Top films I've seen this year

MY FILMS OF THE YEAR

So I’ve seen 119 films this year through a combination of TV, DVD, and the cinema (only 3 on the big screen though).

The top thirteen (yes, thirteen) I’ve seen (not all released this year, but in the last 2 years) are:

Tell No One – my first Lovefilm rental and it was a good start – a gripping French thriller about a woman seemingly coming back from the dead.

El Orfanato – Another Lovefilm rental and probably the most frightening film I’ve sent this year – horror of the psychological kind rather than visceral but very effective

Wall-E – Last year’s big hit which I saw on DVD. An animation with real heart and the first 20 minutes are about as good an example of silent cinema as you’ll see.

Frost/Nixon – the first of the two Michael Sheen films on my list, this adaptation of the stage play based on the Frost/Nixon interviews was a classy act with fine performances all round

Vicky Cristina Barcelona – this soufflé of a film from Woody Allen saw him back on form with a ridiculously good looking cast.

In Bruges – tremendous British film with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason as two hit men hiding out in Bruges. Dark, but very comic at times with one of the best scripts of recent years.

Slumdog Millionaire – the one that got all the Oscars in the Spring and well deserved recognition for Danny Boyle. It didn’t blow me away, but maybe that was due to all the hype there’d been about it. However, it’s still a fine film.

Let the Right One In – possibly my film of the year which earned its own blog-post earlier in the year. Atmospheric scandanavian horror and marvellous stuff

In the Loop – from the team behind the Thick of It, this scathing satire of government on both sides of the Atlantic was foul mouthed but very funny and relevant.

The Damned United – Michael Sheen again, this time as Brian Clough in this fine film about his time in charge of Leeds United.

Up – Seen at the cinema, this was the animation of this year. Nothing quite lives up to the first 15 emotional minutes, but when they’re as good as they are here, that’s not a major failing.

Moon – Brilliant science fiction film starring Sam Rockwell. Has a bit of an oldschool feel to it eschewing flashy CGI and is all the better for it – it’s about the story, not the spectacle

Sherlock – I wasn’t expecting great things from this Guy Ritchie film, but give it its due, it was decent enough. A tad too long, but the Robert Downey Jr/Jude Law partnership of Holmes and Watson works effectively enough.



Other films I enjoyed this year included The Departed, Ratatouille, State of Play, The Reader, The Good the bad and the Weird, Volver, Man on Wire, Changeling, Persepolis, Ghost Town, Son of Rambow and Burn After Reading.

And what about the worst film I’ve seen this year – it’s an “honour” shared by two films – both the fourth instalments of a franchise.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – what did they do to our memory of the first three films. Spaceships, bloody spaceships, that’s what. *sigh*

Die Hard 4.0 – I spent 2 hours trying to find a plot but eventually had to admit defeat

Maybe there’s a lesson there – stop at 3 films!

Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, Emporium! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan!

It's all in the headline -

Hmm, an Anglican Priest delivers a sermon in which he touches on the morality or not of certain crimes. In it he says that shoplifting is a better option than prostitution/mugging etc.

He quite clearly states

Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift

So what simplistic headline would you imagine the Daily Mail would give to such a story?

Yup, that's right - Thou Shalt Shoplift .

Good to see them not trying to sensationalise anything.

A-Z of favourite films - N tertainment?

We're past the halfway point - it's all down hill from now on in my A-Z list of my favourite films

And it’s on to the letter “N”, thankfully a much smaller category than M. I’ve already decided the top five, but first a quick look at a few that didn’t make it:

From 1921 come 2 very different silent films. There’s the comedy short Never Weaken; Harold Lloyd’s last short film before he moved to feature length films. Lloyd plays a man trying to commit suicide when he thinks (erroneously) that his girlfriend is cheating on him. Sounds grim but is in fact hilarious at times and contains some great stunt work from Lloyd. The other 1921 offering is Nosferatu, Murnau’s German expressionist film based on the Dracula story. Shadows abound, and the film is full of atmosphere and innovative film techniques. Max Schreck’s portrayal of the vampire is unsurpassed.

Back to comedy and the Marx Brothers classic A Night at the Opera, from 1935, very nearly made our final five. There’s great comedy in it – the famous stateroom scene where a growing number of people try and cram into a tiny cabin, and the puntastic “there ain’t no sanity clause” line. The only thing that counts against the film are the musical interludes which slacken the pace rather.

Skipping past the 40s which only provide one film (that made the final five) and we arrive in the 1950s. The Narrow Margin is a fine thriller set on a train from 1952, The Naked Spur from 1953 sees James Stewart teaming up again with director Anthony Mann in a psychological Western; Niagara, a film noir from the same year was dominated by the presence of Marilyn Monroe, and also starred Joseph Cotton.

Nuit et Brouillard from Alan resnais is a hard-hitting French documentary from 1955 – a documentary about the concentration camps of WW2. It’s only half an hour long and consists of shots of the now abandoned concentration camp mixed with stock footage, with a simple commentary track. The lack of sensationalism makes it all the more powerful and emotional – a film that’s a must see, even if you it’s not one you really enjoy. Another contender was the 1957 Fellini film, Nights of Cabirira, in which Fellini’s real-life wife plays a naïve prostitute.

Our entry from the 1960s is the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Directed by George A Romero, this low budget zombie horror is highly influential and still packs a punch, even viewed 40 years later.

2 excellent American films from the 1970s films, Robert Altman’s ensemble Nashville – if they’d been a final ten instead of five, it would have definitely made it, and from 1976 Sidney Lumet’s Network with Peter Finch as the newsman who’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it any more. He won a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for his troubles. Werner Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu in 1979 is also worthy of mention.

