Contents"Napoleon" "Nathalie" "The Navigators" "The Negotiator" "The Net" "Never Let Me Go" "The New Girlfriend" "News Of The World" "The Next Three Days" "The Nice Guys" "Night At The Museum" "Night At The Museum 2" "Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb" "Nightcrawler" "Nights In Rodanthe" "Nikita" "9 Songs" "1917" "Nitram" "No Other Choice" "No Strings Attached" "No Time To Die" "Noah" "Nomadland" "Non-Stop" "The Northman" "Nostalgia" "The Notebook" "Notes On A Scandal" "Notting Hill" "Nuremberg" "Nyad"
Veteran British director Ridley Scott is now 85 and "Napoleon", his 29th work, is a fine addition to a wonderful canon that stretches in time-setting from "Gladiator" to "Alien".
This is a hugely ambitious production, stretching from the execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793 to the death of Napoleon in i821. In that time period, he fought some 70 battles (winning about 60 of them) and this film concentrates on just four: Toulon, Austerlitz, Borodino, and of course Waterloo. The story is seen through the prism of his relationship and correspondence with wife and then ex-wife Josephine. This is a good deal to cover in just over two and a half ours (we are promised a four hour version on Apple TV+) - and that is without any significant coverage of Napoleon's statecraft which still underpins the France of today.
The battle sequences are simply stunning and I was pleased that I chose to see the movie in IMAX on Britain's biggest screen (the BFI in London). The sex is hurried and selfish - like his battle victories - but there is no doubt that Josephine had a genuine hold over his emotions. The French couple are portrayed by the American Joaquin Phoenix (a masterly and brooding performance) and the English Vanessa Kirby (coquettish and captivating). The costumes and sets are splendid and the locations (mainly England and Malta) glorious.
Some historians and the French have criticised the film for its inaccuracies, of which there are plenty (for instance, Napoleon and Wellington never met), but this is a work of entertainment, not a documentary, and a degree of artistic licence is permissible. "Napoleon" may not have have the emotional tug and memorable tunes of "Gladiator", but it is a magnificent epic, the like of which we see very rarely these days.
An elegant middle-aged woman (Fanny Ardant), her errant husband (Gérard Depardieu), a beautiful call girl (Emmanuelle Béart), lots of talk of sex but nothing on show, plenty of coffee and cigarettes, no car chases, no special effects - it could only be a French film and a quintissential one at that. Of course, there must be a law that no French movie can be shown outside France (I saw it in London) without the inclusion of Depardieu and the most attractive feature of any French film for me is the starring of Béart (I've been captivated since she gambolled in "Manon Des Sources"). Female director Anne Fontaine seems to be complicit here in the notion that a French man can have affairs without it meaning much as long his wife can share vicariously in the excitement. Mon Dieu ..
"The Navigators"Most movies are escapist, depicting a world and a lifestyle that are unknown to the viewer. We rarely see the working class - except as criminals - and there is virtually never a reference to trade unions. But British director Ken Loach makes utterly different films, as is well-evidenced here. Set in Yorkshire in the mid 1990s, this work looks at the impact of rail privatisation on a group of maintenance staff or 'navvies', forced to confront a new management style where in theory the customer comes first but in practice cost is always the prime factor. Using an unknown cast, naturalistic dialogue and minimal plot, Loach presents us with something close to a documentary and we just know that it is not going to end well.
No, this is not a film about collective bargaining - otherwise it would have been in the section on trade union films! Instead it is a movie about a Chicago police hostage negotiator who is forced - by false charges of murder and embezzlement - to himself become a hostage taker and deal with a police negotiator from the other side of the precinct.
Apparently based loosely on an actual incident which occurred in St Louis, the stars are two of the finest character actors around: Samuel L Jackson ("Pulp Fiction") as the wronged Danny Roman and Kevin Spacey ("The Usual Suspects") as the cool Chris Sabian. The chemistry between the two is important to the film's success and much helped by an excellent script and the actors near 20 years of friendship. The plotting is intelligent with plenty of tension and twists and there are some exciting action sequences, all making for a must-see movie.
So what does the middle initial stand for in Samuel L Jackson? The answer - Leroy - may win you a pub quiz sometime.
