Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Cameron’s action masterpiece, a film Arnie possibly owes his whole life too

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger (T-800), Edward Furlong (John Connor), Linda Hamilton (Sarah Connor), Robert Patrick (T-1000), Joe Morton (Miles Bennett Dyson). Earl Boen (Dr Silberman), S Epatha Merkerson (Tarissa Dyson), Jenette Goldstein (Janelle Voight), Xander Berkeley (Todd Voight)

Schwarzenegger always said he’d be back. And if there’s one film that perhaps explains the, otherwise fairly inexplicable, success of this former body-builder who can’t really act as one of the greatest film stars of the early 1990s, it’s Terminator 2. And this film makes quite the calling card, as it can make a strong claim to being one of the greatest action films and one of the greatest science fiction films of all time. Its influence permeated Western culture – quotes from it are recognised all over the world – and its brilliant mixture of Armageddon-tinged high-brow time thinking with truck chases and lots of shooting has led to increasingly feeble attempts to recapture the magic with innumerable crappy sequels.

After the events of the first film, John Connor (Edward Furlong) is now a tearaway teenager while his mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) is in an institution. So: perfect time for Skynet to send back another Terminator to take out the future leader of the resistance. The resistance sends back its own champion. But, handy-dandy, which is which? Is Arnie playing the baddie once more? Or is Robert Patrick’s unnaturally still non-descript looking fella really an evil Terminator? The answer is only a shock to anyone who has been living under a rock since 1991 (even the film’s original publicity gave the answer away). Soon Arnie’s reprogrammed good Terminator and the two Connors are on the run from Patrick’s liquid metal shape-shifter – and hatching a plan to prevent original Skynet inventor Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) from finishing his life’s work.

Terminator 2 hasn’t dated a bit. It’s still one of the very best rip-roaring, balls to the wall, action films ever made. It is essentially set piece after set piece – but with the set pieces strung together with intelligently written scenes that juggle interesting themes with sharply drawn, realistic characters. Cameron’s direction is, I might almost say, faultless. The film balances bangs and shoot-outs with such impressive zeal and imagination that you will wear out the edge of your seat. But the main reason these sequences work so well is because you care so deeply for the characters in the film, you invest so much in the story of the movie.

I think it’s possible no one does this sort of thing better than James Cameron. Certainly no-one ever gets more out of Schwarzenegger than his directing Svengali. Perhaps because only someone as dementedly determined as Cameron would never feel intimidated by an ego as large as Arnie’s. Cameron gets here, hands down, Arnie’s greatest ever performance. No wonder Arnie has tried to re-launch the franchise so many times, he’s never been able to recapture the magic from this film. Gifted with the ability to learn, here the Terminator becomes (within its robotic programming, perfect for the stiffness of Arnie’s skill with dialogue) a surrogate father figure for John, a creature increasingly capable of caring for and emulating human behaviour. And Cameron draws out of Schwarzenegger a performance striking for its growing mellowness and gentleness, its slowly developing emotional openness and humanity. 

It should, by rights, be corny as hell – the saga of a drifting boy given some shape and purpose in life by a father figure who showers him with love and attention. But it really works. Cameron understands perfectly when to throttle back on any possible schmaltz, and instead keep the characters strikingly real. Connor is a surly teenager, but also someone looking for love. The Terminator understands humanity more and more, but is still a machine. The barriers make the moments when emotions force their way through genuinely moving. And it also means that you deeply invest in this rag tag group of people staying together and saving each other.

And the stakes are against them when they are up against an opponent as fearsome as Robert Patrick’s shape shifting T-1000. Cameron’s initial concept for the Terminators – before the studio suits pushed the fortunate casting of Schwarzenegger on him – had been for them to be non-descript looking, average types. Patrick, with all due respect, fits that exactly – and has the additional dark sting of being disguised as a cop almost throughout. He gives the part a cold, mechanical chill, a total lack of empathy or any emotion that contrasts with the growth of those abilities in our hero Terminator.

The special effects used to create the liquid, shape shifting T-1000 were ground breaking at the time (and contributed to this being the most expensive film ever made) and they are still bloody impressive today. The T-1000 effortlessly shifts between states and skilfully reforms its body to become new people. When under attack, it convincingly has holes blasted into it from shot guns, becoming strange Thing-like abominations before restoring its original shape. It looks extraordinary – helped as well by the steel-like chill of the film’s cinematography that covers every shot in the cities and much of the film’s second half in an icy blue.

Cameron’s film has that icy feel to it, as we never allowed to lose the dread of the future apocalypse. In fact, Sarah Connor is herself a constant physical reminder of it. Played by Linda Hamilton with the sort of fire and determination that turned her into a cult figure, Sarah Connor has pumped herself up to the Nth degree for the wars to come. However, she is a damaged, tragic figure, lost in grief, whose every dream is haunted by visions of dreadful nuclear Armageddon. How could you forget what is at stake, when it’s in every shot of Linda Hamilton’s eyes?

That’s even before the high-stakes action Cameron throws at the screen. The film is built structurally around four, equally different, action sequences and, while each of them has dim echoes of events we saw in the previous Terminator film, they are delivered with such panache and aplomb that it doesn’t really matter. Cameron of course manifestly understands that these sort of sequences mean nothing at all anyway unless we care about the characters involved, so the narrative focus of the film is tightly concentrated on no more than five characters, each of whom we see learn, grow and develop as the film progresses (even the evil T-1000 excels himself by becoming more smarmy, vile and even sadistic as the film progresses).

Because, much as you might want to mock some of the comedic buddy play between John and the Terminator, it adds an emotional heart and heft to the film. It’s two characters who have no real emotional connections at the start of the film, learning over the course of the film to love each other. Yes it allows for some wonky, dorky comedy from Schwarzenegger – a well the series would drain dry in future films – but it works an absolute treat here. Throw in Linda Hamilton as the archetypal cold warrior (wisely she passed on most of the future sequels that were to follow) and you had a pretty much perfect family unit to invest in.

Cameron also manages to give the film a gloomy but not domineering sense of dread, but punctures it with hope. It’s a film that is all about the future impacting the past – but also keen for us to understand that the future is not written, that our fates are not set, that both can be what we make of them. The film’s conclusion (changed from the original ending) of an empty road, heading we know not where, is a neat visual metaphor for our unknown futures. It may be a dark, forbidding, road – but we don’t know where it’s going for sure.

