Category: Comedy

School of Rock (2003)

Jack Black triumphs in high-school comedy School of Rock

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Jack Black (Dewey Finn), Joan Cusack (Principle Roz Mullins), Mike White (Ned Schneebly), Sarah Silverman (Patty DiMarco), Miranda Cosgrove (Summer Hathaway), Joey Gados Jnr (Zack Mooneyham), Kevin Clark (Freddy Jones), Rebecca Brown (Katie), Robert Tsai (Lawrence), Maryam Hassan (Tomika), Caitlin Hale (Marta), Brian Falduto (Billy)

The early 2000s saw the rise of a new force in American comedy films: rotund, rock ‘n’ roll, John Belushi-light Jack Black. Following his breakout role as a music-obsessive with purist tastes in High Fidelity, School of Rock saw the legend of Jack Black hit its peak. And it deserves to, as School of Rock is the sort of perfectly-formed treat that achieves everything it sets out to do.

Dewey Finn (Jack Black) is the sort of slacker man-child beloved of indie filmmakers, who has never grown up from his dreams of being a rock star. The only thing really holding him back? Fate and his own selfishness. Dewey’s expelled from his own band, due to his penchant for extended guitar solos and distracting stage antics, and his old bandmate-turned-respectable-supply-teacher, Ned Schneebly (Mike White, also the film’s writer) is pressured into finally asking Dewey for his share of the rent by Ned’s domineering girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman). Desperate for money, Dewey impersonates Ned and takes a role as a supply teacher for a group of 12-year-olds at a prep school. At first Dewey just wants to leave the kids to their own devices and pick up his cheque – but when he hears his new students in their music classes, he suddenly has a brainwave: they could be his new band, and help him win The Battle of the Bands competition. 

School of Rock is an immensely heart-warming film that manages to never sell out to become sentimental or depend on its characters learning “lessons” that improve them. Sure lessons are learned, and the film is very sweet, but it manages to wear this all with a cool lightness. In fact the whole film becomes a rather touching paen to the transformative power of music, and the way it gives people confidence and a voice. 

Linklater directs with a breezy cool, drawing some fantastic performances from the whole cast (I can’t give enough praise to a director who gets such relaxed, natural and funny performances from children as Linklater does here) and totally embracing the clichés of the “inspirational teacher” genre, with a comedic bent. The kids are the expected combination – the precocious ambitious one, the shy ones who hide skill, the brash wannabe bully who finds the joy of being part of the group – but they are all portrayed with such freshness and energy that the clichés hum with joy.

Linklater’s real stroke of genius is letting Jack Black rip in the lead role. The part is so perfectly tailored to Black that it feels like almost an extension of his own personality. Black is a force of nature in the role, a perfect combination of showboating and carefully thought out character work – and he works brilliantly with the kids. He’s hilarious as well, first as a wannabe rock star layabout, later as a band leader for the kids who discovers in himself a work ethic and ability to inspire. 

The character works because, deep down, under the selfishness and laziness, Dewey is basically a pretty decent guy. He cares about people’s happiness and he has a romantic view of rock and roll as a source of self-expression and celebration of life. (Although fortunately for the film, he’s no fan of the whole drugs side of many of the musicians he worships – having no time for the “poseurs” who attempt to impress the kids with the smoking and gambling at one Battle of the Bands audition.) And he’s so passionate about this that he can actually turn himself, if not into a teacher, at least into the sort of inspiring mentor who can bring his students out of their shells.

And he does this without really changing fundamentally who he is. Sure he’s touched by the kids, just as he’s touched them (to slightly misquote the film’s cheeky paedophile misunderstanding gag, when Dewey is busted by his charges’ parents!), but the warmth under the bluster is there all the time. And Dewey doesn’t suddenly turn into a high achiever or perfect guy – he just learns to channel his enthusiasm into encouraging musical skills in others (and there is something really sweet in his genuine, warm enthusiasm for talent from the very start). The film even allows the headmistress of the school (very well played by Joan Cusack as an under-pressure uptight woman yearning to cut lose a little) to be a spiritual ally and well-meaning obstacle rather than an opponent.

It’s this good natured warmth that runs through the whole film, and which at the end finds every character contented and united. (Well nearly every character – the film can’t shake its love of wistful man-childishness sufficiently to resist turning Ned’s girlfriend into a humourless, nagging shrew, in the film’s only real misstep). Plus the film rocks really well, and seeing the band together and perform is both fun and really sweet. No one puts a foot wrong here, and a lot of its success is due to Linklater’s ease and Black’s dynamic, verging just the right side of cartooney, comic tour-de-force at the centre.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Bond finds himself in another pretty pickle in The Spy Who Loved Me

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Roger Moore (James Bond), Barbara Bach (Anya Amasova), Curd Jürgens (Karl Stromberg), Richard Kiel (Jaws), Caroline Munro (Naomi), Walter Gotell (General Gogol), Bernard Lee (M), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Geoffrey Keen (Frederick Gray), Robert Brown (Vice-Admiral Hargreaves), George Baker (Captain Benson), Michael Billington (Sergei Barsov), Vernon Dobtcheff (Max Kalba), Nadim Sawalha (Fekkesh)

Roger Moore had made two Bond films before he made The Spy Who Loved Me – but this is the one when he finally hit upon the formula that works for him. It’s also probably the moment where the Bond films became – once for all – comedy adventure capers. It was but a few more degrees from here until Bond was telling a tiger to “sit” or racing past a double-taking pigeon in the middle of St Mark’s Square. And the public loved it. For better or worse, Moore’s Bond here helped define the franchise for a whole generation.

Anyway, the story. It’s eerily familiar in many ways to Thunderball and You Only Live Twice: a power-crazed lunatic (Karl Stromberg) running a secret organisation wants to destroy the world. His plan? To capture one American and one Soviet submarine and use them to fire nuclear missiles at the nation’s two capitals, to kickstart a nuclear war, leaving only his underwater kingdom intact. Just as well then that an over-keen Stromberg (Curd Jürgens) first captures a British sub, meaning James Bond (Roger Moore) is called in to investigate. Bond will work with the USSR’s finest agent – Anya Amasova, Triple X (Barbara Bach) – to find out what’s going on and why.

