Toy Story 4 (2019)

The Low-Down: 24 years ago, Pixar’s Toy Story quite literally changed the face of animation as we know it. The film presented an entirely new way of telling a story, bringing characters to life via CGI – pixels over pencils, so to speak. At the same time, Toy Story set a new high standard for storytelling in film, proving conclusively that animated movies aren’t just for kids. In the intervening decades, the franchise has even made a strong case in favour of sequels – demonstrating that they’re not necessarily soulless cash-grabs. Toy Story 4 is very much a part of that grand tradition. This is smart, soulful, sublime film-making: somehow entertaining and profound all at once.

The Story: Sheriff Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) is trying his best to adjust to life with Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw) – the little girl who inherited Andy’s beloved childhood toys at the end of Toy Story 3. Even though he’s forgotten more often than not, Woody remains intensely focused on Bonnie and her happiness. This means going into full babysitter/bodyguard mode when Bonnie creates Forky (Tony Hale), a spork with twists of wire for hands and clumsy wooden popsicle sticks for feet. As Woody tries to keep the trash-oriented Forky safe, he’s swept into an accidental adventure – one in which he meets old friends and learns new truths about who he is and who he has yet to be.

The Great: Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Toy Story 4 is the fact that it feels like the natural, necessary final chapter of a story told in four parts. There’s no way that any of this could have been planned when Pixar first introduced us to Woody in 1995, but the progression in both narrative and character development feels utterly organic. Woody has spent the last three films grappling with his existential fear of being lost, forgotten or replaced, from his first meeting with the brash Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) to the day Andy outgrew him and went away to college. This film challenges Woody – and his audiences – to think hard about second chances, about changing how you look at yourself, about finding and embracing a new purpose in life. As such, Toy Story 4 might be the most philosophical movie you’ll see this year, in the best possible way.

The Not-So-Great: There actually isn’t all that much to complain about. The plot machinations can feel a little clunky at times, but Stephany Folsom and Andrew Stanton weave so much joy and humour into their screenplay that the film still zips along. As this is very much Woody’s movie, fan-favourite legacy characters like Buzz and Jessie (Joan Cusack) inevitably end up taking a back-seat. Even then, however, they each still get moments to shine. You might find yourself both thoroughly amused and mildly annoyed by the antics of Ducky (Keagan Michael-Key) and Bunny (Jordan Peele), a symbiotic pair of new characters who were clearly inserted into proceedings for comic relief.

Forking Funny: Give it up for Forky, surely the best new animated character of the year. Voiced with a bewildered tenderness by Hale, Forky is a delight – a walking, talking identity crisis created out of one little girl’s love and imagination. Even better? With his magnetic attraction to all nearby trash-cans, Forky is a fandom meme just waiting to happen. A close runner-up is daredevil stuntman Duke Caboom, who reportedly owes his ridiculously charming posing and personality to current internet darling Keanu Reeves’ commitment to the role. Toy Story 4 even manages to make its main antagonist, Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), both terrifying and endearing – although there are fewer shades of grey when it comes to her ventriloquist-doll minions, led by the determinedly creepy Benson.

Cowboy Blues: Ultimately, Toy Story 4 belongs to Woody, and rightfully so. He is this franchise’s Captain America, in more ways than one. This film pays loving tribute to Woody’s big heart and unwavering, self-effacing loyalty, even as it shakes up his life and world-view when he encounters old friend and possible paramour Bo Peep (Annie Potts) again. (Bo, by the way, is now super-cool and as far away from a fragile damsel-in-distress as anyone can be.) Woody’s decisions and revelations about himself will make you weep with the most complex and bittersweet of emotions. There is joy and sorrow here, hope and heartbreak, final farewells and new beginnings, often in the same moment. In other words, it’s the stuff of life itself, and it’s glorious.

Credits Where Credits Are Due: You’ll definitely want to stay throughout the credits of the film, which are peppered with closing scenes that are essential to tying up the overarching narrative. At the very end, you’ll even be rewarded with a happy ending for one of Toy Story 4’s most minor of characters.

Recommended? In every possible way. Toy Story 4 is a masterpiece of film-making, story-telling and animation. Delightful and devastating in equal measure, it might well be the silliest and most soul-stirring film you’ll see this year.

The Post (2017)

It’s an odd thing to say about a film set in 1971, but The Post is a movie that sits very firmly in the here and now. The battle royale at its heart – a face-off between the press and the President of the United States that’s almost half a century old – wouldn’t have felt quite as urgent or relevant just two years ago. The Post matters today, at this moment, because – at its very best – the film manages to tie past and present together in a way that will chill and thrill the spirit in equal measure. The power of its message makes it easier to overlook the ways in which The Post falters, from an occasional lack of nuance to its tendency to tell rather than show.