Into the 1980s and we’ll ignore Nightmares in a Damaged Brain as it’s really not that good. Never Say Never Again was an unofficial Bond from 1983 with Sean Connery reprising his role as the secret agent. A year later Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street spawned numerous sequels, and also gave an early glimpse of Johnny Depp. From 1984 came, well, 1984 in Michael Radford’s decent enough adaptation of Orwell’s book, though not up to the standard of Terry Gilliam’s similarly themed Brazil from the same year. No Way out was a good Kevin Costner thriller in 1987, and then from the Airplane team came The Naked Gun in 1988, a spin off from the TV series Police Squad starring Leslie Nielson. Very funny though two slightly less funny sequels would emerge in 91 and 94.

In 1993 came the stop motion animation Nightmare Before Christmas – an excellent gothic tale from director Henry Selick, though produced and co-written by Tim Burton whose hallmarks can be seen all over it. In 1999 came the Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts-starring romantic comedy Notting Hill, and in the same year, The Ninth Gate came from Roman Polanski.

Which brings us to our final five

Notorious (1946) Hitchcock directs one of his best thrillers starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. Bergman is the daughter of a German spy, and is recruited by the Allies to infiltrate a group of Germans in Brazil. Bergman falls in love with Grant who is her contact, but he asks her to pretend to be in love with Rains, one of the gang. Espionage, love, thrills and spills; it’s a tightly constructed film and one of the classics.


Night of the Hunter (1955) What a shame Charles Laughton only directed one film, but the one he directed was top class. Robert Mitchum is the sadistic preacher/serial killer trying to infiltrate a family in order to find a stash of stolen money – only the young children know where the money is. Filmed in an expressionist style with a foreboding atmosphere and great performances all round, this is a fine film influenced by the film-noir movement.


North by Northwest (1959) – Sorry, 2 Hitchcock films in the top five again, but this is a truly great film starring Cary Grant and Eve Marie Sant. Grant is the businessman who finds himself mistaken for a secret agent and goes on the run. Crop-dusting planes, assassins, drunk car rides, shoot-outs on Mount Rushmore – the film is full of iconic moments and is one of American cinema’s finest achievements.


No Man’s Land (2001) A great satirical war film set in the war-torn former Yugoslavia. A Bosnian and a Serbian find themselves stuck together in a trench in no-man's land with a booby trapped corpse The film follows the twists and turns in the relationship between the two soldiers and also takes in the wider picture; the frustration of the UN soldiers who are unable to interfere due to orders from above and the way they get around it by getting the media involved. Quite a cynical take on the situation but one gets the sad feeling it is perhaps rooted in reality

No Country For old Men (2007) The one that finally brought home the Oscars for the Coen Brother garnering their first Best Picture and Director awards. Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and Kelly McDonald star in the tale of Brolin coming across drug money and trying not to be caught by psychotic hit man Bardem with a comedy haircut. Lee Jones is the policeman also trying to stop the confrontation. Fine cinematography and story-telling – the ending upset some, but it’s true to the original novel.


And the winner is North By Northwest. I can never decide on Hitchcock’s best film, but this is certainly one of my two or three favourites. Cary Grant has never been better and it’s an all out entertainment fest from Hitch.

A-Z of favourite films - M it is then.

And we're up to letter 13 out of 26 in the A-Z of my favourite films of all time

Crikey Charlie, M is the biggest category so far, – I’ve seen 147 films beginning with M. That makes it the second biggest category after S, so lots of M films may get skipped – I’ll just try to mention the pertinent ones.

The Man appears to be very busy – I do worry about him. He knew rather too much information in both versions of Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, yet then clearly had amnesia as in 1997 he was The Man Who Knew Too Little. This is surprising as he has double the brainpower in The Man With Two Brains. We don’t know a huge amount about him apart from where he came from – The Man from Laramie tells us this, although he left without permission in Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped. We learn what he wears in Ealing’s magnificent The Man in the White Suit and what he carries in Vertov’s The Man With the Movie Camera and the Bond film, The Man With the Golden Gun. He battles alcoholism in The Man With the Golden Arm and commits murder in the excellent John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, (or did he?) starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. In 2001 he sued God in the below par Billy Connolly film and he even got his own documentary made in the excellent 2008 film, Man on Wire. But did he even exist at all – after all where was he in the Coen Brothers’ excellent film The Man Who Wasn’t There?

Anyhoo, onto films not featuring “The Man” and early highlights include two Fritz Lang’s film. First Metropolis, the silent epic sci-fi that to be honest goes on a bit too long, but is still an astonishing achievement of the 1920s. Probably more influential than enjoyable, there’s not a sci-fi film made since that doesn’t in some way bear the hallmarks of this seminal film – for a prime example see Blade Runner. Also from Lang came M, the early German talkie starring Peter Lorre (who also appeared in Hitch’s first The Man Who Knew Too Much) as a child-killer – another highly influential film filled with expressionism and atmosphere; a film that remains long in your memory.

There’s a fair few decent Laurel and Hardy films in this category including Men o War, Me and My Pal and The Midnight Patrol, but their best would be The Music Box- the short film where they try to get a piano up a set of stairs. Simple but effective, I’m pretty sure it won them an Oscar, and has been parodied to death ever since. From Chaplin comes Modern Times – a great satire on the industrial age, made several years after sound came in, but containing no discernable dialogue – we just hear mechanical noises and the like. Frank Capra then comes up with a couple of gems to round off the 1930s – in 1936 Mr Deeds Goes To Town was released with Gary Cooper in the leading role, but that was outshone three years later when Jimmy Stewart played the idealistic young senator in the truly great Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

The standout of the early 40s is The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart as the private eye Sam Spade and with Peter Lorre (who else?) cropping up again in a supporting role. We’ve also got Hitchcock’s Mr and Mrs Smith – unusual for him in that it’s a comedy, not a thriller, Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, famous for its studio interference and films depicting British life during the war such as Mrs Miniver and Millions Like Us. There’s an unusual film noir in Mildred Pierce in that the protagonist is female, and then in 1946 we get what I think is the best British film of all time – A Matter of Life and Death. Starring David Niven this is a glorious fantasy set on earth and in the afterlife and is just filmmaking at its best from the directing team of Powell and Pressburger, ably contributed by cinematographer Jack Cardiff to create an almost perfect film. My Darling Clementine is a decent John Ford western starring Henry Fonda, and Charlie Chaplin makes another appearance with Monsieur Verdoux; a tale in which he plays a man who goes around murdering old women – quite the departure for him.

