Civil War (2024)

We are now closer than we have ever been to victory. The near future. A civil war has broken out between an authoritarian US Government and various regional factions. The dictatorial President (Nick Offerman) who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photojournalist, Colorado-born Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn. Lee and her colleague, Florida-born Reuters journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) intend travelling to Washington DC to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee’s mentor New York Times veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson)asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville where the Western Forces (‘WF’) of Texas and California are presently assembling. Despite Lee’s hesitance she and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie persuades Joel to take her with them as well. After leaving NYC, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men where Lee negotiates the purchase of fuel in Canadian dollars. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, which she saw from the road. There, she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After leaving, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos. Following an overnight stop close to ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie’s potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing on, the group spends the night at a refugee camp  before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Look at the tops of the buildings. Be subtle. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop. Later, they are pinned down in a sniper battle amid the remains of a Winter Wonderland theme park. No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us and we’re trying to kill them. The snipers they are with mock Joel’s attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply engaged in a struggle for survival. Jessie’s nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths and she develops a mentorship under Lee … They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film plugs into the inflammatory State of the Union as it currently pertains, figuring a fissure that is as much physical as ideological with the Western secessionist states of California and Texas pitched against the federal forces that protect a President hiding out in the White House. Garland’s work from The Beach onwards has focused on trouble in paradise and lately on dystopia. Lee and Joel are both camouflaging psychological disturbance from previous war zones – she has PTSD, he has modern-day shellshock and Lee especially exhibits something world weary cynicism to control symptoms that threaten to erupt into something worse. It’s gonna make a good image. How that dissonance within Lee translates into a kind of mentoring relationship with Jessie reflecting Sammy’s relationship with her provides much of the tension as the action and violence spiral the further into the US they travel. I remember you at her age. The juxtaposing of beautiful landscapes with jarring imagery of shock and awe combat provides much of the troubling visual texture. The sense of reality, the minutiae of a road trip under fire and the urgency of the storytelling has the quality of reportage from the front line. The fact that Lee wants to photograph the President to prove he is still alive speaks volumes. What happens ultimately is straight out of the Romanian playbook. The ones who get taken are always lesser men than you think. With no enemies identified, the viewer is asked to come to their own conclusions, a motley crew of varying protagonist-journalists providing a kind of collegiate and immersive focus group of the population, a prism for coming to terms with radical change and war as Americans fight Americans. Every instinct in me tells me this is death. Whether the presence and role of good old-fashioned photojournalists recording events makes a difference is not really questioned here – it’s presumed necessary for history: proof that things are happening because seeing is believing. Hence the acknowledged reference to Lee Miller in Dunst’s character’s name. What kind of American are you? A powerful state of the nation portrait that feels immediate and true. What happened back there is nothing in comparison with what we’re heading into

BlackBerry (2023)