TSWLM is a lot of fun, possibly the ultimate expression of what a lot of people think Bond is. It’s hugely silly, rather exciting and has almost no connection with reality whatsoever. Moore goes through the whole thing with his eyebrow forever arched, tipping the wink at the audience – “You do know, dear boy, this is all dreadfully silly stuff”. Sometimes in Bond this humour gets a bit much – but here it’s pretty much pitched perfectly. And Moore looks like he is having the time of his life.

The film is crammed with action set pieces in striking locations: the Alps! The pyramids! A converted oil tanker base! Nothing is left to the imagination, and everything is thrown at the screen. It gets the sense of excitement right from the pre-credits sequence, with Bond’s high-speed ski chase across the alps from Russian would-be hitmen. Fools – what chance did they have? I don’t know what I like most about this scene: is it the wild ski stunts? The way music and camera action combine so well? The fact that it’s crystal clear Moore probably spent precisely zero days on location for this sequence? What am I talking about, it’s got to be that insane parachute jump at the end – with the camera leaving it just long enough for you to start to think “is Bond going to get out of this one?”. (Spoilers he does.)

That’s almost nothing compared to the famous Lotus-turned-submarine car chase, which pretty much set the standard for all the car-based action (not to mention gadget filled cars) that would follow in the franchise. The idea of a car that turns into a submarine: it’s both brilliant and so overwhelmingly silly that, like Bond at its vibrant best, it seems to transcend class and logic into a higher plane of excitement.

And all this with a plot that is almost staggeringly stupid. Jurgens has a lot of arch, naughty fun as scheming monomaniac (with subtle webbed hands) Stromberg, a pompous arsehole and a great villain. Of course he wasn’t a physical threat – hence the invention of Jaws, surely the most popular henchman ever invented for Bond. Jaws is a lunking, vicious but strangely endearing brute – it’s hard to put your finger on why he’s strangely likeable, maybe it’s just the totally absurd idea of a hitman whose killer tools are metal teeth. Maybe it’s because Richard Kiel has such a dorky sense of humour – and is as good at the glance at the camera as Moore himself is.

Of course it is a dated film – and it’s always the women that show it. If this set a lot of good Bond archetypes, then it also helped to cement a few bad ones. Anya Amasova is (allegedly) the greatest agent Russia has. Not that you would know it, as she stumbles in this film from moments of staggering incompetence and stupidity to victimhood and damsel-in-distress. There is a hint of character development – Bond offs her boyfriend in that alpine chase literally without a backward glance – but that’s soon forgotten by the end under Bond’s charms. The poor woman can’t even drive stick (“That’s reverse, let’s try again shall we” says Bond with smackable smugness) and by the end of the film she’s bikini-clad and being rescued by Bond. It says a lot when the strongest thing about her character is that her name isn’t an innuendo.

But you can let it go, because the rest of the film is such good fun. Everything is nonsense of course, and you could steer a submarine through the plot holes. If Stromberg only needs two submarines to start his evil plan, why on earth does he grab a third one at the start of the final act? (Just as well he does, of course, as otherwise Bond would never get on board his base.) Stromberg is ruthless enough to eliminate three underlings and to set up a nuclear war to wipe out the world – but those captured submarine crews he keeps alive, imprisoned, with a small guard, next to the armoury on his base. Ooops. His plan is almost effortlessly undone with a radio message from Bond. But never mind. It doesn’t matter.

The point is that this is all great fun and basically set the tone for the next ten years of Bond films – until Dalton shifted gears. Moore is really good in it, as a sort of ringmaster of silliness – and he’s clearly enjoying it wildly. The Spy Who Loved Me is his best film – and for all its dumbness, its leaning into cheap humour, its ludicrous plot and sexist attitudes, it’s still up there at the top of the franchise. Because for a lot of people, all those negatives are exactly what they now expect from Bond.

The Full Monty (1997)

Steelworkers from Sheffield have no options but to turn their hand to stripping, in British phenomenon The Full Monty

Director: Peter Cattaneo

Cast: Robert Carlyle (Gaz), Mark Addy (Dave), Tom Wilkinson (Gerald), Lesley Sharp (Jean), Emily Woof (Mandy), William Snape (Nathan), Steve Huisan (Lomper), Paul Barber (Horse), Hugo Speer (Guy)

In the summer of 1997, Britain was a depressed place. The country was in the middle of an intense mourning for the death of Princess Diana. Perhaps that’s why a film all about overcoming despair and to turn it into heart-warming triumph suddenly gripped the whole nation and emerged from nowhere to become the most successful British film of all time. No one expected a film about Sheffield strippers to do that.

The economy has dropped out of the Sheffield steel market, and hundreds of people are out of work and desperate. Gaz (Robert Carlyle), a genial waster, needs £700 to pay his child maintenance and not lose access to his son Nathan (William Snape). Dave (Mark Addy) has serious self-image problems, his disgust at his own weight is leading him to push away Jean (Lesley Sharp), the wife he can’t believe loves him. Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), their ex-foreman, is so ashamed of losing his job he hasn’t told his wife that he’s been unemployed for six months and is facing financial ruin. Together with three other men with no other options, they decide one way to get money quick is to follow the example of the sell-out male-strippers at the local working club – with the unique selling point that they will go “the full monty”.

It’s been nearly a decade since I saw The Full Monty. Over-exposure made it an easy film to feel a bit sniffy and dismissive about, like it was a happy accident that the film came from nowhere to achieve staggering success. But that’s hugely unfair. Watching it back now, it’s amazing how much it’s a comedic film grounded in a sense of desperation and pain, and then how brilliantly it uses this to create empathy for its characters, and how wonderfully this helps you to share their joy and triumph when they are finally taking control of their own destinies.

The Full Monty emerged from a troubled production history. It was hugely difficult to find funding for the film. It took years to get the filming sorted, and casting was difficult – in a parallel universe Nicholas Lyndhurst and Russ Abbott played the lead roles. Robert Carlyle has described the making of the film as being totally chaotic (he further claimed he was convinced the film was “pish” and heading for disaster). The first cut was met with such negativity from the distributors that it nearly ended up direct-to-video, until the producers begged for one more shot at editing the film. But then it emerged as one of the most widely loved UK films of the 1990s, eventually being nominated for four Oscars (Picture, Director, Screenplay and a win for Best Score). That’s what I call a turnaround!

