Materialists (2025)

Smug, contrived and misguided romantic comedy with a self important air

Director: Celine Song

Cast: Dakota Johnson (Lucy Mason), Chris Evans (John P), Pedro Pascal (Harry Castillo), Zoë Winters (Sophie), Marin Ireland (Violet)

In the modern world, what do we look for most in a partner? To professional matchmaker Lucy Mason (Dakota Johnson) “the math is simple” (strap in folks, that’s a phrase you’ll hear a lot): we want someone who ticks plenty of our boxes, offers financial and social security as well as being the right height with the right level of charm. Love, you’ll notice, doesn’t play a role in that. So, what’s Lucy to do when she starts a relationship with ‘unicorn’ Harry (Pedro Pascal), exactly the sort of charming, super-wealthy and tall guy women dream of, just when her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), part-time-actor-and-waiter, suddenly resurfaces in her life. How strong will her principles to make the best deal possible be?

It sounds like the set-up for a romantic comedy. And honestly, it would have made a perfectly good one. Our heroine would be warm and charming even as she professed her cynicism, and the plot focussed on the whimsically old-fashioned concept of matchmaking would have gradually led her to embrace love (along with, inevitably, the poor but adorable love interest.) But Celine Song’s follow-up to Past Lives is a scrupulously dry character study, that wants you to think it’s got a deep and meaningful message about relationships in the world today, but eventually pedals the same rom-com message you imagine it would call trite.

But in a rom-com, the audience knows they’re watching a candyfloss fantasy – Song tries to staple the same “abandon realism here” kind of ending onto her ponderously, pretentious story, despite it contradicting the heroine’s entire personality and the characters’ painstakingly spelled out obstacles, and doesn’t seem to have noticed it makes the whole thing a complete dog’s dinner.

Putting it simply: I didn’t particularly like Materialists, found its smugly superior attitude irritating, its final message deeply confusing, and felt it eventually chickened out of making a real point about modern dating. It’s an art-house film, dressed as a rom-com, trying to fool you into thinking it’s a state-of-the-nation film while letting its lead end up in a reassuring fantasy that only happens in the movies.

Partly based on Song’s experience as a match-maker, the most interesting content in Materialists is its exploration of what makes people choose who to date. I think this is a very interesting topic: at a time when people find it harder to meet (and the financial demands of the modern world harder to cope with), hundreds of thousands of people will be making relationship decisions based on cold hard financial and social facts. And yeah, some of them probably do feel guilty about that, much as Materialists suggests.

But exploring the loneliness of modern life isn’t Song’s goal. Lucy’s clients (bar one) are deliberately awful caricatures – who cares why someone like that would be looking for love, right? The film is solely here for Lucy’s Great Dilemma: How far will she go in a relationship with a box-ticking man she likes, but whom she doesn’t love. (A more challenging version of Materialists might have left out Evans’ unbelievably-handsome-and-decent penniless actor, and just really explored this dilemma for Lucy.)

But instead, the love triangle offers an easy get-out card for Lucy. Because, unlike her clients, Lucy has already met her perfect match. In fact, while her desperate and deluded clients just want to meet someone who can stand to be at the same table sa them, Lucy has two gorgeous, considerate, tall, charming men begging her to let them commit their lives to her. (And who, by the way, can believe a charming, six-foot multi-millionaire who looks like Pedro freaking Pascal can’t get a date?) She’s got the lovely Harry, whose stunning Manhattan penthouse she gazes at awe-struck, like Lizzy Bennett at Pemberly. And there is literally nothing wrong with John, aside from his lack of income (he’s the only actor in the world who doesn’t have an agent and doesn’t want commercial work) – he’s kind and decent and trying to follow a dream. It makes her conundrum a false fantasy.

That’s one of the worst things about Materialists which, in many ways, is even less risky and daring than flipping Pretty Woman. It talks a big game about dating and relationships being economic and social decisions. It bangs on endlessly about this topic but, deep down, clearly doesn’t believe in it at all. Because even an astute analyst of people’s personalities (as Song can be) isn’t brave enough to make a film that commits to its initial proposition. Instead, Song sets up a parade of straw-man arguments that Lucy’s experiences can knock down to reach the ‘correct’ decision.

Ah Lucy. This mystifyingly motivated character who Dakota Johnson struggles to make coherent sense from. It’s not helped by Johnson’s breathy, evenly paced delivery that makes it very hard sometimes to work out what her character is meant to be thinking or feeling. Her air of dead-eyed professional monotone makes sense for her interactions with clients, but her colourless delivery of nearly all her lines made it almost impossible for me to work out when her character’s views change.

It’s not completely Johnson’s fault that Lucy is a deeply irritating character, but it would take a significantly more charismatic actor to make you overlook what a self-pitying, self-loathing waif she is, whose fundamental selfishness isn’t softened by constantly telling us she knows how selfish she is. Are we supposed to be rooting for her, when she essentially treats John (Evans, very likeable, sweet and witty) as an emotional-comfort-blanket, who can be dropped when she gets bored with him? Even when John calls her out on this, by the next sentence he’s absolving her for it.

Then in order to provoke her epiphany, the film clumsily introduces a sexual assault plotline for a supporting character, which exists solely to give Lucy the equivalent of “man-pain” – honestly, if the same plot was put in a film with a male lead, the socials would be burning up with cries of foul. This plotline is ludicrous from start to finish, while simultaneously treating a genuinely serious issue in dating like a ‘problem-of-the-week’ that can be solved with a hug. No male writer could have gotten away with the shallow, clumsy, plot-contrived development – and I don’t think Song should either.

Materialists takes place in a crazy world, where a dating firm has offices across the world, where the Manhattan police don’t respond to harassment call-outs from rapists, where everyone is paying tens of thousands of dollars to hook-up and John seems to be the only poor person. It’s dripping with smug assurance at its own cleverness, while offering a sort of moral message identical to a Sanda Bullock 90s romcom (but with fewer gags and chemistry). It’s frequently ponderous, stuffed with overly mannered dialogue and goes on forever. Having a Michael Haneke inspired closing shot, doesn’t change the fact the scene itself could have come straight out of The Runaway Bride. Materialists was not good.

Random Harvest (1942)

Two superb leading performances hold together a romantic confection of a film

Director: Mervyn Le Roy

Cast: Ronald Colman (Charles Rainier/”Smithy”), Greer Garson (Paula Ridgeway/ “Margaret Hanson”), Philip Dorn (Dr. Jonathan Benet), Susan Peters (Kitty Chilcet), Henry Travers (Dr. Sims), Reginald Owen (Biffer), Bramwell Fletcher (Harrison), Rhys Williams (Sam), Una O’Connor (Tobacco Shopkeeper), Aubrey Mather (Sheldon), Margaret Wycherly (Mrs. Deventer), Arthur Margetson (Chetwynd Rainier), Melville Cooper (George Rainier), Alan Napier (Julian Rainier), Jill Esmond (Lydia Rainier)

Random Harvest is one of the most fondly remembered romances of Golden Age Hollywood – if you want yearning dedication bought to life, this is the film for you. It might also be one of the barmiest films ever made, stuffed with so many outlandish plot developments, hilarious logic gaps and hand-waved contrivances it would put a Netflix soap to shame. You can see why Syndey Pollack and Anthony Minghella eventually abandoned remakes: you can’t imagine a modern audience going with Random Harvest’s essential loopiness and not laughing somewhere along the line. Which is not to say it isn’t beautifully made and winningly bought to life at times.

It’s the final days of World War One, and amnesic soldier “John Smith” (Ronald Colman) can’t remember anything about his life. On the final day of the war, he sneaks out of the asylum and runs into music hall performer Paula (Greer Garson). She takes a shine to “Smithy” and decides to save him. They run away to the country, fall in love, get married, have a baby, he starts to write, goes to Liverpool to start a journalism career… and gets hit by a cab. The collision restores his original memory – but also causes him to forget everything about Paula and his life as Smithy. Instead, he restarts his original life as industrial heir Charles Rainier, presumed dead by his family. While he lives this life for years, Paula takes a job as his secretary “Margaret”. Will he remember who she is?