We call it PocketLink. 1996: Waterloo, Ontario. The co-founder and CEO Mike Lazirides (Jay Baruchel) of Research in Motion and his best friend and co-founder Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson) are preparing to pitch their ‘PocketLink” cellular device to businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). Lazaridis is bothered by the incessant buzzing of Balsillie’s Chinese intercom and fixes it before Balsillie arrives to the meeting. Their pitch is unsuccessful but when Balsillie is fired from his job due to his aggressive ambition, he agrees to work with them provided he is made CEO of RIM and given one half of the company. They hesitate but after they confirm Basillie’s suspicion that their deal with US Robotics was a malicious attempt to bankrupt them, they bring Balsillie in as co-CEO with one third of RIM for a cash infusion that requires Balsillie to mortgage his house. Balsillie arranges a pitch for the PocketLink with Bell Atlantic and forces Fregin and Lazaridis to build a crude prototype overnight which he and Lazaridis take to New York. Lazaridis forgets the prototype in their taxi, leaving Balsillie to attempt the pitch alone. Lazaridis recovers the prototype at the eleventh hour and finishes the pitch, rebranding the PocketLink as the ‘BlackBerry’ which becomes massively successful. 2003: Palm CEO Carl Yankowski (Cary Elwes) plans a hostile takever of RIM which forces Balsillie to try to raise RIM’s stockprice by selling more phones than Bell Atlantic’s (now Verizon Communications) network can support. This crashes the network, as Lazaridis had warned, so Balsillie poaches engineers from around the world to fix the problem, as well as hiring a man named Charles Purdy (Michael Ironside) as RIM’s COO to keep the engineers in line but this upsets Fregin who values the casual fun work environment he and Lazaridis had created. The new engineers fix the network issue under Purdy’s strict management enabling RIM to avoid Yankowski’s buyout. 2007: RIM’s upcoming pitch of the BlackBerry Bold to Verizon is thrown into chaos when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone … You’re not selling togetherness any more. You’re selling self-reliance. The story of the original smartphone is equal parts horrifying and hilarious. The original Canadian tech bros vs their own boss (with differences cleverly signalled by their in-car musical choices) whose acquisitiveness culminates in a funny aeroplane chase across the US trying to buy out the National Hockey League is on the money when it comes to the cultural differences between creatives and financiers. Maybe we could call it the prophet: profit margin. The core initially is the long-term friendship between Mike and Doug which is gradually usurped by Mike’s dealings with the reptilian Jim who is performed with vainglorious precision by Howerton. His presence prises the friends apart as Mike cannot handle the pressure and Doug cannot comprehend his fraility. This has the virtues of a whistleblower-style docudrama, recounting that insanely good idea to combine a cellphone with a pager and email. The dark moment when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone triggers a chain reaction of events of a desperation that is blackly comic and (almost) tragic. Mike’s presentation to Verizon is a model of a public nervous breakdown. How a small operation of laidback tech geniuses is transformed into an impersonal profit-driven major player (albeit briefly) with grownups in the once friendly groovy music-filled workplace being supervised as though they’re retarded teens in a silent call centre is sobering but explains much about our paranoid surveillance society and the men who control it. This razor-sharp comedy drama is directed by co-star Matt Johnson from a screenplay co-written with producer Matthew Miller. I created this entire product class!

Everything Went Fine (2021)

Aka Tout s’est bien passé. This is our story. Novelist Emmanuèle Bernheim aka Manue (Sophie Marceau) receives a call from her sister Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas) informing her that their retired businessman and art collector father André (André Dussollier) has suffered a stroke. She rushes to the hospital in Paris where she sees the ill effects of this cardiac event: his face is horribly stricken, falling to one side, his speech is affected. She looks at the catscan of his brain on her computer at home. Manue is a devoted visitor despite the cruelties inflicted upon her in her childhood when he called her ugly, constantly berating her for her huge appetite (she is patently beautiful and thin). She used to fantasise about killing him. She is stunned when he asks her to help him die. It’s still illegal so Manue debates the situation with Pascale and then pays a discreet visit to a lawyer for advice and contacts a Swiss clinic run by a woman doctor (Hanna Schygulla). Their mother, his ex-wife (Charlotte Rampling) is a sculptress in the throes of arthritis, Parkinson’s and depression who doesn’t care a fig for him. She is already devastated by her own loss. She reminds her daughters that her parents didn’t attend their wedding because they warned her she was marrying a homosexual. His lover Gérard (Grégory Gadebois) creates a row in the hospital and the women have to stop him visiting. He says he’s getting the great watch he was promised by their father. As Andre gets better Manue is convinced he has forgotten about the whole idea but he tells several people including a cousin and regularly reminds her to make the arrangements. Then someone rats the women out to the police ... I want you to help me end it. Adapted from the titular autobiographical novel by Emmanuèle Bernheim by writer/director François Ozon, who regularly collaborated with the late novelist (she died in 2017), this difficult and highly emotive subject is treated in such a matter of fact realistic way and yet with a sure lightness of touch it becomes a remarkable viewing experience, decorated with stunning acting that nonetheless doesn’t feel like competitive performance. The unsentimental approach to a fraught scenario, dripfeeding backstory into the well managed narrative, subverts any potential for melodrama. Don’t tell your sister, but this story would be great for one of her novels! By turns desperate, petulant, pleading, sorrowful, distressed, enthusiastic, Dussollier is majestic as the playful monster, the gay dad whose bonkers lover has to be banned from visiting – until Manue sees them in a tender moment and eventually Gérard gets the Patek Philippe watch and it is clear the end is nigh. Manue is the daughter whom he treated disgracefully but whom he secretly adores as her sister clearly realises. Everything’s coming together. He wonders randomly when informed of the cost of the Swiss solution how poor people do it. They wait to die, shrugs Manue. This wealthy industrialist reminds her to get his Legion of Honour ribbon. We are in the world of the superannuated bourgeoisie for whom money is no issue but ill-health is the great leveller and financial comfort cannot stop the indignities of the loss of bowel control and the need for 24/7 care. As the moment nears and subterfuge is required the only person keeping a truly clear head is the man who sees only one option rather than succumb to the dreadful infirmities that will encroach upon him as further incidents will surely occur given his prognosis. He recognises his great life, his entitlement, his privilege and now his destruction. Amid all the superbly constructed tension there is great humour, telling detail, laughter, tears. A rich and timely drama, fair in every possible way. Mesmerising. You know, he’s a bad father. But I love him