Terminator 2 is one of those cast iron classics that never gets old. It’s also the last Terminator film you ever need to see. All other entries are little more than superfluous retreads after this. It’s a pitch perfect balance of action and emotion and it’s always a treat and never a chore to watch it.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

Eddie Redmaynes wades his way through the murky Crimes of Grindelwald

Director: David Yates

Cast: Eddie Redmayne (Newt Scamander), Katherine Waterston (Tina Goldstein), Dan Fogler (Jacob Kowalski), Alison Sudol (Queenie Goldstein), Jude Law (Albus Dumbledore), Johnny Depp (Gellert Grindelwald), Ezra Miller (Credence Barebone), Zoë Kravitz (Leta Lestrange), Callum Turner (Theseus Scamander), Carmen Ejogo (Seraphina Picquery), Claudia Kim (Nagini), William Nadylum (Yusuf Kama), Kevin Guthrie (Abernathy), Brontis Jodorowsky (Nicolas Flamel), Derek Riddell (Torquil Travers)

What were the Crimes of Grindelwald? Well the main one is this film. Grindelwald does what we thought might have been impossible – he features prominently in the first flat-out bad Harry Potter film. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a near incomprehensible mess of clumsy set-up for future plots, tedious side-plots, poorly executed drama and a vast array of not particularly interesting characters struggling through not particularly interesting events with low stakes. I feel asleep twice for a few moments in the film. There is very little in it to recommend.

Dark wizard Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) opens the film by escaping from captivity and flees to Paris. There he plans to – well to be honest I’m not terribly sure what he is planning to do at all. I think it involves something about world domination. Also it involves locating and winning to his side mysterious young wizard Credence (Ezra Miller) from the first film. Meanwhile Grindelwald’s old friend (or was it more? The film ain’t saying) Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) sends Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to Paris to find Credence first. Lots of things sort of happen after that, but most of them are building up to the next three (three!) films.

Three films? Seriously? Was that something they had in mind from the start? It feels a lot more likely it’s an idea that came out of the financial success of the first film, rather than any artistic decision. It’s certainly very hard indeed to see many narrative, tonal or thematic links from the first film carrying across to this one. This one feels like it comes from a completely different type of story. More than anything, the film-makers seemed to desperately want to forget the whole “fantastic beasts” angle we started this damn thing with. The odd beast is thrown in every so often to keep ticking the title box, but this flies off (or tries to) into such different, would-be darker, stakes that the beasts never feel a natural link. This is a film that wants – with its muted palette, murders, darkness and (in one supremely misjudged moment) a Holocaust reference – to set us on a dark path to future misery and war. Whatever happened to chasing beasts around to catch them in a suitcase?

Instead the film doubles down on Potter-lore.  You virtually need a PhD in the Potterverse to keep on top of what’s going on. Spells, objects, phrases, charms and incantations are thrown in all over the place, with very little explanation for the audience. Now I can roll with this a certain amount, hell we’ve all read the books and seen the films, but there are at least a few things in here that could desperately do with some reminders for the audience (what is an obscurus again?) so that we can understand their contextual importance. Instead the film barrels along, throwing plot points all over the place and ramming information into our ears.

In fact, most of the film is like an epic info-dump of material designed to set up stuff for later films. Again, you can’t help but feel that they suddenly realised after completing the first film that if they were going to spin this out into another multi-volume series, there were lots and lots and lots of plot threads they hadn’t even attempted to introduce at the start. Instead of taking a bit of time to build these things in and make us care about them, this film throws them into the mix as quickly as possible to make up for lost time.

In all this mass pile of information thrown at us, the film could really do with less going on. There is a massive, red-herring- filled plot about a character’s family history that takes up loads of screen time and eventually turns out to mean absolutely nothing at all. This is a misdirection that could work well in a book – but in a film as crammed and packed as this one, it makes you tear your hair out. How long did we spend on this and it means naff all at the end!

In fact, you can’t help but feel that Rowling as tried to write a book here rather than a film. These sprawling bits of wizarding lore, universe building, red herrings and other plots would have worked really well if she had 500 pages of prose to explore and build them in. But she’s not experienced enough a screenwriter to make them work well here. If another scriptwriter had adapted her ideas into something that works as a screenplay – the sort of focused work that changed the sprawling Order of the Phoenix into a tightly focused couple of hours – the film would be far better.

But instead, the film feels like everyone has got far too used to producing these epics, to a certain style of making the films. There is a lack of fresh ideas here, with a lack of independent or new eyes to see the whole and suggest how an outsider could see it. This also extends to David Yates’ direction which, while competent and well managed as ever, now feels like he has run out of ideas of how to film this wizarding stuff in a new way, which is fair enough after five films. It’s a film that desperately needs fresh new blood in it, and a universe that needs the sort of creative kick-up-the-backside that Alfonso Cuaron gave in The Prisoner of Azkaban.

You feel sorry for some of the actors carried across from the first film. Dan Fogler has so little to do that he would have been better off not being in the film. His absence (for instance, if his memory wipe from the previous film had stuck) would at least have been motivation for the actions of Queenie in this film, who gets a rushed and nonsensical character arc that seems to completely change the character we got to know in the first film. Katherine Waterston is saddled with virtually nothing as Tina.

Instead, far more time is given over to Johnny Depp. Depp’s casting was controversial to say the least – and not worth it. Depp gives one of his truly lazy, eccentric performances – aiming possibly for brooding intensity, he instead lands out dull and underwhelming, a charisma vacuum. It’s hard to see him leading hundreds of followers in a revolution. Jude Law does far better as a twinkly Dumbledore (even if his performance bears little resemblance to Gambon or Harris), and his scenes are the highlights of the film. The film, by the way, shies cowardly away from any real depiction at all at the alleged love affair (which Rowling talks about) between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, presumably because it would make the film a harder sell in China.