It says a lot that that summary only scratches the surface of a plot that throws in the kitchen sink in attempting to ring as many tear-soaked tissues out of you as possible. Smithy and Paula carry out their little memory dance over the course of over twenty years. It’s the sort of a film where millionaire Charles only thinks about investigating what might have happened to him in Liverpool when nudged to do so after over a decade. Where the couple enter a ‘marriage of convenience’ as the memory-free Charles and fake Margaret. Where Charles’ owns a major factory in the town where our lovers first met, but neither (a) stepped foot there in 15 years (since the moment he does his memory starts to return) and (b) the heir to the town’s major employer wasn’t recognised by anyone while living in an asylum five minutes walk down the road.

Take it on the merits of logic and conventional narrative and Random Harvest crashes and burns. But this isn’t a film about those things. This is a classic weepie that stole the hearts of a war-torn nation in 1942 (it was the biggest hit of the year). Powered by two committed and emotional performances, if it hits you in the right mood its probably irresistible. The sort of long-term adversity that makes Romeo and Juliet’s look like a casual dalliance (so full of tragedy, the death of their son is literally a throwaway moment). It’s framed with a great, sensual beauty by Mervyn LeRoy and powered by an emotionally throbbing score by Herbert Stothart that’s just the right side of sickly.

Ronald Colman’s performance is quiet, measured and vulnerable (especially in his “Smithy” performance). From the start, he has eyes of hesitant, unknown sorrow and stumbles into a relationship with Paula like a new-born discovering life. Threads of his gentleness and excitability work their way into his Charles persona, tinged this time with the natural confidence of wealth. Nevertheless, Colman makes Charles a man who has dealt with unnerving amnesia by actively not thinking about it, carrying on a watch-chain the key to his “Smithy” home as a subconscious reminder. It’s a fine performance – so much so you can overlook he’s twenty-five years too old (the restored Charles forgoes returning to university, something that looks long gone for Colman).

Just as fine is Greer Garson, fully embracing an emotional roller-coaster as Paula. Introduced as a good-natured music hall singer (and Garson sings a high-kicking She’s Ma Daisy number in possibly the shortest skirt the Hays Code ever allowed), Garson’s warm and playful Paula is drawn towards “Smithy” in ways she almost can’t understand. But it’s a wonderfully different side for an actress so often associated with self-sacrificing wives and mothers: Paula is vivacious, forward and seizes the things she wants from life. It’s the second half – the patient, yearning desperation of “Margaret” hoping her husband will remember her – that leans more into her Mrs Miniver wheelhouse, but Garson mixes this with a real lingering, desperate sadness tinged with just enough hope that her husband might just recognise her.

Both performers overwhelmingly lift this otherwise (frankly) slightly contrived film into something rather sweet and endearing. It is, however, a film that would be even more so if it was shorter: the general morass of missed opportunities, misunderstandings and wrong ends of sticks being grasped would be easier to sustain over 90 than 120 minutes. It’s a rare film that covers so much ground over so much time that it’s lead character is declared dead twice.

The second declaration is Paula gaining that status for “Smithy”, dissolving their marriage and removing (you suspect for Hay’s Code reasons) the risk that Charles might accidentally commit bigamy by marrying his young niece. This is a lovely performance of youthful idealism and earnest devotion from Susan Peters (a tragic accident shortly after curtailed her promising career), and if the whole years-long subplot of the possibility of Charles marrying his besotted niece is a narrative cul-de-sac the overall film would be better without, it does at least mean we get the pleasure of Peters, performance captured forever.

But Random Harvest remains a pure romance: where no less than two women spend decades of their life in selfless, one-sided devotion for the lead and he still comes across as the sort of saintly man cheered by his own factory workers for sorting out a strike. The whole confection is a very fragile thing, but LeRoy carries this fully-loaded glass ornament with pure skill and the performances of Colman and Garson set the bar for classic Hollywood tragic romance. Minghella and Pollack were right – our cynical age can’t believe the nonsense – but on its own terms it still works.

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Ozu’s final film feels like a perfect summation of the rich sense of ordinary life in his work

Director: Yasujirō Ozu

Cast: Chishū Ryū (Shuhei Hirayama), Shima Iwashita (Michiko Hirayama), Keiji Sada (Koichi Hirayama), Mariko Okada (Akiko Hirayama), Teruo Yoshida (Yutaka Miura), Noriko Maki (Fusako Taguchi), Shinichiro Mikami (Kazuo Hirayama), Nobuo Nakamura (Shuzo Kawai), Eijirō Tōno (The Gourd), Kuniko Miyake (Nobuko Kawai), Ryuji Kita (Professor Horie)

Ozu’s final film feels like a luscious, beautifully filmed summation of a life’s work. Deceptively quiet, simple and gently paced, like the best of Ozu’s work it throbs with a deep understanding of the quiet joys, regrets and pains in ordinary life, where the march of time can relentlessly change and mould your world. An Autumn Afternoon returns to themes familiar from Ozu past work – you see it as almost a remake of Late Spring (with Chishū Ryū, effectively, in the same role) –with his subtly effective recognition of how each generation echoes and reimagines the one before. It’s a deeply humane film from a director who understood everyday life better than almost any other.

Once again, a man feels pressured to marry off a daughter. Shuhei Hirayama (Chishū Ryū) is a middle-ranking factory manager, whose home is tended to by 24-year-old daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita). Hirayama’s old school-friend and colleague Kawai (Nobuo Nakamura) suggests an arranged marriage for her. Hirayama quietly lets the subject drift, little motived to shake up his home. His opinions slowly shift as he re-encounters his former teacher The Gourd (Eijirō Tōno), now a down-at-heel noodle restaurant owner, who lives with an unhappy spinster daughter. Does Hirayama sees parallels between himself, Michiko and this pair? Is Michiko bothered either way?

It’s a classic Ozu set-up: the different views and perceptions of the generations, contrasted against each other. In many ways, very little happens in An Autumn Afternoon, but in other ways a whole life-time plays out. Skilfully, with an observing, restrained (Ozu’s final film is stiller than ever) camera, Ozu observes people in the Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter of their lives. In doing so, he captures a particular moment of Japanese history, where pre-War, war and post-war generations confront the world with subtly different outlooks.

In the first darkening of the Autumn of his life, Hirayama is a quiet man with a rich vein of humour. He’s from a generation which sees itself on being more liberal than those before. He meets regularly with a bunch of former school friends, who pride themselves on holding their drink and frequently prank each other in dead-pan comic exchanges. There is a delighted ragging of their friend Professor Horie’s barely concealed sexual glee at his new (younger) wife. They have traditional values (Hirayama assumes marriage will lead to immediate resignation for his young secretary) but enjoy the post-war flourishing of Japan.

Hirayama is comfortable with Americanised Japanese culture, from bottled beers and baseball to American bars and their stools. He drinks too much, make generous offers to others and indulges his children. He’s perfectly happy with the way things are: perhaps because he already fears what his life may be like when his two youngest children flee the nest. It’s a beautifully judged performance from Ryu, genuine, relatable, quietly content but with a subtle sense of sadness and anxiety at change.

There is a sense Ryu’s Hirayama doesn’t want the world shaken, as he has already lived through enough shaking to last a lifetime. He’s a former career Naval officer, who captained a ship in the War. His late wife, it’s implied, died in the American bombing of Tokyo. (Of his children, only two can really remember her, talking about her only wearing trousers during air raids). Bumping into one of his former petty officers, the two men indulge in reminiscences and reflections of what life might have been like in victory (in an American themed bar of all places). Hirayama is drawn to return to the bar again and again, as the barmaid reminds him of his late wife (this small detail would be the entire plot of another film) – although Ryu’s quietly sombreness suggests the memory is to painful to dive into.