Golda (2023)

I’m a politician not a soldier. October 1973. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad receives intelligence suggesting that Egypt and Syria are preparing to commence a military campaign against Israel, which it promptly relays to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren). Meir is dismissive of the intelligence, noting her inability to initiate a counter-plan without the support of her defence minister Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger) who is as sceptical as she is. 6th October: the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Meir’s inner circle informs her that Egypt has amassed a large force opposite the Suez Canal, concluding that hostilities would begin by sundown. Even though she knows her tardiness in preparing adequately has put them on the back foot, Meir refuses to make a pre-emptive move, instead ordering a partial mobilisation to face the threat. Nonetheless she is surprised when the attack begins early. Dayan, who is sent to inspect the Golan Heights on the Syrian border, is horrified to discover that Syria has launched a thorough attack against the ill-prepared Israeli troops. Shocked, he attempts to resign and Meir talks him out of it but loses confidence in him. Between 7-8 October, with Egypt and Syria making gains into Israel, Israeli Defence Force chief of staff Lieutenant General David ‘Dado’ Elazar (Lior Ashkenazi) proposes to relieve Israeli fortifications in the Sinai Peninsula using the 162nd Division. Despite opposition from Mossad chief Zvi Zamir (Rotam Keinan) the plan proceeds but the IDF is defeated by the Egyptians. The following day, with the Syrian offensive having slowed, Dayan proposes an air strike on Syrian capital Damascus to put pressure on Egypt. However, with a shortage of planes, the Israeli Air Force is unable to proceed. In response, Meir asks United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) to provide surplus jets, to which he reluctantly agrees but he expresses the view that it is problematic for the United States to increase its support for Israel in light of the 1973 oil crisis. On the fifth day, amidst increasing tensions, Major General Ariel ‘Arik’ Sharon (Ohad Knoller) proposes an operation to cross the Suez Canal using the 143rd Division to challenge the Egyptian 2nd and 3rd Armies. Zvi informs Meir that the Egyptian 4th and 21st Divisions would cross the canal in two days, leaving the capital Cairo undefended in the event of an attack. According to the intelligence, the Egyptians cross the canal, are met with resistance from Israeli tank forces led by Lieutenant General Haim Bar-Lev (Dominic Mafham) and are defeated. On 15 October, Sharon’s forces cross the canal at an undefended point called the Chinese Farm. They are ambushed by Egyptian units … This is 1948 again. We are fighting for our lives. Biographical films usually make the mistake of trying to fill in all the gaps of a Great Man’s life: here we have a crucial period in the career of Israel’s first (and to date, last and only) female Prime Minister. Non-Jewish Mirren was horribly criticised for donning a prosthetic nose to play the Jewish woman who held her own in a roomful of male experts which is just silly particularly since it was Meir’s grandson Gideon who wanted her cast. In any case this is not the reason this film doesn’t entirely work. For the most part it’s a low-budget talking shop, a war room convened at a distance while bad news is conveyed in the usual fashion. They say history doesn’t repeat itself in exactly the same way but in 2024 there’s something very familiar about the fifty-year old scenario in which Israel suffers a horrible surprise attack and is forced to respond in self-defence: We are facing an unholy alliance between the Soviets and the Arabs that must be defeated. In the midst of what looks like imminent disaster Golda is dealing with medical issues but drags herself (and is dragged by her secretary Lou Kaddar, played by Camille Cottin) to face down the enemy on a daily basis – sometimes in her own team. She has to rally Dayan when he loses faith in himself and finally agrees to visit the front line – and some archive footage verifies the event. If we have to we will fight alone. There’s some fun (kinda) banter when Kissinger arrives and Schreiber enjoys the cut and thrust of conversation with the woman occasionally known as the Iron Lady of Israel: Madam Prime Minister, in terms of our work together, I think it’s important for you to remember that I am first an American, second I’m Secretary of State, and third, I am a Jew/You forget that in Israel we read from right to left. Nothing if not pragmatic, we are firmly in the world of realpolitik. Mirren does well but is not particularly well supported by the setup or the direction by Guy Nattiv. Otherwise this is filled with tension but the suspense per se is thin on the ground despite this hastily constructed plan falling apart time and again in a race against imminent destruction and the world’s oil supply lines are up in the air. At a time when Jews are in more danger than at any time since the Shoah this portrait in miniature is flawed but essential viewing, a reminder that the state of Israel is permanently at risk while geopolitics continue to slash and burn. Written by Nicholas Martin. Knowing when you’ve lost is easy. It’s knowing when you’ve won that’s hard

