La Bûche

1999, France, directed by Danièle Thompson

A rather slight affair, this is an unsurprisingly wordy Parisian film centered on a somewhat dysfunctional family (in particular three sisters) in the lead-in to Christmas, as they attempt to negotiate a minefield created by the need to accommodate both of their long-divorced parents at the same dinner table. The conceit of three very different sisters is rather overdone, particularly where one or more tends to be offscreen for lengthy periods since their lives rarely intersect. However, the impeccable cast does a generally good job, with Sabine Azéma outstanding. The older generation, in the form of Claude Rich and Françoise Fabian, is a delight: they have an especially good central sequence in a bar, in which they manage to cover both the events and the emotions of their tumultuous marriage; there's no hiding the delight that writer-director Danièle Thompson, a skilled wordsmith making her directorial debut here, had in writing this scene, as well as those in which her characters address the camera directly. It's tempting, in the face of such wit, to read more into the film than is really there, but, that said, there will undoubtedly be a few winces of recognition at the family oddities on display - Christmas tensions are universal, at least where the festival is celebrated, even in this Jewish Parisian household.

Finding Neverland

2004, US/GB, directed by Marc Forster

Perhaps director Marc Forster found Monster's Ball as exhausting as I did, for this is a startlingly different project, filled with whimsy, and the most chaste of interactions between the main couple. There's a poignant, even tragic, undercurrent, but the core of the film is bright and hopeful, like J.M. Barrie's own key creation, Peter Pan. The film introduces us to Barrie on the eve of his professional nadir, a play that flops badly, leaving him casting about for inspiration, and his main patron calling in financial favours. Into his life comes a ready-made family of fatherless young boys (and their mother, Kate Winslet), a distraction from his own unhappy home life, although his interactions with the boys are anything but conventional. The film briefly raises the spectre of a less pleasant side to Barrie's unusually playful relationship with the four boys, only to dismiss it absolutely (Michael Jackson may wish that he had been so lucky). There's much to like here, not least the acting: Depp is charming, with a light Scottish burr that never distracts, and while Winslet can do this kind of thing in her sleep, she's no less appealing for that. The standout among the children is Freddie Highmore, a startlingly self-possessed 10-year-old when the film was made. As Peter, a child wrapped up in grief for his dead father, he walks away with several difficult scenes (the film plays pretty loose with the historical record on this point, since Peter's father was alive and well when Peter Pan had its premiere). By contrast, there's a rather schematic relationship between reality and artistic inspiration - and certainly little sense of artistic struggle - but then this is fantasy rather than social realism.

War of the Worlds

2005, US, directed by Steven Spielberg

Say what you will about Spielberg, but he's rarely ponderous, throwing the viewer into the heart of the story right from the starting gun. War of the Worlds is no exception: the opening segment of the movie is a tour de force of economic, cut-to-the-chase filmmaking, with an exceptional grasp of the mechanics of fear. The early scenes rapidly sketch in Ray Ferrier's (Tom Cruise) place in the world - a blue collar New Jersey worker with a divorce behind him and two kids who live the good life with their stepfather - but we've barely even absorbed this information before the skies darken and a terrifying lightning storm begins. Within minutes, it's clear that this is no ordinary weather event, and the pace ratchets up fast, panic filling the air as no-one can quite grasp what's happened to their city. The 9/11 echo is overt here: inexplicable terror on an otherwise ordinary day, with a devastated population unsure of how to respond (and transportation at a standstill). It's no surprise that the breakneck pace can't be sustained throughout - a dark basement and Tim Robbins slow things down considerably, without adding much to the story - but Ray's gradual ascent, along this journey, to something resembling (belated) adult responsibility is reasonably convincing. The terror outside remains almost entirely unexplained, ultimately unlike 9/11, but the sense of panic of those early post-attack days is both gripping and disturbing.