The Internet really 'took off' in 1993 when the number of users doubled to 25 million and the media discovered the network, so it is no surprise that two years later we see the first Hollywood movie where the Net is the prime focus of the plot. Sandra Bullock is the engaging software tester who finds her identity electronically erased when she stumbles across a plot to control corporation and government networks via a 'trojan horse' in so-called protection systems. As so often in American films, the bad guy is British, this time played by Jeremy Northam. The premise of the plot is perhaps not as outlandish as one might wish, but the execution is extremely derivative of so many other movies, not least in the sequence where Bullock is chased through a fairground by Northam.
I had read the 2005 novel from Japanese-born British writer Ishiguru before seeing this film adaptation so I knew the premise of the plot; if you haven't read the book, it would be preferable that you approached the movie knowing as little as possible. It should suffice that the film is based on a work by one of our best writers and stars some of our most talented young actors.
We have here a remarkably faithful adaptation, much aided by the screenplay being written by Alex Garland who is a friend of Ishiguro and by Ishiguro himself being one of the executive producers. Therefore, like the novel, the film is quiet and understated and profoundly elegiac which means that it will not appeal to all viewers, but I found it intensely moving.
The three leading roles are taken by Carey Mulligan ("An Education"), Keira Knightley ("The Duchess") and Andrew Garfield ("The Social Network"), three friends from their days at the odd boarding school called Hailsham, and, if that is not enough talent, there are also performances from Charlotte Rampling and Sally Hawkins as teachers at the school and even a cameo from Andrea Riseborough who is one to watch.
Sometimes, the less you know about a film, the more you are likely to enjoy it. This is one of those times. All I really knew about the movie was that it was French and appreciated by public and critics alike. That was enough for me and ensured that the surprises really were surprises. You need to know more? OK, the film is based on a 1985 short Story by Ruth Rendell and the directed by François Ozon ("Potiche"). What? You want more? The core of the film is the relationship between characters - the husband David and best friend Claire of the recently deceased Laura - ably acted by Romain Duris and Anaïs Demoustier. Oh, gosh. You want to know what it's about? Let's just say that it's an amusingly serious - if this is not too oxymoronic - examination of sexual identity. And that really is all I'm going to tell you about this enjoyable movie. Now see it for yourself.
I’m a huge fan of Tom Hanks (who isn’t?) and I would watch him reading a telephone directory; here we view him as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd reading items in a newspaper to illiterate folk in post-civil war northern Texas. This poorly-paying itinerant role brings him unexpectedly into contact with a 10 year old girl called Johanna (a mesmerising Helena Zengel) who has been raised by an Indian tribe and, on the rare occasions when she deems to speak, utters Kiowa or German.
This unusual western brings to mind two other films. The first is “The Searchers” which is all about an effort to locate a young woman who – like Johanna – has been taken by an Indian tribe. The second is “True Grit” which – like “News Of The World” – is centred on the relationship between a grizzled man of the west and his young female companion.
Both these other films starred John Wayne and were darker. Hanks rarely plays a character who is not decent and kind and here – overlooking the act that (however reluctantly) he was recently fighting for the Confederacy in the defence of slavery – Hanks, who is growing old(er) gracefully, is a wonderfully brave and altruistic ex-soldier.
The director (and co-writer) of “News Of The World”, the British Paul Greengrass, also made “Captain Philips” in which again Hanks has the starring role, but that movie was utterly frenetic and tense. Here Greengrass is unusually languid in this beautifully-photographed terrain. Indeed this thoroughly enjoyable film has an elegiac tone: not only is the old South dead, so is the way of life of Native Americans, so is the carefree wandering of the buffalo, and so are family members of both the principals.
But ultimately this is a delightfully uplifting film that Netflix brings to us when we need it in the midst of a global pandemic in which we deserve all the kindness we can find.
This is Russell Crowe's film and, if there's bad Crowe performance, I haven't seen it. But here he is not the action figure of "Gladiator" or "Robin Hood" but more the everyman trying to be the good man as in "L.A Confidential" or "The Insider". His beloved wife and mother of his young son is imprisoned for a murder that he is convinced she did not commit and, when all the legal avenues have been exhausted, this mild-mannered teacher gradually resorts to ever-extreme measures. Elizabeth Banks is convincing as the woman for whom he risks everything and there are some fine cameo performances from the likes of Liam Neeson and Brian Dennehy.