But this man contrasts sharply with his children. Hirayama never re-married, and his children have filled the companionship gap in his life. While Michiko matches neatly the traditional view of a Japanese woman as dutiful and guarding of the home (she wears a kimono more than any other female character), his youngest son Kazuo dresses like an American teenager and isn’t afraid to criticise his father. And even Michiko too wants to make her own choices about her life, regardless of the views of others.

The most intriguing contrast though is the marriage between his oldest son Koichi (Keiji Sada) and Akiko (Mariko Okada). Here power dynamics are strikingly different. Both partners work – indeed at one point, Akiko arrives home to find Koichi cleaning and cooking. Decisions are made between them, with Akiko frequently calling the shots. A dispute about Koichi’s plan to spend the excess of a loan from Hirayama on a second-hand set of golf clubs, sees Akiko take firm control of finances (Koichi seems to have inherited his father’s quiet desire not to rock the boat) and has the final say. It echoes, in a way, Professor Horie’s second marriage, where his wife has a level of control over his comings-and-goings that surprises Hirayama and Kawai.

Hirayama may also be quietly disturbed by a vision of what the winter of his life might be like, from ‘The Gourd’, a respected teacher of his childhood, played with a superb desperation and forced good humour by Eijirō Tōno. This once-respected man now works for customers who barely look at him and is totally reliant on a daughter miserable at her life (Ozu quietly watches her break down in tears dealing with her drunken father) and gets embarrassingly pissed at the slightest opportunity when someone else is paying. Considering Hirayama is also a heavy drinker (both men are prone to slumping forward, or swaying on the spot when under the influence) there is a lot that suggests his Winter might not be wildly dissimilar from the Gourd’s.

All of these multi-generational issues are superbly explored by Ozu, all without forced commentary, in a film that is a triumph of his distinctive style of low-angle static cameras, transitions that ground us in location, made even more striking by the film’s gorgeous use of colour (especially its reds). And the film leaves it all open to us to interpret. Because there is no right-or-wrong in Hirayama’s situation: should he let his daughter remain or help her move on and embrace her life?

An Autumn Afternoon concludes with one of the most quietly heart-breaking moments in Ozu’s cinema – under-played to utter perfection by Ryu – as Hirayama sits alone, drink swishing around his guts, singing songs of a martial Japan and facing an unknown future that might see him forced to confront the loneliness he has avoided since his wife died. As the final shots complete of Ozu’s final work – a series of cuts to parts of Hirayama’s home – it feels like a perfect final statement from an artist who looked at the small tragedies of life like no other.

Superman (2025)

A fun, character-led, engaging film that makes a better stab at starting a massive franchise

Director: James Gunn

Cast: David Corenswet (Clark Kent/Superman), Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane), Nicholas Hoult (Lex Luthor), Edi Gathegi (Mister Terrific), María Gabriela de Faría (The Engineer), Anthony Carrigan (Metamorpho), Nathan Fillion (Guy Gardner), Isabela Merced (Hawkgirl), Skyler Gisondo (Jimmy Olsen), Sara Sampaio (Eve Teschmacher), Wendell Pierce (Perry White), Pruitt Taylor Vince (Jonathan Kent), Neva Howell (Martha Kent), Zlatko Burić (President of Boravia), Frank Grillo (Rick Flagg), Bradley Cooper (Jor-El)

In 1978 Hollywood promised to make us believe a man could fly. In 2025 it just wants us to believe a franchise can be reborn. Superman, again, hopes the man of steel can launching a DCU franchise to compete with Marvel (in some ways, hilarious that this is just at the point when the world seems tired of interconnected monolith Comic Book worlds). Has it learned the lesson of the first attempt? I’d say yes: under the experienced hand of James Gunn, Superman is light, fun, exciting and engaging. It may all be (inevitably) heading towards a city-sized smackdown to save the world, but at least it does it with a bit of charm and character work along the way.

What it also definitely isn’t is an origins story. And, in many ways, thank God: is there anyone under this yellow sun that doesn’t know Superman is from Krypton, his alias is mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent at the Daily Planet, he’s got the hots for Lois Lane, his enemy is balding super-genius Lex Luther and he’s got a deadly fear of Kryptonite? Gunn is totally spot-on that we didn’t another hour plus on film laboriously putting all those pieces in place again.

Superman instead throws us straight into the second act: the invulnerable hero (David Corenswet) getting beaten for the first time, outmatched by Lex Luthor’s (Nicholas Hoult) Ultraman who has all of Superman’s powers and none of his personality. It’s part of a doom spiral where Superman’s decisions to unilaterally intercede in a war are condemned for overstepping, painful revelations about his past leave him ostracised by the world and he winds up imprisoned by Luthor who wants to reshape the world as he sees fit. Can reporting (and romantic) partner Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) rope in the Justice Gang (a group of meta-human heroes) to help?

That probably doesn’t give quite a clear enough picture of what a barmy, primary-colour spectacle Superman is. To say it throws in everything including the kitchen-sink at your would be an understatement. Gunn’s film is soaks in love for the scatter-gun, heightened reality of comic books. If the first wave of DCU films were about trying to ground superheroes in the real world, this throws us into a nutsy world where: the Justice Gang are celebrities and their members include a half-hawk woman and a cocky dickhead with a magic ring; the villain has a private pocket universe he’s using as a personal Guantanamo Bay; and battles with giant space monsters are such a regular sight people whip out their phones to film it rather than runaway.

In fact, in this world, Superman facing off against his super-powered foe in a city collapsing into a giant rip in space-and-time actually feels strangely grounded. Compared to floating around on flying platforms through a purple pocket universe or swimming through a river of anti-matter to save a meta-human baby who can change his form into any material on earth, it’s pretty normal. But Gunn’s film embraces its madness with a tongue-in-cheek joie d’vivre: in fact, it’s refreshing that the film acknowledges there is no point trying (once again) to Nolanise this stuff.

In fact, Gunn works hard to make sure any real-world commentary is delivered with a soft-touch. A key sub-plot about the invasion of Jarhanpur (a stand-in for both Ukraine and Gaza) by its neighbour Boravia (blatantly Russia) gets funnelled into a black-and-white moral issue. A Trump stand-in is Boravia’s blow-hard leader, with a thick Russian accent (distancing him from the real thing). Social media gets a kicking (not surprising considering the director’s personal experience on it), but with off-the-wall gags like Luthor owning a legion of engineered monkeys endlessly typing angry comments into the ether to drive algorithms. Metropolis is the only city where a daily paper not only drives discussion, but is the most trusted source of news.

The colourful barmyness also works, because Superman grounds itself in warm and relatable characters. Bought to life with a great deal of humility and relatability (the one area the film plays it completely genuinely) by David Corenswet, this version of Superman embodies the virtues of kindness. He’s endlessly polite and attentive, from his robot servants in the fortress of solitude to his hardest language being “gosh”. He’s dedicated to preserving life (from humane subduing of giant monsters to saving a squirrel mid-fight) and putting others first. He’ll go to great lengths to protect his pet dog Krypto (possibly the most genuinely endearing dog on screen since The Artist).

And it makes a great framework for a film that deconstructs Superman by stripping him of his certainties. Dramatically it’s always difficult to fear for an invulnerable hero, so Gunn’s decision to open with our hero having had the crap beaten out of him (not for the last time in the film) is a good touch. But Gunn also challenges Superman’s moral certainties, in particular with a unique reveal in Superman-lore leaving him questioning everything he thinks he knows about his past. It’s refreshing to see a film challenge superheroes for taking unilateral decisions on behalf of everyone, with even Lois criticising him for a power-grab. Sure, it’s a strawman – there is no doubt Superman’s decision to stop Boravia is the right thing to do – but it’s good to see it discussed and questioned.