Hard-Boiled

1992, Hong Kong, directed by John Woo

I've come to the conclusion that John Woo made one great movie -- The Killer -- and a whole lot of pictures that don't live up to the hype generated by action-movie nerds. Hard-Boiled is a case in point, particularly given that the (now out-of-print) DVD was given the full Criterion Collection treatment. Like most high-profile Woo movies, Chow Yun-Fat is front and centre here, waving around more artillery than Rambo on a bad-hair day. He plays a trigger-happy cop -- and they say John Woo is original! -- who's usually as much of a danger to his own side as he is to the bad guys; he teams up with an undercover cop (Tony Leung) who works inside the Triads, to take down a gun-running operation. The plot is incredibly disjointed, as befits a film whose only raison d'être is the use of as many bullets as possible. In other Woo films, the action scenes advance the plot to some degree, whereas here they stop things in their tracks: many of the sequences are needlessly protracted and, even by HK standards, wildly over the top. The key scenes, such as a shootout in a hospital, dispense with ridiculous numbers of people (even with the requisite suspension of disbelief, it's impossible to accept that World War III could take place in a hospital without a more robust police/military response in colonial Hong Kong). The obligatory 'quiet moments' are pretty ham-fisted, too, with horribly soft-focus music and clichéd buddy material. Contrasted with a film like Infernal Affairs, this is pretty poor stuff to be getting excited about.

Wedding Crashers

2005, United States, directed by David Dobkin

Wedding Crashers was concocted to raise a laugh and more than a few dollars rather than to provide intellectual diversion, and, on those limited terms, it succeeds remarkably well - although it could have done with a more trigger-happy hand in the editing room, especially in its extended central segment. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play a pair of divorce mediators - so garrulous their clients usually reconcile to avoid the torrent of words - who entertain themselves over the summer by crashing as many weddings as they can, doing everything in their power to ensure a good time is had by all, and bedding as many women as possible (the notion that Owen Wilson has a job that requires him to wear a suit indicates the overall level of realism). At the society wedding of the year, featuring the daughter of Treasury Secretary Cleary, however, Wilson's character becomes enamored of one of the bride's sisters, who's sadly unavailable. He convinces his buddy that the two have to break the cardinal rules of wedding crashing, so that they can spend an extended weekend with the wedding party. While the comic misunderstandings are initially very amusing, the 'just one more day' rhythm becomes rather tired, and it's a relief when the action finally leaves the wealthy Cleary family's island home. Wilson and Vaughn are predictably amusing, the former further refining his unflappably stoned persona, with Vaughn's manic energy an effective foil. There's nothing very original about the hang-dog story, but the raucous humor keeps things lively.

Cléo de 5 à 7

1962, France, directed by Agnès Varda

One of the quintessential movies of the nouvelle vague, this is probably also one of those films that only underlines the prejudices of those who dismiss such fare as arthouse claptrap. The set-up is breathtakingly simple: we follow Cléo, a singer with a few hits to her credit, as she wanders Paris for two hours while waiting for the results from an important medical test. She's an astonishingly busy woman, who manages to cram in a visit to a fortune-teller, a walk in the park, some shopping, a visit from her lover, a meeting with her music-men, a drink in a bar, a viewing of a short film and numerous bus and taxi rides in the time we spend with her: titles flash up telling us the length of each element of her peregrinations, and some of the encounters are almost comically short. The film is alternately infuriating and compelling, as befits Cléo's often self-indulgent whims: Michel Legrand's appearance is exceptionally amusing, while the jabbering of a taxi driver is merely distracting, and Cléo's final encounter seems out-of-character. Still, the use of Paris as a movie character has rarely been bettered: the scene in the café is a gem of Parisian street life, while viewers may find themselves trying to locate the gorgeous Hôpital Américain garden which features prominently in the closing scenes.

Danger UXB

1979, UK, Thames Television

A British television classic that somehow hasn't quite the reputation of series like Brideshead Revisited or The Jewel in the Crown, both of similar vintage, this is an often superior show, detailing the exploits of an unexploded ordinance disposal team from 1940-1944. The team is based on the home front, in London at the height of the Blitz (at least in the early episodes). Anthony Andrews plays Brian Ash, a freshly-minted lieutenant who is assigned to the bomb squad despite having no relevant experience - or training.

The first few episodes focus almost obsessively on the mechanics of bomb disposal: the members of the bomb squad themselves are only lightly sketched in, but soon the human drama comes to the forefront. Ash is centre-stage, but the writers are at least as interested in the fates of several of the NCOs and enlisted men, with several episodes cross-cutting between Ash - and his growing relationship with Susan, the daughter of one of the scientists who develop methods to combat new types of bomb - and one or other of the men in his squad. One story arc follows Corporal Salt, perennially in trouble, while another trails Mulley, Ash's batman, who falls for the feisty daughter of Ash's landlady.