And what of our hero? Well Eddie Redmayne is still charming, but his character feels out of step with the increasingly darker tone the film aims for. He’s also saddled with a supremely dull and unengaging sort of love-triangle with his brother (a forgettable Callum Turner) and ex-girlfriend and brother’s fiancée Leta Lestrange (an out of her depth Zoë Kravitz). The film talks a bit about the troubled relationship of the Scaramander brothers – but is so rushed it never has time to really show us any of this, so instead has to tell us about it, even though everything we see basically shows their relationship as being reserved but loving.

But then that’s just par for the course of this underwhelming and deeply uninvolving film. The stakes should feel really high, but they never do because to be honest you are never really sure what they are. The film ends with the expected fire filled wizarding special effects stuff – but honest to God I had no idea what was going on, why it was happening, what was the danger or where it came from. It just felt like the film needed to end with a bang. There are moments of this film that should have had some emotional force but they don’t because it’s so crammed to the margins with plots, superfluous characters (many of whom are introduced with fanfare and then barely appear in the film) and pointless digressions that when things happen to characters we care about from the first film, it doesn’t carry the force it should. Five films of this? I’m not sure on the basis of this I’d want to see another five minutes. A major, major, major misfire.

I, Tonya (2017)

Margot Robbie triumphs as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya

Director:  Craig Gillespie

Cast: Margot Robbie (Tonya Harding), Sebastian Stan (Jeff Gillooly), Allison Janney (LaVona Golden), Julianne Nicholson (Diane Rawlinson), Bobby Carnavale (Martin Maddox), Paul Walter Hauser (Shawn Eckhardt), Caitlin Carver (Nancy Kerrigan), Bojana Novakovic (Dody Teachman)

In 1994, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) is the bad-girl of ice skating. From a working-class Portland background, with a domineering mother (Allison Janney), she struggles to be accepted in the upper-class world of ice skating. After some success, including becoming the first American ice skater to complete two triple axel jumps, she constantly finds success undermined by her own failings and indiscipline, and the influence of her wastrel, abusive husband Jeff (Sebastian Stan). When competing with rival Nancy Kerrigan for a place on the 1994 Winter Olympic team, Tonya encourages her husband to send Kerrigan threatening letters to put her off. What happens instead is an attack on Kerrigan that breaks her knee – and the fallout will have devastating consequences.

I,Tonya is much more than a film about an attack on a rival skater. Tonya (in the film) complains that the event (which she claims to have had so little to do with) has overshadowed her whole life, but that’s not a mistake the film makes. The film is instead a brilliant deconstruction of class and media in America. Tonya struggles in the world of ice skating because she comes from a working-class, trailer-trash background. This leads her to grow up with several chips on her shoulder, aggressively acting out against judges and fellow competitors, because she wants to belong but never feels she does. In a country that likes to pride itself that it doesn’t have the sort of class system the UK has, it’s a striking commentary on how Tonya completely fails to escape the impact of her poor, violent background – and uses it as a justification and excuse for everything that happens to her in the film.

Her background also makes it every easy for the media to cast Tonya as a villain, first as the difficult punk of ice skating, later as the Machiavellian arch schemer of a vile plot. The worst part of this is – like the reality stars of the 00s who would follow her – Tonya feels she needs to keep playing a role in order to “stay in the public eye”. In turn, the media – largely embodied here by Bobby Cannavale’s delighted media commentator, who gleefully recounts every key moment of the film in a smug series of talking head interviews – keeps the pressure on, puffing her up into whatever it requires her to be to fill a 24 hours news cycle. It’s surely no accident that the film ends with camera moving away from Jeff’s house, while news of OJ Simpson’s arrest plays on the television.

And why does Tonya fit herself into this role? Because, the film suggests, she is a victim who has confusingly absorbed her victim status into her personal relationships and self-value. Treated appallingly be her domineering mother, and hit constantly by her worthless husband, Tonya clearly believes that she is personally of very little worth. If she is so used to being an angry, raging punchbag at home, is it any wonder that she settles into that role publically? To the extent that, throughout, Tonya constantly sidelines or pushes away the more supportive people around her, like Julianne Nicholson’s (who is very good) dedicated coach.

The film handles this range of complex psychological and social themes with aplomb. In a neat touch, the film acknowledges that the events of its narrative are so controversial that everyone in it has a different view. The film is framed through a series of talking head interviews with the leading players (played by the actors) twenty years on. Each of them tells a contradictory version of the story and around the “incident”. The film, bravely, gives some weight to all these viewpoints. It’s brilliantly handled, as we see certain scenes from the perspectives of different characters, which makes them much easier to relate to. Gillespie also has a lot of fun with the film leaning on the fourth wall – frequently characters turn to the camera mid-scene for a few words of commentary, sometimes to stress a point, other times to deny the thing we have just watched ever happened. 

The eclectic and dynamic storytelling works an absolute treat, and Gillespie gets the tone absolutely right. While dealing with serious themes, the film is also blissfully funny. Much of the fourth wall humour is brilliant. While taking the characters seriously, the film is also written with a real dark wit. And (once you remind yourself that Kerrigan’s career was not seriously affected by the attack), the build up to the scheme itself, and the feeble cover up, is hilarious. Everyone in the chain of events is stupider than the person above them. Tonya is no genius, her weak husband is a clumsy fool, his friend Shawn an idiotic fantasist, the men hired to attack Kerrigan almost unbelievably stupid. The inevitable crumbling of the plot is hilarious in its disintegration.

It works as well because of the strength of the acting. Margot Robbie is superb as Tonya. She fills her performance with empathy for Tonya, but never lets her off the hook – Tonya never takes responsibility at any point for anything she does. Robbie gets the balance just right between the “little girl looking for love” vulnerability of Tonya, mixed with the bitterness and rage that always lurks just below the surface. She acutely understands the messed up psychology of someone who has been treated badly by everyone around her, and then finds it impossible to form a healthy relationship with the world.

On Oscar-winning form, Allison Janney rips into the sort of part that must have (rightly) looked like a total gift on the page. It’s a scene-stealing role: Harding’s mother is a foul-mouthed bully whose every other line is a zinging put down or resentment-filled burst of cruelty. Janney, however, keeps the part real: there is always a sense that somewhere in there, she genuinely feels she is doing what’s best for her daughter, even if her methods are completely misguided. Sebastian Stan is equally good as Tonya’s weak-willed, not-too-smart husband and Paul Walter Hauser is hilarious (as well as a remarkable physical match) as Shawn. 