Superman uses this to explore characters, in particular the emotional vulnerability of Clark Kent and the bond between him and Lois. There is a refreshing scene where Corenswet and Brosnahan simply sit and talk about his turmoil, while outside the window in the distance a bizarre intergalactic-eye monster is fought by the Justice Gang. (Both a good gag, and a sign of the film’s focus on character). But, unlike other Superman films, Corenswet’s Man of Steel confronts him with the possibility of physical and moral failure on every level. Throw in a Luthor who, for all his man-child antics, carries out some of the darkest, most brutal acts any version of the character has before and this leads to some genuinely affecting moments of grief and guilt.

Gunn combines this genuine interest in character with some engaging use of obscure comic book characters, about him the general viewer has no pre-viewing expectations. Krypto is a genuinely funny addition as a hyper-active chaos pet. Nathan Fillion is good fun as a dickish blow-hard with super-powers. Edi Gathegi is wonderfully droll as the wearily frustrated Mr Terrific. And the three leads make a very effective combo: Corenswet’s selflessness and kindness very well contrasted with Hoult’s petulant arrogance while Brosnahan gives Lane gallons of determination and can-do attitude.

It’s not perfect. A sub-plot about Luthor’s girlfriend is presented as a victim of an controlling relationship and a source of comedy for a desperate neediness. It’s resort to a big-city smackdown is overly familiar, while a few reveals can be seen coming far off. Hoult’s Luthor is a big-swing of a performance that doesn’t always hit. But when it works, it’s a bubbly ball of super-hero-fun that celebrates basic decency, kindness and looking after each other. And maybe that’s the hero we need right now.

The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

Burton and Taylor are perfect casting in this rollicking adaptation of Shakespeare’s most difficult comedy

Director: Franco Zeffirelli

Cast: Elizabeth Taylor (Kate), Richard Burton (Petruchio), Cyril Cusack (Grumio), Michael Hordern (Baptista Minola), Alfred Lynch (Tranio), Alan Webb (Gremio), Michael York (Lucentio), Natasha Pyne (Bianca), Victor Spinetti (Hortensio), Roy Holder (Biondello), Mark Dignam (Vincentio), Vernon Dobtcheff (Pedant), Bice Valori (Widow)

There’s a reason why the poster screamed “The motion picture they were made for!” Who else could play literature’s most tempestuous couple, than the world’s most tempestuous couple? After all, they rolled into this straight off the success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and, say what you like, a knock-about piece of Shakespearean farce is certainly more fun than two hours of Edward Albee. So, Burton and Taylor turned up in Italy, entourage in hand, to bring The Taming of the Shrew to life in a gorgeous explosion of grand sets and wonderfully detailed costumes.

The Taming of the Shrew actually translates well to the screen – and Zeffirelli’s high-octane style. Odd to think now, for a film soaked in elaborate period setting, that in the 60s Zeffirelli’s style was seen as border-line sacrilegious to the Bard. He actually escaped with less opprobrium from the critics than he faced for cutting two-thirds of Romeo and Juliet a year later, since most seemed to think Shrew was less of a holy text. Not that it stopped a lot of critics reckoning Zeffirelli should focus more on executing every pentameter to perfection and less on gags and visual story-telling.

But actually, that’s perfect for a story that was always a raucous farce at heart – so much so, even the original play presents it as a play-within-a-play told to a drunken Christopher Sly (cut here). The bawdiness feels fresh out of Chaucer and Boccaccio, a parade of people in period costumes slapping thighs, roaring with laughter, double taking and enjoying a series of cheeky jokes (did Pasolini watch this before making his lusty adaptations?). Padua is a city of sin, with prostitutes openly advertising their wares (and later, clearly, invited to Bianca’s wedding) and a wife-stealer is in the stocks.

Zeffirelli’s Shrew is full of rowdy wildness – in a nod to the cut Sly framing device, Padua is in the midst of a feast of fools, students turning a choral sing-along into a drunken celebration. Kate and Petruchio’s high-octane gunning for each other, feels fitting for a location where everyone is careering wildly towards the target of their immediate emotions, either horny beyond belief, desperate to marry off daughters or furious at supposed crimes or betrayals.

The age-old question you have when staging Shrew is what to do about its fundamental misogyny (and it’s hard not to argue, much as the bard’s defenders have tried, not to see it as a play deeply rooted in the patriarchy). Zeffirelli’s solution is an intriguing one: his Shrew is enigmatic, with Kate’s motivations, feelings and reasonings often left cleverly open to interpretation. It’s also helped, of course, by the natural chemistry between the two leads. If there is one thing we all know, it’s that Burton and Taylor were really into each other and drove each other up the wall. What Shrew does here is take that sexual force and exuberance of its leads and balances that with a subtle unreadable quality to Kate that leaves the relationship’s power-balance just open enough to interpretation.

In addition, the film makes clear Kate’s behaviour is unacceptable, introduced screaming abuse from a window and smashing up all the furniture in a room in a fit of furious pique. There’s a lovely touch where Petruchio stares into his own reflection, while planning his campaign – a nice suggestion that he will mirror her behaviour to show its unacceptability (indeed, on returning to their marriage home, he’ll also twice smash up a room’s contents in a pointless display of adolescent petulance). Kate has, to put it bluntly, anger management issues and if Petruchio’s methods are extreme you can see the twisted logic.

Their first meeting sets a pacey tone that will run through the whole film. It’s a wild chase through the Baptista home, through a connected wool barn, over a roof and back again. One in which they will bellow at each other, Kate will rip up planks and bannisters to throw at him, they’ll roll in the wool (hard not to see a sexual charge here) and eventually collapse through the roof to land back in the wool. Petruchio will then announce her consent to marry with an arm twisted round her back, just as he will cut off her refusal at the altar with a kiss (the wedding scene is a neat interpolation, showing something the Bard only reports). They are in a constant pursuit of sorts from here, from the back-and-forth at Petruchio’s house, to the journey to Padua and then finally through a crowd of women at the film’s end. But where does the power lie: pursued or pursuer?

At first, of course, with the pursuer. Burton’s Petruchio is a wild-eyed force-of-nature, permanently partly sozzled (Burton spends most of the film with a pale, damp drinking sweat that was probably not acting), his tights full of holes, his manners rude (he’s basically Christopher Sly in the lead role), focused on the money he’ll get from wooing Kate. But, while he’s a powerful alpha male, it’s remarkable how the balance slowly shifts to Kate. After their arrival at his home (she, soaking wet after falling in a puddle to Petruchio’s laughter), she puts her drunken husband to bed, has the house redecorated, the servants redressed and everything arranged to her liking.

Taylor’s performance here adds to the effect. It’s an intelligent, camera-wise performance which uses looks to convey Kate’s loneliness and pain. Locked in a room before the wedding, she glances out of a window with aching sadness. She looks with gentle envy at warm friendship in others. Taylor gives a wonderfully calm, genuine delivery of the famous closing speech of wifely piety. But it’s words are undermined in two ways: firstly by the suspicion it’s partly done to show-up the jokes against her throughout the wedding, and then by Taylor’s immediate departure after kissing a finally flabbergasted Petruchio, leaving our macho hero wading through a pile of laughing women in a desperate attempt to catch-up. Who might just rule here, long term?

Zeffirelli’s film moves the Lucentio (a wide-eyed Michael York) sub-plot even further to the margins – in a neat invention, Petruchio during the first chase, keeps barging in on rooms where different sub-plot scenes are all going on at the same time. As a result, this does mean a number of first-rate actors get very little to do: Cyril Cusack’s Grumio becomes a grinning observer of the chaos, Alfred Lynch’s Tranio (after some initial fourth-wall breaking) fades into the background, Michael Hordern has little to do but look aghast as a desperate Minola, Alan Webb barely registers as a rejected suitor while after an initial sight gag (his minstrel player disguise making him look like the fifth Beatle) Victor Spinetti gets similarly fades away.