"The Next Three Days" is a remake of the French movie "Anything For Her" and the action is transposed to Pittsburgh with shooting in the actual Allegheny County Jail. It is a slow build up to the increasingly tense action scenes. The real problem is the lack of credibilty in the plotline. Many movie require us to suspend our critical faculties and make all sort of allowances, but here it's really hard to believe both the transformation in the central character and the efficacy of the escape plan. But, heh, my wife has never been accused of murder and I've never tried to break her out of prison.
Critics and audiences alike have rated this movie and some of my friends really liked it, but I was disappointed. At one level, it's a retread of action comedy buddy films like "Lethal Weapon" which is not surprising since director and co-writer Shane Black penned the original "Lethal Weapon" in 1987. But clearly, three decades later, he feels that the humour has to be more absurd (interviewing mermaids?) and the violence has to be more visceral (choking a dying man?) and this is a combination which sat uneasily with me in spite of a sharp, wise-cracking script. Of course, as the eponymous private eyes of seedy 1977 Los Angeles, burly Russell Crowe, as the violent Jackson Healy, and slimline Ryan Gosling, as the more sensitive Holland March, have great chemistry and are very watchable, but some of the female roles - especially Kim Bassinger (remember her in "LA Confidential" with Crowe) and young Angourie Rice (an impressive film debut) - are more surprising delights.
This is the 1990 French movie that was remade by the Americans as "The Assassin" and then became separate, long-running television series in Canada and then the USA. The original, written and directed by Luc Besson, is raw, violent and powerful - always on the edge and surprising. It involves a young drug-addict and cop-killer being given a new life as a highly trained state assassin.
As the eponymous character, Anne Parillaud - then Besson's wife - is totally convincing in a role which requires her to show very different personality facets and there are able support performances from Tcheky Karyo as her minder, Jean-Hugues Anglade as her lover, and Jean Reno as 'the cleaner', with a surprise cameo from 62 year old Jeanne Moreau. The atmospheric music is from Eric Serra.
This is the kind of family movie that I used to take my son to 20 years ago and I only saw it because he (now aged 30) took me along as a Boxing Day frivolity. Ben Stiller is the hapless divorced father taking a job as night security guard at New York's Museum of Natural History (which I've visited) where, over three consecutive nights, he has to come to terms with history coming alive (literally).
There'a amazing array of talent here including Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan & Ricky Gervais and even embracing veterans Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney & Bill Cobbs (average age almost 80). The cast of characters is amazing from Attila the Hun to Christopher Columbus, from miniature cowboys and Roman soldiers to a dinosaur skeleton and wild animals, and the special effects are excellent. Entertaining enough - just don't expect anything clever or subtle.
This is a model of how a sequel should succeed in following up on the success of an original. Keep the same basic plot but relocate and develop it: so it is still night-time in a museum but we move from the Museum of Natural History in New York City to the Smithsonian museum complex in Washington DC. Keep all the favourite characters but add some new ones: so we still have the pan-faced Ben Stiller as the one-time museum guard but now we also have Amy Adams as the feisty flier Amelia Earhart; we still have the cowboy (Owen Wilson) and the centurion (Steve Coogan) but now we have the Egyptian pharaoh (Hank Azaria) not to mention Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon and Al Capone; and we don't just have one president (Theodore Roosevelt) but two (add Abraham Lincoln).
This is film squarely aimed at children and we took two boys aged 8 and 10 who thought it was fantastic. The monkey face-slapping scene was the one that all the kids loved most. But young-at-heart adults will find much to enjoy too with much referencing of historic figures and incidents plus allusions to plenty of other movies. Personally I really enjoyed the scenes set in the National Air & Space Museum because this is my favourite museum in the whole world.
"Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb"
In spite of the absence of a number in the title, this is the third (and last?) film in a franchise that I have thoroughly enjoyed for providing inventive entertainment (imagine a fight sequence inside a MC Escher drawing). Each movie has been based in a museum I know well and this time we are in my home city of London at the wonderful British Museum which means that the Elgin Marbles and other artifacts come alive. At the heart of the franchise is Ben Stiller, a comic actor with deceptively understated style, and this time he gets to plays two very contrasting roles, particularly funny when his characters interact.
If there are weaknesses in this outing, they are that perhaps too many of the original characters are involved (meaning that screen time is spread rather thinly between them), there could have been more original museum characters (the main one is Dan Stevens as Sir Lancelot), and it would have been good to have more female roles (Australian Rebel Wilson as the BM security guard is effectively the only substantive one). And, of course, there is the sadness of seeing Robin Williams and Mickey Rooney in their last screen roles.