The 50s begin with the oddity that is Miracle in Milan – a neo-realist fantasy which is something of an oxymoron. Monkey Business is a really enjoyable Howard Hawks comedy starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe – Grant plays a professor who develops a potion that makes the recipient younger – trouble is he takes too much and regresses to childhood! Then there’s Jacques Tati directing himself in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and Douglas Sirk’s melodrama Magnificent Obsession.

The 60s begin with The Magnificent Seven – a marvellous Western based on Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Try and name all seven actors – go on – I always forget Horst Buchholz or Brad Dexter. John Huston’s The Misfits is more famous for its production than the resulting film – it was Clark Gable’s last film, and Montgomery Clift wasn’t long after. The Manchurian Candidate is an intriguing tale with a stellar cast and outshines its remake in the 2000s. For musical fans there’s My Fair Lady and the decade ends with the only X Certificate film to win Best picture at the Oscars as Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voigt star in Midnight Cowboy.

Highlights from the 70s include Robert Altman’s MASH, a tale about army medics and their gallows humour during the Korean war, Polanski’s bloody version of Macbeth, Scorsese’s Mean Streets and the uproarious Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There’s also Marathon (is it safe?) Man, and Woody Allen’s black and white love letter to New York in Manhattan. Finishing off the decade it’s the gang again with the hilarious Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

The 1980s brings Manon de Sources the sequel to Jean de Florette, and it doesn’t disappoint. From the UK comes Mona Lisa with Bob Hoskins as the taxi driver developing a relationship with prostitute Cathy Tyson, and then there’s US comedy with Moonstruck and Midnight Run.

Into the 90s with Miller’s Crossing from the Coen Brothers and Misery from Rob Reiner starring James Caan and Kathy Bates. I used to be quite partial to My Cousin Vinny from 92, though haven’t seen it for a while now. Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite was enjoyable even if not one of his best and there’s big budget films with Mission: Impossible and Men in Black from 96 and 97 respectively. Ken Loach’s hard hitting My Name is Joe is definitely worth a viewing, as is the classy ensemble piece from PT Anderson, Magnolia – funny, tragic, sweet, vulgar, heartbreaking – there’s not enough adjectives to describe it. The decade ends with a film you may have heard of as Keanu Reeves takes the lead in The Matrix. It’s about computers and that.

Into the last decade and Maybe Baby takes the distinction of worst M film, in fact perhaps the worst film I’ve ever seen – was this really the same bloke that wrote Blackadder? On the plus side, Meet the Parents was a good laugh with Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro getting most of the best lines. From the same year came Memento, an absolutely superlative film starring Guy Pearce as an amnesiac. Adventurous filmmaking, pulled off with aplomb by Christopher Nolan. Two very different films from 2001 – the animation comedy Monsters Inc. and the almost impenetrable David Lynch film Mulholland Drive. An interesting double bill they would make! Other contenders include Minority Report from Spielberg, Master and Commander with Russell Crowe, and Mystic River from Clint Eastwood. Eastwood also crops up the following year with Million Dollar Baby, and Spielberg returns too with Munich. To round the decade off there’s Moon, an excellent sci-fi film directed by David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones.

So out of the 147 films, what’s made the final five?

M – Peter Lorre as a child killer in this early German sound offering. His performance is the highlight of this highly influential film.

The Maltese Falcon – Private eye movie from 1941 – Bogie, Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor star in this Hollywood classic.

A Matter of Life and Death – Shot half in black and white, half in colour, this is one of the greatest movie fantasies of all time. David Niven falls in love with Kim Hunter – the only trouble is he’s meant to be dead and Heaven wants him back. Film-making at its most imaginative.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail – In my opinion the best of the Monty Python movies – they may not have had much money, resulting in coconuts replacing horses, but that led to some of the best gags ever seen on film.

Magnolia – Ensemble piece that lasts over 3 hours, but never feels that long – the stories draw you in and weave in and out each other splendidly. Confident filmmaking from PT Anderson.


And the winner is…

A Matter of Life and Death. Stiff competition, but this still comes out on top – it’s my favourite British film of all time and I have to watch it at least once a year.

A-Z of favourite films - Flippin' 'el, it's L

And we're onto L in my A-Z list of favourite films. Hey, it's nearly halfway!

After the relatively narrow range of films available in the last couple of letters, J and K, we’re now up to a choice of about 80 that I’ve seen beginning with L. Don’t worry, I won’t mention them all here, just the ones that are in the running for the top five shortlist.

The earliest offering in the list is The Lodger from Alfred Hitchcock in 1926. Arguably the first true Hitchcock film, by which I mean the film where he hit his stride and addressed themes that would recur throughout his career over the next 70 years such as the wronged man and the Hitchcock blonde. It also contains some nice directorial touches which, in retrospect, show great promise for a directing career.

There’s then six Laurel and Hardy short films in the L category; the best of which I’d say is Laughing Gravy, a fine comedy about the duo trying to keep the presence of a dog secret whilst staying in a guesthouse – and failing miserably! Looking further afield Rene Clair’s 1931 French comedy Le Million is also a decent watch with characters trying to get their hands on a winning lottery ticket. In the same year, but with a completely different tone, came Little Caesar, one of the most influential gangster films of early Hollywood, and with a standout performance by Edward G Robinson. Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon crops up in the 1930s too, though it didn’t greatly appeal to me, then Hitchcock crops up again in 1938 with the marvellous British comedy-thriller The Lady Vanishes. There’s competition for Hitch’s best British film (39 Steps, Man who Knew too Much etc) but The Lady Vanishes has got to be a contender with its mix of British humour and spy thriller.

