Author: Alistair Nunn

Ghost (1990)

Romance and the afterlife come together in a very earnest, but rather endearing, mega-hit

Director: Jerry Zucker

Cast: Patrick Swayze (Sam Wheat), Demi Moore (Molly Jensen), Whoopi Goldberg (Oda Mae Brown), Tony Goldwyn (Carl Bruner), Rick Aviles (Willie Lopez), Vincent Schiavelli (Subway ghost)

The biggest smash hit of 1990, Ghost turned Demi Moore into one of Hollywood’s biggest star, transformed ‘Unchained Melody’ into one of the most popular songs of all time and turned pottery into a hobby everyone thought they should try at least once. You wouldn’t have predicted any of this when you were pitched Ghost, helping to explain why nearly everyone in Hollywood turned it down. After all who wants a romantic film where the hero is six feet under and ectoplasmic by the end of the first act? Throw in that the film was directed by Jerry Zucker, best known for a parade of spoofs, comedies and farces and the smart money was on a bomb waiting to happen. Guess again.

Sam (Patrick Swayze) and Molly (Demi Moore) are a loving couple, living in New York: she’s a sculptor, he’s a banker (the sort of contrasting professions only Hollywood romantic couples have). They have big plans for the future; plans cut short when Sam is killed by a mugger. But Sam doesn’t move on with the bright heavenly light. Instead, he sticks around on Earth, wanting to be near Molly and desperate to find out who killed him. Something that’s hard to do when he can’t touch or move anything and no one can see or hear him except other ghosts. Two things change his (after)life – discovering his murder was only the tip of a pile of shady dealings at his bank that puts Molly in danger and fake-psychic Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) who isn’t quite as fake as she thought.

Ghost is extremely earnest and surprisingly endearing. Despite what the doubters said, from Romeo and Juliet to Titanic nothing gets people invested in a romance more than a tragic end. Ghost merely reshuffles the deck by placing this death at the start, then explores the on-going grief of two deeply bonded people, wrenched apart. It mixes that with familiar romance tropes: it doesn’t let Sam’s demise get in the way of the old “he just can’t say I love you too” chestnut (a Han Solo-ish ‘Ditto’ is his preferred response), inevitably finding a way to flip this in a later plot point.

Sure, it’s easy to giggle at the soft-focus obviousness of the lovey-dovey material between Swayze and Moore, but you can’t doubt their commitment or their natural chemistry. The film’s ace-in-the-hole of ‘Unchained Melody’-sound-tracked pottery turning into earth-rocking rumpy-pumpy is parody-bait, but kind-of-works in its soapy earnestness in showing how much they hunger for each other’s touch. (You could say it can’t be that good since they seem to fly through foreplay to climax in the time it takes a not-that-long song to play). Both actors are quite under-rated: Moore is perfectly tender and fragile (she was partly chosen for her ability to cry on a six-pence) but also tough and determined when the situation calls for it, while Swayze charmingly develops his character from cocky junior-master-of-the-universe to a deeper, more rounded man after he ceases to be alive.

Having stressed so much their tactile love in the film’s first act, it makes the afterlife hit harder. In this film haunting has the potential for a being a dull chore (the rules of haunting here were wonderfully parodied in BBC’s Ghosts sitcom): ghosts are stuck in whatever clothes they died in (without all the blood), can’t touch anything in the real world and end up sitting around waiting for they’re-not-sure-what. Dead Sam carries on one-sided conversations, tags behind Molly when she drives places and watches time go by so slowly. Ghost captures rather well the weakness of this situation: Sam sees all sorts of danger unfolding for Molly, but there is literally nothing he can do about it (a desperate Swayze thrashing his hand through things trying to stop them, plays rather well).

Ghost gets some brief meta-physical fun out of the lack of logic in ghosts being able to walk through walls and pass their hands through objects but can sit in chairs perfectly fine and never sink through floors (basically, don’t ask, as also parodied in Ghosts). It even chucks in some mildly-disturbing POV shots of what it looks like to Sam as he walks through someone else (icky basically). You can’t keep a high-flyer down though and Sam masters ‘ghost skills’ after what seems like a few hours training from an unbalanced poltergeist (a wonderfully twitchy Vincent Schiavelli), allowing him to interact with objects in the real world (he basically becomes an invincible superhero – and the ease he masters this makes me wonder why every single ghost can’t put aside an afternoon to learn how to do it. They’ve got the time after all!).

Of course, you couldn’t make a film about a man who can’t talk to anyone. Ghost has a trump-card in the Oscar-winning Whoopi Goldberg, having a whale of a time in a terrific comic performance as a hustling fraudster who unknowingly turns out to be a real psychic, eventually pushed into helping Sam. Goldberg provides nearly all of the film’s laughs – and her mad-cap energy makes an excellent contrast with the earnest leads – with her fast-talking frustration at the constant stream of interjections she hears from Sam (making conversations with other people rather challenging). It’s a role with several comic set-pieces, not least a crowded séance full of ghosts desperate to be heard, but also with heart as Oda Mae becomes a better person despite herself.

She does this of course by helping Sam root out exactly why he was murdered. The reveal of Sam’s secret nemesis will be a shock only to someone who has never seen a film before. Of course, his even cockier colleague and best friend (played with a sleazy desperation by a marvellously weasily Tony Goldwyn) is behind the shady financial dealings Sam was uncovering. Just to hammer home how much we loath Goldwyn’s Carl, he’s also a whiner, a guy who loves flashing his cash and makes some none-to-subtle topless moves on our grieving Molly. How dare he!

Ghost builds itself to a neat final confrontation that proves surprisingly affecting in its honesty (dead means dead) and its optimistic view of the afterlife as a place where love still lives on. Sure, it’s a bit corny and its weakness for teary, soft-focus romance is easy to poke fun at. But you can’t argue that it doesn’t work: it’s romantic, sweetly played, funny when it means to be (Goldberg is excellent) and surprisingly optimistic and feel-good.

Nickel Boys (2024)

Beautiful and emotional film, with a unique filming style, at times too overtly arty but truly striking

Director: RaMell Ross

Cast: Ethan Herisse (Elwood), Brandon Wilson (Turner), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Hattie), Hamish Linklater (Spencer), Fred Hechinger (Harper), Jimmie Fails (Mr Hill), Daveed Diggs (Adult Eldwood)

In the Deep South of America in the 1960s, a Black American couldn’t afford a wrong-place-wrong-time situation. That’s what happens though to teenager Elwood (Ethan Herisse). A star student, who firmly believes in civil rights and the power of moral action, he accepts a lift to college in what turns out to be a stolen car and is sentenced to an indefinite time in a Louisiana reform school, the Nickel Academy. Despite its lofty claims, the school is a bastion of racism where the black ‘students’ are housed in shabby huts and subjected to beatings, violence and exploitation as slave labour with almost no chance of leaving. The desperate efforts of his grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) to get his release are doomed to failure and his only friend is cynical Turner (Brandon Wilson). Decades later, an adult Elwood (Daveed Diggs) reacts as shocking news reports of unmarked mass graves of Black inmates are found at the site of old Nickel Academy.

Nickel Boys is adapted by RaMell Ross (making his fiction debut) from a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, itself a fictionalisation of a real-life scandal. Dealing with challenging, difficult subject matter, its remarkable what a poetic, sensitive and subtle film Ross has created. Nickel Boys is a sad, lyrical, deeply tragic film which immerses us in the POV of its lead characters, making us feel the same hopelessness and powerlessness they do in a system designed to make them suffer.

Ross shoots Nickel Boys almost exclusively in POV, initially solely from Elwood’s perspective then switching back-and-forth between him and Turner. The older Elwood is shot as if the camera is strapped to his back (like the weight of the world). Ross commits to an extraordinary degree to this unique look-and-feel, with the camera focusing with the same roaming as a head turn, sometimes frustrating us by looking at the ‘wrong’ thing. What it does, above all, is forces us into the shoes of these boys: we see the sights exactly as we see them, their abusers stare into our eyes, we are made to feel as trapped in this small world as they are.