All that said, this is a worthy addition to a really fun franchise which has probably now run its course.
It's a delight to see a film with a different topic and a different style from so much Hollywood fare. The eponymous nightcrawler drives around Los Angeles at night listening in to police communications, waiting for a car smash up or even a murder, and racing to get to the scene before the cops and other nightcrawlers to obtain graphic images on a camcorder that can be sold to a TV news channel desperate for ratings.
Lou Bloom is a newcomer to the role but learns quick and knows no physical or moral limitations. The role is totally inhabited by Jake Gyllenhaal in a brilliant performance in which he has slimmed down his body, slicked back his long hair, and adopted a speaking style that is invariably calm yet robotic and utterly chilling. And it's good to see 60 year old Rene Russo (the director's wife) back with a decent role as an avaricious, yet vulnerable, television editor.
Great credit goes to screenwriter turned director Dan Gilroy who has crafted a sharp script and an almost documentary-style debut direction that draws in the viewer remorselessly with never a weak scene in a story that simply races along. The gritty urban landscape and thumping soundtrack add to the atmospherics. This is a biting satire both of "if it bleeds it leads" television news and of senseless and insensitive management speak that hits the mark time and time again in a narrative that would be funny if it was not so callous and cruel.
Terrible title for a movie that is not nearly as terrible as some critics have suggested. At a time when there are so many romantic comedies aimed at young viewers, it's no bad thing to have the occasional romantic story that eschews humour and involves characters in middle age - think something along the lines of "Bridges Of Madison County" (both are based on novels).
The (goodlooking) stars are Richard Gere, as a doctor seeking to establish a new relationship with his estranged son in Latin America, and Diane Lane, a mother in a deeply unhappy marriage considering whether to abandon it - two actors who were together in the earlier "Unfaithful". The (unusual) setting is the Outer Banks of North Carolina at a time of year when hurricanes are threatened. At times, it's a little silly and sentimental but still worth an evening in front of the television if not a visit to the cinema.
In the (admittedly unlikely) eventuality that someone wandered into a cinema expecting this to be a musical, a rude shock would ensue, since this is the most sexually explicit mainstream film ever exhibited in Britain. Indeed the only mainstream movie I've previously seen to compare in explicitness was the 1976 Japanese work "Ai No Corrida" ("In the Realm Of The Senses"), but this work goes further with a scene of ejaculation, as well as fellatio, cunnilingus and penetrative sex. Since this is the work of accomplished British director Michael Winterbottom ("In This World"), one cannot possibly regard this is as pornography - besides anything else, porn features far more voluptuous women and portrays the sex from an exclusively male point of view, whereas the sex here is realistic (as well as real) and as female-oriented as much as male.
The problem is that the film appears to be utterly meaningless. A British research geologist Matt (Kieran O'Brien) goes to London gigs and has sex with American student Lisa (skinny model Margot Stilley), but there is no characterisation or plot or even a script (the dialogue was improvised and is banal). Even the music seems to bear no relationship to the lovers and - except for some haunting work from Michael Nyman - is dreary gunge. Shot on low budget digital video, the picture is as grey as the subject matter and the only light-hearted aspect is the rather unsubtle joke of the (mercifully short) running time (69 minutes). Come again? No chance - too much of an anti-climax.
Director Sam Mendes stunned cinema-goers with his opening sequence for the James Bond movie "Spectre", set during The Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City, when it appeared to be shot in one take of seven minutes (actually done in three shots). In retrospect, we can see that this was just a trial run for Mendes since the hugely ambitious "!917" appears to be a single take for the entire two-hour film (it isn't, of course, but most viewers will not spot the cuts). The most impressive cinematic work that I have seen that does truly involve just a single take is the oddly captivating "Russian Ark". In "1917", the single-take approach gives the work powerful tension and the viewer strong engagement in what is a genuinely immersive experience. The technique enables the narrative to appear to run in more-or-less real time to represent a matter of hours in April 1917.
The plot - inspired by stories told by Mendes' grandfather who served on the Western Front in the First World War - involves British Lance Corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Scofield (George MacKay) - being instructed to cross 'no man's land' and abandoned German lines to reach 1,600 British troops - including Blake's brother - intending to launch a dawn attack in ignorance of a German trap. The power of the story is helped by the casting of two leads who are newcomers, but there are brief cameos from Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbach. Interestingly, although we do see odd Germans, we never really view their faces - they are an anonymous enemy.