This being Britain - and perhaps more to the point British television - there's a constant class-consciousness behind much of what's on-screen. Ash's officer colleagues take him for an Oxbridge man at first and are surprised when he turns out to be the product of a much less fashionable institution - although his background is clearly that of the landed gentry. The accumulation of tiny details over the course of the episodes is a fascinating social portrait - both of wartime Britain and a country in the 1970's which was on the verge of profound change (it's very clear we're watching Britain at war here, incidentally, and not just England: the small squad has a Scot and a Welshman, a Cockney and a northern lad).

The army is perhaps uniquely suited to reflections on class, with the aristocratic officer corps, the enlisted men and the reliable NCOs not quite sure of where they stand - having left their humble origins behind, they're still clearly not quite good enough to make the upper-class grade. Ultimately, of course, it's the characters, not the social or political insights, that make Danger UXB so compelling over the course of thirteen episodes - and for that, much credit goes to a fine complement of character actors, with Maurice Roëves (as Sergeant James), Kenneth Cranham (as Corporal Salt), George Innes (Corporal Wilkins) and Gordon Kane (as Mulley) particular standouts. Andrews does a fine job with Ash's character, although Judy Geeson seems rather too strained as Susan, a rare flat note in an otherwise excellent series.

The Commitments

1991, United Kingdom/Ireland, directed by Alan Parker

The Commitments hit Dublin's movie screens in 1991 in a blaze of local publicity, the first film to be based on one of Roddy Doyle's books. The film was a huge box-office hit - a rare glimpse of contemporary Ireland on the big screen, albeit somewhat exaggerated for cinematic effect. In 2005, the film has the air of a historical document, given the changes in Ireland, and particularly Dublin, over the period since the film was made: Roddy Doyle's entire Barrytown trilogy seems to belong to a little-lamented past, although it's still not hard to find pockets - or whole areas - of Dublin that have been leapfrogged by the Celtic Tiger.

While the context may have changed - or we'd like to think that it has, at least, with a veneer of wealth and sophistication - Alan Parker's film remains as fresh as it did in 1991. The aspiration to stand out from the crowd is as infectious as it ever was, and lines that worked fifteen years ago are equally hilarious now, a testament to Doyle's exceptional ear for Dublin vernacular (much of the script is lifted straight from his novel, which is written in long strings of dialogue).

The film chronicles the unlikely birth of a band playing 'Dublin soul', modelling themselves on the American greats, but what's perhaps most appealing is the manner in which it remains true to its roots. The film even-handedly presents the unpleasant side of its characters, and there's no overnight ascent to glory, just a succession of gritty gigs in which the band members channel their annoyances with each other into a series of increasingly confident on-stage performances. Alan Parker revisited the territory of Fame here and avoided the melodrama this time out, mainly by hewing close to the source material; there are a few shots of excessively poetic poverty, but the core rings true. It's striking how many successful British and Irish movies are - often clear-eyed - celebrations of working-class life, a genre virtually absent from US cinema - perhaps because it makes no sense to celebrate something that you're supposed to aspire to leave as soon as possible.

Winter Sleepers

1997, Germany, directed by Tom Tykwer (original title: Winterschläfer)

Tom Tykwer's best-known - and best - film, Lola rennt, centers on notions of coincidence and happenstance, and Winterschläfer, along with some of his later films, makes clear that this is an ongoing preoccupation. As the film begins, in a small town in the mountains, the otherwise level-headed Rene spots a fancy car with the keys in the ignition, and decides to take the vehicle for a drive. While out on the road, he's involved in an accident - which he doesn't cause - with a farmer, pulling a horse-trailer behind his car. Rene's car veers off the road, and is embedded in the heavy snow. Shaken, he walks away apparently unharmed, save for the fact that he has no memory of the incident; the car, to all intents and purposes, disappears. The farmer discovers that his daughter has concealed herself in the horse-box. She has been severely injured in the crash, and lapses into a coma. Half-mad with grief and anger, the farmer is convinced that the other driver is to blame. Meanwhile, Rene, aware that he can't remember something, but unsure quite what he may have missed, has begun a tentative love affair with a nurse, Laura, who watches over the injured girl. Laura's roommate, Rebecca, has problems in her own love-life, constantly at odds with her combustible boyfriend Marco - whose car has mysteriously disappeared. 

This complex set-up is sketched in, expertly, in the opening twenty minutes or so of the film: the film does a rather better job of making it all seem plausible (the small-town setting helps). While it's a quieter, more contemplative film than the adrenaline-charged Lola rennt, it's no less involving: once you buy into the film, there's a real interest in the outcome of the characters' lives, while there's a genuine, unpatronising warmth in Tykwer's portrayal of small-town social life. While the conclusion is perhaps a touch contrived, it's hard to imagine an outcome that better, or more satisfyingly, exemplifies the notion of poetic justice. Tykwer is a jack-of-all-trades, co-authoring the script, and also putting an oar in with the music which, as in Lola rennt, cleverly plays with the viewer, heightening the mysterious interconnections between the characters, and creating tension at the most unexpected moments.