Ross opens Nickel Boys with its most extraordinary and beautiful sequence – one so perfectly constructed, it’s worth the price of admission alone – as we watch through Elwood’s eyes his growing up through a series of vividly remembered memories, our only glance of him brief reflections. This is a parade of truly striking images: a sidesways horizon with an arm stretched out (Elwood lying on his side); tinsel sprinkling down at us from the tree his grandmother is decorating; hazy soft-focus as a half-asleep Elwood witnesses his parents last-night in town; segregated bus journeys; his first encounters with civil rights; the aggressive searching of himself and another boy by a police officer; and his unjust arrest and imprisonment. It’s a breath-taking sequence, a virtuoso and deeply moving exploration of childhood impressions and contrasting memories.

The rest of Nickel Boys doesn’t quite match this glorious opening, but Ross uses the POV to take a surprisingly brave side-swipe in what we see and don’t see. The film becomes a tour-de-force of half looking, with the horrors of the Nickel Academy largely off-screen and ripe for our interpretation. In that, Nickel Boys would make an astonishing companion piece to The Zone of Interest which similarly took an unusual perspective on atrocity, as something on the edge of our visual and aural perception. When Elwood is beaten, the camera pulls away and cuts to extreme close-ups of black-and-white photos of Nickel Academy students to a cacophony of disjointed sound from Elwood’s thrashing.

Ross turns Nickel Boys into a sensory experience, one of acutely captured sounds and gorgeous imagery. The world of our two protagonists drifts interminably on, from eeking out their labour for the family and friends of the Academy’s staff – and Ross’ film makes clear this is unpaid convict labour – to seeing their ‘education’ ignored. The Black boys are kept at the margins of the grounds, never touching the privileges of the white boys with their football games – the only sport available to them is boxing, and there the school’s Black champ is ordered to take a dive to fix the betting ring among the staff (and ‘disappears’ when he, possibly mistakenly, fails to do so).

In this world Elwood is clinging to the hope that he can make a difference: by keeping a detailed log of the abuses and crimes, he might be able to escape. Elwood is a firm believer in civil rights – in one of the film’s most striking moments he runs across a busy street because he (and us – the visual deception is uncanny) mistakes a cardboard cut-out of his hero Martin Luther King as the real thing. His hope is only dented by the growing despair of his grandmother (a deeply heartfelt performance by Ellis-Taylor) and their swindling by their crooked lawyer.

By contrast, Turner is coldly cynical, convinced they have no chance of escaping the Nick alive. Turner’s bitterness – at one point he holds back Elwood’s precious letters for reasons he barely understands, but linked perhaps to his jealousy at never having any himself – is a sharp counterpoint to Elwood’s optimism, the two finding their contrasting viewpoints draws them closer together.

The legacy of events continues to be felt years later, with Elwood still haunted by his memories, struggling to adjust with his survivor’s guilt. A beautifully judged scene in a bar sees the adult Elwood encounter a fellow survivor (an extremely striking performance by Craig Tate) which not only sees Elwood deeply uncomfortable at this vivid reminder of his past – Tate’s Chicken Pete is fragile, alcoholic and not-all-there – but deeply disconcerted to find Pete has almost no memory of foundational events in Elwood’s life. It’s an affecting reminder that we are seeing one experience, and that the memories of each survivor would be radically different.

Nickel Boys has its flaws. At nearly two hours and twenty minutes, its running time dilutes its impact. Despite fine performances by Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson, the POV shooting at times makes it harder to personally engage with their characters, so focused is the film on sharing their experience at the cost of their reactions (which, naturally, we rarely see). Ross is a little too in love of documentary-style montages, which slow the pace rather than enrich the experience and can dilute the impact. A tighter, less at-times wilfully artistic film might have actually carried more force.

But it’s also a film full of deep sensory impact, that builds towards a shocking and deeply affecting climax that causes us to re-interpret much of what we have seen. And for large chunks, the film’s unique filming style creates a movie full of poetic wonder that places us firmly into the experience of living in a racist, unjust system like this one. For that alone, Nickel Boys deserves to be commended as a thought-provoking, striking film, one that leaves a real impact on the viewer.

Stagecoach (1939)

Iconic action adventure, a very exciting chase film with a strong script and characters

Director: John Ford

Cast: Claire Trevor (Dallas), John Wayne (The Ringo Kid), Andy Devine (Buck Rickabaugh), John Carradine (Hatfield), Thomas Mitchell (Dr Josiah Boone), Louise Platt (Lucy Mallory), George Bancroft (Sheriff Curly Wilcox), Donald Meek (Samuel Peacock), Berton Churchill (Gatewood), Tim Holt (Lt Blanchard), Tom Tyler (Luke Plummer), Chris-Pin Martin (Chris), Francis Ford (Billy Pickett)

It might be the greatest star entrance of all time. Before Stagecoach, John Wayne was a minor leading man from a never-ending stream of oats-and-saddles B-movies. But, after one shot – a superb fast-paced zoom (so fast, the focus slips at one point) into the stoic face of Wayne, Winchester rifle twirling – that wasn’t going to be the case anymore. Stagecoach was Ford’s return to the Western – and he was bringing a friend along for the ride. After it, both director and star would become synonymous with the genre and Wayne would remain Hollywood’s Mayor-in-all-but-name.

Of course, that shot alone didn’t make Wayne a star (but, as you can imagine Andy Devine’s Buck wheezing “it sure helped, didn’t it”). What cemented the deal was what the hugely entertaining thrill ride Stagecoach is, a rollicking journey through Monument valley, crammed with just about anything you could want, from gun-battles and stunts to class commentary and arch dialogue. Like some sort of JB Priestley play, a regular smorgasbord of folks climb into a stagecoach to travel from Tonto to Lordsburg, facing a parade of dangers from Geronimo’s Apaches along the way – not to mention their own personality clashes and business to take care off in Lordsburg. All aboard!

We’ve got prostitute Dallas (Claire Trevor), run out of town by ‘blessed civilisation’ – much like drunken surgeon Dr Boone (Thomas Mitchell) – hoping for a new life. Army wife Lucy Mallory (Lucy Platt) trying to find her missing husband, escorted by Southern gent turned gambler Hatfield (John Carradine); both are more than a little uncomfortable sharing a carriage with a lady of the night. They probably wish the carriage had more people like bank manager Gatewood (Benton Churchill), although they might change their mind if they knew he was an embezzler. Sheriff Curly Wilcox (George Bancroft) is trying to catch escaped prisoner The Ringo Kid (John Wayne), who is himself keen to get to Lordsburg to take down the Plummer gang who killed his father and brother.

All of these well-drawn characters – including the timid whisky salesman (whose name no-one can remember) Peacock (well played by the suitably named Donald Meek) – are bought vividly to life by a strong bunch of actors working with a well-constructed script by Dandy Nichols, crammed with sharp lines and wit. It’s packaged together by Ford into a film that’s lean, plays out at a whipper-cracker pace and juggles several plots, threats and character motivations all at once.

You can see Ford’s mastery of story-telling throughout Stagecoach. The opening fifteen minutes is a superbly efficient piece of lean scene-setting which, in a series of tightly-focused, engaging scenes, brilliantly introduces the principle characters, their motivations and the twin dangers of the Indians on the road and the Plummers in Lordsburg all in perfectly digestible chunks. In addition, Ford carefully introduces the class commentary that greases Stagecoach’s wheels: from the unconcealed loathing and disdain Dallas is treated with by the town’s worthies (including the appalled revulsion of Hatfield and the marginally less strident disdain shown by Lucy) to the unquestioned bluster of blowhard fat-cat Gatewood, whose blatantly transparent lies and increasing nervousness draws no where near the level of suspicion it should do.