I, Tonya is a very smart, very funny piece of social satire mixed with tragedy. While being very funny, it’s also sad and rather moving. It has some terrific acting in it and is directed with confident, but not overly flashy, aplomb by Gillespie. As a commentary on the media it’s well judged, and as a look at the impact of class at America it feels fresher than ever.

Zulu (1964)

Michael Caine and Stanley Baker are under siege in classic Zulu

Director: Cy Endfield

Cast: Stanley Baker (Lt John Chard), Michael Caine (Lt Gonville Bromhead), Jack Hawkins (Reverend Otto Witt), Ulla Jacobsson (Margareta Witt), James Booth (Pvt Henry Hook), Nigel Green (Colour Sgt Frank Bourne), Patrick Magee (Surgeon Major James Reynolds), Ivor Emmanuel (Pvt Owen), Paul Daneman (Sgt Robert Maxfield), Glynn Edwards (Cpl William Allen), Neil McCarthy (Pvt Thomas), David Kernan (Pvt Fredrick Hitch)

There are some films so well-known you only need to see a frame of them paused on a television to know instantly what it is. Zulu is one of those, instantly recognisable and impossible to switch off. A few notes of John Barry’s brilliant film score and you are sucked in. Zulu has been so popular for so long, it’s almost immune to any criticism, and deservedly so because it’s pretty much brilliant.

The film covers the battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu War of 1879. Rorke’s Drift was a small missionary supply station, near the border of Zululand with the Transvaal. The British had instigated the Zulu war with a series of impossible-to-meet ultimatums (the Natal government wanted to restructure Southern Africa into a new confederation of British governed states and Zululand was in its way). The British had of course massively underestimated the disciplined, dedicated and organised Zulu armies and the war started with a catastrophic defeat of the British (nearly 1,500 killed) at Isandlwana by an army of 20,000 Zulu (who lost nearly 2,500 killed themselves). Isandlwana took place on the morning of the 22nd January – and by the afternoon nearly 4,000 Zulus had marched to Rorke’s Drift, garrisoned by 140 British soldiers.

The film opens with the aftermath of the Isandlwana defeat (with a voiceover by Richard Burton, reading the report of the disaster written by British commander Lord Chelmsford). The camera tracks over the bodies of the British, as the Zulu warriors move through the camp (the film omits the Zulu practice of mutilating the bodies of their fallen opponents, which is just as well). Action then transfers immediately to Rorke’s Drift where Lt John Chard (Stanley Baker), a Royal Engineer temporarily assigned to the base to build a bridge, is senior officer by a matter of months over Lt Gonville Bromhead (Michael Caine – famously billed as “Introducing Michael Caine”). Chard takes command of the preparations to repel the siege, building fortifications, arming the walking wounded, and carefully making the defensive line as tight as possible to cancel out the Zulu numbers (the exact opposite of what happened in Isandlwana).

Zulu is drama, not history. Much has been changed to make for better drama. Chard and Bromhead were not as divided along class lines. Nigel Green (excellent) plays Colour Sergeant Bourne exactly as we would expect a Colour Sergeant to appear – a tall, coolly reassuring martinet “father to his men” – so it’s a surprise to learn the real Bourne was a short 24-year old nicknamed the Kid (the real Bourne was offered a commission rather than a VC after the battle). Henry Hook, here a drunken malingerer with right-on 60s attitudes towards authority, was actually a teetotal model soldier (his granddaughter famously walked out of the premiere in disgust). Commissioner Dalton is a brave pen pusher, when in fact it was he who talked Chard and Bromhead out of retreating (reasoning the company wouldn’t stand a chance out in the open) and then fought on the front lines. Neither side took any prisoners – and the British ended the battle by killing all wounded Zulus left behind, an action that (while still shameful) is understandable when you remember the mutilation the Zulus carried out on the corpses of their enemies at Isandlwana the day before.

But it doesn’t really matter, because this isn’t history, and the basic story it tells is true to the heart of what happened at Rorke’s Drift. Brilliantly directed by Cy Enfield, it’s a tense and compelling against-the-odds battle, that never for a moment falls into the Western man vs Savages trope. Instead the Zulus and the soldiers form a sort of grudging respect for each other, and the Zulu army is depicted as not only disciplined, effective and brilliantly generalled but also principled and brave. The British soldiers in turn take no joy in being there (Hook in particular essentially asks “What have the Zulu’s ever done against me?”), admire as well as fear their rivals and, by the end, seem appalled by the slaughter. (Chard and Bromhead have a wonderful scene where they express their feelings of revulsion and disgust at the slaughter of battle.)

It’s a battle between two sides, where neither is portrayed as the baddie. We see more of it from the perspective of the defenders of the base, but the Zulu are as ingenious and clever an opponent as you are likely to see. The opening scenes at the court of Zulu king Cetshawayo’s (played by his actual great-grandson) allow us to see their rich culture and their own fierce traditions, grounded in honour (and spoken of admiringly by missionary Otto Witt, played with an increasingly pained then drunken desperation by Jack Hawkins, as he begs the British to flee and prevent bloodshed). Many of the Boer soldiers in the base compare the British soldier unfavourably with his Zulu counterpart. The film goes out of its way to present the Zulu people as a legitimate culture, and a respected one.

But its focus has to be on the British, as this is a “base under siege” movie, and to ratchet up the tension successfully it needs to chuck us into the base, playing the waiting game with the rest of the men. The Zulu army doesn’t arrive until over an hour into the film – the first half is given over entirely to the wait, the hurried preparations and the mounting fear as the seemingly impossible odds start to seep into the British. The men react in a range of ways, from fear, to anger, to resentment, to grim resignation. The first half also plays out the tensions between Chard and Bromhead, one a middle-class engineer, the other the entitled grandson of a General. 

Caine is that entitled scion of the upper classes, and he plays it so successfully that it’s amazing to think it would only be a couple of years before he was playing Harry Palmer and Alfie. Caine nails Bromhead’s arrogance, but also the vulnerability and eventual warmth that hides underneath it. Set up as a pompous obstruction, he demonstrates his bravery, concern and even vulnerability. It’s a turn that turned Caine from a jobbing actor into a major star (Caine originally auditioned for Booth’s part as the working-class Hook. Booth later turned down Alfie). It also meant that Stanley Baker’s excellent turn, in the drier part as the cool, controlled Chard, buttoning down his fear to do what must be done, gets unfairly overlooked.