Red Lights

2004, France, directed by Cédric Kahn (original title: Feux rouges)

It's interesting to wonder what Hitchcock might have made of this - although Cédric Kahn shows considerable expertise himself with what the French like to call the drame psychologique. The set-up, from a novel by Simenon, is worthy of the master, with an undercurrent of tension from the first moments of apparently ordinary domesticity, and there's a chilly, beautiful wife for good measure. The film opens as a Parisian couple are about to head towards Bordeaux on their summer holidays: the children have been sent ahead to a camp, and papa et maman get on the road at roughly the same time as the rest of France, which doesn't help their already fractious relations.

Jean-Pierre Darroussin is exceptional as the aggrieved husband, skewering a certain male insecurity quite perfectly: he's an inadequate man unable to deal with his beautiful wife's professional success, and his attempts to manage his jealousy are largely self-destructive. The couple's constant car-bound arguments eventually lead his wife to continue her journey alone, when the film takes a much darker turn, as Darroussin first acts out his apparent 'liberation' and then realizes he might have bitten off rather more than he expected. As with Hitchcock, most of the frisson is very much inside the viewer's own mind - and it's made the more powerful by the realism of Darroussin's morning-after predicament. There's a fabulous solo scene where he makes a series of increasingly panicked phone calls, the kind of thing where a lesser actor might start to chew the scenery, while the gathering tension is perfectly managed, and manipulated, by director Kahn.

Fever Pitch

2005, US, directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly

It's hard to be in any sense objective about such an upbeat movie, especially one that's so squarely aimed at making even the most casual Red Sox fan feel fabulous. Adapted from a semi-memoir by the English writer Nick Hornby - which became, in turn, a humdrum British film - the Farrelly Brothers take the original obsession with soccer and convert it into a full-blown psychiatric condition centered on baseball. The book focused on a key real-life season for Arsenal football team, whereas the directors simply used the 2004 Red Sox team as their backdrop, and happened to be monstrously lucky with the outcome of the season.

The movie starts out firmly in chick-flick territory, chronicling the growing romance between the charming Drew Barrymore and the equally charming Jimmy Fallon, and avoiding most of the usual lavatorial Farrelly Brothers touches. Barrymore's gal pals correctly surmise that Fallon has a deep, dark secret - although the average guy will probably argue that in comparison to, say, Norman Bates, Fallon's hidden side is really quite acceptable. Needless to say, the path to true love is littered with slumps, injuries and walk-off home runs, all of them against a Red Sox backcloth that makes you want to head back to the old ballpark as quickly as you can shout 'scalper'. It's interesting to imagine how they might have concluded the film in the absence of such a fairytale end to the actual Red Sox season (the rumored alternate ending never made an appearance on the DVD).

La Chèvre

1981, France/Mexico, directed by Francis Veber

I have a weakness for French comedies - not the arthouse kind that often leave you thinking that 'France' and 'comedy' are two entirely separate notions, but the kind that sets the box office on fire in France. The big domestic comedy hits rarely make it to English-speaking countries - at best, they're remake fodder (this film, which did get a US release, was remade as Pure Luck, with Danny Glover and Martin Short). This was the first of three films starring the tandem of Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu, and the biggest hit to boot, one of the most successful of all French comedies. The odd couple are paired up when an industrialist's accident-prone daughter disappears in Mexico and, at the prodding of his company psychologist, he dispatches an equally unlucky employee (Richard) on her trail, along with an old pro PI (Depardieu). The two clash inevitably and incessantly; the (rather repetitive) pratfalls are balanced with more polished wit from the pen of writer-director Veber. The marketing of Depardieu to the English-speaking world from the mid-80's onwards focused on his 'classical' roles in films like Jean de Florette and Cyrano de Bergerac, so it was something of a shock to cinéphiles to see him pop up in trashy Hollywood material later on, but he's balanced low- and high-brow material throughout his French career; the main difference is that Hollywood pays through the nose. Depardieu is fine here: a hulking physical presence with little time to emote. Richard is perfectly cast as the naïf, a character he's played throughout his career to great effect; he gets the lion's share of the laughs, both visual and verbal. The only troubling thing about the whole affair is yet more evidence of Veber's apparent distaste for female characters, also apparent more recently in The Dinner Game (Le Dîner de cons) or Le Placard: women barely appear, and those we do see hardly paint a glorious picture.