But then most people are too worried about catching sin-by-touch from Dallas. Stagecoach never outright states her profession, but only the naïve Ringo Kid seems unaware she’s on-the-game. At the first stop on the journey, Ford orchestrates a perfectly constructed scene of micro-aggressions and class structure, where Ringo guiltily utterly misreads as snobbery about his own jailbird past. (Hatfield is so committed to keeping the distance between himself and Dallas, he won’t even let her borrow his water glass as he does Lucy, tossing Dallas the canteen to drink straight from instead). Similar disdain also meets Dr Boone, whose utter refusal to even slightly moderate his drinking (he spends the first day getting sozzled) disgusts the elite passengers, right up until his skills are needed during a medical emergency. (At this point Hatfield starts treating him as the fount of wisdom).

Ford’s sympathies are, like so often, with the tough little-guys out in the West, who judge people by who they are and what they do rather than where they come from. Claire Trevor is perfectly cast as Dallas, never a victim but always full of patient defiance, all-to-used to the snubs from others. But we respect Dallas because it’s clear – from the start – she’s kind, considerate and decent. When the chips are down for Laura, it’s Dallas and Boone (not self-appointed guardian Hatfield) who step-up to save her, and never once does it cross their mind to hold Lucy to account first.

Just the same is, of course, The Ringo Kid. Stagecoach was possibly the last time Wayne could plausibly be called ‘the Kid’ – he looks older than his 32 years already – and he fills the part with a sincere honesty, courtesy and straight-forwardness that would become integral to Ford’s films, while still making the Kid the rough-and-tumble hero you want to be. The Ringo Kid may be a jailbird, but treats people according to their personal merits, sticks to his word, unhesitatingly protects people (that iconic introduction is him warning the coach of danger ahead) and won’t do anything he isn’t unwilling to do himself. It’s people like that – and Thomas Mitchell’s Oscar winning (Mitchell had key roles in half the best picture nominees that year, so had to win for something!) Doc Boone who turns himself into a master surgeon by force-of-will alone – who form the backbone of Ford’s West.

This all sits alongside some truly sensational action-adventure. Most of Stagecoach is a long build-up to its two action sequences that end the film: the running attack across the wide-open desert sands from the Apache and Ringo’s fateful duel with the Plummers. The eight-and-a-half minute chase would be the highlight of any film, a dynamic, pulsating masterclass of tight editing and tracking shots that fills the screen with electric pace and energy. It also has some of the most iconic stunts of all time, executed by Yakima Canutt Wayne’s long-term stunt consultant. From Canutt-as-Ringo jumping from pair-of-horses to pair-of-horses in front of the coach galloping at full-speed, to Canutt-as-Apache leaping from horse, to coach horses to falling and bring dragged under the coach (a stunt homage by Raiders of the Lost Ark’s truck chase) their visceral thrill is made even more exciting by Ford’s camera speeds making them look like they took place at even faster pace than the 45-miles-an-hour the horses were galloping at.

Ringo’s final duel with the Plummers gets a different approach, a long, steadily paced build-up that culminates in a very low camera watching a ready-for-action Wayne move towards us like a striding mountain. Stagecoach is also a masterclass in visual imagery and camera-use – so much so Orson Welles literally used it as such in prep for Citizen Kane, screening it over 40 times. Not just in action and editing, but also the brilliance of placement. Stagecoach’s low-ceilinged sets and striking shadows are a clear influence on Kane. A superb shot of Dallas from down a corridor, framed in light strewn from an open doorway, is a wonderful piece of visual poetry and there are gorgeous visual flourishes throughout, from the black cat that crosses the Plummer’s path to the wonderful vistas from Ford’s first trip to Monument valley.

All of this comes together into a film that is a wonderfully entertaining character study, wrapped up with a series of knock-out set-pieces, with romance, comedy and social commentary thrown in on top. It’s perhaps one of the most purely ‘entertaining’ Westerns ever made and one of Ford’s finest fusions of artistic brilliance and popcorn chewing thrill-rides.

Scent of a Woman (1992)

Pacino roars to Oscar-glory with an impressive turn in an enjoyable but predictable coming-of-age drama

Director: Martin Brest

Cast: Al Pacino (Lt Col Frank Slade), Chris O’Donnell (Charlie Simms), James Rebhorn (Mr Trask), Gabrielle Anwar (Donna), Philip Seymour Hoffman (George Willis Jnr), Ron Eldard (Officer Gore), Richard Venture (Willie Slade), Bradley Whitford (Randy), Nicholas Sadler (Harry Havemeyer)

Hoo-ha! It took eight nominations, but Pacino finally lifted the Oscar for his abrasive, damaged, charismatic turn as blind retired army Lt Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman. It’s not really a surprise: it’s a gift of a part, tailor-made for an actor as in love with bombast as Pacino to rip into, and rip he does. But he also manages to find the moments of gentleness, pathos, fear and self-loathing while expertly calibrating his internal acting dial to pings with explosive entertainment when the big show-stopping speeches come. It’s a million miles away from Michael Corleone’s bolted down, internalised rage – but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Pacino picks Scent of a Woman up and carries it single- handedly through enemy lines. Almost nothing will surprise you in this cosily familiar mix of coming-of-age posh-school drama and well-worn “odd couple” friendship, where an abrasive older guy toughens up a reluctant mild protégé. But, whaddya know, the kid also softens the old guy up. Charlie Sims (Chris O’Donnell), decent and polite scholarship kid at super-posh Baird school, faces expulsion because his principles won’t let him snitch on the spoilt, trust-fund, tosspot kids who played a prank on the school’s sanctimonious headmaster (James Rebhorn). Taking Thanksgiving to think about what to do, he accepts a job looking after Slade who promptly ropes him into a trip to New York, where the blind Slade plans on one final glorious weekend before blowing his brains out in a five-star hotel.

Of course, the film doesn’t end with Pacino’s little grey cells dripping down the side of the Waldorf’s no-expense-spared wallpaper. It will not surprise you at all that Martin Brest’s film heading where all feel-good films like this head: learned lessons, love of life re-embraced and a big speech from the big star solving all the problems. Scent of a Woman’s biggest flaw is it takes a very long time to hit all these familiar beats on the way towards its cookie-cutter capping of its coming-of-age/road trip set-up. Martin Brest was never a director to tell a story in a few sentences when a whole chapter would do, and Scent of a Woman is the last time he got the balance right between the length of the journey and the pleasure of being on it.

But then, as mentioned, a lion’s share of the credit belongs to Pacino. Surly but with just enough cheek. charm and biting wit, it’s a hugely entertaining role with big meaty speeches to chew on. Pacino makes it very funny, from his don’t-give-a-crap rudeness to his don’t-take-no-for-an-answer insistence on getting his own way. The film gives him a memorable set-piece moment pretty much every 15 minutes: his surly introduction, via a speech on the beautiful scents of women, the film’s iconic tango-dancing with Gabrielle Anwar, driving a Ferrari around the empty streets of the Bronx (and convincing a cop who pulls him over that he’s not blind), a thwarted suicide with the sort of barked refrain Pacino loves (“I’m in the DARK here!”) to a leave-no-prisoners final “courtroom” speech that’s one of the best of its kind. This is all meat and drink for Pacino.

But this is a more nuanced performance than just a star’s turn. Pacino makes Slade a deeply unhappy man, slowly realising he has been so most of his life. A man who uses anger, wit and cruelty as shields to drive people away and make himself look and feel tough. Blindness has become a constant reminder of his vulnerability and dependence, but also made the shell of isolation he has built around himself all consuming. He’s realising pretty much everyone he knows hates him, whose family (from youngest to oldest) want as little to do with him as possible, who has never had a meaningful relationship and clings to a war record he frequently garnishes to appear more important. Pacino manages to convey all this deep-down regret and self-loathing extremely well, matched with a physically dedicated performance of approximating blindness that is one of the best there is on film.