Will the two lance corporals reach the attack zone in time and will they be able to prevent a military massacre? The production design (Dennis Gassner) and cinematography (Roger Deakins) are brilliant and some scenes are almost surreal (notably the nighttime sequences). The blasted wasteland, the clinging mud, the huge water-filled craters, the stripped tree trunks, the carcasses of man and horse everywhere, all represent a Dante-like nightmare as the odyssey unfolds and one challenge follows another. Unfortunately the dialogue is sometimes stilted (Mendes himself was co-writer) and some of the scenes are a bit hackneyed. But overall this is a cinematic tour-de-force that will leave the viewer exhausted rather than exhilarated.Note: In reality, the average length of a shot was 5-6 minutes and the longest was 8 1/2 minutes. Transitions were made at the moment of greatest drama so that the viewer would not notice.
Sadly mass shootings are a common occurrence in the United States, but fortunately Down Under they are rare. This Australian film is based on the worst such incident in the country's history. It happened in Port Arthur in Tasmania on 28-29 April 1996 when a mentally disturbed loner called Martin Bryant, aged 28 at the time, managed to put together a veritable armoury before murdering 35 people and wounding 23 others.
The work has been controversial in Australia on the grounds that it highlights knowledge and notoriety of the killer at the expense of the memory of the victims and the pain of their family and friends. However, in a sensitive narrative, director Justin Kurzel and writer Shaun Grant attempt to overcome such objections by never fully naming the shooter (although all Australians know his name and the title is simply Martin backwards) and by not showing any of the actual shooting. Instead we are presented with something of a character study superbly embodied by Caleb Landry Jones in a performance that won him the Cannes Best Actor Award.
Furthermore we are encouraged to consider some basic questions: what gun control restrictions do we need and how do we enforce them? what role do medication and therapy have in dealing with mental illness? what is the responsibility of parents, friends and acquaintances in creating or controlling such behaviours?
These, and other questions, around mass shootings and indeed all shootings are not just for Australia where we are told at the end of the film that, in spite of tougher controls, there are now more guns in the community than in 1996. These are questions for Britain (the film references the massacre at Dunblane) and many countries - most notably the US - around the world. In that respect, this film, while uncomfortable to watch, is compelling viewing and something of a public service.
The 'country' is the US-Mexico border (more specifically West Texas) and, for anyone involved in the drugs trade, they are unlikely to become 'old men' because the attrition rate is so high. It is clear then that this is a movie with a high body count but, in the hands of the talented Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan), the story of a drug deal gone wrong is told with a superlative mixture of drama and style that won the film four Academy Awards including Best Picture.
On this occasion, although the Coens as usual wrote as well as directed (and co-produced), they were adapting an original work, the 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy. So they are McCarthy's characters but the Coens' choice of actors is superb.Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson are excellent and Javier Bardem is - not withstanding a weird hairstyle - chillingly wonderful as the unstoppable killing machine with a fondness for coin tossing.
It is not always clear what is happening but the action quickly moves on, so one has no time to ponder on the confusion. For me, the real weakness of the movie is the conclusion which - while apparently faithful to the novel - is unsatisfyingly opaque.
From the Korean director of the infamous "Old Boy", Park Chan-wook's latest film will not be to everyone's taste since this surreal black comedy is a tale of mayhem and murder, but it is done with some style and poses a challenging social problem: what do we do when traditional industries - in this case, paper-making - embrace robotics and artificial intelligence to such an extent that almost all the staff are 'let go'? In the case of the redundant middle-manager played by Lee Byung-hun, he decides to enhance his chances of re-employment by eliminating his major competitors in the jobs market, but killing them and disposing of the evidence comes with problems in this deliciously entertaining, though rather overlong, macabre story.
Note: The film is an adaptation of a 1997 novel called "The Ax" written by American author Donald E Westlake. It was previously adapted for the screen in 2005 by the Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras to whom the Korean film is dedicated.
In 1989, the classic rom-com "When Harry Met Sally" posed the question of whether a guy and a gal could just be friends without sex getting in the way. A little over two decades later, "No Strings Attached" asks whether they can just have sex without love taking over. Of course, we are now in the age when so many rom-coms are much more sexually explicit and here we have an excessive number of references to body parts and sexual activity. Yet there is very little visual explicitness and the only naked body on show is male.
