A-Z of favourite films - Join the Q

And so we reach Q in the blog series of The A-Z of my favourite movies

Ah, this is where a slight drawback emerges in my method of choosing my favourite films by letter. Whereas some letters have over 100 films to choose from, and S, as we shall see, has many more, Q is a bit of a bugger as I’ve only seen five films beginning with that letter, none of which if I’m honest would probably make the top five of any other letter up to this point.

Of course I could cheat and ever so slightly alter the titles of deserving films that have so far missed out on winning their category due to there being another great film starting with the same later. Hence, we could have a top five of Quitizen Kane, Quight Club, The Quapartment, Quo Country For Old Men and The Quig Lebowski. However, I know you, my loyal 3 readers would think less of me for that, so I’ll just have to continue with the method employed up to now and stick with my stupid rules.

So, no Q films outside the final 5 to mention so straight to the top five itself

The Quiet Man – Winning a Best Director Oscar for John Ford in 1952, this Irish-set drama stars John Wayne and Margaret O Hara. It’s a while since I saw it, but I from what I remember Wayne is a bloke returning to Ireland from American, he falls for O Hara and wants to marry her, but her brother is the stumbling block. It didn’t blow me over and seemed a tad dated.

Quick Change – This was an enjoyable comedy from 1990 starring Bill Murray, Randy Quaid and Geena Davis They’re a trio of bank robbers trying to get away with an audacious robbery in Manhattan. The heist goes well, but can they get to the airport to make their escape – the journey is not an easy one. Good, undemanding fare.

Quartier Mozart – Yep, the fact that this is in the top 5 of any list grieves me. I didn’t enjoy it at all. It’s a 1992 movie from Cameroon (note the spelling – it’s the country, not James Cameron) and just seemed a mess to me. A girl wants to be a boy and by witchcraft, hey presto she is, and then she finds a girl to have sex with. Or something. I’ve blocked most of it out of my mind cos it was bloody awful

Quiz Show – Now this is one I liked, a Robert Redford directed film from 1994 about the true life story of a lawyer discovering a quiz show is fixed in the 1950s and that a contestant is being fed answers beforehand. I mainly watched it due to the presence of Rob “Northern Exposure” Morrow, and he gives a fine performance, as do John Turturro, Ralph Fiennes, Hank Azaria and the rest of the cast in an absorbing drama that captures time and place beautifully

The Quiet American – From 2002, Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser star in this drama set in Vietnam in the 1950s at the end of the first Indio-China war. It’s based on the Graham Greene book and is decent enough, though again, I’m afraid dear reader, I don’t have very strong memories of it, so it didn’t have a huge effect on me.

And that’s the quintet. And out of the five, my favourite is…. Quiz Show. In all honesty, it wouldn’t have got into the top five of any of the previous categories but it beat the competition here and is hence the winner.