There’s a striking scene midway through where Slade crashes his brother’s Thanksgiving dinner. The family are less than happy to see him, but tolerate him at a table he dominates, first with garrulous (uninvited) army stories and then increasingly rude, sexual comments about his nephew’s wife. The nephew (Bradley Whitford) eventually tears him off a strip: in 1992 some felt sorry for this merciless puncturing of Slade’s self-mythologising, but today I can’t help but agree with Whitford’s takedown of Slade’s bullying. Slade’s eventual assault on his nephew is allegedly for calling Charlie “Chuck” once too often, but really feels like a desperate attempt to take revenge without feeling in the wrong. It’s a scene that actually cements what an awful negative force Slade has been, something he’s just starting to realise no end of whimsy can fix. This is a complex stuff among the Hoo-Ha.

Pacino’s helped by a very fine, generous performance from Chris O’Donnell as a young man who may be naïve and innocent but, in his own way, has more guts and integrity than the mercurial Slade ever did. While Slade is fundamentally selfish (and always has been), Charlie will make sacrifices for people he knows will never do the same for him and won’t flex his principles for any personal gain. O’Donnell also does some magnificent reacting throughout, frequently generously providing the dramatic context and crucial reaction points to make Pacino’s character work effectively.

Scent of a Woman’s posh-school drama provides a few more straight-forward figures of loathing: from James Rebhorn’s headmaster, via Philip Seymour Hoffman’s smug, gutless, entitled fellow student (a prototype of his role in The Talented Mr Ripley) who hangs Charlie out to dry, culminating in the three unbearably arrogant rich kids who carry out the prank. In some ways the plot here is far more engaging than Slade’s suicide run, even though nothing surprising really happens at all throughout it’s runtime. It also allows Brest to caps it off with such a dynamite speech from Pacino that it made the Oscar probably a foregone decision (even though Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X could feel rightly aggrieved at missing out on the little bald man).

That kind of sums the whole film up. Despite moments of complexity in its character study – forcefully delivered with depth and feeling by Pacino – Scent of a Woman is a film that offers virtually no surprises at all while expertly hitting every single beat you would expect to see while giving maximum entertainment factor along the way. It’s the sort of thing that Oscars are grown from.

Queen Christina (1933)

Garbo is at her best in this luscious, romantic, beautifully filmed historical epic

Director: Rouben Mamoulian

Cast: Greta Garbo (Queen Christina), John Gilbert (Antonio Pimental de Prado), Ian Keith (Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie), Lewis Stone (Axel Oxenstierna), Elizabeth Young (Countess Ebba Sparre), C. Aubrey Smith (Aage), Reginald Owen (Prince Charles Gustav), David Torrence (Archbishop), Gustav von Seyffertitz (General), Akim Tamiroff (Pedro)

What could be more perfect casting than Garbo as Queen of Sweden? In Queen Christina she plays the eponymous queen, daughter of legendary martial monarch Gustavus Adolphus, killed in the never-ending European bloodbath that was the Thirty Years War. Coming to the throne as a child of six, almost twenty years later she’s ready for peace in Europe. But, after a lifetime of duty, she’s also ready for something approaching a regular life. But her lords need her to do something about providing an heir, ideally by marrying her heroic cousin Charles Gustav (Reginald Owen) despite the fact she’s conducting her latest secret affair with ambitious Count Magnus (Ian Keith). One day Christina sneaks out of town, dressed as a man and meets (and spends several nights with – the disguise doesn’t last long) Spaniard Antonio de Pradro (John Gilbert) in a snowbound inn. Returning to court she has a difficult decision: love, duty or a bit of both?

Queen Christina is a luscious period romance with Garbo in peak-form. It’s a masterful showpiece for a magnetic screen presence and charismatic performer. Queen Christina gives Garbo almost everything she could wish: grand speeches, coquettish romance, Twelfth Night style romantic farce, domineering regal control and little-girl lost vulnerability. Garbo brings all this together into one coherent whole, and is a dynamite presence at the heart of Queen Christina. Garbo nails the show-stopping speeches with regal magnetic assurance, but will be delightfully girlish when giggling with lovers. Her nervousness that her femineity could be unmasked in any moment with Antonio in the inn is played with a charming lightness that’s deeply funny, while the romantic shyness and honesty she displays with him is pitched just right. Garbo also manages to make the queen never feel selfish even as she is torn between desire and duty.

She’s at the centre of a beautifully assembled film, gorgeously shot by William H Daniels, with dynamic camera movements, soaking up the impressive sets and snow-strewn locations. Rouben Mamoulian’s direction is sharp, visually acute and balances the film’s shifts between drama and comedy extremely well – it’s a remarkable tribute that considering it shifts tone and genre so often, Queen Christina never feels like a disjointed film or jars when it shifts from Garbo holding court in Stockholm, to nervously hiding under her hat in a snowbound inn to keep up the pretence she’s just one of the guys. (How anyone could be fooled for even a moment into thinking Garbo was a boy is a mystery).

It’s a relief to Antonio to find she isn’t one of the guys, since he’s more than aware of the chemistry between the two of them when he thinks she is one. There more than a little bit of sexual fluidity in Queen Christina, with Garbo’s Queen clearly bisexual, sharing a kiss with Elizabeth Young’s countess in ‘a friendship’ that feels like a lot more. Even before escaping court, Christina’s clothes frequently blur the line between male and female, as does the way she talks about herself. She is after all, very much a woman in a man’s world. Garbo brilliantly communicates this tension, her face a careful mask that only rarely slips to reveal the strain and uncertainty below the surface. You can see it all released when she stands, abashed, nervous (and unequivocally not a boy) in front of Antonio, as if showing her true self to someone for the first time.

Seizing not being the figurehead of state but her own, real, individual is at the heart of one of Queen Christina’s most memorable sequences. After several nights of passionate, romantic love making with Antonio, Christina walks around the inn room where, for a brief time, she didn’t have to play a role. With metronomic precision, Mamoulian follows Garbo as she gently caresses surfaces and objects in the room, using touch to graft the room onto her memory, so that it can be a place she can return to in her day-dreams when burdened by monarchy. It’s very simply done, but surprisingly effective and deeply melancholic: as far as Christina knows, the last few days have been nothing but in an interim in a life where she must always be what other people require her to be, never truly herself.

But then if she never saw Antonio again, there wouldn’t be a movie would there? He inevitably turns up at court, presenting a proposal from the Spanish king – which he hilariously breaks off from in shock when he clocks he is more familiar with the Queen than he expected. John Gilbert as Antonio gives a decent performance – he took over at short notice from Laurence Olivier, who testing revealed had no chemistry with Garbo – full of carefully studied nobility. He and Garbo – not surprising considering they long personal history – have excellent chemistry and spark off each other beautifully. He also generously allows Garbo the space to relax as Christina in a way she consciously never truly does at any other point in the film.

The rumours of this romance leads to affront in Sweden, from various lords and peasants horrified at the thought of losing their beloved Queen – and to a Spaniard at that! (Queen Christina makes no mention of the issue of Catholicism, which is what would have really got their goat up – an Archbishop shouts something about pagans at one point, but he might as well be talking about the Visigoths for all the context the film gives it). The shit is promptly stirred by Ian Keith’s preening Count Magnus, making a nice counterpart to Gilbert’s restrained Antonio. It also allows another showcase for Garbo, talking down rioting peasants with iron-willed reasonableness only to release a nervous breath after resolving the problem.