Stage Door

1937, US, directed by Gregory La Cava

A near-perfect example of 1930's comedy, this is a mostly light-as-a-feather backstage affair, set primarily in a boarding house for aspiring, and sometimes declining, Broadway actresses (it must be right around the corner from the theatres, since the players routinely leave for work less than an hour before the curtain comes up). Katharine Hepburn is, in a surprising bit of casting, an upper-crust heiress keen to try her luck on the boards; her entrance into a house full of less polished characters, most notably Ginger Rogers, is the occasion for much biting wit on both sides, although as luck would have it everyone slowly learns to get along. There's an undercurrent of melodrama in the house, which becomes overt towards the end - not entirely successfully. Just as the deus ex machina seems entirely too convenient, the film tries to have it both ways; the 'second ending' seems more honest than the first. Whatever the shortcomings of the structure, the cast, well-served by director La Cava, are top-notch: there's barely a wrong note in the whole film, which establishes the diverse characters with remarkable efficiency, and gives ample time to each of a range of fine actresses (Constance Collier is an especially effective scene-stealer).

Sexy Beast

2000, United Kingdom, directed by Jonathan Glazer

Although it sometimes seems like one of those quintessentially American obsessions, gangsters have been as much of a trope in British cinema as in the US, with a particularly persistent renaissance over the past decade, mostly of the Cockney variety. Sexy Beast leaves the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels flicks in the shade, however, with a fully realized portrait of a gangster desperate to stay retired from the game, no longer interested in either the highs or lows that come with law-breaking. Ray Winstone is in fine form, exhibiting a much softer, more nuanced side than is usually the case; his character's sincere desire for the quiet life and the love of his wife is almost heartbreaking (the film does nonetheless elide the exact nature of his past career: was he a violent criminal or the fabled 'gentleman thief'?). Into his southern Spanish idyll comes Don Logan, a sociopath with a mission to recruit him for one more job. Ben Kingsley plays Logan in an utterly atypical turn: for an actor best known for quiet force, he's adept with Logan's machine-gun speech and hair-trigger temper (not to mention borderline insanity). It's easy to get caught up in his performance, and lose sight both of Winstone's work and the fine direction, reminiscent, in its focus on the details of speech and atmosphere, of Mike Hodges's excellent Croupier.

I'm Not Scared

2003, Italy, directed by Gabriele Salvatores (original title: Io Non Ho Paura)

I can't help thinking that many of the reviewers of this film felt that they should like it and therefore gave it more raves than it really deserved. After all, it's impeccably crafted, from the almost impossibly gorgeous imagery of a southern Italian summer to the strong acting, from both adults and children. It's got a sterling premise - a ten-year-old boy finds a boy of a similar age imprisoned in a hole near his home - and there's much to think about in the depiction of a certain element of Italian society in the 1970's (while the treatment of the imprisoned boy is not soft-pedalled, the script smartly avoids easy condemnations of his captors). With all that in mind, the film should grip from first frame to last, but in truth things are so wilfully stop-start that the script constantly punctures whatever tension it creates - and there's no shortage in the first 45 minutes. The director never quite makes up his mind between genre thriller, coming-of-age tale, and leisurely depiction of Italian village life, and that, more than anything, kills the pacing, as Salvatores attempts to fulfil the requirements of each option. It's a shame: with better pacing this might have been a minor classic.

Rabbit-Proof Fence

2002, Australia, directed by Phillip Noyce

A deceptively simple account of three half-caste Aboriginal girls who run away from an institution of 'training' after they are forcibly removed from their mothers in the early 1930s, Rabbit-Proof Fence is a powerful indictment of white Australian policies of assimilation and 're-education'. The young girls escape from the very low-security Moore River home, and embark on a trek of more than 1,200 miles north to their home territory of Jigalong, navigating their way by following one of the rabbit-proof fences that were erected to protect farmland - and which were later rendered moot by the introduction of myxomatosis. In sharp contrast to the mythology of colonial Australia, the bush here is rarely threatening, despite the difficulties of sustenance occasionally encountered. Phillip Noyce's very mobile camera gives the tale a real urgency at times - the attempted escape from the policeman who captures the girls, and the narration of the girls' flight from Moore River are especially gripping. The conclusion, using a Schindler's List device, though with more power here, is exceptionally moving, a fitting indictment of misguided policies without a trace of hectoring.