And what a lot of telling it does in its first half. We’re introduced – via copious amounts of exposition – to the film’s many puzzle pieces: Kay Graham (Meryl Streep), fretful widow trying to do right by her late father, husband and the newspaper she inherited from them; Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), her fiery editor-in-chief who’s desperate to take The Washington Post into the big leagues; and the Pentagon Papers, classified government documents that reveal just how much has been kept from the American public about the country’s decades-long involvement in the Vietnam War.

In the hands of a lesser director than Steven Spielberg, the first act of The Post would have been an interminable slog. It’s hard to conjure up tension when the narrative isn’t being very cooperative – which it isn’t, because, in reality, it was actually The New York Times that spent months cracking the biggest story of the year. For much of its first half, the film tries to find drama where there isn’t very much of it on hand. The most subterfuge we see is Ben’s decision to send an intern to infiltrate The Times to find out why his rival’s top reporter hasn’t published a story in months.

But Spielberg is nothing if not a master craftsman, and he uses the quieter moments at the start of the film to establish and explore character. We bear witness to the way in which Kay is routinely dismissed, as a person and a voice, by all the men who sit on the board of her own company. We laugh as Ben takes a stand against the White House, even on an issue as trivial as The Post being barred from reporting on the marriage of President Nixon’s daughter. We watch Kay and Ben interact – the former worrying about the bottom line, as the latter defends the paper’s headlines.

The film really comes alive when it shifts into higher gear about halfway through. Suddenly, it slips from amiable drama to heart-gripping thriller, as the big story finally comes to The Washington Post at a moment when the stakes for everyone involved couldn’t be higher. In the very same week that the newspaper is about to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, assistant editor Ben Bagdikian (a terrific Bob Odenkirk) tracks down the source who leaked the Pentagon Papers. With The New York Times barred from further reporting by a court injunction, Kay must decide whether to defy the White House to publish – and risk irreparable damage to her family’s company and legacy.

At this point, The Post becomes an absolute thrill to watch. As The Post’s team of reporters – played by a stable of fine comedians and character actors like David Cross and Carrie Coon – struggle to pull their story into shape, Kay sits in the eye of a hurricane of men’s opinions: Ben urging her to publish on principle, as misogynistic board member Arthur Parsons (Bradley Whitford) and even trusted advisor Fritz Beebe (Tracy Letts) advise caution.

It’s a credit to Spielberg and his fantastic cast that they inject these defining moments with genuine doubt and suspense. Streep is marvellous, as always, radiating Kay’s worry and despair while also hiding her character’s quiet strength in plain sight. She’s so good that you can almost buy into a completely unsubtle scene – in which she descends the courtroom steps before a line of young girls gazing upon her with unvarnished adulation – that anoints Kay as a feminist hero. Hanks is similarly effective as a brash, principled newsman who takes the value of truth so much for granted that he needs to be reminded – especially in a lovely scene with his wife, Tony (Sarah Paulson) – that integrity does not come without its own incalculable costs.

Spielberg cleverly finds tension and hope, as well, in moments that no longer exist in this age of digital media, when just about anybody can toss words into the vast vacuum of the Internet. There is an almost hypnotic, hallowed magic to the sheer effort it used to take to tell the truth, which comes through clearly in the clatter of typewriters, the pressing of ideas into hot type, and the storm and churn of men and machines producing stories and newspapers that have the power to change the world.

Taken altogether, The Post works precisely because it is a film very much made for and about this time. It’s not perfect – you probably won’t be able to completely shake the feeling that the final screenplay was a draft or two away from greatness. But, at this peculiar, particular moment in history when the incumbent President of the United States regularly challenges the very fabric of reality through his Twitter feed, there is a raw, incisive power to this film that allows it to rise above its flaws. In this world, at this time, The Post – and its spirited defense of truth, integrity and accountability – matters.

Basically: At any other time, The Post might be considered a minor entry in Steven Spielberg’s filmography. Today, right now, it’s a story that will thrill, inspire and resonate – as it rightfully should.

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

There are very few movies in the world that are so universally beloved and well-known that they can serve as the emotional undercurrent of another film. Mary Poppins is one of that handful: after all, who doesn’t have the fondest memories of the practically perfect Julie Andrews singing songs about spoonfuls of sugar; Dick Van Dyke dancing in his trademark, gloriously elastic way with animated penguins; and stern, career-minded Mr. George Banks loosening up and flying kites with his children?