It’s also strangely fitting for the film itself. The opening footage showing a prosperous and bustling Sheffield in the 1960s is a perfect set-up for the Sheffield of the 1990s with unemployment rampant, and our characters confined to endless days of drifting around the city and failing to gain any benefits from a workshop at the unemployment office. Every frame of Cattaneo’s well shot film stresses the relative bleakness of the environment, the run-down world the characters inhabit, and that sense that all promise is missing from the future of this city.

In the middle of this, the film doesn’t shy away from looking at – with plenty of jokes – plenty of themes which are hardly your default expectations for a comedy movie. We’ve got depression, self-loathing, body-image, fathers’ rights and suicide: if that’s not a comic gold on paper I don’t know what is!  However, what is so perfect about the film is how well it judges the tone when dealing with these themes. Simon Beaufoy’s script is warm, humane and above all immensely empathetic. Never – not once – are any of these characters the butt of the humour. While we may see the dark comedy that can occur, we never laugh at the characters.

The script gets a perfect balance between all this desperation and pain and well-worked, down-to-earth, honest and affecting humour. It’s also genuinely funny, with several stand-out gags. As an interesting side note, perhaps the film’s most famous comic moment – the boys standing in the dole queue, involuntarily practicing their routine when Hot Stuff starts playing in the radio – nearly didn’t make the film, as the producers felt it was unrealistic. Just as well they left it in, as it perfectly captures the mood of the movie.

On top of which, the film taps into the human bonds that can grow in adversity. One of the film’s principal delights is seeing this odd bunch slowly begin to come together like a family. We see them confide in each other, listen to each other’s problems, accept each other for what they are. It’s a film about the triumph of the human spirit and the rewards that can come from opening your heart to other people when all seems lost.

It further helps that Simon Beaufoy’s script draws such terrific performances from the actors. Carlyle (for all his doubts about the film) plays Gaz with a perfect, low-key, commitment and empathy. Carlyle in many ways makes the film work as well as it does because he plays the truth of each scene and is willing to be the film’s loadstone. He plays every moment truthfully and is as effective showing Gaz’s chancer wasterness as he is at allowing the real pain and fear Gaz feels at the prospect of losing his son.

The film also changed the careers of Addy and Wilkinson, turning the two into character actor superstars. Addy is fabulous as the self-loathing Dave: having had problems myself with being concerned about my own image, seeing the psychological damage Dave inflicts on himself through his own inadequacies is very moving, and perfectly played by Addy – who also brings a great deal of comic mastery to the film. Wilkinson is perhaps the pick of the bunch as the seemingly proud and haughty Gerald, who hides intense fragility and pain under the surface. He has a truly affecting breakdown scene after a job interview gone wrong – and the reaction acting to this from Carlyle and Addy is also by the way marvellous. It’s a terrific (BAFTA winning) performance.

And then you hit the final stripping scene – and all that empathy the film has been building pays off, because the triumphal dance and strip down is hugely heart-warming. After seeing the men go through such difficulty and despair it’s really affecting and joyful to see them finally take control of their own destinies. How could you not be wrapped up in it? How could a whole nation not take the whole thing to their hearts? Put out of your mind all those thoughts that this can’t be that good, or that we were all mistaken in 1997: this is genuinely very good, thought-provoking and hilarious stuff.

Parenthood (1989)

Steve Martin struggles with the demands of fatherhood, in the rather sweet Parenthood

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Steve Martin (Gil Buckman), Tom Hulce (Larry Buckman), Harley Kozak (Susan Huffner), Jason Robards (Frank Buckman), Rick Moranis (Nathan Huffner), Martha Plimpton (Julie Buckman), Keanu Reeves (Tod Higgins), Eileen Ryan (Marilyn Buckman), Helen Shaw (Grandma), Mary Steenburgen (Karen Buckman), Dianne Wiest (Helen Buckman), Joaquin Phoenix (Garry Buckman-Lampkin)

If there is one thing everyone knows, it’s that families can be complex. That’s why good films about family life resonate so well – everyone (and I mean everyone) can find something in it that echoes with their own experiences. Parenthood is very good at this sort of thing, an entertaining but also tender and rather sweet comedy-drama about an expansive family and their many triumphs and problems.

Frank Buckman (Jason Robards) is the patriarch, a distant father with four children all now raising families of their own. Gil (Steve Martin), married to Karen (Mary Steenburgen), desperately wants to be the perfect dad he feels his own never was, but is struggling with the increasingly apparent emotional problems in his oldest son, 12-year-old Kevin. Helen (Dianne Wiest) is divorced, her ex-husband wants nothing to do with their children. Her son Garry (Joaquin Phoenix) is a socially withdrawn teenager, while her elder daughter Julie (Martha Plimpton) isn’t interested in education only in her relationship with gentle but useless Tod (Keanu Reeves). Susan (Harley Kozak) is married to Nathan (Rick Moranis) who is obsessed with turning their young daughter into a child prodigy. Frank’s favourite son is the feckless Larry (Tom Hulce), a wastrel sponger who turns up after years with an unexpected young son, Cool, in tow, in whom he shows little interest.

You can see just in that quick summary you’ve got a huge array of issues for the film to tackle, all of which it manages to do with sweetness, humour and also a certain amount of emotional truth. The film manages the ups and downs, the flat-out comedy and the heartbreak with real confidence, meaning you are moved smoothly from broad laughs to genuine “ahs” of sweetness. 

With the exception of the shallow and selfish Larry (every family has that black sheep), each of the characters has moments to demonstrate their depth and truth, showing sides of themselves you wouldn’t expect. In a large-cast film that delivers in a tight, well-structured two hours, that’s quite an accomplishment to be honest.

Ron Howard directs all this with fabulous control, a reminder that he’s actually quite a skilled director of comedy, with a good sense of timing and pacing. He’s also a superb director of actors, and there isn’t a weak link in the whole cast, from the youngest child actor to the most experienced Broadway veteran. 