The film never lets up the slow build of tension – and then plays it off brilliantly as battle commences. Perhaps never on film have the shifts and tones of proper siege combat been shown so well. This is perhaps one of the greatest war films ever made, because it understands completely that war can highlight so many shades of human emotion. We see heroics, courage, self-sacrifice and unimaginable bravery from both sides. We also see fear, pain, horror and savagery from both. Several moments of bravery make you want to stand up and cheer or leave a lump in your throat (I’m a sucker for the moment Cpl Allen and Pvt Hitch leave their wounded bay to crawl round the camp passing out ammunition).

Enfield’s direction is masterful, the first half having so subtly (and brilliantly) established the relative locations and geography of everything at Rorke’s Drift, you never for one minute get confused about who is where once battle commences. The combat after that is simply extraordinary, a triumph not just of scale and filming but also character and storytelling. We are brought back time and time again to characters we have spent the first half of the film getting to know, and understand their stories. Eleven men won the Victoria Cross at Rorke’s Drift (more at one engagement than at any other time in history), and each of the winners is given a moment for their courage to be signposted. All of this compelling film-making is scored with deft brilliance by John Barry, with the sort of score that complements and heightens every emotional beat of the film.

Strangely some people remember this film as ending with each of the garrison being killed – I’ve seen several reviews talk of the men being “doomed”. Perhaps that impression lingers because there is no triumphalism at the end of the film. After the attack is repelled, with huge casualties, the soldiers don’t celebrate. They seem instead shocked and appalled, and simply grateful to be alive. After the final deadly ranked fire of the British, as the smoke clears to show the bodies of their attackers, the men seem as much stunned as they do happy. Bromhead talks of feeling ashamed, Chard calls it a “butcher’s yard”. Duty has been done – but the men were motivated by wanting to survive. The film doesn’t end with high fives and beers, but people quietly sitting, gazing into the near distance. There are small moments of dark humour from the survivors, but never cheers.

It’s all part of the rich tapestry of this enduring classic. Historically, many believe the celebration of the victory at Rorke’s Drift was to deliberately overshadow the catastrophe of Isandlwana (and that the number of VCs handed out was part of this). But, even if that was partly the case, it doesn’t change the extraordinary bravery and determination to survive from the soldiers. And the film doesn’t even try to get involved in the politics of the situation. The men must fight “because they are there” and the rights and wherefores of the war (which the film ignores completely) are neither here nor there. Instead this is a celebration of the martial human spirit, packed full of simply brilliant moments, wonderfully acted and directed, and an enduring classic. It allows you to root for the besieged but never looks down on or scorns the besiegers. It pulls off a difficult balance brilliantly – and is a brilliant film.

The Falling (2014)

Florence Pugh and Maisie Williams deal with tedious coming-of-age antics in The Falling

Director: Carol Morley

Cast: Maisie Williams (Lydia Lamont), Maxine Peake (Eileen Lamb), Monica Dolan (Miss Alvaro), Greta Scacchi (Miss Mantel), Mathew Baynton (Mr Hopkins), Florence Pugh (Abigail Mortimer), Joe Cole (Kenneth Lamont), Lauren McCrostie (Gwen)

Any film set in an all-girls school that succumbs to hysteria, with ominous goings-on that might be supernatural or might all be allegories for coming of age and emerging sexuality, is inevitably going to get compared with Picnic at Hanging Rock. But few films seem to be so desperate to be that film as The Falling does. 

Set in an all-girls school in 1969, at the cusp of the sexual revolution that will soon engulf the whole country, Lydia Lamont (Maisie Williams) and her elder brother Kenneth (Joe Cole) are both obsessed with Lydia’s charismatic classmate Abigail Mortimer (Florence Pugh) – feelings of emotional and sexual dependency that Abigail knowingly encourages and flirts with. After Abigail’s sudden death connected to her pregnancy, Lydia becomes increasingly disruptive at the school and finally becomes “patient zero” in an epidemic of fainting that afflicts the school.

Based on a true story, you can tell that this film is keen to conjure up some sort of deep-rooted mystery at the heart of the girls’ actions, questioning whether they were truly in control of their own actions at this time or under the influence of something else. Is this linked directly to the tragic fate of Abigail – is she in some way possessing the girls, driving them towards this fainting? Or is the fainting just a sort of acting out, as Lydia tries to get over her grief at the loss of her friend?

Frankly, who really cares? It’s pretty hard to get invested in a film that is working so hard to be meaningful that it overshoots the mark and just becomes tiresome. Yeah I get it, teenage relationships can have this unhealthy intensity to them. They can spin out into self-destructive elements. And maybe, if the film had focused more on that rather than trying to suggest some unsettling mystery it might have got further. But with every shot of the British countryside around the school, or the lingering shots on the girls writhing on the floor, or the unsettled terror of the teachers, you feel the film’s attempt to invest these events with meaning.

What you actually end up feeling, throughout this overlong and puffed up film, is impatience at the indulgence of these children. Far from a mystery, the fainting appears to be a tiresome, attention-seeking effort from young girls unable to express and process emotionally the things that have happened to them. There isn’t a single element of the film that makes you seriously consider some ghostly or psychical explanation for the events – they seem, clearly and throughout, to be manufactured by the girls involved. It’s hard to watch it without unsympathetically suspecting that if the adults around them stopped indulging all this nonsense, they’d miraculously recover soon enough. It’s possible to speculate over whether the girls are doing it deliberately or if this is the work of their overwrought subconscious – but while that could form a good premise for a film interested in group psychology, this film seems more interested in pretentious shots of trees. 

As if realising halfway through that it’s not come up with anything compelling yet, the film hastily throws in a poorly developed incest plotline, which is unsettling, illogical, and springs from nowhere. Not content with that, it then shoe-horns a rape into the backstory of a character late on, in a way that is clearly meant to be a dark reveal, but is in fact a really clumsy “obviously this caused all the problems” solution to the questions of the film. The character’s mental health problems and inability to bond with her closest family could have made for a complex and challenging character (and she’s certainly played by an actor who could’ve handled that material). Instead, rape is casually chucked in as a glib explanation for “oh and this is why she’s troubled – ta-da”. It’s cheap and lazy. But then that is on a par with all the sexual awakening content of the film, which is clumsy, clunky and often misguided. It wants to suggest an unsettling fascination with sex, and tie that in with dangerous, subversive ideas. Instead, it just ends up looking like standard teenage experimentation, filmed with a certain amount of style.