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Pretty much the bottom line is if you are in Iraq you are dead. The second year of the Iraq War. A U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with Bravo Company led by Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) identifies and attempts to destroy an IED (improvised explosive device) with a robot but the wagon carrying the trigger charge breaks. Team leader Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson (Guy Pearce) places the charge by hand, but is killed when an Iraqi insurgent in a nearby shop uses a mobile phone to detonate the charge. Squad mate Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) feels guilty for failing to kill the man with the phone. Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) replaces Staff Sergeant Thompson. He is often at odds with Sergeant J. T. Sanborn because he prefers to defuse devices by hand and does not communicate his plans, removing his headset to prevent communications. He blocks Sanborn’s view with smoke grenades as he approaches an IED and defuses it only moments before an Iraqi insurgent attempts to detonate it with a 9-volt battery. In another incident, James insists on disarming a complex car bomb despite Sanborn’s protests that it is taking too long; James responds by taking off his uniform headset and ‘flipping off’ Sanborn, saying if he’s going to die he might as well be comfortable. Sanborn is so worried by his conduct that he openly suggests killing James to Eldridge while they are exploding unused ordnance outside of base. On their return to base, they encounter five armed men in Iraqi garb by an SUV which has a flat tyre. After a tense encounter, James learns they are friendly British mercenaries (aka ‘private military contractors’) led by a handsome supposed crack shot (Ralph Fiennes). While fixing the tyre, they come under sniper fire. Three of the contractors are killed before James and Sanborn take over counter-sniping, killing three insurgents. Eldridge kills the fourth who attempts to flank their position. During a raid on a warehouse, James discovers a ‘body bomb’ he believes is Beckham (Christopher Sayegh), the Iraqi boy who sells him porn DVDs and plays soccer outside of base. During the evacuation, Lt. Colonel John Cambridge (Christian Camargo), the camp’s psychiatrist and Eldridge’s counsellor, is killed in an explosion; Eldridge is more deeply traumatised. James sneaks off base with Beckham’s apparent DVD sales associate at gunpoint in his truck, telling him to take him to Beckham’s home. He is left at the home of an unrelated Iraqi professor who tells him in English he is pleased to meet someone in the CIA and when his wife attacks James he flees. Called to a petrol tanker detonation, James decides to hunt for the insurgents responsible nearby. Sanborn protests but when James begins a pursuit, he and Eldridge follow. After they split up, insurgents capture Eldridge. James and Sanborn rescue him, although Eldridge gets shot in the leg … You are now in the kill zone. Independently directed and produced by Kathryn Bigelow with a screenplay by freelance writer Mark Boal who had been embedded in the war zone in 2004, this is a relentless, fully immersive trawl through a parched, sunblasted bombscape with three men whose differing takes on their shocking reality lend this an unparalleled realism. The management of the narrative is supreme. Episodic by nature, with six roughly fifteen-minute scene-sequences demarcated by alternating forms of action and different kinds of explosive and disposal style, the contrast between the characters and their various predilections or weaknesses exhibited in their dealings with each other and situations are heightened by the escalating violence, repetition and juxtaposition. Killing off a major star is an appropriately Hitchcockian start in a story that is structurally suspenseful. In comes Renner as James, a wild man who earns the admiration of a vicious commander Colonel Reed (David Morse in one of a number of notable cameos) who sees a guy after his own take-no-injured-prisoners (literally) heart. Sanborn’s ire is juxtaposed with Eldridge’s increasing fear, handled maladroitly by a Yalie shrink whom he inadvertently invites to finally see some action – and boy does he get his after engaging in a dumb talkshow with the local terrorists. This is what we think of psychology/psychiatry – we are in a film where the right wrench is more useful than trying to rationalise the unspeakable violence of modern warfare. When the scene changes and the guys encounter the mercenaries led by Fiennes out in the desert they form a tight trio – right after Sanborn has been conspiring with Eldridge to kill James, who invariably calms things and they are rewarded with a sunset after an exhausting thirsty day of picking off the Iraqis. That happens at 65 minutes and they finally let rip back at base where Eldridge finds James’s memory box of bomb parts that didn’t kill him under his bed. It’s a bonding experience which culminates in a bout of roughhousing between James and Sanborn in which the latter comes off much worse. They discover that James has a wife and son (he’s not sure if he’s divorced) and Sanborn wants that for himself. The scene shifts and another element is finally introduced – water: on the floor of a building where they find a dead boy rigged up with a body bomb and James exhibits emotion believing him to be Beckham, the teen chancer who sells him porn outside the base. A really good bad guy hides out in the dark. Then there’s a massive explosion which results in a cauldron of fire with James believing that it was done remotely and the bomber is likely just beyond the kill zone. So he and Sanborn and Eldridge set off into the nighttime streets in uniform – a difference to the preceding evening when he went out looking for Beckham’s home as a civilian and getting beaten up by that Iraqi woman for his trouble. He shoots Eldridge – accidentally? He’s the one who’s been keeping him sane, now Eldridge has a reason to go home, falling apart physically with a busted femur just as he’s been falling apart mentally with a broken mind. Sanborn stands in a shower and does it in his uniform, collapsing in grief, adrenaline rushing out of him. Then there’s a different kind of bomb – and another variety of conflagration. Back home, shopping in the supermarket, playing with his baby, cleaning the gutters, James tells his wife Connie (Evangeline Lilly) the military needs more bomb techs. And there’s a circular conclusion, like a hero’s journey tale. Bigelow says it’s about the psychology behind the type of soldier who volunteers for this particular conflict and then, because of [their] aptitude, is chosen and given the opportunity to go into bomb disarmament and goes toward what everybody else is running from. Unfailingly tense and suspenseful, this is never less than subjective. And there goes Renner, like an astronaut in his dirtbound bombsuit, walking alone, into a moral void. This was shot by Barry Ackroyd using four 16mm cameras at a time, in Jordan and Kuwait. Two hundred hours of material were edited by Chris Innis and Bob Murawski with a score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders. Simply stunning filmmaking, rivetting storytelling, anxiety-inducing, utterly compelling. Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director while the film got Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Film Editing. A modern masterpiece. Going to war is a once in a lifetime experience. It could be fun!