Queen Christina concludes in a way that mixes history with a Mills-and-Boon high romance (there is more than a touch of campy romance throughout). Mamoulian caps the film with a truly striking shot, the sort of image that passes into cinematic history. Having abdicated into a suddenly uncertain future, Christina walks to the prow of the ship carrying her away from Switzerland. Mamoulian holds the focus on Garbo and slowly zooms in, while Garbo stands having become (once again) a literal flesh-and-blood figurehead, her eyes gloriously, searchingly impassive leaving the viewer to wonder what is going on in her head? Is she traumatised, hopeful, scared, regretful, determined? It’s all left entirely to your own impression – and is a beautiful ending to the film.

Queen Christina was a big hit – bizarrely overlooked entirely at the Academy Awards, which makes no sense to me. It’s beautifully filmed by Mamoulian who finds new, unique angles for a host of scenes and at its heart has a truly iconic performance by Garbo. If you had any doubts about whether she was a great actress, watch Queen Christina and see how thoughts and deep emotions pass briefly across her face before being replaced by a mask of cool certainty. It’s a great performance from Garbo and a lusciously conceived historical epic.

United 93 (2006)

Heartfelt, gripping and traumatic recreation of 9/11, superbly directed and edited

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Christian Clemenson (Tom Burnett), Cheyenne Jackson (Mark Bingham), David Alan Basche (Todd Beamer), Peter Hermann (Jeremy Glick), Corey Johnson (Louis J. Nacke, II), Daniel Sauli (Richard Guadagno), Richard Bekins (William Joseph Cashman), Michael J. Reynolds (Patrick Joseph Driscoll), Peter Marinker (Andrew Garcia), David Rasche (Donald Freeman Greene), Erich Redman (Christian Adams), Khalid Abdalla (Ziad Jarrah), Lewis Alsamari (Saeed al-Ghamdi), Jamie Harding (Ahmed al-Nami), Omar Berdouni (Ahmed al-Haznawi), Ben Sliney (Himself), Patrick St Esprit (Major Kevin Nasypany), Gregg Henry (Colonel Robert Marr)

On 11 September 2001, the world changed. A glance at the Manhattan skyline brings back memories of the Twin Towers, now memorials to the thousands killed. United 93 is a memorial of another sort, an outstanding docudrama following the fateful journey of the only hijacked plane which didn’t hit its target. The passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 bridged two worlds: when they left the ground, American Airlines Flight 11 was four minutes from the North Tower. Just over an hour later, the passengers made their desperate attempt to seize control of their plane in a world a million miles away from the one they took off in. United 93 catches the terror of that moment where no one could comprehend events. Our full understanding only makes the film more heart-racingly, terrifyingly tragic.

Greengrass had pioneered this style of filmmaking in the past – most notably Bloody Sunday, his recreation of the 30 January 1972 firing on a civil rights march in Derry by British soldiers. For United 93 he approached events in rigorous detail, after copious research and hours of discussion with family members, air-traffic controllers and military responders (many of whom play themselves in the film). FAA operations manager Ben Sliney (9/11 unbelievably his first day on the job) even plays himself in a key role. The passengers were played by a series of unknown supporting players – correctly it was judged it would have felt wrong if the likes of Clooney or Pitt had led the fightback.

United 93 marries this careful recreation of events with the masterful tension-building of a skilled director. United 93 is highly immersive film in its fast-paced, handheld camerawork and sharp editing (much of this team also worked on Greengrass’ Bourne films). Greengrass understands he doesn’t need to resort to melodrama or manipulation to make us feel it. We learn little about the passengers, the early camerawork and editing stressing their everyday anonymity. But knowing their fate, it’s impossible not to wish you could warn them. When a passenger sprints to make the flight, you want to stop him. When the plane’s door closes, it’s gut-wrenching.

United 93 splits its narrative into two halves. The first focuses on events on the ground – while on the flight, the passengers are largely unaware the largest terrorist attack in history is happening around them. Those on the ground can’t even find the procedure guide for a hijack, never mind the unthinkable idea of planes converted into flying bombs. There was no playbook for 9/11, which becomes all too clear throughout the chair-arm grasping tension of watching people try to interpret events we know inside-out. Alongside this, Greengrass keeps carefully within the bounds of taste – the collision with the South Tower is seen from air traffic control at JFK, the camera panning across to watch the horrified faces of the crew at the moment of impact, the world changing before their eyes.

Greengrass doesn’t shirk on the chaos, uncertainty and disbelief that crippled decision making and the response to the unfolding horror. United 93 matches the lack of clarity on the day, throwing us into this pressure cooker of misinformation. The report of the number of hijacked planes zig-zags from three to a possible twelve (it is confidently reported as five consistently by the military). American Airlines 11 is consecutively reported: crashed, missing, presumed flown into the North Tower, unaccounted for and finally airborne. There are terrifyingly small number of military response planes jet available (barely enough to patrol Brooklyn, let alone the East coast). Air traffic controllers try to interpret garbled communications from hijacked (or possibly not) planes.

What emerges – a point Greengrass strives not to present politically – is the complete absence of central direction. Much of the response is disorganised – the inability to locate a missing military liaison means FAA and Eastern Air Defence barely communicate for a large chunk of the disaster – and air traffic controllers across multiple states only share information on their own initiative. Any political leadership is completely absent: the commander of Eastern Air Defence spends almost the entire crisis on the phone desperately trying to locate the President or Vice President for rules of engagement against hijacked passenger planes. Ben Sliney is forced to take a unilateral (way above his paygrade) decision to close American airspace.

This lack of central direction is eventually what motivates the passengers, as they slowly realise through phone calls with loved ones on the ground, exactly what their captors intend. As Tom Burnett says, no one is coming to save them. Most of the second half takes place entirely on United 93 as we watch in real time the passengers grapple with a simple choice: die when the plane hits its target or risk their lives to retake it. Greengrass makes clear their aim is to survive – one of the passengers, a light aircraft pilot, is picked to fly the plane. What’s superb about United 93 is that these actions are both astonishingly brave, but also realistic. United 93 doesn’t turn the passengers into superhuman martyrs and avoids Hollywood-ised speeches – even Todd Beamer’s ”let’s roll” is a throw-away line. Instead, it makes them ordinary, brave people doing all they can to stay alive. (Although the film’s interpretation of one German passenger, convinced cooperation with the terrorists will save them, rightly drew criticism for its unfair judgement)

United 93 similarly avoids definitive statements about the terrorists. It isn’t afraid to show their misguided faith. It even shows cell-leader Ziad Jarrah calling his girlfriend to tell her he loves her. But it doesn’t shirk on their ruthless fanaticism, from their murder of the pilots to the suicidal determination of their last stand against the passengers. Greengrass’ film argues the hijackers failed due to their inexplicable delay of almost 46 minutes to hijack the plane (the other cells carried out their hijacks almost as soon as the seatbelt lights were off), suggesting Jarrah lost his nerve. It’s this delay – leaving them 50 minutes’ flight from their presumed target (the Capitol) rather than 20 – that gave the passengers time to understand their situation and make a plan to try and save themselves.

The final desperate struggle to reclaim the plane is a brutal, extremely hard to watch, superbly executed sequence, made immeasurably worse by the fact we know it will fail (the film’s final shot pans away from a close-up of a desperate struggle for the plane’s steering wheel to the ground moving closer). Greengrass presents the facts as they are and by doing so makes it even more powerful. A polemic that went overboard in patriotic hagiography would have carried less impact. United 93 is overwhelmingly, unbearably moving because it forces us to imagine what we would do in that situation. It’s a film made up of the confusion, fear and grim, desperate determination of ordinary people, and in the end few things have more impact with a viewer than that.