Diminutive (5' 3") Natalie Portman is obviously trying to do something totally different from her intense role in "Black Swan" as Emma, a doctor with commitment issues, and, pretty though she is, this is not a natural role for her. Tall (6' 2") Ashton Kutcher is more at home as Adam, an aspiring television writer who is originally willing to go along with the sex-only partnership. Like "When Harry Met Sally", "No Strings Attached" is written by a woman (Elizabeth Meriwether) and directed by a veteran of comedy films (Ivan Reitman) but it is not in the same class, while still being moderately funny and engaging.
The release of this 25th feature in the official James Bond franchise was successively postponed for a total of a year and a half as a result of the global pandemic and it comes no less than six years after the last 007 film, so we've waited a long time for this. For lovers of new action movies like me, the period since the coronavirus has been a lean time with really only "Tenet", "Black Widow" and "Shang-Chi" easing the drought, therefore "No Time To Die" is so very welcome. I made a point of seeing it in IMAX on Britain's largest screen and the audience applauded at start and finish.
At 2 hours 43 minutes, it's the longest Bond film and could have done with a bit of trimming, but the risk of taking on director Cary Joji Fukunaga (after more experienced Danny Boyle pulled out) has really paid off. All the traditional ingredients are there. The megalomanic villain: the not-so-subtly named Lyutsifer Safin played by Rami Malek ("Bohemian Rhapsody") who plans to use nanobots to take over the world (I know ...). The exotic locations: such as Matera in Italy and various parts of Norway. The chases: one on a high-powered motor bike, another in the formidable Aston Martin DB5.
Inevitably, after a franchise spanning almost 60 years, there are echoes of other Bond films, most notably narrative, dialogue and music referencing one particular earlier 007 movie. What is different - and this has been developed over the recent Bond movies - is the updating of the British spy to a more caring, emotionally vulnerable man. "No Time To Die" will not do as spectacularly well at the box office as "Skyfall" and "Spectre" but should exceed the takings of "Casino Royale" and "Quantum Of Solace" and the five movies together have been a tribute to Daniel Craig's wonderful wearing of the 007 mantle with his final outing in the role a fitting finale to this joyous ride.
It looked so promising. Darren Aronofsky is an imaginative director who has produced some impressive work such as "The Wrestler" and "Black Swan". Russell Crowe never gives a weak performance and has filled a variety of heroic roles from "Gladiator" to "Robin Hood". And the trailer looked good with Ray Winstone and all that water.
But, oh, what a disappointment. It starts too slowly, it finishes too limply, and too many sections in between are languid. Since I am not religious at all, I had no problem with variations from the Biblical text, but I did expect some narrative sense and sensibility. The worse aspect was the appearance of fallen angels in the form of lumbering stone giants who looked as if they had taken a wrong turning off the set of a "Transformers" movie. There was not enough about the ark or the animals and Noah himself is portrayed as a callous zealot with little examination of his motivation.
The Icelandic locations are striking and some of the director's trademark flashiness is quite gripping but, as I left the half empty cinema, my abiding impression was that every member of humankind is a descendant of Emily Watson and I'm not sure that's what Aronofsky intended. So, should you bother to see "Noah"? Sadly, no-a.
By the time restrictions had eased on the third lockdown in pandemic Britain and I was able to see this film on the big screen, it had already received three Academy Awards, winning Best Director (Chloé Zhao), Best Actress (Frances McDormand) and Best Film. It is a remarkably original work, mixing a fictional story of widowed 61 year old Fern (McDormand), who makes a life for herself in a recreational vehicle (RV) travelling to wherever she can find casual work, with what is in effect a documentary about the life of such nomads in modern America featuring a cast of real-life characters who fit into the story while telling their own stories. The cinematography is amazing with shot after shot looking like a photograph or painting.
This could have been a depressing critique of an America for whom the dream has become a nightmare, but instead there is a moving sense of solidarity and community between people who have so little materially but so much in spirit. The sense of positivity is captured in Fern's comment: "I'm not homeless, I'm just houseless. Not the same thing, right? Don't worry about me." The narrative is sparse and episodic and underlined by the understated music of Ludovico Einaudi. The ending of the fictional part of the film is unresolved and enigmatic. My viewing companion and I had very different ideas about Fern's future.