The 1940s start with The Lady Eve from Preston Sturges, a typically well-crafted comedy from the director with Henry Fonda in the lead role as a rich explorer who encounters con-woman Barbara Stanwyck on his journey home aboard a cruise ship. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a fine drama from the Powell/Pressburger team; a film that Churchill wanted banned as he thought it would have a negative effect on public morale during the war. However it is a great biopic of the fictional Colonel Blimp. Hitchcock returns yet again in 1944 with the excellent Lifeboat; a film set entirely on a lifeboat following the bombing of a cruise liner. Not many directors could pull off that feat, but Hitchcock certainly did. Four other notable films crop up in the 1940s – for brevity’s sake I’ll just mention them by name – Otto Preminger’s Laura, Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai, and from Max Ophuls, Letter from an Unknown Woman. Each of these is worthy of more explanation but I don’t want this to turn into a dissertation.

I’ll just pick two highlights from the 1950s – both from Ealing Studios. There’s The Lavender Hill Mob from ’51 and then four years later came The Ladykillers. Both exquisite films, sharp and humorous but with a dark underbelly, especially the latter. The Coen Brothers tried to remake The Ladykillers 50 years later but even they couldn’t match the Alexander Mackendrick original with its cast that included Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, though the film is stolen by the elderly Katie Johnson – the lady that the killers are trying to target. A must-see film.

The 60s begins with The League of Gentlemen – no, not the Royston Vasey kind, but the Basil Dearden film that follows the planning and execution of a bank heist by a group of ex-military men, led by Jack Hawkins. Just a shame that crime couldn’t be shown to pay. Our other film of the 1960s is Lawrence of Arabia – David Lean’s masterpiece, making epic use of the desert locations and creating a work of art with Peter O Toole as the eponymous lead.

The Last Picture Show had its fans in the 1970s but I wasn’t really blown away by it; the same could be said of Last Tango in Paris which I just found cold – I know that it’s probably meant to be like that, but I just didn’t warm to it. Passing over the Bond film Live and Let Die, and Logan’s Run, the decade ended with the superb film The Long Good Friday, the British gangster movie with Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren in the lead roles and even with Pierce Brosnan popping up in an early film appearance.

The 80s is dominated by Local Hero, Bill Forsyth’s gentle comedy drama about an oil tycoon trying to buy up a village on the Scottish coast. Wonderful performances and a pitch perfect script make this one of the best British films ever made. Burt Lancaster appears as the American tycoon and his salary took up most of the budget but it’s the Scottish cast that make the film so endearing and a pleasure to watch. Other entries for the 80s include the first 2 Lethal Weapon films – a further 2 would follow – with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover teaming up as the “mismatched” couple. There’s the 2 Timothy Dalton films – License to Kill and The Living Daylights – both more violent than the preceding Roger Moore films, but decent enough nonetheless. Scorsese courted controversy with The Last Temptation of Christ and on a similar theme, the decade ended with Look Who’s Talking – a film that you can be pretty sure won’t make the final five.

The 90s are ridiculous with over 24 contenders – one could say flipping ‘L, but I won’t. Well, not again anyway. Of these, LA Story is a highlight, as is The Last Seduction and Leon with Jean Reno and Natalie Portman forming an odd partnership, directed by Luc Besson. Nicholas Cage won an Oscar for his performance in the bleak Leaving Las Vegas, and two interesting low budget offerings crop up with The Last Supper and Living in Oblivion, both in 1995. The Long Kiss Goodnight is a decent “suspend disbelief” action thriller with Geena Davis and Samuel L Jackson, and then in 1997 came the excellent LA Confidential. Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Kevin Spacey all took leading roles but it was Kim Basinger that won the Oscar for her turn as the moll in this film-noir thriller, full of twists and turns, and excellently filmed by Curtis Hanson. Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful is also worthy of mention – a comedy set in a concentration camp may sound like something of an oxymoron but he just about pulls it off. From the UK came Little Voice, and then Guy Richie hit the scene with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels which appealed to mockney gangsters everywhere.

Into the 2000s and I may as well say now I’m not a great fan of Lord of the Rings, hence I’ve only seen the first one. Sorry, but I was a bit bored by it so whilst it’s got its fans, I’m not one of them. I wasn’t really looking forward to The Last Samurai but, even with Tom Cruise in the starring role, I thought it wasn’t bad. Not good enough to make the final five, but not bad nonetheless. Lost in Translation was another supposed classic that left me a bit cold and I didn’t really buy into the hype around it. Lady Vengeance from Korean director Chan-Wook Park was more to my taste, as was Little Miss Sunshine, gem of a low-budget indie film that came in 2006. Our list ends with the recent Let the Right One in, a quite remarkable vampire film from Sweden, which I’ve addressed previously in another blog entry. Tender, beautiful to look at, a real surprise of a film, and in a good way.

And after all that the final five is:

The Lady Vanishes – Hitchcock’s 1938 film, his penultimate one before leaving for Hollywood. An old lady disappears on a train but no-one seems to believe she was ever there, a spy dresses as a nun, two Englishmen discuss cricket scores, a shootout on a train, a coded message – what else could you want from a film?

Lifeboat – Hitchcock again, this time from 1943. A group of diverse survivors from a ship end up in a lifeboat with a German U-Boat commander for company. Can they trust the man who bombed their ship out of the water? A tense tale, made all the more claustrophobic for being set solely in a small lifeboat.

The Ladykillers – Ealing comedy from Mackendrick, just winning out over The Lavender Hill Mob for a place in the final five. Devilishly dark and funny, a gem of a film.