Nominally, Saving Mr. Banks tells the behind-the-scenes story of how Walt Disney’s silver-screen incarnation of Mary Poppins came to be, swooping as it did into the imaginations of children across the world in the guise of magical songbird Andrews. Actually, John Lee Hancock’s film is a finely-crafted, if rather heavy-handed, character study that doubles as a meditation on family, fatherhood and the healing power of fiction.

For years, Pamela ‘P.L.’ Travers (Emma Thompson) has jealously guarded the rights to her Mary Poppins novels, refusing to bow to the considerable charms and exhortations of media mogul Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) – a man who always get what he wants. When she hits a rocky financial patch in 1961, she’s finally persuaded by her accountant to spend a fortnight in L.A. discussing the project. Once there, she terrorises Disney’s entire creative team – including screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) and composer brothers Richard (Jason Schwartzman) and Robert Sherman (B.J. Novak) – with her demands.

The story, it would seem, naturally lacks narrative tension – of course Travers gives in at some point, in some fashion. The existence of Mary Poppins in its everlastingly sublime cinematic form – despite Travers’ strident and ruthlessly documented (via audio-tape) objections to script, score, animation and character design – is proof of that final surrender.

But Saving Mr. Banks makes up for the inevitability of its outcome with some outstanding character work, allowing the darker and lighter sides of both Travers and Disney to peek through the conflicting personas – one prickly, the other genial – that they present to the world.

In this regard, Saving Mr. Banks benefits enormously from the skill and talent of its two lead actors. As good ol’ Uncle Walt, Hanks radiates a genuine charm that comes intriguingly laced with a hint of Machiavellian menace. In his business-minded courtship of Travers, Disney seems to reveal something deeper and sadder about himself and his soul – only for that glimmer of heartfelt intimacy to vanish as quickly as it appears. Hanks is masterful in playing the sweetness and steel of this complicated, media-savvy man, a warts-and-all portrait that’s all the more surprising for the fact that this film was shot under the aegis of Disney’s own studio.

Thompson, meanwhile, is nothing short of spectacular. Onscreen (and, by all accounts, in real life), Travers is abrasive and utterly unsentimental, merrily insulting everyone who crosses her path with little care for their feelings or stature. Thompson breathes life into this difficult character, disappearing into the stern lines of Travers’ face and the strict cuts of her dresses (not to mention that unflatteringly tight perm). Most impressive of all is the way in which Thompson plays the chinks in Travers’ armour. She skilfully unveils years of guilt and regret in moments of quiet, unexpected vulnerability, all of which hint at the depths of soul and imagination that helped her dream up Mary Poppins in the first place.

It should go without saying that the scenes Hanks and Thompson share are the best in the film. When they meet, Saving Mr. Banks acts as a master-class in physics – irresistible force meets immovable object – and acting; together, they create fireworks both explosive and emotional. There are few scenes more delightful than the ones in which Travers flatly defies Disney’s flights of fancy (no red in the film!), or when Disney takes Travers for a ride (quite literally) in a personal tour of Disneyland.

Unfortunately, a substantial chunk of Saving Mr. Banks – necessitated by the script as its main narrative device – is preoccupied with unravelling Travers’ backstory and daddy issues. Far too frequently, the film cuts back to her yellow-washed childhood in Australia, where she – nicknamed ‘Ginty’ and played by the saucer-eyed Annie Rose Buckley – begins to realise that her sensitive dreamer of a dad (Colin Farrell) isn’t quite the hero she has always believed him to be. It’s not that this section of the film is bad, per se. In fact, it features a fine, heartbreaking performance from Farrell as a man who wildly loves his family but can’t resist the siren call of alcohol.

But the themes and ideas of these flashbacks are almost profoundly sentimental and hammered home in so blatant a fashion that one imagines Travers – whether the real or fictitious incarnation – would regard it with a furious disdain. As Travers herself grumbles in the film, when welcomed to L.A. by a roomful of Disney merchandise, the script could afford to “learn the art of subtlety”. For all that Thompson is excellent in the part, it’s sometimes tough to reconcile the open-hearted Ginty with the closed-up Travers. Hancock would have done better to trust Thompson to tell that story in the shifts and shadows of her enormously expressive eyes.

Nevertheless, Saving Mr. Banks powers through on the strength of its marvellous cast. Whitford, Schwartzman and Novak have great fun playing their reactions to Thompson’s Travers, ranging from exasperation to annoyance and, in one case, pure, unfettered anger. The unsung hero of the piece is Ralph (Paul Giamatti), Travers’ eternally upbeat chauffeur. For all that Disney tries to find his way to Travers’ heart, it’s Ralph who brings the audience there with him.