But then audiences were here for the Burton-Taylor show, and they get that in spades: framed within a medieval setting inspired by classical painting (and which features an obviously fake backdrop for its countryside exteriors). And The Taming of the Shrew is rollicking good fun, which manages to work an interesting line on the play’s troublesome sexual politics, suggesting that all but not always be as it seems. And it nails the atmosphere of rollicking fun in this ribald Shakespeare yarn.

Me and Orson Welles (2008)

A star-turn from McKay and a brilliant theatrical reconstruction makes a charming comedy

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Zac Efron (Richard Samuels), Claire Danes (Sonja Jones), Christian McKay (Orson Welles), Ben Chaplin (George Coulouris), James Tupper (Joseph Cotton), Eddie Marsan (John Houseman), Leo Bill (Norman Lloyd), Kelly Reilly (Muriel Brassler), Patrick Kennedy (Grover Burgess), Travis Oliver (John Hoyt), Zoe Kazan (Gretta Adler)

In the 1930s Orson Welles was the Great Man of American theatre, a genius blessed with Midas’ skill to turn everything he touched to Gold. He had conquered the stage and his success on radio transmitted his fame into households across America. All this and he was not even thirty. On top of his boundless charisma, creativity and magnetic leadership qualities, he was also vain, selfish, boundlessly ambitious and self-obsessed, seeing other people as little more than extras in his drama. It’s an exploration of the man central to Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles, combined with the film’s wonderfully fond exploration of that magical world behind the curtain in the theatre.

Me and Orson Welles charts Welles’ landmark Broadway production of Julius Caesar: a modern-dress marvel (‘the fascist Caesar’) that reimagined a sharply cut, pacey production set in a world of jackboots, black shirts and Nuremberg-esque beams of light. Welles (Christian McKay) was, of course, front-and-centre as Brutus with his Mercury theatre players (nearly all of whom followed him to Hollywood for Citizen Kane) all around him. Newest to the cast is 17-year-old Richard Samuels (Zac Efron), away from school, dreaming of being an actor and falling in love with older production manager Sonja Jones (Claire Danes). As the production stumbles towards the stage under Welles’ mercurial hand, Richard worships Welles and loves Sonja – but will his hero-worship survive sustained contact with Welles?

Linklater’s film is set in a gorgeous recreation of 1930s Broadway theatre, full of love for the greasepaint, backstage gossip and theatrical tricks that create a world on stage. It also features an astonishingly accurate recreation of this seminal production, staged and lit to perfection, which gets as close as we can to capturing some sense of the astonishing experience the first night audience had watching the sort of Shakespeare production they had never seen before (Dick Pope, harnessing his experience of recreation Gilbert and Sullivan in Topsy-Turvy deserves major credit for his cinematography here, perfectly capturing Welles’ pioneering use of light).

Welles’ flaws are slowly discovered by Richard Samuels – a charming, deceptively light and winning performance by Zac Efron. Samuels is at first bowled over by Welles charisma – and Welles enjoys the ego-trip of taking a star-struck young man under his wing, who he can tutor and mould (who, after all, doesn’t love having a disciple). What Me and Orson Welles interestingly does is to have its young lead slowly work out that Welles may be a genius – but he’s also a fundamentally, principle-free shit who never means what he says, doesn’t think twice about dropping people when they have served their purpose and largely sees conversation as a one-way street where Welles monologues and the other person listens (and certainly never, ever, contradicts – Welles never forgives correction).

But Welles dominates the film, like he dominated life. He’s brilliantly portrayed by Christian McKay in his first major film role. McKay, an unknown, was selected after Linklater was wowed by his one-man show about the Great Man. (Linklater refused calls from the producers to replace him with a more famous actor). McKay dominates the film in what is not only a superb capturing of Welles vocal and physical mannerisms, but also a capturing of his mix of utter charisma, God-given talent and overwhelmingly selfish egotism. McKay roars through every scene with the same force-of-character you imagine Welles had, bowling over everyone around him and shaping the world into what he wishes it to be. Problems of money, timing and people are waved away (or left to be fixed by Eddie Marsan’s put-upon version of John Houseman) and McKay’s Welles uses sheer force of will to turn every event, outcome and single moment into an intended triumph (whether it is or not). Me and Orson Welles brilliantly captures Welles ability to shape his world.

We see the way he overwhelms the personalities of those around him. People like Joseph Cotton (a superbly captured performance by James Tupper) both love him and know that’s he’s a selfish, arrogant git who doesn’t seem to care about anyone but himself. Others, like Ben Chaplin’s tortured George Coulouris, allow themselves to be mothered by Welles, even though they know his motivations are more for the show itself (and the glory that shall be Welles’). Welles is the guy who gives the same heartfelt pep-talk to multiple actors, and writes identical jovial thank-you cards to all on opening night. The guy who uses nicknames for those around him because it’s a way to subtly assert control. Linklater’s film recognises his genius, makes him overwhelmingly attractive in his gung-ho confidence, but – and this is the brilliant thing about McKay’s stunning performance – also exposes his deep character flaws.

It superbly captures his vanity, selfishness and self-occupation. Welles cares little for anyone, assuming he can brow-beat or overwhelm them to fulfil his wishes. That could be a set designer, furious at Welles hogging credit for his work in the programme (Welles promises this will be amended, forgets about it and then later – when it’s too late to do anything about it – bluntly says he has no intention of not taking credit). It could be the radio show he turns up to record, clearly having not read the script, walking in seconds before live broadcast and promptly improvising a superb monologue (based on The Magnificent Ambersons) which at first puzzles, frustrates and then stuns into fawning admiration his fellow actors. What’s clear is that this is the sort of behaviour you can only get away with when you are flying high and all is perfect – Welles after all would self-destruct like few others in the next few years, never again able to yield such charismatic power again.

Me and Orson Welles uses a familiar structure – a love triangle of sorts – to bring this to life. Claire Danes gives a marvellously winning performance as an ambitious and super-confident woman, trying to make her way in a male world, perhaps drawn towards young Richard because he’s more thoughtful than the rest of the men around her. (Me and Orson Welles makes clear we live in a world where the actors of the company feel comfortable taking bets on who can bed Sonja, while she is also accepts that Welles can use the women of the company like a room-service menu). Both she and Richard are perhaps the forerunners of those who will finally be pushed too far by Welles, that would leave him a perpetual outsider.

This is a fun musing on the personality of one of the greatest film-makers of all time, brilliantly set in a luxurious recreation of classic Broadway. Directed with pace and wit by Linklater, with a fine cast giving it their all (and a career-defining turn from McKay), Me and Orson Welles is light, frothy but fascinating work.

Les Misérables (1935)

Odd choices are made in this Hugo adaptation, despite good photography and performances

Director: Richard Boleslawski

Cast: Fredric March (Jean Valjean), Charles Laughton (Inspector Javert), Cedric Hardwicke (Bishop Myriel), Rochelle Hudson (Cosette), Marilyn Knowlden (Young Cosette), Florence Eldridge (Fantine), John Beal (Marius), Frances Drake (Éponine), John Carradine (Enjolras)

There isn’t a more famous loaf of bread in literature, than that stolen by Jean Valjean to feed his starving family. There’s something quite sweet about the fact that Richard Boleslawski’s film of Hugo’s doorstop gives that loaf its moment in the sun, as its half-eaten remains are produced as evidence in Valjean’s trial. It’s an unintentionally funny moment, but feels right in a sometimes blunt film, that at times makes odd decisions for those of us so familiar now with the plot’s ins-and-outs and the moral up-righteousness of its lead character after forty years of the musical. Boleslawski’s version is an odd mix, part psychological drama, part atmospheric thriller, part thuddingly obvious soap where a loaf of bread needs to be literally seen. Parts of it work extremely well, other parts weigh the film down like the chains on its galley slaves.