This is not to say the film is badly made as such. It looks good and it’s put together well. It’s just trying way too hard. The acting is very good. Maisie Williams is never anything less than watchable as Lydia, and creates a well-drawn character as a girl who goes from easily-led hero worshipper to the troubled centre point of disruption at the school. Florence Pugh is also a revelation as Abigail – a charismatic presence that you instantly believe would be obsessed over by everyone who knows her. Joe Cole is also very good as the creepy, sexually exploitative brother. There are some good performances from the adults, not least Maxine Peake as Lydia’s nervous, agoraphobic mother. 

But none of this cancels out the laboured pretension of the rest of the film, which always wants to let you know how clever it is, and how much it wants you to question the impact of all that dark sexual awakening. Instead, for all the sturm und drang,it ends up looking rather like a collection of silly girls who are acting out. The idea that obsession with Abigail draws rebellious and transgressive feelings from Lydia seems painfully obvious and unoriginal, and the flirtation with incest, rather than invested with meaning, instead feels like a film straining to shock.

The Falling wants to be a great cult classic. Neither of those words can be applied. It’s a well-made but empty spectacle, living in the shadow of other much better films. For all the skill of Maisie Williams and Florence Pugh, it misses the greater depth it is aiming for and settles for being a rather shrill would-be ghost story and a plodding attempt at social commentary.

Creed II (2018)

Sylvester Stallone and Michael B Jordan take to the ring once more in Rocky IV/Creed remake Creed II

Director: Steven Caple Jr

Cast: Michael B Jordan (Adonis Creed), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Tessa Thompson (Bianca Taylor), Dolph Lundgren (Ivan Drago), Florian Munteanu (Viktor Drago), Phylicia Rashad (Mary Anne Creed), Andre Ward (Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler), Wood Harris (Tony “Little Duke” Evers), Brigitte Nielsen (Ludmila Drago), Milo Ventimiglia (Robert Balboa), Russell Hornsby (Buddy Marcelle)

After eight films, in a franchise that has been running for over 40 years, you have to ask if there are any original stories left to tell in the Rocky universe. The answer? Yes there probably are. Does this film tell one? Well no not really, even if there are moments where you feel it wants to. Instead it basically gives us the formula we expected going into it.

Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) is finally heavyweight champion of the world – but why is he so glum? Maybe because he still can’t seem to shake off the shadow of his deceased father Apollo Creed. So he finds it hard to resist when Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), the man who killed Apollo, emerges from disgrace in the Ukraine (I’m not sure the makers of this film realise that the Ukraine is different country to Russia). Drago brings with him his super-fighter son Viktor (Florian Munteanu, virtually mute for the whole film) who challenges Adonis to a title fight. Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) doesn’t approve and wants nothing to do with it. Adonis’ pregnant wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) isn’t sure it’s a good idea. But Adonis gives it a go – and is left hospitalised after a mauling, though Viktor is disqualified in the fight on a technicality. Adonis has to rebuild his confidence from nothing, lay to rest his daddy issues and, of course, take on Viktor in a rematch – stop me if you have heard any of this before.

Because you almost certainly have. This is a film that repackages themes from Creed, the basic plot structure of Rocky IV ,and mixes in elements from several other films to come up with a sort of Frankenstein’s monster that feels familiar rather than fresh. Practically every beat can be predicted in advance, and there are no surprises or challenges to your expectations. Essentially everything plays out so closely to what you might expect, and is so clearly signposted in the film, that it’s almost impossible to spoil. 

Which is a shame as there is a better, more intelligent film in here which is thrashing around trying to get out. There was a film to be made here about the shadows fathers cast over us. After all, Adonis and Viktor are basically fighting the battles of their fathers and adopted fathers rather than their own. For Adonis in particular, his struggles to live in the shadow of his father is hammered home with decreasing subtly as the film goes on. Director Steven Caple Jnr was clearly so pleased with his framing of a shot where Adonis trains while a window with a picture of his father towers above him that he repeated it several times in the film. It’s as far as the film goes to questioning the wisdom of these people being weighed down by legacies.

Because this is a film that is trying to have its cake and eat it. All of the characters close to Adonis oppose his first fight with Viktor – Rocky even tells him it’s not his fight – but come the second fight all these characters are cheering him on in the rematch. It seems the only way to escape your father’s shadow… is to climb deeper under it. (Interesting note: all references to Creed being the son of a girlfriend of Creed’s rather than with his wife are deleted in the film, which feels odd.)

You know what would have been interesting? Perhaps Adonis thinking he doesn’t need to win the fight to match his father’s achievements. Or perhaps Adonis deciding that fighting alone proved his point, and he didn’t need to match Rocky’s success in Rocky IV. Or deciding that he didn’t need to rise to the bait. Instead the film shows him pushing against his father’s legacy – and finally doubling down on it in order to create his own legacy. Thinking about it doesn’t make a load of sense.

It would also have been nice if the intervening years had changed Ivan Drago in some way – but he’s established very early on as a villain, and that’s it. Of course this is partly due to Lundgren’s limitations as an actor – wisely it’s nearly half an hour before Ivan speaks, and he does only one scene in English – but it would have been nice if Drago perhaps expressed some regret to suggest he has changed in some way since 1986. Viktor has an equally unclear trajectory – Ivan’s determination to reclaim glory via his son seems to be leading towards some bust up between them, but it never does (is it just me or does Viktor seem like he almost hates his domineering father?). The film tries to pay this off with a moment of familial affection between the two but it comes from nowhere and seems unclear.

So the story is predictable. So predictable by the way, that the film seriously sags in the middle as we wait (with no tension) for Adonis to decide he will get into the ring again and fight Viktor. It also has a slightly manipulative relationship between Bianca and Adonis (Tessa Thompson is wasted again in a bit of a nothing role – and her musician character is saddled with some of the worst music you’ll ever hear). But it’s still a well made film. The fight scenes in the ring are of course excellent as always. The main actors are all good – Jordan is very convincing and Stallone continues to get a load of pathos from the ageing Rocky.