Autumn Sonata (1978)

The great Bergmans collaborate in a raw powerful film that does cover familiar Bergman ground

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Charlotte Andergast), Liv Ullmann (Eva), Lena Nyman (Helena), Halvar Björk (Viktor), Erland Josephson (Josef), Gunnar Björnstrand (Paul), Georg Løkkeberg (Leonardo)

In the history of Swedish cinema, there was one mighty collaboration the world was waiting for. The Bergmans (no relation) Ingmar and Ingrid, two generations of iconic Swedish filmmaking, to work together for the first time. It’s ironic that when it finally happened – and Autumn Sonata was the final time both Bergman’s worked on a project exclusively intended for cinema – it came during Ingmar’s self-imposed exile, meaning it was shot in Norway via a German company (and with a title originally in German) with British and American money. But one thing you couldn’t change: this would bring Ingrid back to the artistic Euro-film-making of her own Hollywood exile and that Ingmar wouldn’t flinch on his forensic, emotionally traumatic style for the legend.

Ingrid plays Charlotte, a famed classical pianist whose entire life has been her career, with brief stop-offs between concerts for marriages and kids. It’s meant she’s not seen her now-adult daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) for over seven years. And that she’s also missed most of Eva’s affectionate-but-passionless marriage to Viktor (Halvar Björk) and the entire life (including birth and funeral) of her grandson Erik. Charlotte also has no idea Eva has moved her disabled younger sister Helena (Lena Nyman) from the nursing home Charlotte deposited her in years ago into her own home. A visit brings mother and daughter together again for an awkward reunion that turns into a cathartic emotional outpouring, as Eva unbottles decades of resentment, anger and pain.

Autumn Sonata revolves around this extended confrontation scene, which takes up a sizeable portion of Ingmar Bergman’s thoughtful, measured film where conversations are all too clearly ticking time bombs leading to revelations that might be best unsaid. It fixates powerfully on the damage parents can inflict on their children and the shattering pain children can cause their parents. It’s a film about the brutal, challenging complexities of family and the unspoken resentments they can cause on those within them, who see their own opportunities and freedoms eaten into by a never-ending stream of demands and expectations from ‘loved ones’.

It’s a feeling familiar to all three of the principles. Ingmar was all-too-aware of his difficult relationship with both his parents and his children, Ullmann wrote about her self-perceived failings as a mother while Ingrid’s elopement with Roberto Rossellini in the 40s led her to not seeing her own daughter for almost five years. And it plays into this incredibly raw film which, while it covers familiar Ingmar ground, is played with such powerful, visceral commitment from its leads (held grippingly in frame by Ingmar’s regular collaborator Sven Nykvist), that it’s still one of his tougher watches.

Ingrid is superb as Charlotte, a woman who arrives in the remote vicarage home of her daughter, bursting with glamour. Assured, certain and utterly confident of her position as the centre of any room, Charlotte has a tendency to narrate her own life, self-assuredly mapping out her actions (from what to wear to the decision to gift Eva a car) and basks in advance in the positive reactions she anticipates. Charlotte maps her life out in terms of concerts and recitals (constantly, when Eva asks about an event from her childhood, Charlotte will ground herself by referring to a performance from that time). She automatically assumes maestro status in the house, including listening to Eva’s piano playing, moving her aside to take over and lecturing her on how the piece should be played.

She’s also though a woman deeply uncomfortable with emotion and emotional commitment. It’s an insight into how distant and unconnected Eva’s childhood must have been (brief flashbacks show Charlotte’s politely affectionate utter lack of interest in the young Eva) that what’s motivated her to visit Eva is to distract herself from the unpleasant burden of dealing with her recent husband’s death. Not grief or the need for comfort mind: it’s the experience of dealing with the events connected to the death that’s unsettled her. Her refusal to engage with anything emotional continues, from avoiding the topic of Eva’s dead son entirely to reacting to something close to barely concealed irritation at discovering her disabled daughter Helena in the home: she didn’t come here to be reminded about this other difficult emotional bond she’d outsourced to a professional.

Charlotte’s emotional coldness and distance under her warm confidence is brilliantly embodied by Ingrid. She’s a woman so overwhelmingly focused on her career she probably should never have had children at all (and perhaps regrets doing do), wasn’t remotely interested in Eva and Helena’s father (a decent, bank-manager sort played silently by Erland Josephson in flashbacks) and wants nothing from this visit except to feel better about herself. The lacerating home truths unleashed on her, see Ingrid’s composure fracture in shock, guilt and regret, her eyes becoming wells of shamed emotion.

Equally brilliant is Liv Ullman, perhaps even more so. Ullmann appears at first mousey, dowdy, humble and deferential – her husband opens the film with a heartfelt monologue about her being convinced she is not worth loving and that he only regrets he has never been able to persuade her otherwise. The cause for this becomes clear as Eva releases years of pent-up fury and anger at her mother’s oscillating from ignoring her to bursts of obsessive attention focused on coaching Eva into becoming what Charlotte wants her to be (Ingrid is fantastic at establishing Charlotte’s dumb-founded amazement that these times she fondly remembers were in fact purgatory for her daughter). Ullman’s delivery of this is powerful, viciously resentful and overwhelmingly painful.

This confrontation is the centre of Autumn Sonata but Ingmar knows that, despite what happens in Hollywood, moments like this don’t cure festering boils. In fact, our great gift as humans is to forget, re-form and move on. The film’s coda sees both women doing this: Charlotte feels her shame, but in a one-sided conversation with her agent (a wordless cameo from Gunnar Björnstrand) has already begun the process of self-justifying self-mythologising of her past. Similarly, having released years of frustration, Eva returns to her compromising self, drafting letters of apology to her mother. Or perhaps these are springs of hope? Somehow in Bergman it’s hard to think so.

You can argue that all of this very familiar to Bergman watchers: and it is (the presence of Ingrid is probably what cements it as one of his best-known films). But this is also a thought-provoking work in its own right. Autumn Sonata suggests we may try to confront or deal with things that have caused us pain. But in reality, the long, continual work of doing so is too much or us: we revert instead to compromise, adjustment and familiar patterns. Flashpoints carry emotional and dramatic weight, but life is made up of forgetting. It’s a powerful closing idea in this viciously raw piece of film-making from Ingmar, that draws such heart-breaking and emotional performances from Ingrid and Ullman.

Frankenstein (1931)

Iconic monster film, dark expressionist nightmare that totally reinvented the novel’s public image

Director: James Whale

Cast: Colin Clive (Henry Frankenstein), Mae Clarke (Elizabeth Lavenza), John Boles (Victor Moritz), Boris Karloff (The Monster), Edward van Sloan (Dr Waldman), Frederick Kerr (Baron Frankenstein), Dwight Frye (Fritz), Lionel Belmore (The Burgomaster), Marilyn Harris (Maria)

Has any film shaped the popular idea of a book more than Frankenstein? Ask anyone to describe the monster or the book itself, and you’ll not have to wait too long until you start to hear about bolts in the neck, thunder-struck gothic castles, hunchbacked assistants and labs stuffed with bizarre electrical equipment. Of course, none of that is actually in Mary Shelley’s The Post Modern Prometheus. But it is a key part of James Whale’s creative vision in this Hollywood hit. In fact, so much of a hit that it and its army of sequels led to whole generations convinced Frankenstein was the name of the monster, not his creator.

Frankenstein in fact bears almost no similarity to the original novel at all, checking off a few plot points and duplicating some character names. Other than that, it’s very much its own thing, a big expressionistic nightmare, with everything dialled up as high as those lightening-catching electrical machines can cope with. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) – you’ll note the film even changes his name to the more relatable Henry, with Victor given to his dull-as-dish-water pal Moritz (John Boles) – won’t settle down and marry fiancée Elizabeth (Mae Clarke). Instead, he dreams of creating life, to become like God! And to follow that dream, he’ll dig up bodies, steal laboratory brain specimens from his mentor Dr Waldmann (Edward van Sloan) and stitch them together into a creature (Boris Karloff). But then misunderstandings and ill treatment leads to a series of terrible events.