There's a whole sub-genre of movies based around trouble in an airliner - think of the four "Airport" films of the 1970s, the two "Airplane" comedies of the 1980s, the action-thrillers "Passenger 57" (1992) and "Flightplan" (2005), the real life account of "United 93" (2006) or even the hilarious "Snakes On A Plane" (2006). So don't expect anything too original from "Non-Stop", set almost entirely on a flight from New York to London on the fictional airline Aqualantic.
At the centre of the action is air marshal Bill Marks who - like the pilot in "Flight" - has a past fuelled by alcohol. What gives "Non-Stop" an element of class is that Marks is played by Liam Neeson who is a serious actor - brilliant in the eponymous roles of "Michael Collins" and "Schindler's List" but latterly turning to action roles (the two "Taken" movies"). Julianne Moore is also around as one of the suspect passenger to add a little gravitas.
As entertainment, this is a fun enough film. At the time, the tension is maintained and the twists keep coming but, on reflection, little of the narrative makes much sense - but, if it did, air travel would be less safe, so let's enjoy the ride.
There aren't too many Viking revenge movies and this one is a cracker. At the turn of the 10th century, Prince Amleth sets out to avenge the murder of his father by his uncle. Be warned: there will be blood. If the name of the lead character and the basic plot-line seem familiar, that is because the film was loosely inspired by the same 12th century Danish story as Shakespeare's "Hamlet". But "The Northman" has many fewer words and much more action than the Bard's play. Think "Conan The Barbarian" meets "Gladiator".
The director of this accomplished and distinctive movie is American Robert Eggers whose two previous films - which I haven't seen - were small, horror movies and here he mixes elements of the supernatural with Nordic mythology. Eggers wrote the script with Iceland novelist Sjón - one of whose weird novels I've read. Shot in Iceland and Ireland, the cinematography is wonderful and the pulsating score is atmospheric.
The film features an eclectic cast: Swedish Alexander Skarsgård is magnificent in the lead role; his father and mother are played respectively by the American Ethan Hawk and the Australian Nicole Kidman; his wicked uncle is the Danish Claes Bang; American Willem Dafoe has a small role; and British-American Anya Taylor-Joy and Icelandic singer Björk are witches. The accents are all over the place but the primal screaming works in any language.
Above all, this is an action movie with visceral and brutal hand-to-hand and sometimes even head-to-head combat. Heads and limbs are lost and much blood is spilt. And all in terrain where you can almost feel the cold and the mud and the wind. Wonderful stuff.
My mother was from Naples and took us there twice as children, so the city has a special place in my heart. Naturally, therefore, I was attracted to this 2022 Italian film, co-written and directed by Mario Martone and based on a 2016 novel, which is shot mainly in the impoverished Rione Sanità district of Naples.
The cinematography is simply wonderful and captures brilliantly the atmosphere of this urban slice of comradeship and corruption. Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino) is nostalgic for the friendship that he had with Oreste (Tommaso Ragno) some 40 years ago, before he left the city to make a new life in Egypt, but revisiting his past is going to have huge consequences for his present.
There are so many magical scenes in this moving work but, for me, the most touching was when Felice reconnects with his aged mother and bathes her with gentleness and love.
It took me a decade or so to catch up with this 2004 film, by which time its two young stars had carved out impressive careers: Ryan Gosling with leading roles like "Drive", "The Ides Of March" and "The Place Beyond The Pines" and Rachel McAdams with appearances in "The Time Traveler's Wife", "Midnight In Paris" and "About Time". In this early work of theirs, you can see why because Gosling as Noah and McAdams as Allie are utterly convincing as two immensely attractive young people crazily in love with one another in spite of the differences in class and personality.
The tale is told through the notebook of the title which, many years later, is read by Duke (James Garner) to a fellow inmate of his nursing home (Gena Rowlands) who is suffering from very serious dementia. It is a powerful story taken from the novel by Nicholas Sparks and ably crafted by director Nick Cassavetes, the son of Gena Rowlands and film director John Cassavetes. Some may find it sentimental, even manipulative, but ultimately all art manipulates our emotions and I simply loved "The Notebook".
It is a sheer delight to see such a character-driven film with a sharp script and fine acting all round. It cannot have been an easy task to translate to the screen Zoë Heller's Booker-shortlisted novel, given its first person perspective, but Patrick Marber's screenplay does an excellent job, incorporating a lot of voice-over, especially at the beginning.