But it’s just a little bit dull and familiar. There is too much of the same old same old here. Where are the new ideas? Even all these father themes were explored to a conclusion in Creed – why retread it all again? What does this do that is new and different – nothing really. It’s another chapter in their lives. But nothing else. And with the birth of Adonis’ daughter we’ve got to get ready for a whole new series of films in 30 years, as Amora Creed takes on Clubber Lang’s grandson’s nephew in Kid Creed. Or something like that.

Suspicion (1941)

Is Cary Grant plotting to murder Joan Fontaine? Oh the Suspicion.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Cary Grant (Johnnie Aysgarth), Joan Fontaine (Lina Aysgarth), Nigel Bruce (Gordon Cochrane ‘Beaky’ Thwaite), Cedric Hardwicke (General McLaidlow), May Whitty (Martha McLaidlow), Isabel Jeans (Helen Newsham), Heather Angel (Ethel), Auriol Lee (Isabel Sedbusk), Leo G Carroll (Captain George Malbeck)

What do you do when you suddenly start to believe you might be living in a murder mystery? When you begin to think that the person you are married to might just be planning to dispatch you as well? That’s the big suspicion that haunts the mind of Lina Aysgarth (Joan Fontaine), a shy and meek heiress who has been charmed into marrying waster Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant), a lazy spendthrift and playboy. After they elope together, she quickly finds out that Johnnie has no work ethic or talent at all other than spending money. As real estate deals fall through, and Johnnie steals money from his employer to cover his debts, Lina starts to worry that her life insurance is looking more and more tempting to Johnnie.

Suspicion is a decent, middle-of-the-road Hitchcock thriller, which deals with familiar themes of doubt, dread and (of course) suspicion, but with Hitchcock very much in second gear. He’s not helped by the neutering of the source material. The original novel is very much a story of a woman who works out that her husband is definitely trying to kill her. The producers here, however, couldn’t abide the idea that CARY GRANT could be plotting to kill his wife. So the story is rejigged at the end to turn Lina into a silly, paranoid woman and Johnnie into, well yes a playboy, but also one who has been treated badly because of the suspicion thrown at him. This may have flown in 1941, but it’s impossibly sexist today. Plus it means the whole film basically builds towards – well – nothing.

Hitchcock throws in the odd decent flourish – most famously the carefully lit glass of milk that Johnnie carries up the stairs near the film’s end, which may or may not be poisoned. But far too often the story seems to be taking place in a fairytale England, of horses riding to hounds, country villages, Agatha Christie style authors dispensing accidental poisoning advice, and careful class structures. For all the odd moments of danger, the film is safe, contained and as unthreatening as it can get. But the rest is Hitch on autopilot, which feels at time as a remix of the director’s earlier Oscar winning film Rebecca.

That mood carries across to Joan Fontaine as well in the lead role. Fresh off working with Hitchcock on Rebecca, Fontaine essentially recreates the same role again here as the timid, shy, would-be dutiful wife who wants to see the best in a husband who in fact seems dangerous and unknowable. Fontaine won the Oscar for this film – but it feels as much like a compensation award for her previous defeat for Rebecca as it does for Suspicion. Really she does very little here that lifts the film, or stretches her as a performer from her previous role. It’s a retread, and while it’s a trick she does well, it’s a trick she has done before.

A far more challenging performance comes from Cary Grant, who uses the role as a clever meta-commentary on his own persona. Johnnie has all the charm and engaging bonhomie of Grant himself, but all subtly twisted with a selfish superficiality and wastrel greed. Grant walks a very fine line of a man who could be plotting to murder his wife or could just be a greedy chancer – and walks it very well indeed. You always see that Johnnie is bad news, while also understanding why Lina finds him so engaging. It’s a terrifically skilled performance, a lovely riff on Grant’s own screen persona, that shows he’s a far better actor than people often give him credit for – and you feel he is only too willing to embrace the chance to play a weak-willed, opportunistic murderer with little conscience (except of course it turns out he isn’t a murderer). 

It’s a shame that nothing else in the film really rises to the occasion in the same way (although Nigel Bruce gives a very good performance as the gentle, ageing playboy Beaky). The film itself never really seems to be heading anywhere – it even takes a good two-thirds of its runtime before Lina begins to wake up to the fact that Johnnie is far from being the sort of husband women should dream of. It’s a bit slow, a bit too safe, and it largely lacks the element of danger. For the final few scenes, logic seems to evacuate the film as all the clues and hints we’ve had building towards us are shown to be – nothing more than red herrings and the inferences of a silly woman. Because, after all, CARY GRANT can’t be a murderer can he? No matter what he wants.

Jason Bourne (2016)

Matt Damon swings back into action in after-thought Jason Bourne

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Matt Damon (Jason Bourne), Tommy Lee Jones (Director Robert Dewey), Alicia Vikander (Heather Lee), Vincent Cassel (The Asset), Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons), Riz Ahmed (Aaron Kalloor), Ato Essandoh (Craig Jeffers), Scott Shepherd (Edwin Russell), Bill Camp (Malcolm Smith), Vinzenz Kiefer (Christian Dassault), Gregg Henry (Richard Webb)

They say you should never go back. Producers had been begging Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon to get back together again and make another Bourne film. After all, there was hardly anyone asking for a sequel to that Jeremy Renner one was there? But Jason Bourne seems like a film that’s been made after Greengrass and Damon ran out of reasons for saying no. I can’t decide if we can blame them for that or not. But their making the film at all suggests they aren’t really losing any sleep about whether people feel this half-hearted effort has an impact on the legacy of the others.

Anyway it’s ten years later. The world is an increasingly technical place, with people living in an era of increasing social unrest and anti-government fury. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), recovered from his amnesia, now lives off-the-grid – until of course he’s unearthed by his old colleague Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). Parsons is now working with a hacker commune in Iceland, and has unearthed more evidence about the shady CIA programme, Treadstone, that Bourne used to be a part of, and about Bourne’s own recruitment into it. Meeting in Athens in the middle of an anti-government riot, Parsons is killed and Bourne is set on a collision course with the CIA as well as finding out more about the mysterious death of his father 20 years before. 