James Whale’s film is a triumph of atmosphere; its images and visual creativity so haunting it’s not a surprise it effectively overwhelmed the novel. Inspired by German expressionist cinema – you can see the fingerprints of Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Fritz Lang all over it – Whale sets this monster tale in a world of towering, angular buildings, looming shadows and vast steampunk (long before it came into fashion) labs in damp-lined medieval castles. There is a strange timeless quality to Frankenstein: it opens with a shadow-laden graveyard dug up by Henry and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye), but the village feels like it is set in almost any time from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century (the costumes in particular are a real hodgepodge). Perhaps this was part of Whale’s intention, to create a timeless metaphor for man’s reach exceeding what’s sensible, to disastrous consequences?

It’s also interesting that, for all the warning of the terrors to come the film opens with from Edward van Sloan (who also portrays Waldmann), we actually end up siding with the creature. A lot of this is due to Boris Karloff’s excellent performance. Without a word of dialogue, Karloff makes this lumbering result of stitched together bits and pieces, into something vulnerable, frightened and child-like, whose violent acts only emerge from tragic misunderstandings or gross provocations. Karloff’s physicality is frequently gentle and timid, the few strangled sounds he makes sound almost scared, and his awkward stumbling resembles a deadly, confused toddler. He needs parenting, not chasing down by a mob.

The film’s key moment is Frankenstein introducing the creature to the daylight – the camera following those towering vertical lines of the set up to into a skylight, with the enchanted creature reaching his arms up to try and touch this magic ball of light. Then Frankenstein smugly slaps it shut and Fritz shoves a torch into the poor creature’s face. The monster may be introduced with all the elements of dread – Whale’s classic introduction a series of striking cuts that pull us closer and closer to the reveal of his restitched head – but it doesn’t take long before you feel really sorry for it. Even if it does have a ‘criminal mind’ stitched into it (a development so out of tone with the treatment of the monster, it feels like a fig leaf to reassure the producers it must be the baddie).

Not least because Frankenstein himself is hardly that sympathetic. Colin Clive – a long-term collaborator with Whale – grabs this larger-than-life part and runs with it, oscillating from scenery-chewing self-aggrandizement (his celebratory screaming has rightly passed into cinematic legend) to self-pitying excuses. It’s telling he never takes a jot of responsibility for either creating the monster, or for his inattention and poor treatment of it directly causing the tragedy it unleashes. Unlike his book counterpart, his arrogance requires witnesses – Elizabeth, Victor and Waldmann – to his experiments, entirely due to his arrogant fury at Waldmann’s questioning his sanity. His first solution, as soon as the creature becomes challenging, is to euthanise it and he never confesses to the lynch mob that take on the creature in the film’s final act that he is its creator.

The lynch mob is responding to the creature’s accidental drowning of a small girl. Again, this killing stems from a misunderstanding. Young Marie – the only person in the film who doesn’t react with horror when she sees the creature, suggesting she instead sees a kindred spirit – invites the delighted creature to join her in a game, tossing flowers into the river. Clapping his hands in delight, the creature joins in for a scene directed with bucolic beauty by Whale – right up until the flowers run out and the creature tosses Marie in instead, only to find she doesn’t float artistically.

As the creature flees in confused panic, Whale cuts to the raucous wedding celebrations in the Frankenstein village, which comes to a crashing close as Marie’s father walks with her body through the crowd, that turns from joy to shock around him. It’s one of several striking moments of fluidic camera work in Frankenstein, Whale employing a tracking shot that follows and partially rotates around the father, while keeping him tightly central in the frame as he walks through the crowds. There are similar moments of dynamic camerawork throughout the film, Whale using every opportunity to make this gothic nightmare world as immersive as possible.

The hyper reality of Frankenstein means it doesn’t really matter that much of the skylines are all too clearly cloth (I like to think Whale deliberately kept the multiple points where the cloth has bunched up in shot to stress the artificiality), since everything about this is dialled up to eleven, from performances, to setting to the grandly staged windmill-finale, hugely impressive in its flame-licked excitement. In fact, it’s all so overblown and gothic, in its set design, shooting and performance that the most grounded, human thing in it is Karloff’s beautifully played creature himself. That feels like no accident and makes Frankenstein a surprisingly subversive film. And also perhaps, even though it strips the creature of much that makes him a character in the novel, made him a modern icon.

Wicked (2024)

Hugely enjoyable and electrically filmed (sung and danced) adaptation of the classic stage musical

Director: John M. Chu

Cast: Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba Thropp), Ariana Grande (Galinda Upland), Jonathan Bailey (Fiyero Tigellar), Michelle Yeoh (Madame Morrible), Jeff Goldblum (Wizard of Oz), Ethan Slater (Boq Woodsman), Bowen Young (Pfannee), Marissa Bode (Nessarose Thropp), Peter Dinklage (Dr Dillamond), Bronwyn James (Shenshen), Andy Nyman (Governor Thropp)

I might be the only person who missed the phenomenon of Wicked, a smash-hit musical that filled in the back story of The Wizard of Oz. Set long before the arrival of Dorothy and her march down that yellow brick road, it covers the meeting and eventual friendship of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) future Wicked Witch of the West and Galinda (Ariana Grande) future Glinda the Good, at Shiz University (a sort of Ozian Hogwarts). Wicked is a grand, visual spectacular crammed with memorable tunes and show-stopping dance numbers and it’s bought to cinematic life in vibrant, dynamic and highly enjoyable style by John M. Chu.

At Shiz, Elphaba is snubbed by all and sundry who can’t see past her green skin. Despised by her father (Andy Nyman) – who we know isn’t her true father (I wonder who it could be?) – she’s lived a life of defensive self-sufficiency. Galinda, in contrast, is effortlessly popular and has never found herself in any situation where she can’t get what she wants. But Elphaba has something Galinda wants – a natural talent for magic that makes her the protégé of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) – and circumstances end up with the two of them sharing rooms. Surprisingly, a friendship forms when these two opposites find common ground. But will this be challenged when Elphaba is called to the Emerald City to meet with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum)?

Wicked Part One covers (in almost two and half hours!) only the first act of Wicked, meaning the film culminates with the musical’s most famous number ’Defying Gravity’. The producers proudly stated this was to not compromise on character development by rushing – the more cynical might say they were motivated by double-dipping into mountains of box-office moolah. Despite this, Wicked Part 1 (despite taking pretty much as long to cover Act 1 as it takes theatres to stage the entire musical) feels surprisingly well-paced and the film itself is so energetic, charming and fun you quickly forget the fundamental financial cynicism behind it.

Wicked is directed with real verve and energy by John M. Chu – it’s easily the most purely enjoyable Hollywood musical since West Side Story and one of the most entertaining Broadway adaptations of this century. Wicked is expertly shot and very well edited, its camerawork making the many dance sequences both high-tempo and also easy to follow (Wicked avoids many musicals’ high-cutting failures that make choreography almost impossible to see). And it looks fabulous, the design embracing the bold colours and steam-punk magic of Oz.

It also perfectly casts its two leads, both of whom are gifted performers bringing passion and commitment. Cynthia Erivo’s voice is spectacular, and she taps into Elphaba’s loneliness and pain under her defensive, defiant outer core. It’s a fabulously sad-eyed performance of weary pain and Erivo beautifully conveys Elphaba’s moral outrage at the lies that underpin Oz. Just as fantastic is Ariana Grande. Grande says she had dreamed about playing Galinda since she was a kid (yup, that’s how old this musical is) – and it shows. It’s an electric, hilarious performance that embraces Galinda’s studied sweet physicality, her little bobs and flicks and blithe unawareness of her aching privilege and self-entitlement, but what Grande does stunningly well is really make you like Galinda no matter how misguidedly self-centred she is.