When it comes down to it, Saving Mr. Banks isn’t about who won in the battle between Disney and Travers. To keep her house and home, Travers pretty much knew from the start that she would have to sign the rights to her beloved magical nanny away. She went to L.A. to fight for the spirit of her story – for her Mr. Banks – and this is precisely what allows the film, buoyed by the undeniable magic of Disney’s final product, to take flight.

Basically: Thompson and Hanks lend magic to a slightly pedestrian script – the result is (mostly) supercalifragilistic… you know where this is going!

Captain Phillips (2013)

The true story of Captain Richard Phillips could very easily have been filmed in black and white – not literally, of course, but metaphorically. It’s easy to imagine a Hollywood hack deciding to have it all play out as a simple morality tale: obviously the Somali pirates who hijacked the real-life Captain Phillips’ cargo ship in 2009 would be the villains of the piece, the bad guys who have the temerity to threaten a perfectly nice, upstanding American bloke who just wants to get home to his family. In a casting coup, the captain could be played by Tom Hanks, who is a genuinely nice, upstanding American bloke. Perfect!

It’s a good, good thing then, that Captain Phillips wound up in the hands of a director like Paul Greengrass. Greengrass is known for his gritty, hard-hitting, deeply realistic style, employed to memorable effect in The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93 and Green Zone. The films might vary in their impact and worth, but Greengrass has never simplified his characters and their dilemmas for the sake of box office. It’s a trait that he brings to Captain Phillips, in which he ensures that the ostensible antagonists of the film are portrayed in a light that shatters preconceptions and biases which would otherwise be all too easy to adopt.

Captain Phillips begins in benign, if rather bland fashion. We get a glimpse of the captain’s routine as he prepares for his next marine voyage; he says goodbye to his wife (Catherine Keener), frets about his kids, boards the vessel in Oman. At this point, Billy Ray’s screenplay still seems to be playing it safe – the dialogue is pat and the foreshadowing pointedly obvious as Phillips  sends wistful e-mails home and orders extra security drills for his crew. All seems well… until the MV Maersk Alabama lands in the crosshairs of a ragtag quartet of pirates led by the volatile Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi).

It’s when Phillips meets Muse that the film properly kicks off: the dynamic between the two is brilliantly handled, shifting from adversial to cagily confessional and back again. Their relationship forms the bedrock of Captain Phillips, not least because it sets up two such diametrically different characters and points of view. Apart from the struggle for life, death and control of the ship (which provides plenty of tension as is), Phillips and Muse represent two different worlds. Phillips might be every inch a perfectly lovely man who doesn’t deserve to be trapped in a horrible situation, but Greengrass also digs deep into the idea that he’s the unfortunate scapegoat of a system of first-world countries preserving their first-world privileges – one from which he’s benefited enormously.

Similarly, Greengrass ensures that Muse is no crazed madman, bent on securing wealth and riches at all costs. He probes relentlessly into Muse’s life and backstory, drawing out the poverty and tragedy that gave him no choice but to eke out a livelihood on the high seas. Muse, the film suggests, is a pirate by choice – but it’s not like he had all that many choices to begin with. Throughout Phillips’ harrowing ordeal, Muse is volatile, charismatic, merciful and almost heartbreaking. It’s his own humanity that preserves Phillips’ life against the threats and anger of his less thoughtful comrades.

Both actors are in fine form. Hanks wisely reins in his performance, playing the part of a determined survivor – his final moment onscreen, however, is one of almost unbearable vulnerability. Before our eyes, Phillips shudders apart beneath the weight of all he has gone through: the stand-off, the incarceration upon a dinky, claustrophobic lifeboat, the challenging of his notions of right and wrong. It’s hard to imagine a first-time actor daring to claim control of the screen when Hanks is in the same room, but Abdi does so with a fiery magnificence. His performance is searing, sad and subtle: small wonder that Hanks seems to respond in real terror when Abdi bursts through the doors for the first time onscreen – that being the first time the two actors ever came face to face.

Much has been made of Greengrass’ masterful control over the tension of Captain Phillips – he certainly keeps the action at a steady, nervy hum, reducing the pirates’ options with every tick of the clock. But the film runs quite long (134 minutes), testing the patience of audiences rather than keeping them completely spellbound. The film’s gut-wrenching impact lessens the longer Greengrass keeps his camera trained steadily on his actors: he takes a little too long to drive home his deeper themes of globalisation and imperialism, losing emotional momentum even as his narrative picks up speed.