Local Hero – Bill Forsyth’s greatest hour, almost harking back to the days of Ealing with its focus on community coming together. A delightful watch and bizarrely, as I learnt the other day, Jeremy Clarkson’s favourite ever film!

Let the Right One in – I’ve discussed this in more depth here in a previous blog and my opinion hasn’t changed since – I still think “it’s a thoughtful atmospheric film offering far more than the odd chilling moment.”


And the winner is:

The Ladykillers – following Kind Hearts and Coronets, an Ealing film takes the title for the second letter in a row. It’s just a hair’s breadth above the other contenders.

A-Z of favourite films - Okay, it's K.

So it's the 11th in the series of A-Z of my favourite films and we arrive at K

Following the J films, K is another category with less films than usual; at the time of writing I’ve only seen 28 K films. For the avoidance of doubt that doesn’t mean I’ve seen 28,000 films, just 28 films beginning with K. (note to self - find out if there actually are 28,000 films beginning with K in existence)

First the ones that didn’t make it. From 1933 comes King Kong; its effects may look a tad shaky now, but at the time they were state of the art. Fay Wray took up the screaming honours as the woman the monkey develops a crush on. In the interests of disclosure I should state that I’ve not as yet seen any remakes of the film and that includes Peter Jackson’s recent “reimagining”.

The 30s and 40s pass without further troubling this category (apart from one which you’ll find in the final five). 1957 brought A King in New York, one of Charlie Chaplin’s lesser films in my opinion, though notable for being the first film he made after his forced return to the UK, and also for being the film in which he last had a leading role.

In the 1962 Roman Polanski emerged with the Polish thriller, Knife in the Water, a tense tale set aboard a yacht where the owners make the mistake of picking up a stranger. In 1964 Don Siegel’s The Killers was released – this was the last film to star Ronald Reagan before he turned to politics and was never heard of again; here he plays the bad guy, starring alongside Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson among others.

Closer to home, quite literally in my case being from Yorkshire, Kes was released in 1969. Ken Loach took the directing reins and a career was born. It’s a bit grim, admittedly, hence the reason it’s not in my top five, but you get a real sense of time and place, and who can forget Brian Glover’s deranged P.E. teacher on the football field?

Back to the US in the 70s and there’s the jolly good yarn Kelly’s Heroes with a group of allied soldiers sneaking across enemy lines to try and purloin some Nazi gold. The fact that these soldiers include Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland adds to the fun. A year later with a very different tone, Donald Sutherland appeared again in Klute alongside Jane Fonda who played a prostitute and won a best Actress oscar for her troubles. Changing tone again, we move to anarchic comedy with the 1977 film Kentucky Fried Movie. Directed by John Landis and written by the team behind Airplane, it’s more a series of sketches rather than a narrative film, but is still good fun.


The 1980s bring a couple films from Asia. There’s Kagemusha from Akira Kurosawa which is decent enough, though not up there with his best films – he would return to form a few years later with Ran. Then there was The Killer in 1989, a typically stylish action film from John Woo, still working in Hong Kong at this time. There’s also a couple of films from the US, but perhaps not up to the standards of their Asian cousins, being as they are The Karate Kid in 1984 and K9 in 1989. I think the States lose the battle of the 1980s!


The 1990s don’t start a whole lot better with Arnold Schwarzenneger in Kindergarten Cop, then King Ralph with John Goodman finding himself the King of England a year later. What actors like John Hurt, Peter O Toole or Joely Richardson were doing in it is anyone's guess, but possible money played a bigger part than artistic endeavour! A Kiss before dying improves the standard a little in 1991 and then in 1996 there’s Kingpin from the Farrelly brothers which is laugh-out-loud comedy starring Bill Murray, Woody Harrelson and Randy Quaid in an uproarious tale about ten pin bowling.

2000 brings the good - Keeping the Faith, a decent comedy directed by Ed Norton who also stars alongside Ben Stiller, and the truly dreadful with Kevin and Perry go Large – the embarrassing Harry Enfield spin-off. A year later Paul Bettany steals the show from the late Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale, then in 2003 and 04 Quentin Tarantino released the long awaited Kill Bill Volumes one and two. Those films divided opinion but I enjoyed them – probably the second one more than the first as it had more narrative than the first which contained most of the action. In 2004 Stephen Chow made Kung Fu Hustle which was a fun tongue-in-cheek Kung Fu film from China and Hong Kong. Back to the UK and I was thoroughly underwhelmed by Kinky Boots in 2005 – a comedy about a plucky shoe factory fighting to stay in business – a film clearly made by someone wanting to recreate the style of The Full Monty or Brassed Off, and failing.


But those are the ones that didn’t make it. What about the final five?

Kind Hearts and Coronets – A 1949 masterpiece from the great Ealing studios, Robert Hamer directs, but this is Alec Guinness’ film all the way. He plays all 9 members of the same family who Denis Price is trying to kill in order to avenge the way they treated his late mother. A devilishly dark comedy with a bite, this is superb stuff that can be watched over and over again.

Kiss Me Deadly – 1955 film noir from Robert Aldrich. A private eye makes the mistake of picking up an attractive woman lost on the highway. When she turns up dead, the private eye is drawn into an unsavoury world where things may not be quite as they seem. With a complex plot revolving around some highly radioactive material, it’s a film that certainly goes with a bang.

The King of Comedy – Scorsese’s underrated gem with Robert De Niro as the deranged fan obsessed with Jerry Lee Lewis *edit - I mean Jerry Lewis of course - oops*. Funny and dark at the same time, it’s more relevant today than ever in this celebrity obsessed world. Maybe not as high profile as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas etc, but just as enjoyable and probably my favourite Scorsese film.