And she really is. Part of Wicked’s appeal is mixing Oz with Mean Girls with more than a dash of racial prejudice. Elphaba is immediately snubbed because she literally doesn’t look right (anti-green prejudice is an unspoken constant) compared to Galinda’s pink-coated, blond-haired perfectness. Galinda is Shiz’s queen bee, followed everywhere by two sycophantic acolytes (delightfully slappable performances from Bowen Young and Bronwyn James) who cheer everything she does and push Galinda to maximise her subtle hazing of the green-skinned outsider. After all, they see popularity as a zero-sum game: the more Elphaba might have, the less there must be to go around for them.

It’s not really a surprise that Elphaba has had a tough time. Oz is dripping with prejudice, racist assumptions and strict hierarchies. From the film’s opening number – ‘No one mourns the wicked’, where Munchkins wildly celebrate Elphaba’s future death – we are left in little doubt there is a culture of blaming those who are different for misfortunes. This sits alongside a purge of unwanted citizens: namely talking animals. Goat professor Dr Dillamond (a lovely vocal performance from Peter Dinklage) is subtly belittled for his goat-accent then dragged in disgrace from the school. A new professor extols the virtues of keeping frightened animals in cages. The casting of Jeff Goldblum helps with creating this genial but cruel world, his improvisational mumbling suggesting a man of arrogant, sociopathic distance under initial aw-shucks charm.

These secrets will impact the friendship between our leads. The extended runtime means it already takes a very long time for the ice between them to thaw (and, for me, their ballroom reconciliation doesn’t land with the cathartic force it needed for the transition from hostility to friendship to completely work), but the exceptional chemistry between Erivo and Grande helps sell it. What Wicked does very well though is show the fault-lines in this relationship. Galinda’s answer to all Elphaba’s problems is for her to be more like her, while Elphaba has clearly never had a real friend in her life and wants one more than anything. There is true kindness and love between them, but Elphaba remains an outsider with cause to be angry against the system while Galinda is the ultimate insider for whom the system has always worked. Wicked Part 1 does a very good job of never letting these facts escape your notice, for all the charm of an unexpected friendship.

Wicked Part 1 though is also a monstrously entertaining film. The song and dance numbers are spectacular – the pin-point choreography of ‘What Is This Feeling’ is superb, while the power ballad intensity if ‘The Wizard and I’ is perfectly nailed by Erivo. Jonathan Bailey comes close to stealing the limelight with a show-stopping turn as the charming, likeable but slightly rogueish Fiyero, his ‘Dancing Through Life’ routine in particular being a stunning display of athletic dancing matched with perfect vocals. Every number is given its own carefully judged tone, with wonderfully complementary photography and editing, to create a film that leaves you eagerly wanting more.

I didn’t really know the musical coming into it, but after Jon M Chu’s excellent production, I’m excited to see what happens in Part (Act) 2.

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Second-tier Hitchcock thriller, with some interesting flourishes and entertaining moments

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Ray Milland (Tony Wendice), Grace Kelly (Margot Mary Wendice), Robert Cummings (Mark Halliday), John Williams (Chief Inspector Hubbard), Anthony Dawson (Charles Alexander Swann), Leo Britt (Party goer), Patrick Allen (Detective Pearson)

Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) is in a bind. A former tennis pro turned barely-successful sports goods seller, he loves the high life. Unfortunately, he’s running through cash like water – and, worst of all, most of it isn’t even really his but the property of his socialite wife Margot (Grace Kelly). And Margot is in the middle of an affair with trashy fiction writer, American Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings). An affair Tony knows all about, having stolen Margot’s love letters to anonymously blackmail her. But his new scheme is somewhat more permanent: blackmail disreputable Charles Swann (Anthony Dawson) into murdering Margot at a time when Tony has a perfect alibi. Sadly, things don’t go to plan – when do they ever? – and with Swann skewered in the back with a pair of scissors, Tony hurriedly improvises pining a pre-meditated murder charge on Margot all while avoiding the suspicions of Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams).

In his later extended interviews with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock gave less than a few minutes to talking about Broadway-adaptation Dial M, describing it as, at best, a one-for-the-money assignment or sort of warm-up for Rear Window. He was similarly dismissive about the film being shot for 3D, which he described as a ‘nine-day wonder’ which he joined on the ninth day. Hitchcock had a tendency to play up to ideas of his genius, laying sniffy dismissal on what were viewed by critics as his lesser works (although Truffaut said Dial M grew on him every time he saw it). Actually, while Dial M does have the air of an assignment to it, there are some neat little Hitchcock touches it that, while not making it a classic, does make it an entertaining way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

After all, not many other directors would have so relished Swann’s body sliding down onto a small pair of scissors. Or found so many fascinating angles for shooting a (mostly) single-set, from lofted over-head shots that give Tony’s detailing to Swann of his elaborate plan a God-like force to crashingly tight close-ups on the phone Tony will use to dial in his alibi. Hitchcock also adds more than a little sexual energy to the play. There Margot’s affair is very much in the past, as opposed to here being very much keenly anticipated by Grace Kelly’s sensual stare over a newspaper to a clock counting down her assignation with Halliday. Hitchcock also avoided the sort of tedious ‘duck now!’ shots that has made 3D a joke in cinema-going circles, framing shots with a great deal of depth, placing key objects in different depths of field in the shot.

Dial M For Murder itself though, even with these little Hitchcock touches, tends to feel exactly like what it is: a well-heeled adaptation of a Broadway entertainment that is far more about plot, procedure and Christie-lite mystery than character or themes. (Actually, a mechanical operation like Dial M might well have appealed to Hollywood’s greatest ever proponent of the masterfully constructed tension piece more than her cared to admit). It’s a page-turner, Airport-novel transposed into glitzy, breezy entertainment where we get to flirt with someone completely naughty and wicked, but can be pretty sure the ‘howdunnit’ will become clear to everyone in the play, not just us (after all, the idea that Hitchcock – or anyone – will let Grace Kelly be executed for a crime she didn’t commit is of course preposterous).

Dial M plays very much into the Hitchcock playbook, where tension arises not from what we don’t know, but from the fact we know a little bit more than most of the characters. Just like Vertigo revealing its mystery surprisingly early, or watching a bomb tick down in Sabotage while its victims remain oblivious, we know from the start that this is all a scheme designed to entrap Margot. We know all the time exactly what Tony has done and the tension lies solely in working out whether Halliday or Inspector Hubbard will work it out and how they might manage to get Tony to pay for it. (There are also some echoes of Strangers in a Train, from Tony’s tennis-playing background to his sociopathic crime swop with Swann).

Tony is played with a suave, smugness by Ray Milland, which is just about likeable enough for a bit of you to want the selfish, shallow, self-obsessed Tony to get away with it. Milland won’t allow a slightly smug grin to disappear from his face – except in a burst of twitchy nerves when a stopped watch makes him concerned that he’s going to miss a vital phone call back home to establish his alibi during the attempted murder – and never once does he appear troubled by morality. In fact, he thinks rather sharply on his feet, pivoting in seconds from surprise at Margot’s survival to smoothly improvising a very convincing story, framed to (literally) hang Margot in. It’s an effective, enjoyable, pantomime-hissable performance which Milland has a lot of fun with.

He gets most of the film to himself, since Kelly is given a role that gives her little to do – although it does showcase her ability to communicate a great deal from looks alone, from her excitement at a future liaison, to growing fear as the police net draws around her. She’s certainly a far more magnetic performer than the bland Robert Cummings who has little about him to suggest he could set Grace Kelly all aflutter. The other key roles were filled out with actors from the original production: Anthony Dawson’s weasily opportunist Swann is perfectly convincing as the sort of cove who’d agree to murder to make his life easier while John Williams’ cements the image of the unflappable pipe-smoking detective who understands far more than it looks and lulls suspects into making fatal mistakes with an avuncular reassurance.

Dial M For Murder offers plenty of entertainment, even if it’s largely just a fairly routine plot-driven mechanical puzzle, spruced up by the odd inventive shot and engaging performance. But Hitchcock was probably right, that it sits very much in the second tier of his work.