The film is overwhelmingly focused on the clash between Valjean (Fredric March) and Javert (Charles Laughton). One a good man who wrestles with temptation, but follows the sprit of justice. The other a rigid fanatic, who sees the letter of the law as gospel and the rights and wrongs of a situation an irrelevance. First meeting when Valjean serves a decade as a slave at the oars in the galleys, their paths recross after a released Valjean has a road-to-Damascus moment after the intervention of a noble priest (Cedric Hardwicke). Reinventing himself as ‘Monsieur Madeleine”, he becomes mayor of a small town and protector of Fantine (Florence Eldredge) and her daughter Cosette (Rochelle Hudson). But he cannot escape the pursuit of Javert which carries him into hiding for years in Paris, where a now grown-up Cosette falls in love with reforming student Marius (John Beal), leaving Valjean with one last dangerous choice.

Les Misérables restructures the novel into three acts, each presenting Valjean with a moral quandary. As such, Fredric March’s impressive performance must be unique among Valjean’s: this version is forever tempted with greed, anger and his own desires, constantly struggling to overcome his baser feelings. March is very good at bringing to life this conflict, just as he sells the sense of awakening purpose Valjean feels washing over him after the Bishop’s intervention prevents him from being returned to prison. It’s a muscular, agonised performance of a man constantly striving, even in the face of his resentment, to live up to his adopted moral principles. So, much as Valjean would like to let another man be accidentally condemned for his crimes, or to keep Cosette to himself or pull a trigger on Javert (March’s skilfully communicating the deep internal conflict each time) he’ll still (however reluctantly) find himself doing the right thing.

He contrasts excellently, with Laughton’s rigid, well-spoken, self-loathing Javert who has absorbed his moral code so completely, its left no room for any other form of principle or emotional judgement. Introduced, lips quivering, as he explains being denied promotion due to his convict father, Laughton’s Javert has channelled that resentment to worshipping the penal code as God. As he repeats, several times, good or bad is irrelevant, it’s just about the law. Of course, Laughton’s performance bubbles with repressed frustration, his pursuit of Valjean clearly motivated by far more personal feelings of anger and envy than he is willing to admit. Valjean is a spoke in his wheel of justice, a factor that makes no sense to him.

Boleslawski’s film is at its best when these two face off. It’s also at its most stylistic for these sequences. Les Misérables is awash with Gregg Toland’s atmospheric, mist-filled photography and expertly uses his expressionistic shadows. It’s depiction of a Parisian uprising, just like it’s introduction of a fast-paced horse chase between Valjean and Javert, are snappily edited and throw in a parade of dynamic Dutch and high angles. At the end of each act, Christian imagery is well used (in two cases, shrines to Mary and Jesus) to add emotional heft. A pursuit through grime and mist-filled sewers near the film’s close has a Fritz Lang atmospheric strength (did Carol Reed watch this before The Third Man?) as well as the film’s most effective use of music to build atmosphere as Valjean desperately submerges himself and Marius to hide.

There is effective stuff in Les Misérables. So, you try your best to forgive the fact it’s full of extremely on-the-nose, obvious touches. The introduction of the bread at the trial is not an end of its obviousness: for starters, the galley’s were prison hulks, not actual ships rowed around by convicts (where do they imagine these enormous hulks are going?). Truncating so much of the book down – and focusing overwhelmingly on its two leads – means many other parts of the story are short-changed or make little impact or sense (the hilariously watered down Parisian revolutionaries don’t turn up until the final 40 minutes). Florence Eldridge’s Fantine (all references to her prostitution are of course cut) does almost nothing but die – although not before the film gives her a (unique) ludicrously sentimental reunion scene with her daughter (played by a highly irritating precocious film-school brat before she grows up into Rochelle Hudson). Clearly the actual tragedy here (a mother never sees her daughter again) was considered too much.

Then there are the strange mis-readings and mis-interpretations. I can understand why Marius and his law students are re-imagined, by conservative Hollywood, into legal reformers rather than idealisitic revolutionaries (Marius even denounces the very idea of overthrowing the government as terrible). Here they want only penal reform – although of course, while ensuring the guilty are harshly punished – and chat like champagne socialists. It’s a bit of a mystery why this call for slow-paced, moderate social reform erupts into throwing up barricades, but clearly audiences at the time couldn’t be expected to get on board with anti-Monarchist cells. They’d probably agree with Eponine (interpreted here as a sort of femme fatale and Marius’ secretary) that it’s all a silly, slightly disreputable, waste of time.

However, even more strange, is the inexplicable interpretation of Valjean’s desire to keep Cosette to himself not due to being a protective father-figure investing everything in his life into his daughter, but instead an unpleasant sexual desire to make Cosette his wife. Even leaving aside this utter perversion of the novel, since we’ve seen Valjean raise her from the age of about 6 it’s hard not to feel a bit of bile forming in your throat at the stench of grooming this gives the relationship. It’s almost as if Hollywood could only imagine a man going to great lengths to protect a woman if he wanted to eventually get in her pants.

It’s odd reinventions like this that don’t quite work even within the world presented by the adaptation, let alone compared to the original source, that weighs the film down too much. They are blotches in the streamlining of a huge novel. But when the film focuses on an increasingly personal clash between two men, both well played by March and Fredric, and its atmospheric visuals, it works much better.

The Dresser (1983)

One of the best films about the magic and trauma of theatre, with two powerhouse lead performances

Director: Peter Yates

Cast: Albert Finney (Sir), Tom Courtenay (Norman), Edward Fox (Oxenby), Zena Walker (Her Ladyship), Eileen Atkins (Madge), Michael Gough (Frank Carrington), Lockwood West (Geoffrey Thornton), Cathryn Harrison (Irene), Betty Marsden (Violet Manning), Shelia Reid (Lydia Gibson), Donald Eccles (Godstone), Llewellyn Rees (Brown)

For centuries British theatre was run by Actor-Managers. Stars with complete control of their companies, where they (and their wives) played the best roles – sometimes years past the point where it was still suitable – until the next generation emerged to build their own companies. The Dresser shows this world’s dying days, at the height of the war, when Sir (Albert Finney) a legendary actor is shepherding an aged company around the provinces to perform, while his health and mental sharpness teeter, Lear-like, on the edge of the abyss.

If Sir is Lear, his Fool is Norman (Tom Courtenay) his dresser. A waspishly camp man whose entire life revolves around every inch of Sir’s whims, shepherding, coaxing and bullying the man onto the stage, somewhere between a valet, son and nursemaid. Sir remains a force-of-nature, toweringly bombastic egotist and man of magnetic charisma, with an all-consuming, obsessive love for the theatre. The Dresser takes place in January 1942 in Bradford, largely during a performance of King Lear which Sir’s declining health has placed on a knife-edge. Can Norman hold Sir together to give life to Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy for the 227^th time?

The Dresser is based on Ronald Harwood’s play, which was semi-based on Harwood’s experiences as dresser then business manager to Donald Wolfit, one of the final breed of the old-school actor-managers Sir represents. (Harwood hastened to add, neither he nor Wolfit were portraits of Norman or Sir). While it’s a sometimes acidic look at the backstage politics and egos of touring theatre, it also richly celebrates the power of theatre and the momentary (and the film is unsentimental enough to show it is momentary) sense of family that can develop in theatre, that can end with that final curtain. In other words, The Dresser understands the brief, bright flame of theatre can be – and what a transformative feeling and dizzy drug it can be.

Both Sir and Norman are addicted to the grease-paint, their whole lives revolving around theatre and that elusive search for perfection. Even if Sir’s health is failing and sanity is crumbling – pre-show, Norman finds him raging in the streets of Bradford like Lear in the storm, only barely aware of who he is – ‘Dr Greasepaint’ can still briefly restore him to the man he was, spouting Shakespeare, bemoaning and relishing the huge weight of bringing art to life night-after-night. Norman is equally consumed by theatre: he can barely speak to others (such as train manager or a baker) without his conversation being littered with impenetrable theatre-speak. He’s as well-versed in Shakespeare as Sir is and flings himself into his backstage tasks with the same gusto Sir tackles a soliloquy.