Good-Time Girl (1948)

You are a born sybarite. Juvenile court magistrate Miss Thorpe (Flora Robson) is asked to give advice to a young delinquent Lyla Lawrence (Diana Dors) and recounts the sordid tale of Gwen Rawlings (Jean Kent) who left an abusive family home to take up work in a nightclub run by Max Vine (Herbert Lom) courtesy of fellow boarding house lodger Jimmy Rosso (Peter Glenville). When Rosso beats her up she takes refuge with band owner Red Farrell (Dennis Price) but winds up in an approved school after being framed for theft by Rosso. There she starts ruling the roost with Roberta (Jill Balcon) but sees a chance to escape when a melee erupts one day. She flees to Brighton where Max has a new club and then falls in with a bad crowd again causing a policeman to die in a hit and run. She is robbed by her lover Danny (Griffith Jones) on the London train and found by two GIs on the run (Bonar Colleano and Hugh McDermott) and together they embark on a crime wave … Smile at the customers that way and you’ve got a career in front of you. Adapted from Arthur La Bern’s novel Night Darkens the Street by producer Sydney Box, his wife Muriel Box and Ted Willis, this post-war British crime noir is a vivid, zesty and perfectly lurid cautionary tale. With Kent delivering a fabulously fruity performance amid lines like, You say that again and I’ll cop you a packet, you don’t mind she’s no sixteen-year old. More or less divided into three equal parts – the path to destruction, life at the girls’ borstal and the final spree with the copper-killing and then the GI spree, this simply brims with character and murk. Kent’s relationship with Price is unbelievable of course and this is a different take on the Gainsborough melodrama despite being framed as a sympathetic social realist portrait of JDs which betrays its protagonist by permitting a lie to entrap her and send her into a downward spiral. Great to see Dors in an early role and Daniel Day-Lewis’ mother Balcon giving such a wildcat interpretation. A wonderful portrayal of the grim underworld throbbing behind the neon lights of late Forties Britain. Directed by David MacDonald. You like nice things, don’t you Gwen?

