deserves note for his low-key turn as a disappointed man of decency, who has grown used to battening down his dreams and taking the brush off from girls like Wendy Barrie’s Kay who want men with better prospects. It’s hard to deny it isn’t at its strongest when its focused on gangsters pretending repentance rather than struggles to save kids souls, but it’s still a punchy film for all that.

Mayday (2026)

Branagh throws down big time in this unsurprising but fun popcorn buddy action flick

Director: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein

Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Troy “Assassin” Kelly), Kenneth Branagh (Nikolai Ustinov), Marcin Dorociński (Alexander Volkov), Maria Bakalova (Anna Ustinov), David Morse (Harold Kelly), Clark Johnson (Keith Hardwick), Wendy Crewson (Karen Meadows), Louis Cancelmi (Pete Sanders), Josh Hamilton (Dan Hennessey)

Did anyone have on their 2026 film-bingo card “Kenneth Branagh throws goons around in an action movie”? Saying it’s a big change of pace feels like an understatement, with Branagh confessing in interviews he was delighted to get the opportunity to do something so different. So we get to see the actor most associated with Shakespeare slamming punches and kicks into bad guys and also showing some mean comic chops mixing the banter with Ryan Reynolds.

It’s 1987 and Reynolds is ace American pilot Troy “Assassin” Kelly, shot down over Russia during an off-the-books spy mission. The badly injured Troy wakes up tied to a bed in the home of Nikola Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh). Nikolai is obsessed with all-things-American (“I have not eaten McDonalds but I expect I would find it delicious”), his favourite film is Top Gun which he has seen multiple times on a dodgy bootleg VHS and having an American pilot buddy is his dream. He also, fortunately, is a deadly former KGB operative, willing to help Troy escape his former employers so long as Troy can deliver American passports for Nikolai and his estranged dissident daughter Anna (Maria Bakalova). Cue a buddy road-trip through the dangers of the Soviet Union.

Mayday delivers what you hope it will do: fast-paced, witty entertainment for a Saturday night, with two charismatic actors having a whale of a time bouncing off each other. Reynolds can nearly do this sort of off-the-cuff, improvisational cool in his sleep, expertly making Troy someone wittily cool but also brilliant at his job and deeply caring about his men and (dying) father. Few other actors are as comfortable with the casual quip, the gentle leaning on the fourth wall or leave us in no doubt about his competence even while he spends most of the film floundering out of his depth, limping around and bleating in limited Russian.

Reynolds is undeniable funny and charismatic, but he generously gifts much of the finest moments to Branagh. Covered with a Grizzily Adams beard (obviously referenced by Reynolds), Branagh’s under-appreciated gift for comedy is utilised to superb effect. He makes Dimitri hilariously endearing in his naive thrill at his American guest, or the dry enthusiasm he gives to subjects as diverse as McDonalds, Springsteen and Tom Cruise. But he’s also equally deadpan when discussing every single element of espionage spycraft, commenting on events around him (from fights to lovemaking) with a hilarious matter-of-fact laconic bluntness. Branagh’s sensitive eyes also show the vulnerability of a lonely man, plagued with guilt for his failures as a father.

And Branagh, it seems, can throw down. Mayday gives him multiple opportunities for impressively choreographed fights. From a bar-room brawl that uses snooker cues, bottles, arrows and anything else to hand to a machine-gun grabbing train dust-up to using everything from pens to seatbelts in various other fights. Mayday races from entertaining set-piece to entertaining set-piece, after its initial misdirection opening which suggests we might be in for a sort of lightweight Misery with Reynolds as a bed-strapped Jimmy Caan and Branagh as a genial Kathy Bates.

It’s all so entertaining and snaps along so pacily in just over 90 minutes, well-assembled with a witty series of shots and edits by directors John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein that it almost doesn’t matter that the film truthfully has very little in it that is truly new. In fact, with its 1980s setting, it almost adds to the fun that this feels like a meta-riff on half a dozen other 80s buddy movies with Reynolds and Branagh playfully swopping the roles of Maverick and Goose between them depending on the situation. All of the film scenes could have been merrily ripped out of a studio rolodex of set pieces and character riffs, that sort of stuff that has powered hundreds of films before.

There are a few riffs on the distrust and flaws in both systems either side of the Cold War. Nikolai may love America and be deeply ashamed of the brutality of his own system, but he’s fairly clear-eyed that both sides are willing to push a propaganda view of the other. Troy, a firm believer that America is generally flawless and the USSR unquestionably wrong, has his viewpoint challenged throughout – from discovering his government’s sense of right and wrong is far from perfect to finding not all Russians are brainwashed commie fanatics. The villain – a smug Marcin Dorociński doing a lot with not a lot on paper – plans to use events to shatter Gorbachev’s Glasnost, leaving Troy in the unusual position of helping the system he started the film convinced was terrible.

But really Mayday is all about having good fun. And that’s generally what I had when watching it. It’s all familiar and, aside from the novelty of seeing Branagh do it, there isn’t much in its comedy, action, car chase or fighter pilot antics you’ve not seen before. It skirts around more hard-hitting stuff, such as the fraught relationship between Nikolai and his daughter – largely resolved through an off-screen conversation. The most daring thing in it goes largely unspoken: Reynold’s character is a hotshot fighter pilot at least in his forties with no girlfriend or partner, expresses no sexual interest in any woman in the film and has a faultless gaydar – is Reynolds winkingly playing the full subtext of Top Gun here?

Mayday is assembled with real light comic energy, by people who really know what they doing, to put together a film that’s not pretentious, outstays its welcome or trying too hard to anything other than pop a grin on your face. Which you’d be hard-pressed not to have at some point.