The setting is a north London school and the key relationship is that between Barbara Covett and Sheba Hart (two carefully-chosen names), the first a cynical history teacher close to retirement, a hard-looking and bitter woman, and the other a new and idealistic art teacher, beguilingly beautiful to a variety of her colleagues. These characters are played respectively by Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett who both give outstanding Oscar-worthy performances. Among an able support cast, Bill Nighy is especially impressive.
Barbara and Sheba are both missing something and think that they can find it in another person, in the case of Barbara - the diarist and narrator - in Sheba herself ("She's the one I have waited for"). But the working out of this relationship - and that between Sheba and her family and lover - involve many secrets, much pain, and some betrayals in this rawly emotional tale.
Although I enjoy the music of Philip Glass and thought that it enhanced "The Hours" considerably, here it is in danger of overwhelming the movie. But this is a minor criticism of a superb piece of cinema which brings much credit on its director Richard Eyre who tackled the life of another older woman in "Iris". At barely one and a half hours, it does not seek the length of so many movies which is in a sense a relief since the subject matter is so intense.
This is from the writer (Richard Curtis) and producer (Duncan Kenworthy) of the phenomenally-successful "Four Weddings And A Funeral" and it is another romantic comedy with Hugh Grant leading a very British cast except for an American leading lady. All the performances are excellent and Julia Roberts is perfectly cast as the famous movie star who falls for the diffident London bookshop owner. It might not be for the cynical, but my wife and I found it totally charming with some enjoyable jokes. However, those of us who live in London know that a portrayal of Notting Hill without black faces is a serious misrepresentation.
Nuremberg: the German city where Hitler held his infamous rallies from 1923 to 1938 and where 22 Nazi leaders were put on trial in 1946-1947. This film centres on the interactions between two men at that trial: Hermann Göring, effectively Hitler's deputy, and Dr Douglas Kelley, a US army psychiatrist assigned to determine the mental state of the Nazi defendants. The psychological interplay between these two characters is reminiscent of that between Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling in "The Silence Of The Lambs", except that the conversations between Göring and Kelley actually happened and were the subject of a book by Kelly. Chillingly, both Göring and Kelley ultimately met the same end.
Göring is portrayed by Russell Crowe in a performance a million miles from "Gladiator" and he has clearly put on a lot of weight which fits him well for this role which he fills with aplomb. Kelly is played by Rami Malek as the moral opposite to his earlier appearance as a Bond villain in "No Time To Die". in a starry case, there is also Leo Woodall, John Slattery and Richard E Grant.
Shot in Hungary, this is a work with high production values and the use of some actual footage from the liberation of concentration camps and scenes from the trial add to the impact of the work. In the first two-thirds of the narrative, much of the dialogue is expository and often a little melodramatic, but one has to forgive this in a work which attempts to inform and entertain and is, after all, a film and not a documentary. The final third of the film is compelling and much of the wording of Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) is verbatim from the actual record of the trial.
The writer and director is James Vanderbilt. The messaging of the movie is not subtle but it is hugely important: that the Holocaust is a historical fact that must not be forgotten or forgiven and that Nazi Germany was not uniquely evil but a phenomenon that could happen in other times and other places. "The Zone Of Silence" made the same points more obliquely, but these uncomfortable messages need to be repeated loudly and clearly at a time growing tendencies to totalitarianism.
How would anybody even think of swimming nonstop from Cuba to Florida? This is a 110-mile stretch of ocean bedevilled by powerful currents, sharks and jelly fish. American long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad knew better than anyone what would be involved and how impossibe it would be, After all, when she was 28, she had tried and failed. But, aged 60, she decided that she wanted another go. It sounds crazy, but this true story makes for a compelling movie.
It is directed by wife and husband team Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, previously known for excellent documentaries and here making their feature film directorial debut. The work has a documentary feel to it which draws in the viewer. But it is the casting that makes the movie. Annette Bening, as you've never seen her before, is "the swimmer" and Jodie Foster is her former partner, best friend and coach Bonnie Stoll. Both give outstanding performances which understandably have attracted award nominations.
Of course, all heroes are flawed and Nyad has been challenged over details of her record but, as a film, "Nyad"is a considerable success - gripping and inspirational. You can find it on Netflix. All reviews by ROGER DARLINGTON.
Last modified on 10 February 2026
Some Cinema Sites
"Empire" magazine
Internet Movie Database
American Academy Awards
British Academy Awards