Carrie (1952)

Everybody’s a stranger until you meet ’em. Beautiful young Carrie Meeber (Jennifer Jones) travels from her small hometown to live with her married sister Minnie (Jacqueline de Witt) in Chicago in the 1890s, On the train she meets well-off travelling salesman Charles Drouet (Eddie Albert). When she loses her job in a sweatshop, she reconnects with the charming and smitten Drouet because she needs a new job to pay $5 board to her Swedish brother-in-law Sven (Robert Foulk – uncredited) but she becomes Drouet’s mistress and is now a kept woman. When Drouet’s friend middle-aged restaurant manager George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier) falls in love with her, complications ensue. He hasn’t told her he’s married albeit unhappily to a controlling social-climbing wife Julie (Miriam Hopkins) and to escape his marriage (and two children making their way in society) he has to commit grand larceny in his office. As he and Carrie make a life together in New York his circumstances worsen and she is none the wiser as to why he cannot work. Then she tells him she’s pregnant and their financial problems threaten to overwhelm them when he reads in the newspaper that his newly married son is arriving from his honeymoon and Carrie sees an opportunity to improve their situation leaving him to his own devices while she blags her way to an acting career … You’ve got to pay the fiddler in this world. Theodore Dreiser’s realist novel Sister Carrie is adapted by Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz for the screen and becomes a typically beautiful William Wyler production – grave, melancholy and immensely moving. Not least because Olivier gives a truly magnificent performance as a man undone by desire and love, brought low by a woman so much younger and more naive. When he declares, This much happiness I’m going to have, you know his sacrifice will bring him down. He is enormously sympathetic, his acting horns drawn right in, probably because with Wyler he was never going to be able to indulge the grand theatrics of old: they had already worked together on Wuthering Heights and the mannered actor in him had been brought to book then by a director who knew just how much he needed from him, and how much storytelling he could do with the camera. And here the camerawork by Victor Milner is supreme, framing every emotional beat with just the right amount of distance and shot size, emphasising different perspectives and roles, juxtaposing possibility with imminent disaster, not least in those wonderful train scenes. Jones’s lack of technique somehow works to the advantage of the story: as her professional acumen improves, so does her control of the narrative: when she sees her ill and bedraggled husband again, and asks, Did I do this? it is simply heartbreaking. Their mismatched yet overwhelming love for one another contrives to make this one of the great unsung melodramas. The casting of Hopkins, who had also worked with Wyler (These Three), and Albert, is perfect, their character notes bringing solidity to an otherwise unbearable tragedy. It’s a sad story but I’ll keep it strictly commercial

Operation Amsterdam (1958)

Gentlemen, the noise you can hear is the German Army. Summer 1940. British army officer Major Dillon (Tony Britton) leads a dangerous commando-style raid with diamond dealer Jan Smit (Peter Finch) and expert Walter Keyser (Alexander Knox) to Amsterdam to prevent valuable industrial diamonds falling into the hands of the invading Germans. When they reach port Jan stops Anna (Eva Bartok) from driving her car into the water after she realises she’s put her Jewish fiance’s parents on to a small craft just bombed by the Nazis. He persuades her to take them to Amsterdam where he asks his father Johan (Malcolm Keen) to get his colleagues to allow them bring their jewels to London for safe keeping by the British Government. While the men enter negotiations, Anna pays a visit to Colonel Janssen (John Le Mesurier) and informs on her latest acquaintances, promising to monitor them and she returns to the men as they attempt to plan an expedition to crack a safe and avoid setting off an alarm. They play cat and mouse with the Dutch Army, never sure of who’s collaborating with the invading forces … We’re trying to beat the clock and the Germans. Every second counts. From the opening voiceover informing us that this incident doesn’t even exist in wartime records through the nailbiting heist scene in the bank, this is a documentary-style race against time WW2 drama with a possible femme fatale, fifth columnists and Nazis breathing down the necks of our men on a mission. And they still need permission to board the boat home. Bureaucracy has no respect for heroes. Finch is as good as he ever is as the dashing, daring Dutchman and the late Britton has the role of his career – he finds out just how hard it is to kill a German soldier along the canals, sweat bedevilling him as his eyes dart around seeking safe harbour. And you never know where you are with Bartok – she’s convincing as the woman under pressure. And wouldn’t you know it there’s Melvyn Hayes to help them save the day. An intriguing premise from David E.Walker’s novel Adventure in Diamonds adapted by John Eldridge and director Michael McCarthy. Nicely shot by Reginald Wyer (with second unit work by Sidney Hayers) in a near-empty Amsterdam where hidden ears are always cocked for the rat-a-tat of gunfire as the Germans approach. We’ve all had a busy day

Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)

You and Marie are nothing but a couple of sluts. Twenty years after their shotgun marriage, their child dead and their little dog lost for months, dowdy Lola Delaney (Shirley Booth) rents out a room in the house she shares with her recovering alcoholic husband, chiropractor Doc (Burt Lancaster). The pretty college student Marie Buckholder (Terry Moore) does life drawings in the living room of track star jock Turk Fisher (Richard Jaeckel) and Lola enjoys watching them fall in love. Their carry on aggravates Doc who infers that they are engaged in sexual shenanigans despite being told that Marie is engaged to someone else. He compares Lola to Marie and his obsession ultimately drives him back to the bottle despite his two year membership of Alcoholics Anonymous which had got him back on track … I can’t spend my time kissing all the girls. Booth was recreating her acclaimed stage role (and it won her an Academy Award in her screen debut at 54) and Lancaster gives a great, mature performance in a William Inge play that reads like a suburban take on A Streetcar Named Desire: just how big is this house and how long is this woman going to stay in the spare room? Adapted by Ketti Frings, Lola is slatternly and useless but enormously endearing, Doc is remote and difficult but somehow admirable. His paranoia is not far from the surface and peppy Marie gets under his skin. His concealed passion destroys his resolve but Lola treats Marie like a daughter, unaware of his conflict until she opens the cupboard to make cocktails. He has never forgiven her for the forced marriage that stopped him training as a proper doctor and then Lola lost the baby. When his pent-up violent anger finally erupts it’s shocking. It’s a persuasive picture of long-festering marital resentments, fixation on the brevity of youthful beauty and loss and a signature film of kitchen sink realism. Directed by Delbert Mann. Alcoholics are mostly disappointed men

Z (1969)

He is alive. Greece, the 1960s. Doctor Gregorios Lambrakis (Yves Montand) leader of the opposition is injured during an anti-military/nuclear demonstration in an incident that causes his death. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth – their involvement with a right-wing organisation in a covert assassination. But they don’t control the hospital where Lambrakis is brought and the autopsy reveals the cause of death. Then tenacious Examining Magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is determined to not to let them get away with it despite every witness getting beaten up en route to his office … Always blame the Americans. Even if you’re wrong. Adapted from Vassilis Vassilikos’ 1966 novel by Greek-born director Costa-Gavras and Jorge Semprun (with uncredited work by blacklisted Ben Barzman), this political thriller gained its frisson and urgency from its lightly fictionalised portrayal of recent events in Greece which this more or less accurately depicts. Nowadays its style is commonplace but its skill in evoking the dangers of the official version and the suppression of free speech is more important than ever. Inspired by real-life events, including the ‘disappearing’ of opposition Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965, with a surgical reference to JFK, the beauty of the construction is in having Montand’s experiences including with wife Helene (Irene Papas) dominating the first half, while the second is about the steady work of investigation carried out by Trintignant, who winds up unmasking a conspiracy at the highest level. Beautifully shot by Raoul Coutard and scored by Mikis Theodorakis. Tough, taut, suspenseful filmmaking that is exciting and dreadful simultaneously, speaking truth to power about corruption, passionate engagement and the casual use of street thugs to commit murder for the state. There is even room for humour as Trintignant insists on treating the officers like anyone else when they are indicted and each one of them believes him to be a Communist when in fact his right wing credentials are impeccable. In real life the military junta came to power and banned the venerable Papas, who was a member of the Communist Party:  she wasn’t the only one of course but she survived to celebrate her 94th birthday on 3rd September last. Essential cinema. Why do the ideas we stand for incite such violence?