Kikujuro – 1999, - A quite simply marvellous offering from Japanese tour-de-fource Takeshi Kitano. The story’s basic – a young boy goes on a trip to try and find his mother and finds himself accompanied by a quite unsuitable companion in Kikujuro (played by Kitano) – a grumpy, low level gangster, a man of few words. Doesn’t make it sound great, but it’s full of charm and is a real treasure. I’m not making a good job of explaining it but if you get the chance, watch it when you can.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – From Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black comes this splendid directorial debut.; self referential to the nth degree. Our narrator is Robert Downey Jr. a crook who somehow finds himself in LA auditioning for the role of a private investigator. He has to spend time with gay P.I. Val Kilmer and it is this partnership that drives the film and produces much of the humour. A spoof of the world of Chandler, film-noirs etc. but it is done with affection and it works splendidly as well as having enormous fun at its own genre's expense.


And the winner is…

Kind Hearts and Coronets, one of the best Ealing films; wickedly funny and containing a bravura performance(s) from Alec Guinness

A-Z of favourite films - Jay of the Dackal

It's the one you've all been waiting for - we're on to the letter J in the list of my favourite films.

Not as many to choose from in this entry as I’ve only seen the quite pathetic number of 25 films beginning with J. Which still means 20 will miss out on the top five. Of those 19 a few are worth of mention.

We'll start with, and disregard Alfred Hitchcock’s Juno and the Paycock from 1930 which is quite frankly unwatchable rubbish. My DVD copy of it admittedly isn’t great but, much as I love almost all things Hitchcockian, this is probably my least favourite of all his films. Thank goodness he redeemed himself by making much better films over then ensuing 50 years. Slightly better from Hitch was Jamaica Inn, though still one of his lesser films; this in 1939 was the last film he made in the UK before making the move to the US to start his Hollywood career with Rebecca.

In the forties came Robert Stevenson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre which is pretty decent, mainly due to its cast which includes Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, and Elizabeth Taylor. In Europe, Jacques Tati made Jour De Fete at the end of the forties; a film I didn’t enjoy as much as his later films such as Mon Oncle and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.

The only notable 50s entry is Johnny Guitar; a typically unconventional Western from Nicholas Ray starring Joan Crawford. The 1960s brought Jules et Jim from Francois Truffaut; again a film that others seem to enjoy more than me – there’s other Truffaut films of which I’m far more fond.

The 70s brought zany comedy from the team of Carl Reiner and Steve Martin in The Jerk and then not much of note in the 80s unless you include Jagged Edge; a contrived legal thriller starring Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges.

A few more contenders from the 90s including Spielberg’s box-office smash Jurassic Park. On a completely different note, Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jude is enough to depress you for a year or two. James and the Giant Peach is a decent enough animation from 1996, the same year that brought Jerry Maguire from Cameron Crewe; Cuba Gooding Jr won an Oscar for it (what happened to his career?) and Tom Cruise and Renee Zellwegger took the leads in a pretty enjoyable romantic comedy.

Glossing over Jackass: the Movie, the 2000s brought Juno, a neatly scripted comedy drama about a teenage girl finding herself pregnant. You could accuse it of being unrealistic, but fine performances and endearing characters made it an enjoyable watch.

But none of the above make the final five which are:

Jaws – Steven Spielberg’s mega-grossing film set the precedent for the curse of the big-budget summer blockbusters throughout the 80s and 90s. But we can’t hold that against it; it’s a particularly well crafted piece from a young director who used the fact that the shark wasn’t realistic to his advantage by hiding it from the viewer and creating the majority of the thrills through suspenseful editing. Robert Shaw, Roy Schieder and Richard Dreyfuss are all on fine form and take the acting honours.


Jean de Florette – From 1986, this marvellous French drama about a hunchback trying to make a success of his farm is beautiful and heartbreaking. With Gerard Depardieu as the titular character, and Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil as the villains of the story, set against picturesque rural France, it spawned a sequel Manon Des Sources which acts as a great companion piece. It may be famous for its score (used to advertise Stella Artois), but it’s got a lot more going for it than simply the music.

JFK – Whatever your feelings about Oliver Stone’s conspiracy theories, there’s no denying this is an engrossing and riveting film about the assassination of the former president. Stone successfully weaves found footage and newsreels with his film, so much so that at some points you’re not sure if you’re watching stuff he’s filmed, or that which already existed. Kevin Costner takes the lead in a cast that’s too long to mention but contains Kevin Bacon, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau among others.


Jackie Brown – Whenever anyone asks me what my favourite Quentin Tarantino film is (admittedly this doesn’t happen very often – I think I’ve been asked it twice), I say Jackie Brown. It may not have the visceral impact of Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill; maybe didn’t play about with cinematic conventions as much as Pulp Fiction did, but it’s a great story, I think it’s got the finest acting in it of any Tarantino film, and also has more heart, actually allowing you to get emotionally involved with the characters. Probably Quentin’s most intelligent film and, like I say, my favourite of his.


JSA (Joint Security Area) – From Korean director Chan-wook Park comes this brilliant film, made in 2000. You could describe it as a war film – the action takes place in and around the JSA – the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. An investigation is underway after 2 North Korean soldiers have been found dead and suspicion is on a South Korean soldier. However things may not be as they seem and the action is revealed in flashback as a neutral team of Swiss and Swedish investigators look into what has happened. The action builds to a suspenseful climax and it’s a film that lingers long in the memory.

And the winner is.. well this is a tricky one. There’s no one real standout film like there’s been in many previous categories. However, using the criteria of "If I was going to sit down and watch one right now, which one would it be?" I’ll go for Jaws.

A-Z of favourite films - I of the tiger

It's the ninth in the series of my favourite films by letter and we're on to I

To be honest, I thought “I” would be an easy category as I’ve only seen around 50 films beginning with that letter, but there’s many top quality ones in amongst them; it’ll be most difficult to get them down to a final five.