Steve Martin is fabulous as the centre of the family saga, the dad desperate to be the best dad he can be, but who overly worries and obsesses about every detail to try and be as perfect as possible. Martin is ace at this sort of stuff, this gentle comedy grounded in reality, and totally understands how to make a character feel real and grounded. Combine that with his natural comic chops and willingness to embrace the absurd at moments – showcased here in a sequence where he desperately has to cover for a missing entertainer at his son’s birthday party – and he supplies many of the film’s stand out moments. 

Dianne Wiest (Oscar nominated) also manages a difficult balancing act in perhaps the film’s most interesting set of plotlines. Helen’s family covers the full range of teenage trauma, from a loving son who seems to turn overnight into a monosyllabic stranger to a daughter who rejects all her mother’s hopes for the future in order to spend time with a boy she doesn’t approve of. Wiest is not only extremely funny in some of her responses to these problems, but also heartrendingly real in her pain, confusion and frustration at not being able to help her children (or herself) as much as she wants, as well as the clear feeling that her life is somehow a failure compared to her two elder siblings. 

What’s also beautiful about the film is that none of these events or storylines work themselves out quite as you might expect. Young Garry (played excellently by an impossibly young Joaquin Phoenix, here billed as Leaf) has clear reasons for his feelings and is dealing with complete lack of interest his father shows in his life. Julie (Martha Plimpton, very good) isn’t the layabout teen you might expect, and has genuine feelings for Tod – who, under Keanu Reeves’ sweet, slacker style, is a man of far greater emotional depth than might be expected.

The other plotlines of the film are secondary to these, but are still wonderfully played and put together. The Moranis/Kozak plotline of “I’m an ignored wife who wants another baby” v “I’m trying to turn our daughter into a genius” is a bit more played for laughs, but the two actors know their stuff and deliver. Tom Hulce channels Mozart as the irredeemable Larry, but works very well with Jason Robards, who expertly portrays a man aware he was not the perfect dad. Again these scenes develop in ways you might not expect – particularly as regards Robard’s character.

The final sequence of the film, showing how the events and lessons of the film have changed the family but brought them together in different ways, and how they have changed and learned, should feel manipulative and pat, but because the whole film is done with generosity and warmth it actually brings a small tear to the eye with its sweetness and warmth. Parenthood isn’t perhaps remembered quite as well as it should be – but it’s a film that never fails to deliver and always leaves you feeling better about yourself. And you can’t ask more than that.

The Martian (2015)

Matt Damon is Lost in Space in The Martian

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Matt Damon (Mark Watney), Jessica Chastain (Commander Melissa Lewis), Jeff Daniels (Teddy Sanders), Kristen Wiig (Annie Montrose), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Vincent Kapoor), Sean Bean (Mitch Henderson), Michael Peña (Major Rick Martinez), Kate Mara (Beth Johansson), Sebastian Stan (Dr Chris Beck), Aksel Hennie (Dr Alex Vogel), Mackenzie Davis (Mindy Park), Donald Glover (Rich Purnell), Benedict Wong (Bruce Ng)

Imagine being abandoned somewhere really difficult to get out of. Now how about being abandoned somewhere where it’s literally impossible to escape? Well you can’t get much more impossible than Mars, a place so bloody difficult it doesn’t even supply you with such luxuries as oxygen, water or food. But that’s exactly what happens to astronaut Mark Watney.

Part of the first manned mission to Mars, Watney (Matt Damon) is struck by debris and presumed killed after a storm forces the crew to abandon their planet. With no one on Earth aware he is alive, Watney faces huge difficulties: the next Mars mission isn’t for four years, and will land over 2,000 miles away. He has only enough food for at best a couple of years, and his Mars Rover can only travel 70 miles before it needs to be recharged. Fortunately, Watney (as well as being incredibly inventive) is a botanist – and works out a complex improvised farm in the base to grow potatoes (the only potential crop he has) as well beginning to modify the Rover to drive to the next mission site in four years. But things change when NASA (after holding his funeral) spot his movements via satellite – and now the race is on to organise a rescue mission.

The Martian perfectly works out what we find appealing about survivor stories: a charming, easy to relate to, protagonist who inspires with his never-ending MacGyver-ish invention. The best sequences by far focus on this, as Watney uses whatever he has available, from radioactive waste to his own shit, to try and save his life. There is something hugely compelling about seeing such inspiration in the face of adversity – perhaps because you want to believe “heck that’s what I would do…”

The first half of the film is crammed with these moments, made even more enjoyable by Watney’s off-the-wall, amusing commentary on events via video diary. Watney never succumbs to despair but instead constantly puts as positive as possible a spin on his situation, aware that opening the door to despair is the road to the end. A lot of this works so well because of Matt Damon’s terrific performance in the lead role. It’s no easy thing basically holding the screen entirely by yourself, but Damon does an amazing job here. He’s not just funny and engaging, but he also subtly touches on deep inner feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Scott understands all this and shoots most of the sequences with Watney with a low-key, calm but technically assured simplicity. He lets the action here largely speak for itself, and shows a better ear for comedy than I think many people thought him capable of. He also uses Watney’s “suit cam” and the video diary format to constantly shake up the visuals and allow us to see Watney’s actions and decisions from different perspectives. His mastery of the sweeping epic comes into its own when the camera swoops over Martian panoramas, making the hostile red planet look unbelievably beautiful. 

It’s easy to see why NASA supported this film so strongly, as the organisation comes out of this impossibly well. This is essentially a fictionalised retelling of Apollo 13, with the astronauts surviving above, while the ingenious techies below work miracles to first communicate with, and then devise a rescue mission, for Watney. The film is deeply in love with NASA – despite some personality clashes, the NASA characters are all shown to be highly intelligent, compassionate people. Even “the suit”, Director Sanders (played with a square jawed patience by Jeff Daniels), is basically a humanitarian who wants to preserve human life (and is cool enough to have a brilliant Lord of the Rings gag).

Despite this, the struggles of the various bigwigs at NASA to save Watney are slightly less interesting than the opening half of the film based around Watney’s struggles to survive. Perhaps because, well done as it is, we’ve seen this sort of stuff before, done better – not least in Apollo 13 – and partly because what NASA is trying to do is not quite clearly explained in layman’s terms. Think of the simple brilliance of Apollo 13 when the engineers need to create a filter using only what the astronauts have on the ship: it’s easy to understand, clear, brilliant and gripping. Comparative scenes in this film just don’t land as quickly.