These two have a symbiotic relationship: Sir for the support and dedication Norman exerts to get him on stage, Norman for the glorious world (and purpose) Sir gives him access to. Yates uses mirrors, framing and shared reflections to frequently frame these characters together, visually linking them in a Bergmanesque way as elements of the same personality. But, the relationship is never as straightforward as that, complicated by underlying feelings on both sides. Norman’s homosexuality – over-looked in a world where such feelings are a crime (another member of the company has recently been fired for what sounds like cottaging) – complicates his obsession with Sir, while Sir’s affection for Norman always has the hint of a Lord’s affection for his valet: a man he will confide in, but would never imagine inviting to dinner.

This complex interplay of both characters urgently needing the other, but with an underlying imbalance in their level of true emotional engagement is a subtle dance brilliantly handled throughout Yates’ and Harwood’s film: so much so, it is a surprise to many audiences that Sir utterly fails to mention Norman at all in his draft autobiography even though it’s about as likely as Churchill name-checking his butler in his. Sir and Norman may be partners in the same task – creating theatre – but Norman’s mistake is to see himself as an equal, something Sir never truly believes he is.

There is, however, no doubt about the partnership between the two actors. Tom Courtenay, who had played Norman on stage, is extraordinary. With his flamboyant hands and a voice divided between camp, whiny and ingratiating, constantly reaching for the bottle to power through the stress, Norman is as loyal, dutiful and comforting and he can be waspish, bitter, selfish, possessive and cruel. Courtenay can switch from coaxing Sir like a recalcitrant child, to throwing a potential rival for Sir’s attention to the wall and threatening all manner of damnation. It’s an astonishingly multi-layered performance, with Courtenay shrewd and brave enough to avoid making Norman a fully sympathetic figure but someone so soaking in desperation that even at his most self-pitying you feel for his desolation and emptiness.

Alongside him, Albert Finney is imperiously brilliant as Sir (playing a role almost 25 years older than him). Finney’s Sir is magnetic (they may grumble about him, but in person the company treat him with awe) and charismatic (his booming voice carries such power, it can even stop a departing train). But he’s also selfish, cruel, childish and intensely vulnerable. He’s got all the egotism of the actor (“The footlights are mine and mine alone. You must find what light you can.”), the productions revolve around him (he even continues to direct mid-performance, muttering instructions from Othello’s death bed). But he’s teetering, his mind crumbling, constantly looking to Norman for assurance, Finney living Sir’s fear at the approaching undiscovered country.

Both actors are extraordinary in a play that understands the addictive power of theatre. The Dresser avoids the trap of making Sir an Old Ham: in fact, the production we see (for all its old fashioned air) contains a performance of real power from Sir, rousing himself to touch something transcendent. Of all his 227 Lear’s this might be finest. Cynical technicians and wounded pilots weep openly. Thornton (Lockwood West), an ageing second-rate actor hastily promoted to Fool, talks of how the part has made him hungry for more. Oxenby (a marvellously louche Edward Fox), the youngest company member, clearly is ready for the new era (he carries a script full of bad language he longs to stage) but even he (after an initial point-blank refusal) throws himself into the backstage effort to create the storm. For all the rivalries, when the play is on, everyone briefly feels part of the same team working towards the same goal.

It’s a film with a melancholic feeling of an era coming to a close. It’s also one that punctures the character’s illusions. Sir is a star, but there are greater stars (with real knighthoods) in London; Norman may feel like his relationship with Sir is special, but Sir’s relationship with Madge (a brilliant Eileen Atkins, unflappably loyal and deeply pained under her professionalism) predates his and is more genuine. But it’s also one that understands the transformative power of live theatre. With stunning performances by Finney and Courtenay, backed by a marvellous, faultless cast it’s one of the finest films about theatre ever made.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Fun entry in the MCU, bright, pacey and entertaining – but never engages with its deeper issues

Director: Matt Shakman

Cast: Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm / Invisible Woman), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm / The Thing), Joseph Quinn as (Johnny Storm / Human Torch), Julia Garner (Shalla-Bal / Silver Surfer), Ralph Ineson (Galactus), Sarah Niles (Lynne Nichols), Mark Gatiss (Ted Gilbert), Natasha Lyonne (Rachel Rozman), Paul Walter Hauser (Harvey Elder / Mole Man)

It’s taken almost seventeen years (can you believe the MCU has been going for so long?!) but ‘Marvel’s First Family’ finally make it to the party, escaping one of those legacy rights deals the comic giant signed before working out it could make films itself. Since, for those interested, there are already three Fantastic Four origins-films for you to seek out (they gained their powers from flying through a space storm), Fantastic Four throws us straight into the second Act of our heroes lives, communicating their origins in an in-universe TV show celebration of their achievements (including a montage of them defeating a parade of second tier villains, including Mole Man and an army of super-intelligent chimps) before throwing them up against their biggest challenge yet.

For their unofficial leaders, Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal – whose real life super-power seems to be that he appears in all movies) aka Mr Fantastic science super-genius and master strategist with limbs of rubber and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) aka Invisible Woman, the world’s greatest diplomat, who can create forcefields and make herself (and others) invisible) there is the challenge of impending parenthood. And for the whole gang, also including scientist and wild-child Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) – he can set his body on fire – and Reed’s best friend, astronaut and Herculean powered made-of-stone Ben Grimm – it’s the threat of Galacticus (Ralph Ineson) a planet-eating giant whose herald (Julia Garner) arrives on a silver surfboard and announces Earth will be his next snack, unless the Four hand over Sue’s unborn child.

The Fantastic Four’s decision to skip the origins story throws us straight into a story that’s a lot of fun. A very enjoyable romp with some well-sketched out characters (played by engaging and charismatic actors), a few extremely well-made set-pieces, plenty of humour, just enough heart and a decent, city-crushing, smackdown at the end. It’s directed with a lot of bounce and joy by Matt Shakman and despite being about literally earth-shattering events manages to keep the focus tightly on the family at its core (perhaps a little too tightly, but more on that later).

It’s also a delightful triumph of design. Set in a sort of cyber-punk 1960s (the idea being that Richard’s intellect has super-powered mankind’s development), it’s a gorgeously realised world of 60s design, all curving surfaces and primary colours, intermixed with souped-up 60s technology like ingenious androids that run on cassette decks and flying cars, like The Jetsons made flesh (doubly engaging as the film so obviously committed to real sets rather than blue-screen invention). I also rather liked the implied joke that the world has progressed only in the areas Richards’ considered worthwhile: so this world has faster-than-light travel, flying cars and abundant energy sources, but totally lacks hi-def television or social media (and who can blame Richards for that).

There is also a certain charm in how the Four are universally beloved heroes. Everywhere they go, they are flooded by admirers and merchandise wearing children (it’s quietly never explored if the Four paid for their colossal, futuristic tower and private space base with a fortune in image deals). Reed fills time between inventing the future with hosting a TV show about science for kids, while Sue essentially runs the United Nations. Johnny is the star of every social event and Ben bashfully lifts the cars for the kids in his Brooklyn neighbourhood and flirts shyly with a primary school teacher (Natasha Lyonne).

This world is pleasingly shaken up by the arrival of the Silver Surfer, a charismatically unreadable turn from Julia Garner (under a CGI naked silver body). First Steps successfully uses this threat to humanise a group of heroes who otherwise might have proved too good to be true. For starters, their confident assurances all will be well when they head for space turns out to be far from the case when they are comprehensively outmatched by an immortal planet eater and his physics-defying silver herald. First Steps most exciting and thrillingly assembled scene is their retreat from a first encounter with this giant, a brilliantly managed high-octane chase around a black hole with a few extra personal perils thrown in on top, made even more gripping by Michael Giacchani’s pitch-perfect score.