Steel Magnolias

1989, US, directed by Herbert Ross

Another 80's opus from Herbert Ross - this much more successful than Footloose, mining territory not a million miles from the 80's Kleenex epic Terms of Endearment. As a portrait of Southern charm, it probably bears only a vague resemblance to the truth, but as a showcase for a fine collection of actresses, too many of whom appear only rarely on screen these days, it's a lovably shaggy dog affair. It's the story of the loves and losses of a group of strong, but disparate, Dixie women, whose mutual support network carries them through their various familial trials, with pithy one-liners usually directed at the men in their lives. There are long scenes in the beauty parlor and well-honed speeches that betray the film's stage origins, but that's rarely a handicap: the action moves along smartly, and you're too busy watching the different actresses at work to notice the occasional mechanical creaks. Julia Roberts was on the verge of superstardom here, and she's already adept at eating up the screen. She's in the company of some real scene-stealers in the form of Dolly Parton and Shirley MacLaine, while Sally Field has a fabulous scene late in the film that's a classic weepie moment - a compliment, not a barb. Best seen with a mint julep or a bowl of ice-cream, or perhaps both.

The Set-Up

1949, US, directed by Robert Wise

It's hard to believe that the director of The Sound of Music (and Star Trek: The Motion Picture) started out making movies as spare and pitiless as this one (although there is a core of realism in The Sound of Music if you care to look past the whimsy). Robert Ryan does a phenomenal job as the never-made-it-big boxer convinced he can win one fight against a kid who's being set up for a title bout. His manager, however, has made a deal on the side with a local hood, assuming that his washed-up charge will go down without any financial incentive. The action is mostly in the ring: almost half the movie is a literal blow-by-blow account of the fight, with occasional asides as Ryan's wife wanders the streets, miserable at the life she's found herself leading. The dressing-room dialogue and interactions are especially treasurable, with some fine character turns; the other boxers include an unusually rounded black character by the cinematic standards of the time. The movie's a salutary lesson for those who labor under the impression that Raging Bull was somehow sui generis; Scorsese has no difficulties in acknowledging his debt to this standout genre flick, as well he should...

Footloose

1984, US, directed by Herbert Ross

Twenty years on, it's a little hard to see why Footloose caused quite the fuss it did - which says as much about the evolution of 'youth' films since 1984 as it does about my memories of the movie from a viewing on video circa 1986. There's no denying the casting magic: Kevin Bacon was poised for a breakout role after several smaller parts in high-profile movies, while Chris Penn and Lori Singer also catch the eye (you wonder why Penn, in particular, didn't go on to headline much better things, but his ballooning weight can't have helped). The story, though, is something of a mess: there are several great individual scenes, whether drama (such as in the meeting of minds between Kevin Bacon's character and the tightly-zipped local minister portrayed by John Lithgow), or dance action, but the film seems to lurch from one scene to the next with no great coherence. I don't demand high realism from popcorn features, but the plotting here seems especially loose; any time things lag, they just pop Kenny Loggins' Footloose on again. That said, it's amazing to note how slow, in a good sense, some of the movie is in comparison to more recent youth hits: Hollywood in 1984 still assumed that a teen audience could deal with scenes of more than 60 seconds, where not that much happened beyond dialogue, and it's something that's sorely missed in the more slam-bang 90's and 00's.

Zappa

1983, Denmark, directed by Bille August

As coming-of-age stories go, Zappa is far more bitter than sweet: it's nothing like the heartwarming Swedish My Life As A Dog, made a year later and set a few years earlier. Zappa follows an odd trio of boys in early 1960s Copenhagen: rich kid Steen, a manipulative bully who has everything but the love of his high bourgeois parents; middle-class Bjorn, with whom we're invited to identify most closely; and good-hearted working-class Mulle, the reliable gag-man. From such unpromisingly clichéd raw materials, Bille August fashions a very affecting series of snapshots, as Bjorn in particular navigates the shoals of adolescence and figures out how best to free himself from the malign influence of Steen. The sense of time and place is perfectly judged, with the class tensions of post-war Europe (even in reputedly egalitarian Denmark) in clear relief. The young actors are spot on, as is so often the case in Scandinavian cinema: from their work, you'd assume they all went on to long careers in the movies, but you'd be mistaken. A little patience is needed to let this movie work its spell, but it's worth the investment.