The film also struggles as events and twists in the midway part of the movie lead to Watney losing a lot his agency. Since most of the film’s unique enjoyment is seeing Watney conquer his environment, and gain mastery of the rotten hand that fate has dealt him, as soon as that element is removed and Watney turns into more of a man in distress, the film struggles to maintain its unique interest. It makes the second half of the film more conventional (Damon is noticeably in this much less, considering how much he dominates the first half) and also ends up comparing unfavourably with other, better films (sorry I mean Apollo 13 again…)

But The Martian is crammed with good lines, fine jokes and some good performances – even if some of the characters seem a bit sketchily drawn. Benedict Wong is very good as NASA’s top techno bod. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean do well as the most clearly sympathetic senior NASA bods. Up in space, the rest of the crew are very lightly sketched, but Jessica Chastain gives a fine sense of authority to the Mission Commander. But make no mistake this is Damon’s movie – and he dominates both the audience’s interest and the film’s.

The Martian is a very well made, intelligent crowd-pleaser. It’s not a classic – and it’s slightly in the shadow of better movies – but it’s brilliantly put together and hugely engaging. The second half of the story is less compelling and more conventional than the first, but there is more than enough invention and enjoyment there for you to want to come back and see it again.

About Schmidt (2002)

Jack Nicholson is superb as beaten down Warren Schmidt in About Schmidt

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: Jack Nicholson (Warren R Schmidt), Kathy Bates (Roberta Hertzel), Hope Davis (Jeannie Schmidt), Dermot Mulroney (Randall Hertzel), June Squibb (Helen Schmidt), Howard Hesseman (Larry Hertzel), Len Cariou (Ray Nichols)

When you think about About Schmidt, it’s almost impossible not to think about Jack Nicholson. For so long Nicholson has been JACK, a personality so large, so present in the public conscious as the ultimate raging lothario, that most of his performances have been unable to escape it. He has blasted through so many films as a force of nature that what’s almost most surprising about About Schmidt is that Nicholson is so feeble, worn-out, uncharismatic and beaten down in the lead role. Did I also mention he was brilliant?

Nicholson is Warren R Schmidt, a recently retired actuary with an Insurance company in Omaha. As a young man he dreamed of a golden future, but his life has been one of crushing mundanity and boredom (albeit, I will say, clearly very well paid!). Schmidt has become a cowed, average, hollow man – the sort of man who urinates sitting down because his wife insists he does so and whose idea of defiance is to pop out for a milkshake. After his wife (June Squibb) suddenly dies, he is forced to deal with the fact that he is actually largely estranged from his idealised daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) and that he despises her decent-but-no-hoper fiancée Randall (Dermot Mulroney). Can he make her abandon the wedding?

Alexander Payne has excelled in this style of film: a slightly off-centre social comedy with a mix of a lemony sharpness, satirical wit and genuine warmth for its characters. He perfectly captures the hopes and dreams of small-town America and the trap of mediocrity and disappointment that these sort of suburban, unremarkable lives can have. About Schmidt does this brilliantly, by counterpoising the Schmidt’s feelings of depression and being trapped with the clearly empty dreams of his daughter’s would-be husband. Not to mention taking shots at the overbearing try-too-hard irritability of Randall’s bohemian family (who seem to celebrate the very failures Warren believes his life has been made of).

Payne works in perfect synchronicity with Nicholson, keeping all the actor’s OTT gestures and mannerisms well in check and pushing him to create a quiet, timid, worn-out man who is beginning to reflect (with some bitterness) on what his life has been and been to suspect (with some dread) what it might be for his daughter. Nicholson’s comic timing and his sense of empathetic sadness are both absolutely perfect. The film uses a brilliant device to let us hear Schmidt’s inner monologue via his writing a series of letters to the African child Ndugo he is sponsoring (hilarious in that he unleashes on this no doubt uncomprehending young boy a series of bitter, reflective and sad cries from the heart).

The film is about the disappointments of life, but each point is told with a dark or wry humour. From Schmidt’s retirement party (an event that everyone seems to attend only out of duty) to the death of his wife (who collapses mid hoovering) there is a dark sense of humour throughout. Nicholson plays these moments with a world-weary sadness that keeps the character grounded. At other moments, he can let rip with a more overt comic touch as he struggles with the distaste and alarm he is far too polite to show as he stays with Randall’s bohemian family (Kathy Bates is very good as the matriarch of this clan, a woman whose laissez-faire attitude is a front for her tyranny).

The film’s plot is brilliantly simple, and is fundamentally about how far Schmidt can go in re-evaluating and re-claiming his life, giving his final years (with his actuary head on he believes he has between 10-12 years left) some sense of individuality. These attempts rotate from sad starry-night imagined conversations with his late wife to awkwardly comedic encounters with a nice couple at a camping site, whose signals he completely misreads. Schmidt is angry – and those moments when it bursts out to Ndugo are hilarious – but as much with himself as anyone else. After all, who do we have to blame more than ourselves? 

Schmidt isn’t even a bad guy. He’s spot on about Randall, a decent enough guy but a hopeless businessman and incompetent chancer. A large chunk of the film’s final act hinges on us knowing that Schmidt is right, knowing that is daughter is making a huge mistake, but also knowing that we’d be as powerless about it as Schmidt is. Because the film, in its darkly comic way, is saying that nearly all of us are on this treadmill – and that nearly all of us can see that others are as well – but we can’t do anything about it or help them get off. We can only watch the gears shifting on.

It’s a brilliant, thought-provoking film, very funny in places – and Jack Nicholson gets to remind us all that he a marvellous, clever and subtle actor, in one of his finest performances since the 1970s. Nicholson’s control and likeability are vital to making Schmidt someone whom we warm to and pity, even while he frustrates. And Payne’s wonderfully directed, empathetic story illustrates a life of tragedy without meaning and dreams, but never scoffs at those who lead them – instead it’s only wistfully sad for what might have been.