Jason Bourne is basically going through the motions. There is an attempt to add another layer of mystery around Bourne’s background, but it barely seems to add much to the hinterland of Bourne we’ve already learned about in the last couple of films. Furthermore, I’m uncomfortable with a Bourne here who goes increasingly on a rampage of revenge. Part of the charm – or rather what makes Bourne different – in the previous films was that he was a man who lived in a world of violence, but didn’t care for it himself. He used brutal force only when it was absolutely necessary, and several times chose not to take a personal revenge. Here however, he dispatches at least three people, which doesn’t seem to square with the character as we’ve previously seen him.

Furthermore, the film seems to be struggling to reclaim Bourne as one of the formal good guys, a patriot and American hero. Again part of what made him different in the original trilogy was that he stood outside the government and nations, that (as Greengrass once said) “he’s on our side”. Here he’s clearly less than sympathetic to anti-government forces, and strongly opposed to exposing CIA secrets. In fact he ends up feeling rather conservative here to be honest, and more like the faceless killer that he started as rather than a renegade. 

It’s not helped by the fact that the plot is pretty meh, a remix of different elements from previous films, carefully ticked off to make sure we get everything we could expect. So we get a reworking of various car chases, fights, tense meetings in public locations etc. etc. The film-making is very well done – Greengrass rewrote the book on how to make films like this, and he carries that on here, brilliantly mixing twitchy editing, handheld camera work, immersive film-making and gloomy silences to create a really wonderfully done viewing experience. It’s just more of the same from the originals. The film just ends up living in the shadow of the originals, rather than really forging something out on its own.

Greengrass tries to tap into contemporary ideas. We get the sense of anti-establishment clashes and Internet data scams – but it never really feels like it goes anywhere or coalesces into any real point at the end of it. What is the actual message of this film? There are hints that Tommy Lee Jones’ gravelly CIA Director and Riz Ahmed’s Mark Zuckerberg-lite tech expert are planning some sort of mass intrusion on people’s privacy – but the film never explains this or explores it. It never even makes Bourne aware of it – and since Bourne is our “window” into this world, that means we never understand it either.

I mean, the film is fine other than that, but that’s all it really is. Matt Damon still hasn’t lost it as Bourne – and blimey he should have some inverted award for how little he speaks in this film – and he has not only the physicality but also the worn-down, haunted look of a man who has seen way, way too much. There are professional performances from the rest, but nothing that stretches any of the actors here, with Alicia Vikander particularly under-used as an unreadable CIA agent. 

But that sums up the whole film. Despite all the attempts to build in a modern “torn from the headlines” angle to the story, it feels more like Greengrass and Damon are quite happily (and with some enthusiasm at least) going through the motions in order to pick up a cheque. And I guess that’s fine. It just means we are probably not going to rush to see this again.

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 Book Thief (2013)

Sophie Nelisse is The Book Thief in this worthy, dull adaptation

Director: Brian Percival

Cast: Geoffrey Rush (Hans Hubermann), Sophie Nélisse (Liesel Meminger), Emily Watson (Rosa Hubermann), Nico Liersch (Rudy Steiner), Ben Schnetzer (Max Vanderberg), Heike Makatsch (Liesel’s mother), Barbara Auer (Ilsa Hermann), Roger Allam (Death)

Every year you get prestigious film versions of novels that have soared up the bestseller lists. Some of these are good or even great films. Other are so lifeless, listless and lacking in spirit they leave you wondering what on earth people got so fussed about the original for. That’s the case here with The Book Thief.

In late 1930s Munich, young Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) is fostered with a local decorator Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and his wife Rosa (Emily Watson). Liesel has a fascination with books – despite not being able to read and write – and soon Hans is teaching her literacy. Liesel has a compulsion to “borrow” books – first from a burning pile of Nazi forbidden tomes, then from the library of the wife of the local mayor. But it’s dangerous to draw too much attention to the family, particularly when they are hiding a young Jewish man, Max (Ben Schnetzer). 

I’ve not read The Book Thief. I can’t say that I feel the need to dash out and do so after this bland, middle of the road picture that makes Fascist Germany seem very picturesque. The film largely fails, like so many films before it, to translate the joy of reading into a visual language so the whole “book thief” concept of the title quickly gets pushed to the margins in favour of a series of episodic events based around Nazi Germany and Second World War tropes that already feel a bit tired. 

Percival’s award-baiting film doesn’t seem like it wants to bring (or is capable of bringing) something unique or interesting to the setting, instead going through the motions as prettily as possible. And the film does look great, I will give it that. It also sounds pretty damn good, not least through a playful and rich score from John Williams (his first original score for a non-Spielberg film for decades). But it never really gets anything special from the content. In fact, that very chocolate-box beauty of the film seems to run contrary to the setting of Nazi Germany. The awards-friendly beauty envelops the film like treacle.

The book was written from the prospective of Death, but, the film seems to drop this unique aspect as soon as it possibly can. Again, it’s a sign that the film cannot reproduce what worked in the book – by stripping out its most unique and interesting point, it makes the film feel as generic as it possibly can. Roger Allam is a wonderful choice as the richly voiced narrator – but he’s so rarely used in the film that when Death talks about how fascinating he found Liesel you are simply left wondering why. 

In fact that why is a real problem with the film – it’s what you’ll be asking all the way through. Why? Why is anything really happening? Why is Death telling us how different and striking this story is when everything we see in the film feels pretty familiar? What is the point of this film or the message it is trying to give us? For a film that tackles war, fascism, persecution of the Jews, and childhood innocence, it seems empty all the time.

And that’s the problem with the film. It’s all about the pretty presentation. The characters speak with forced German accents that make it feel even more like a pretty Hollywood Golden Age film. (By the way the bad Germans, like the Nazis, they speak only in German. Make of that what you will.) The acting is pretty good, Sophie Nélisse is a great find as the heroine. But there is nothing special about it at all. It’s seemingly made entirely as a prestige product for potentially winning Oscars. Any of the depths of uniqueness of the book seems to have been shaved off in service of that, and we’ve been left with a chocolate box that feels like it’s lacking the sweet richness you’d expect to find in it.