A-Z of favourite films - V

Post 22 out of 26 in the A-Z list of my favourite films series of blogs and we're up to:

Excellent, V is another easily manageable category, with just 14 films in it. The drawback of course is that they’ll be films in this final five that wouldn’t have come near the final five in other categories due to the competition there, but them’s the breaks.

Anyway we start with a film that WOULD make the top five of most categories, Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo. Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, it’s a film that’s probably the most critically acclaimed of all of Hitch’s works. It’s not quite my favourite – that would go to North by Northwest or Rear Window, but it’s up there with them and is arguably the darkest and most psychological of Hitch’s films.

Into the 1960s and a very British horror film with Village of the Damned – lots of “gollys” and “goshes” at the start, before the atmosphere becomes darker as a group of creepy blond children begin controlling people’s minds. The following year came another British film with Victim; this was a ground-breaking Basil Dearden film starring Dirk Bogarde as the lawyer who has to make a choice between staying silent or revealing his homosexuality when he is threatened with blackmail. Made at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK it may seem tame by today's standards, but every journey has to start with one step, and Bogarde took quite a risk in taking the lead role in a film that also stars Sylvia Sims.

Jumping over the 1970s and we reach 1983 with David Cronenberg’s Videodrome a film telling how a television program called Videodrome controls people's lives and makes them kill. James Woods is the unknowing guinea pig in a film that also stars Debbie Harry. A couple of years later came A View to a Kill, a Roger Moore Bond film – you know, the one that has bonkers Grace Jones in it.

Into the 1990s, and there’s Tommy Jones in the fairly preposterous disaster movie, Volcano and then the better Very Bad Things featuring Jon Favreau enjoying a disastrous stag night with friends before marrying Cameron Diaz. Featuring a nice twist in the tale for the Lady Macbeth-like Diaz, the film employs VERY dark humour which may not be to everyone's taste but it works for me.

In the 2000s we have the enjoyably Danny Boyle TV movie Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise which probably doesn’t count, being a TV movie, and from the same year Cameron Crowe remade the Spanish film Open Your Eyes as Vanilla Sky starring Tom Cruise and, reprising her role from the original, Penelope Cruz. If you’ve not seen the original I guess it’s ok, but if you have, you’ll spend most of the film wondering why it was made – it’s a shot by shot remake at some points and without the originality of its predecessor. 2004 brings three V films, the poor Van Helsing, the bleak, well made abortion drama Vera Drake, and, from M Night Shyamalan came The Village which is watchable schlock, although his directing career does seem to slowly be going down the pan.

A director with a better current reputation is Pedro Almodovar, and his excellent 2006 film Volver was a sort of cross between Mildred Pierce and Arsenic and Old Lace. Penelope Cruz stars as the mother of a 14 year old and wife of a layabout husband; her life is soon turned upside down by a certain event which she has to deal with, whilst at the same time taking on a neighbour's restaurant, and dealing with her aunt's death. Plus Cruz's sister is now seeing visions of their late mother. Is she a ghost - or is it more complicated than that? The plot sounds complex but it all makes sense, and it's an enjoyable watch. Cruz is on top but all the cast do a great job. Cruz’s third appearance on this list (is it in her contract to appear in most V films?) comes in Woody Allen’s return to form, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Cruz won an Oscar for her role in a film that follows the relationships that ensue after friends Rebecca Hall (Vicky) and Scarlett Johansson (Cristina) spend a summer in Barcelona and meet artist Javier Bardem. Cruz plays Bardem's ex-wife, and if nothing else, you have a very good looking cast. However the conversation sparkles, and though it might not be very deep, it's an enjoyable souffle of a film, also featuring Patricia Clarkson

So them’s the fourteen – what are the five?

Vertigo - One of Hitchcock’s best, casting Jimmy Stewart in not the best of lights!

Victim – Tackling a taboo subject at the time, Dirk Bogarde is excellent in this 1960s drama

Vera Drake – Bleak but well made period drama; Imelda Staunton takes the title role

Volver – Almodovar’s excellent Spanish language comedy with Penelope Cruz on fine form

Vicky Cristina Barcelona – Cruz again in a cast to die for, in a film that sees Allen back on form after recent misfires.


And the winner is Vertigo – joining North by Northwest, Psycho and Rear Window as the fourth Hitchcock winner, but will it be the last. Er, probably, though there’s still Young and Innocent and The Wrong Man to come.