That’s before the devilish conundrum of balancing the fate of seven billion people with Sue’s unborn son. If First Steps refuses to really dive fully into it, it does successfully raise the emotional stakes. It’s also a ‘reasonable’ offer from Galactus, a surprisingly soulful anti-villain, played with a mix of disdainful arrogance and death-dreaming melancholy by Ralph Ineson (there is a lovely moment when he takes a break from imminent city-smashing to pick up and sniff a fistful of Earth as if he’s forgotten the smell) desperate to escape the cycle of endlessly devouring planets to maintain his interminable life.

Horrific as it is to imagine a baby taking his place, First Steps avoids really delving into this intergalactic trolley problem. Because, at heart, it’s a film where superheroes alarmingly make decisions for billions of people with no oversight or pushback. Having unilaterally decided to reject Galactus’ offer, the Four seem surprised the rest of Earth are less than thrilled at their impending demise because the Four won’t make a Sophie’s Choice. There is some rich potential here to really delve into the way the Four are, arguably, benign dictators, reshaping this world in their own image and accepting adulation and unquestioning following. First Steps ignores it – the world’s discontent underdone by a single speech from Sue – and only for a split second is the moral quandary treated as something meriting genuine debate. As the surfer points out, if the kid was an adult he would certainly accept: is it right to take that choice from him?

But it’s a comic book movie, right? So, let’s not overthink it. And Marvel was never going to darken its First Family with hints of elitest oppression, demanding sacrifices from others (and the world makes huge sacrifices to protect their child) but not themselves. First Steps is a fun film. I liked its vibe, like a live-action Incredibles (only not that good), I enjoyed the BB4-like robot Herbie, all four of its leads are highly likeable with excellent chemistry. So, I’m trying to just not think about where this onrushing trolley is going and instead enjoy the view.

Guns at Batasi (1964)

An excellent lead performance powers a solid film that slightly pulls it’s punches

Director: John Guillermin

Cast: Richard Attenborough (RSM Lauderdale), Jack Hawkins (Colonel Deal), Flora Robson (Miss Barker-Wise MP), John Leyton (Private Wilkes), Mia Farrow (Karen Eriksson), Cecil Parker (Fletcher), Errol John (Lt Boniface), Graham Stark (Sgt ‘Dodger’ Brown), Earl Cameron (Captain Abraham), Percy Herbert (Colour Sgt Ben Parkin), David Lodge (Sgt ‘Muscles’ Dunn), John Meillon (Sgt ‘Aussie’ Drake), Bernard Horsfall (Sgt ‘Schoolie’ Prideaux)

In the dying days of Empire, in an unnamed African nation, the British have agreed to a peaceful handover of power. Something that’s thrown out of kilter when an attempted coup takes place. That appals Regimental Sergeant Major Lauderdale (Richard Attenborough). His whole life has been keeping the peace in the colonies, making sure the mess is kept spick-and-span, drilling recruits, saluting portraits of the Queen and regretting he missed his chance to do his bit at Tobruk or El Alamein. A coup to him is nothing more than a mutiny, and harbouring the new overthrown government commander in the NCO’s mess from the troops looking to lynch him is both a matter of honour and (perhaps) a chance to fight his own little war preserving decency, honour and the British way.

Guns at Batasi is a fascinating slice of post-colonial film-making that succeeds as well as it does because it treats its lead character both as a sort of Blimpish moron and a tragic hangover whose Victorian principles are hideously out-of-step with the world around him. All of that is captured in Richard Attenborough’s rich, BAFTA winning, performance as he makes Lauderdale both faintly ridiculous (obsessed with neat collars, perfectly executed salutes and drill bullshit sitting) with an utter lack of interest in the world outside the parade ground and strangely likeable. He’s got a principled sense of right-and-wrong, a strangely affectionate regard for the soldiers he presses to the uttermost and an utter lack of cynicism or cruelty in his convictions.

It’s near career-best work by Attenborough, one well out of his wheel-house (at the time) of softly spoken eccentrics. In fact, he’s almost unrecognisable, transformed into a sort of walking bullet, rigid as his swagger stick and barking out his every utterance with a parade-ground bellow that emerges from a deep vocal bass. He’s a character soaking in absolute certainty, and Guns at Batasi gives him the dignity of letting him be both right and wrong without crowbarring in any moral judgement. Put bluntly, it trusts us to be intelligent enough to appreciate his determination to protect the lives of those under his care, just as we can feel uncomfortable at his parental attitude towards Africans.

Guillermin’s film places this bolted down man, absolutely certain of his understanding of the world, in two turmoils, one on-top of the other. Firstly, he’s the sort of bloke who wouldn’t have been out of place in the height of the Raj, barely able to believe that the British army (embodied by the decent, gentlemanly but subtly ineffective Colonel Deal expertly played by Jack Hawkins) doesn’t sweep everything before it anymore but has to negotiate with the locals. Secondly, he’s flung into the middle of a siege of the NCO’s mess, shepherding a mix of other sergeants, a young private (John Leyton) whose mocking 60’s swagger feels like he’s from a different planet and a painfully liberal visiting MP (Flora Robson) who feels Lauderdale is the problem not the solution.

Guns at Batasi builds its base-under-siege storyline very effectively, with Guillermin skilfully shooting a small set, interspersed with some well-staged action set pieces, not least Captain Abrahams (Earl Cameron) escape from his would-be lynch-mob. There is a neat sense throughout of a world pushing in on Lauderdale and his sergeants, from artillery pieces gathering on the lawn outside to an ever more searching series of questions for Lauderdale from the others about what exactly he thinks he’s preserving here. What’s well-handled about the film is you could see this as both Lauderdale making a stubborn stand that’s more about his pride than anything else, and a genuinely selfless noble attempt to save a persecuted man.

The film does slightly weight the deck in favour of Lauderdale. We warm to his witty sergeants-cunning to prevent the noble Abraham handing himself over to save lives (drafting a hugely wordy written order to do so, which he knows Abrahams will never stay conscious long-enough to sign). It’s hard not to sympathise with him, when the voice of liberalism is placed in the piously self-important lips of Flora Robson’s MP who insists, until she’s finally shown she’s terribly wrong, that coup lickspittle Lt Boniface (Errol John) isn’t the ruthless two-faced man-of-no-honour he so plainly is. It’s hard not to sympathise when Lauderdale tears Boniface off a titanic strip (a tour-de-force moment from Attenborough) or hard not to admire the professional pride in his duty to keep others safe.

If you could criticise the film, it gives less scope to putting into an explicitly critical viewpoint or giving much scope to Lauderdale’s probably less charming or attractive features. You could well imagine that, returning to Blighty, his attitudes could curdle into an unattractive ‘Britain First’ attitude. Sure, we are encouraged to see his obsession with perfectly ironed uniforms and the exact perfection of a salute as something quite silly. But he’s also a man who doesn’t question for a minute Britain’s inherent superiority or its right to dominate large chunks of the globe. But Guns at Batasi lacks a real character who challenges Lauderdale – even Leyton’s cheeky private ends up being adopted in an affectionate strict-fatherly way by the RSM, rather than someone who could really signpost Lauderdale’s relic nature or the potentially darker implications of his character. Just as the film treats the other sergeants lack of knowledge or interest in this country (right down to continually mis-pronouncing the local town as Battersea) as comedic rather than an insight into underlying complacent understanding as the world being a place run by and for the British.

But the film stands out as one of the best acting showcases Attenborough ever had, a swaggering role of bombast that he absolutely rips through while humanising it. There are great supporting turns from Horsfall, Herbert, Lodge and Mellion as wildly different types of sergeant and the film manages to be both quietly satirical, nostalgic and pack in some derring-do along the way. If it doesn’t quite manage to really seize on its potential, it’s still an interesting film.