Deadpool (2016)

Ryan Reynold swings into action in slightly-pleased-with-itself comicbook satire Deadpool

Director: Tim Miller

Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson/Deadpool), Morena Baccarin (Vanessa), Ed Skrein (Francis Freeman/Ajax), TJ Miller (Weasel), Gina Carano (Angel Dust), Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenager Warhead), Stefan Kapičić (Colossus), Leslie Uggams (Blind Al)

One day (soon?) we’ll reach critical mass with comic book films. Eventually, when every single character who’s ever appeared in a frame of a DC or Marvel comic has appeared on the screen, we’ll surely wonder if we will ever see anything new again. Some may already feel this, so perhaps that explains why Deadpool, which, for all its faults, is a comic book film doing something different, made such a big impact.

Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a mercenary who meets and falls in love with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Discovering he has terminal cancer, he leaves her so she does not have to watch him die, and signs up to a gruesome medical procedure designed to bring out dormant mutant genes that may cure him. It works but leaves him hideously deformed. Wanting revenge, he names himself Deadpool and hunts for a cure to his deformity – scared Vanessa would reject him without it.

What Deadpool does well is wittily flag up the familiar tropes of comic book movies. The film in fact follows each trope to the letter – but at least it has a foul-mouthed cheeky commentary. The big question you have to ask is, can a film really be that smart and different if it basically does something very traditional? If I tell you I’m going to perform a tired magic trick you’ve seen before, but I’ll do it while pointing up every single cliché of delivery, with panache, does it matter the magic trick is still as tired as I said it was at the start?

That’s what Deadpool is – the same old ideas, re-packaged in a different way, so juvenile and cheeky that for a beat or two it feels like something new, which it manifestly isn’t. It might not take itself seriously, but it also doesn’t really develop into something unique. The film opens with a neat comic riff on credits, listing not the actors but their generic character traits (“Love Interest”, “Brit Baddie”, “Comic relief” etc. etc.) – sure this is funny and smart, but doesn’t change the fact that the characters themselves are exactly that. 

Deadpool is a faux-clever film. It’s a cheeky piece of college humour: an X-Men film with swearing, sex, fourth wall breaking and gags about other films. There is a sort of witty enjoyment from Deadpool reminding us he knows he is in a movie. But most of the time, he basically behaves exactly like dozens of other lead characters in dozens of other films: he has an emotional arc of fear of rejection and embracing who he is that you’ve seen so many times before.

But the market is so saturated with films like this that the difference of presentation makes you feel for a moment you are seeing something new or clever – rather than essentially a very high budget, end-of-the-pier routine full of cheeky humour. Much of this is pretty funny by the way, but don’t kid yourself that it’s anything clever. And I don’t really think many of the gags here would stand up to repeated viewing – it’s basically just swearing and shocks. The writing is not great, its punchlines and shock beats giving the illusion of intelligent scripting.

Most of its success (in more ways than one) comes down to Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds campaigned for the film to be made for nearly a decade, and he totally nails the character. He thought up many of the best gags, and delivers the entire thing with whipper-snapper quickness and likeability. He gets the balance generally just right, and lands all the film’s big laughs. He’s very good.

But it’s an elevation of material that plays at being clever, while really just being an effective repackaging of the same-old, same-old. Remove the jokes and everything you would expect from a superhero origins story is present and correct. 

So maybe everyone was a little tired of the same old, same old from Marvel et al and wanted something different. That’s the explanation I can think of for why a pretty average film ended up so damn popular. The action when we get it is pretty good, there is some imagination behind the cameras, but it’s basically a teenager’s idea of the best film, like, ever rather than an actually very good film. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it puts a nice shiny new tyre on it.

In Bruges (2008)

Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farell excel in hitman comedy In Bruges

Director: Martin McDonagh

Cast: Colin Farrell (Ray), Brendan Gleeson (Ken Daley), Ralph Fiennes (Harry Waters), Clémence Poésy (Chloë Villette), Jordan Prentice (Jimmy), Thekla Reuten (Marie), Jérémie Renier (Elrik), Anna Madeley (Denise), Elizabeth Berrington (Natalie Walters), Eric Godon (Yuri), Željiko Ivanek (Canadian)

Who hasn’t been dragged somewhere for sightseeing and culture, and longed to be somewhere else (anywhere else?). Most of us right? So how many of us are hitmen hiding out after a job gone wrong? Probably not that many (I hope!). It’s this mixture of the everyday and the bizarre that Martin McDonagh nails so well in his debut film, a sharp as nails, laugh-out-loud but also moving piece of work, possibly one of the sharpest written, well-made debut films you’ll find.

Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) have been sent to Bruges to hide out for a few weeks after a job gone horribly wrong in Dublin. Ken is fascinated by the city, its culture and buildings and enthusiastically buys a guide book. Ray responds like a surly, miserable kid and is desperately unimpressed with everything he sees. Their long weekend in the city becomes increasingly unusual and dangerous as they encounter angry tourists, a racist dwarf (Jordan Prentice) and a drug-dealing film assistant (Clémence Poésy), and dodge the rage of their boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes).

In Bruges is a hilarious piece of film-making, with every scene featuring some moment of black humour, wry observation or un-PC laugh-out-loud comedy. It’s foul-mouthed, sometimes violent, very rude – but also deals with profound feelings of guilt and regret with a real humanity. McDonagh’s work expertly combines jet black comedy, with a warmth for its deeply flawed characters. It’s got a compelling, masterful story that packs character development, incident and intricate plot threads together with assured expertise.

McDonagh’s gift is to make you relate for all of these characters, all of whom are made to feel very real and human. It skilfully leads you to overlook their many flaws and embrace them as people. It says a lot that the most sympathetic, likeable person in the film is a multiple murderer with an (implied) cocaine habit. Everything we learn or see about the characters is designed to make us understand and relate to them more.

Ray initially seems little more than a foul-mouthed thug. But as the film progress – and thanks to Colin Farrell’s masterful performance of brashness covering deep insecurity and vulnerability – we learn he is a rather sweet, even loving man who has stumbled into a career he is deeply unsuited to. Farrell gets these switches perfectly – and his childishness is hugely endearing. From stropping around like a sulky teenager to bouncing up to a film shoot with a childish, excited shriek of joy, he defies expectations. McDonagh throws in a perfect note of tragedy once we find out the mistake Ray made – and suddenly Farrell’s performance overflows with guilt, self-loathing and an unbearable regret that makes you re-evaluate everything you’ve seen him do.