From the 30s comes The Invisible Man from Frankenstein director James Whale; it utilises such stunning special effects to portray the invisibility that you really marvel at how they were done considering the film was made in 1933. A year later comes the multi Oscar winner It Happened One Night – a Frank Capra comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It was the first film to win all five major Academy Awards – Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay – this feat wouldn’t happen again until 42 years later with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Two notable entries from the 40s. First there’s Powell and Pressburger’s charming I Know Where I’m Going; maybe not up to the standards of A Matter of Life and Death, but still among their top films. Then, there’s the perennial classic It’s a Wonderful Life – another Capra film; a dark masterpiece with Jimmy Stewart as the man who wishes he’d never been born, only to be shown another side to his life by n apprentice angel.

In 1950 Nicholas Ray and Humphrey Bogart teamed up for In a Lonely Place, a dark tale of a Hollywood scriptwriter which contains one of my favourite movie lines: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me; I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” Another of Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ikiru crops up in 1952 – one of his films set in the modern day rather than his samurai epics for which he is more famous. A lesser Hitchcock, but hey, still a Hitchcock arrived a year later in I Confess with Montgomery Clift playing the Catholic priest falsely implicated for murder. 1956 brought Don Siegel’s Invasion of the body Snatchers, filled with analogy and subtext; more straightforwardly John Mills was just looking for an ice cold beer in the war adventure Ice Cold in Alex a couple of years later. Stanley Donen’s Indiscreet draws the decade to a close, a soufflé of a romantic comedy.

The swinging 60s brought an unlikely tale about a prostitute in Irma La Douche. Directed by Billy Wilder and with a cast including Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine, it’s not as sordid as it sounds though and is immensely entertaining. The working class alternative to Bond made his debut in The Ipcress File, starring a bespectacled Michael Caine, and then in the US, race relations came to the fore in In the Heat of the Night, another Oscar winning film with sterling work from Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger on screen. If tales of boarding school shenanigans are what you are after then Lindsey Anderson’s If may be for you, though be warned – it’s no Harry Potter. The 60s end with the British classic The Italian Job; Michael Caine again taking the lead in the crime caper with minis.

The 70s are a tad disappointing for I films. There’s the infamous In the Realm of the Senses from Japan, famous for its sexually explicit subject matter, but actually quite dull. I’m not going to recommend I Spit on Your Grave, and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is fairly interesting but not up to the original.

Indiana Jones appears in the 80s with instalments two and three actually beginning with “I” ( the first was Raiders of the Lost Ark so not to be found here). I prefer Indiana Jones and the last Crusade to the earlier Temple of Doom, mainly due to the banter between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery in the latter film. Plus Temple of Doom is saddled with that most annoying character played by Kate Capshaw.

A plethora of I films arrive in the 90s. In the Line of Fire is a decent thriller with Clint Eastwood as the ex-presidential bodyguard. It Could Happen to You is a charming romantic comedy of the sort that Frank Capra could have made had he still been around at the end of the century. Independence Day is extremely silly but does its job as mindless entertainment and you find yourself carried along despite yourself, mainly due to the charisma of Will Smith in the leading role. From the Dogme school came Lars Von Trier’s The Idiots; a film with which I can’t decide my opinion – on one viewing I thought it was hideous; on another I quite liked it and saw its merit – I’m still undecided. Michael Mann’s The Insider gave Russell Crowe a chance to flex his acting muscles and the decade ends with the fabulous animation The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird (later to helm The Incredibles), a film full of charm and adapted from the Ted Hughes poem, it packs an emotional punch.

Into 2000 and Wong Kar Wai comes up with a masterpiece In the Mood For Love. Full of atmosphere with a great score and buckets of atmosphere, this is a heartbreaking film – it’s kind of like a Brief Encounter for the 21st Century, only set in Hong Kong. Also from Hong Kong, the first decade of the century brought the Infernal Affairs trilogy; a labyrinth of a film series, Shakespearian in its complexity and depth of characters. It would be remade by Scorsese as The Departed, but the original in this case is still the best. From the US came a fine emotional drama about the death of a son with In the Bedroom, and then Brad Bird re-emerged with The Incredibles; a massively successful superhero animation from Pixar. We’ll ignore the fourth Indiana Jones movie, mainly because it was pants. From the UK came In Bruges, a superb, if foul mouthed drama about a hitman, starring Brendan Gleason, Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes. Speaking of foul mouthed, the spin off from the TV series The Thick of It arrived with In the Loop, a superb satirical comedy about the lead up to a fictional war; a thinly disguised take on the lead up to the Iraq war.

The final five

It’s a Wonderful life – Capra’s life affirming film from 1946 marked the comeback from James Stewart after his wartime service, and what a comeback it was. Actually a flop on first release and you can see why – most of the film’s very dark, tackling suicide and a man’s sense of worthlessness of his own life. It’s not what you’d call cheerful fare for the majority of its running time. This only makes the ending all that more joyful though. Quite possible Capra’s best ever film, and the only film I’ve seen at the cinema where the audience broke into spontaneous applause at the end.

Ikiru – We’re on a dark theme in this final five – this modern day (for 1952) tale from Kurosawa deals with a bureaucrat who leads a monotonous life until he is diagnosed with cancer and told he has less than a year to live. The film deals with his search for life’s meaning and whilst it may not have any easy answers and address grim issues, it’s a beautiful film with Takashi Shimura giving a career-highlight of a performance in the main role.

In the Heat of the Night – Oscar winning drama with Sidney Poitier as the black detective from Philadelphia helping Rod Steiger to investigate a murder in a racist town in Mississipi. He encounters all sorts of bigotry, even from his new colleague. A superbly atmospheric film, nominated for 7 Oscars and winning 5.

In the Mood for Love – Along with Chungking Express, perhaps Wong Kar-Wai’s best film. It’s not for everyone; some find it frustratingly slow, and if it’s action you’re after, perhaps give it a miss. However give it a chance and it’ll draw you in, seducing you with the characters as well as with the film-making techniques – the sound, lighting and cinematography are all near-perfect

Infernal Affairs – Actually a trilogy of films, adapted into The Departed by Scorsese, this examination of both sides of the criminal divide in Hong Kong is fascinating filmmaking at its best. A gang member is undercover in the police; a policeman is undercover in a gang; what does that do to their identities, and at the end of the day who’s really on whose side?