But then that is the whole film right there: it makes you laugh uproariously, then chucks you a curveball and before you know it you are hugely emotionally invested, with a huge sense of empathy for their slowly revealed depths. That goes for every character – even the nominal villains have a sadness, or a firm set of principles, or a certain dignity to them that makes you care. It’s a brilliant piece of writing and directing – and masterfully acted.

Brendan Gleeson plays the other lead in Ken: and few other actors could surely have managed to turn Ken into such a warm avuncular figure, a gentle giant who feels he has come to terms with his choice of career but experiences a subtle shift over the course of the film. Gleeson’s performance is sublime, warm and witty with a careful thread of sadness underneath it – it’s some of his best work. 

But then the whole cast is great. Prentice’s bitterness as the angry Jimmy is brilliant – and he is very funny – while Poésy’s gentle bad-girl is a terrific, radiant performance. The film also has third act dynamite with Ralph Fiennes’ Harry Waters, a foul-mouthed, furiously angry, tour-de-force character who shakes up the whole film – but who has a strange sense of nobility about him, even while he is (hilariously) effing and blinding left, right and centre.

And the film has a brilliantly anti-PC vein of humour. Jokes about drug-taking and dwarves. Foul-mouthed gags about every subject under the sun. Brilliant encounters with “large” American tourists (brilliantly paid off later in the film), jobsworth ticket sellers, angry tourists in restaurants – the film is crammed with hilarious moments. All of it is brilliantly funny because it comes naturally out of characters who feel real.

It’s also so thematically rich. As the characters stand in front of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Last Judgement, you realise that the entire film is a metaphor for purgatory, with Bruges’ medieval beauty carefully chosen to reflect this. Our heroes, laden down with sins, wait in Bruges for an unspecified length of time to discover where they will head next. Amends have to be paid, sins have to be reconciled – and all these threads come together brilliantly in a final, dream-like sequence that you suddenly realise the whole film has been carefully building towards from the start.

So the film, after a scabrous, brilliantly hilarious, darkly foul-mouthed start, slowly becomes something which (while still hilarious) is also a discussion of morality, principles and guilt. We see characters do things we might never have imagined them doing at the start, some are redeemed, others make principled decisions. And it’s really funny. I’m not sure Colin Farrell or Brendan Gleeson will ever be better than they are here. It’s a brilliant play script turned into a wonderful film. A classic.

Three Colours: White (1994)

Zbigniew Zamachowski confronts the problems of revenge in Kieślowski’s Three Colours: White

Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski

Cast: Zbigniew Zamachowski (Karol Karol), Julie Delpy (Dominique Vidal), Janusz Gajos (Mikolaj), Jerzy Stuhr (Jurek), Aleksander Bardini (Lawyer), Grzegorz Warchol (Elegant man), Cezary Harasimowicz (Inspector), Jerzy Nowak (Old farmer), Jerzy Trela (Monsieur Bronek)

The second film in Kieślowski’s ambitious thematic trilogy probably couldn’t be much more different from the first. Whereas Blue was a romantic tragedy, this is a sort of bitter comedy, a kind of anti-farce if you like. Here, the themes of equality are much more about getting even rather than all men being equal. Just as Blue looked at the negativities of liberty, this looks at the dark side of equality, and the blinkered tunnel vision we follow in order to get ourselves even.

Polish hairdresser Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is divorced in Paris by his French wife Dominique (Julie Delpy). In quick succession, Dominique strips him of his home, access to their bank account, his passport and his share of the business, and takes another lover. Reduced to homeless penury on the streets of Paris, Karol finally finds a way to get home to Warsaw by befriending sad-sack successful businessman Mikolaj (Janusz Gajos), a fellow Pole, on the Métro. With Mikolaj’s help, Karol finds himself back home and soon in a position to start scheming his revenge.

White is, let’s be honest, a lot less of a triumph than Blue. That was a film that combined stunning visuals, directorial invention, profound depth and emotion. It was a story that looked at universal themes from a fascinating series of new angles. White,however, is more of a shaggy dog story. It feels like it’s aiming for some sort of Chaucerian fable, but it never really goes anywhere in particular, and it never really engages as much as it should while it tries to get there. While it’s not unentertaining film, it’s at best a good one rather than a great one.

My main problem is that Dominique’s character just never clicks. Why does she do the things she does? No idea. We are never given any insight into her character – she remains a cipher, bordering on a trope of the wicked beautiful seducer. Why does she jilt Karol? Surely it can’t be because of his (rather obvious) impotence ever since he arrived in France, and felt isolated in his new home? Why does she take such a delight in persecuting him, even down to audibly having sex with her lover when he calls her (“Perfect timing” she says before getting frisky)?

It’s hard not to get the sense of a film which has a slight suspicion of women. I don’t imagine that this a suspicion Kieślowski  in any way shares – sensitive and humane portrayals of women are central to his films (not least Blue) – but when the only female character in this is the distant and unknowable Dominique it’s not good. Without any sense of why she has done the things she does, it’s hard to feel comfortable with the semi-comic destruction of her Karol plans.

But then that is part of the film’s point: Karol is obsessed (without even really knowing it) with his wife. Not even so much with revenge for that matter – just getting the chance to take on his wife in a one-sided struggle makes him feel closer to her. The only possession he takes home from Paris is a bust that reminds him of his wife (and which he painstakingly repairs after it is smashed to pieces). Much as tries to build a new life, it’s a monofocus – he only gets what he gets in order to use the resources against his ex-wife. 

So equality is in Kieślowski’s design, not a good thing. Shy, sweet Karol basically ends up entrapping himself and his wife in equally frustrating positions: she in prison, he faking his own death without a penny. What was the point for Karol? No wonder he looks up at her in prison with tears rolling down his face – he’s still in love and he’s got nothing to really show for his equality, other than their joint misery.

All of this sits alongside Kieślowski’s brilliant understanding of post-Cold-war Poland, a bustling land of opportunity to make a quick buck, where simple peasant farmers can be bamboozled out of their land by smarter guys who know businesses from the West are just dying to buy up properties. Karol shares this understanding of Poland. No wonder he’s all at sea in the rest. The instant he arrives back he’s delighted, relaxed and more confident – “I’m home!” he cries joyfully, even when his first view on arriving in Poland is a mass rubbish dump. 

Moments like that show Kieślowski’s dry comedy. There are plenty of other moments, helped by Zamachowski’s pretty lovable performance of the naïve-but-growing-in-confidence Karol. Karol and Mikolaj (an excellent Janusz Gajos) put together quite an excellent double bill of bromance laced with darker themes of depression (it’s no real surprise who Mikolaj is talking about when he tells Karol that he will help him if Karol can help his “friend” who wants to die but can’t kill himself). Karol’s hapless fate in Paris raises a few smiles, as does his surreal escape stuffed in a suitcase.

But there aren’t quite enough of them. Too much of the film either doesn’t connect or hold together. I could have certainly done without Karol’s sexual prowess returning once he is confident and rich in Poland (yawn!). Dominique’s non-character remains a serious problem, and there just isn’t enough meat on the bones here. Compared to the richness of the first entry in the series, this feels remarkably empty. It’s also a lot less visually arresting and imaginatively done than the first film: I’m already struggling to remember any of the visuals.

Kieślowski may well have wanted a sort of anti-comedy to be the pivot of his trilogy, but it doesn’t really work here. He ends up with something that feels so slight and underdeveloped that it doesn’t stick with the viewer, and doesn’t engage them either. While it has moments, as you would expect from a great director, and some very good actors, it doesn’t have nearly enough of them.

Alfie (1966)


Michael Caine excels as amoral cockney moralist lothario Alfie

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Michael Caine (Alfie), Shelley Winters (Ruby), Millicent Martin (Siddie), Julia Foster (Gilda), Jane Asher (Annie), Shirley Anne Field (Carla), Vivien Merchant (Lily), Eleanor Bron (Doctor), Denholm Elliott (Abortionist), Alfie Bass (Harry), Murray Melvin (Nat)

Is there a more “swinging Sixties” film than Alfie – the story of a cockney wideboy interested only in “birds” and having a good time? On the surface it captures the attitude of the 1960s, with free love, thumbing your nose at authority, and having the sort of fun the wartime generation frowned on. But it’s a more interesting film than this, which criticises the emptiness of the 1960s by showing us Alfie’s selfishness and loneliness. Sure he has a good time now and again – but would anyone really want to live like this forever?

Alfie (Michael Caine) is a handsome chauffeur with a never-ending stream of affairs, commitment constantly avoided. The film follows these entanglements, starting with his needy girlfriend Gilda (Julia Foster), the mother of his child, whom he constantly cheats on. When Gilda finally leaves him – and Alfie loses touch with the son he has become fond of – a medical condition ends up with him in a convalescent home, where his affairs include the wife of a fellow patient, Lily (Vivien Merchant). Later relationships with a young hitchhiker (Jane Asher) and a rich American woman (Shelley Winters) similarly lead to disappointment.

The main thing that makes Alfie last (possibly the only thing) is Michael Caine’s sublime performance. Caine is on screen the whole time, and the film is spotted throughout with his casual direct-to-camera addresses. Caine’s charm and likeability work perfectly for this device, winning the audience over. But Caine never falls for Alfie – even if many audience members clearly did. Caine’s constantly demonstrates Alfie’s hypocrisy, shallowness, meanness and selfishness. Sure he recounts his actions with wit, but most of these actions are extremely shitty. But right from the start there is a charismatic, lothario swagger to him – and a cheeky charm – that makes you like him.

But his general shittiness is more obvious today than back in the 1960s. Then the amount of sex probably shocked viewers the most. Today it’s Alfie’s inability in to refer to women as anything but “it”, like some smooth Richard Keys. His attitude to women is appalling – he describes Jane Asher’s hitchhiker like some sort of floor-cleaning, bed-sharing car. Alfie avoids any sort of emotional connection at all with his conquests, and the film makes clear that this has left him empty and lonely, feelings he buries deep down.

In fact, the film is most telling at the moments when Alfie doesn’t turn to us with that confident grin and place a self-serving spin on what just happened. Seeing his son being warmly embraced by Gilda’s new husband (at the christening of their new child), Alfie can only skulk quietly at the back of the church – as scared to meet our eyes as he is those of this family he could have had. His love for his son is something Alfie refuses to accept himself – but his feelings are all too clear at his physical collapse on losing access to his child, and his later tear-stained reaction to Lily’s abortion.

Ah yes the abortion scene. Probably the highlight of the film – if only because its intense seriousness is so different from the rest of the film, and Alfie’s wheedling weakness and whiny self-justification become all the clearer. His complete lack of principle in sleeping with his only friend’s wife (“Well what harm can it do?”) of course results in her pregnancy. And Alfie is all at sea, firstly with Vivien Merchant’s expert portrayal of distress, pain, shame and guilt as Lily – and with Denholm Elliot’s perfect cameo of grimy, resentful disillusionment as a struck-off doctor turned back-street abortionist. Just to bang the nail on the head, Alfie leaves Lily alone after the operation (telling the audience that there’s nothing he can do anyway, right?). He may be horrified later at what he has done, and may feel moments of empathy – but has he really learned anything?

The film is full of these moments where we are invited to understand that Alfie is not leading a life for us to aspire to, but one we need to avoid. It’s left Alfie alone, miserable and abandoned. For all the jaunty 1960s vibe, and Alfie’s charming cheek, he’s not a happy man but a desperately shallow one. And he’s even got a shelf life for this way of life: “He’s younger than you are” one of his lovers tells him late in the film, as she leaves him. Because what has Alfie got in his life? When he runs through a checklist in the film’s closing monologue (“a bob or two, some decent clothes, a car. I’ve got my health back and I ain’t attached. But I ain’t got my peace of mind”) the emptiness of his life is all too clear.

Caine’s brilliance is to make this tragic, empty, selfish man seem attractive and exciting – while also never losing sight of what a complete shit he is. It’s a great performance and he dominates the entire film. He plugs perfectly into the hip, light touch that Lewis Gilbert directs the film with, and the entire film has a layer of cool on it that works rather well. What makes the film last today though is its shrewd analysis of the empty, soulless, coldness that underpins living your life like this – and how the sort of shallow, no consequences, no emotional investment bouncing around Alfie has just leaves you alone and growing old.

“What’s it all about?” You can argue the answers are buried in this film – but Alfie never spots them.