And the winner is ...

It’s a Wonderful Life – beating off 3 East Asian films in the top five, it’s one of my all time favourites and worthy of repeat viewing time and time again. Just don’t watch the colorized version – sacrilege!

A-Z of favourite films - H it is then.

No point dropping the aitches so we’re onto H in the A-Z of my favourite films list.

Laurel and Hardy make their obligatory appearance in two fine entries from their extensive back catalogue – Hog Wild and Helpmates - both excellent shorts that are guaranteed to raise a laugh. From one comedy team to the other as the Marx Brothers crop up too with Horse Feathers with Groucho as a college professor trying to help his college win a football match. The 30s comedy continues with the 1939 Howard Hawks screwball comedy, His Girl Friday which is quite simply genius and one of the fastest talking comedies ever filmed with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell sparking quite brilliantly off each other.

The forties bring an excellent performance from Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra and a couple of decent American studio comedies with Here Comes Mr Jordan and Heaven Can Wait. From Britain came Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, doing Shakespeare and propaganda at the same time during the Second World War.

1950 brings perhaps the most charming film ever made – Harvey with James Stewart making everyone fall in love with him (yes, I’d have probably changed sexuality to marry him and we’d spend our days saying “Ah, shucks..” Anyway, I digress). Harvey is almost perfect in every way, but there are other H films to discuss. In 1952 came High Noon which is up there with my favourite Westerns, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. It was almost an anti-western, challenging the generic norm and took the genre into a new direction. Grace Kelly crops up again 4 years later in High Society opposite Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. To finish the decade off if you fancy a bit of arthouse cinema there’s Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, though be warned - it’s not light viewing.

During the 1960s, The Hustler contained a powerful performance from Paul Newman as the pool shark, ably supported by George C Scott. Changing tones entirely there’s A Hard Day’s Night with The Beatles which is a film that seems to sum up an era (from what we’ve been told anyway – I wasn’t actually there!) There’s also the very un-politically correct comedy How to Murder Your Wife with Jack lemmon and Terry Thomas. Wouldn’t be made nowadays but still funny at times.

The cult dark comedy Harold and Maude kicks off the 1970s, charting the romance between a teenage boy and a elderly lady and full of weird charm. Clint Eastwood directs himself in the interesting Western High Plains Drifter, with more of a touch of the supernatural about it. Mel Brooks came up with the Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety in 1977, then a year later John Carpenter directed his horror masterpiece Halloween, starring a very young Jamie Lee Curtis and introducing the character of Michael Myers to the world.

The 1980s is a pretty barren time for H films (as indeed it seemed to be for films in general – yes, there are exceptions before you start!) and the only real diamond in the muck is Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters – a great ensemble piece with Mia Farrow and Michael Caine amongst others. Sir Michael picked up an Oscar for his troubles.

Into the 90s and we’ll gloss over the Home Alone films. The Hunt For Red October is a good cold war yarn and there’s juvenile humour to be had in the Hot Shot films too. The Coen brothers came up with The Hudsucker Proxy in 1994 – some say it’s one of the Coens’ lesser films, but I have a soft spot for it and could watch it over and over again. From France in ‘95 comes La Haine, a superb hard-hitting look at gang life in Paris that is very powerful. From the same year comes Michael Mann’s Heat which paired up De Niro and Pacino on opposite sides of the crime divide. We’ll round off the 90s with Todd Solonz’s independent American film, Happiness – controversial, opinion-splitting, but for me an involving and excellent movie.

From recent years comes High Fidelity with John Cusack and Jack Black starring in this adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel pretty successfully. Zhang Yimou’s Hero is well worth a mention from 2002, as is his follow up film in 2004, House of Flying Daggers – both absolutely beautiful to look at, as you’d expect from him. A History of Violence is a standout film from David Cronenberg; then there’s the award winning Hotel Rwanda and finally from 2007 there’s Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s excellent follow up to Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz which very nearly lived up to its predecessor.

You’ll notice an absence of Harry Potter in this list – that’s because it’s my favourite films, not a popularity contest!

And on to the final five

His Girl Friday – Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, direction by Howard Hawks- all the ingredients were there and they added up to one of the all time classic Hollywood comedies. Try and hang on to the light speed dialogue and just enjoy the ride.

Harvey – James Stewart is the alcoholic with a six foot invisible rabbit as a best friend. As you do. A charming comedy, with Josephine Hull winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as his frustrated aunt. The dialogue is exquisite as this seemingly crazy amiable man spreads his good-naturedness and has a profound effect on all that he meets.

High Noon – Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly are the newly marrieds about to leave town on honeymoon just as a band of criminals return after spending time in prison. Cooper, the ex-Sheriff finds himself torn between his new wife and his sense of duty to fight off the criminals whoo have returned for revenge. None of the townsfolk will help him so he has to resort to taking them on single-handedly. A classic western, essential viewing.

The Hudsucker Proxy – Ah, shucks to the critics – I love this Capra-esque offering from the Coens. Tim Robbins is the employee suddenly rising to the top through a scam by boss Paul Newman. Jennifer Jason Leigh does her best Rosalind Russell impression as the newspaperwoman investigating the new protégée.

Hot Fuzz – Bad Boys meets Midsomer Murders in this marvellous British comedy from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Pegg is the London cop drafted into a sleepy town with zero crime rate, but all is not as it seems. Timothy Dalton and Edward Woodward also feature in a film crampacked full of visual and verbal jokes.

And the winner is…

Harvey. What else? If you’re having a bad day, sit down, get the DVD out, and put the film on for 90 minutes of topclass feel-good fare.