Nevertheless, Captain Phillips might be one of the most important films of the year. Whether it’s as emotionally gripping as it is technically nail-biting, it’s that rarest of movies: an American-made action-packed film starring Tom Hanks that isn’t shoving a simplistic, ultimately inconsequential message down its audience’s throats. On the contrary, it asks staggeringly big questions with heartbreakingly sad answers. There is no happy ending here – and that’s how, perhaps, it really ought to be.

Basically: A tough-minded, brilliantly-acted treatise on politics and privilege that peters out somewhat by the end, but remains important nonetheless.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Just as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas was deemed an ‘unfilmable’ book, this movie version of that same novel is an almost ‘unreviewable’ movie. There’s just too much of everything packed into each frame of its lengthy 172-minute running time: too much ambition, too many ideas, too much that could go wrong. It’s a grand, huge, beautiful, faintly ludicrous film – very much a passion project for its trio of directors, Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and Andy and Lana Wachowski (the Matrix trilogy), and one that manages to be an epic and something of an indulgent folly all at the same time.

Mitchell’s novel is a Chinese box of narrative, with six stories nestled amongst one another to give the sense that everything – past, present and future – is connected by our choices and, more obliquely, souls. As both reader and viewer, we travel across oceans with American notary Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) in 1849, into letters written from troubled composer Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) to his scientist friend Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy) in the 1930s. Sixsmith leads us into a ’60s-set nuclear conspiracy involving intrepid reporter Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), before her story is picked up in farcical fashion by a publisher Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent), who winds up stuck in a nursing home against his will. This is all before we end up in the dystopian future Korea of clone Sonmi-451 (Bae Doo-na), who is still spoken of in hushed, reverent whispers several centuries later by Zachry (Tom Hanks) and his tribe, who are struggling to survive in the wilds of post-apocalyptic Hawaii.

The novel presses home its theme of connectivity and souls passing through time and space, just as clouds do, by having its narrative double back on itself, and featuring a number of characters throughout the novel who bear a tiny comet-shaped birthmark somewhere on their person. The movie makes the same point in an even more arresting way: the birthmark element remains in play, but the directors also decided to make the themes of eternal recurrence, karma and redemption even stronger by having the same stable of actors play several different roles in the movie. In other words, Hanks pops up as no less than six different characters in the film, sporting varyingly successful degrees of  make-up and accents. Same goes for Berry and the rest of the main cast – in fact, they occasionally turn up in guises you’d never recognise in a million years (stay through the credits for a handy primer), with the dapper, debonair Hugh Grant of our rom-com daydreams making the biggest (and most successful) departure from his usual image.

Does this tactic work? Well, as with much of Cloud Atlas, the answer is yes… and no. Having the same actor play a host of different parts could prove terminally confusing for some, especially since the six stories are blended together in a way that doesn’t make as much sense as it does in the novel (which itself took quite a while to properly set up its hyper-ambitious premise). I could more easily keep track of and differentiate between the various characters because I’d just read the book, and knew what they were doing and how they were related. But if you’ve never read the book, you could well spend the first hour completely befuddled about who’s who, what the hell is going on, and how it all links together. On occasion, too, the painstaking make-up slathered liberally onto the actors goes from seamless and invisible to distracting and unintentionally funny – which hardly makes for the most immersive of cinematic experiences.

At the same time that the concept is audacious and a bit ridiculous, it’s also – to be honest – really quite genius. It layers a whole different level of story and complexity into the very fabric of the film. With the same actors telling different stories across time, it’s confusing at first but makes a strange, marvellous kind of sense once it all clicks. There’s room to chart the progress of all the different souls that cycle through the six tales: Hanks, for instance, starts out as the oily, ominous Dr Henry Goose, both friend and foe to the deeply trusting Ewing, before cycling through decent scientist Isaac Sachs and thug-author Dermot Hoggins, and winding up as the suspicious, brave, pidgin-speaking Zachry. Some souls remain relentlessly, unforgivably evil: largely those played by a very brave, very game Hugo Weaving and the aforementioned Grant. Their antagonists stalk or skulk through the film, sometimes in drag, other times caked in wrinkles or brandishing a devilish top-hat.

So the concept has its pros and cons – does it at least work to emotionally engage its bewildered, entranced audience? Again, yes and no. The sprawling structure of the film sees its narrative switching hands a dizzying six times throughout, repeatedly, with no warning and adhering to a tenuous logic that likely becomes clearer only with subsequent viewings. It’s difficult to care very much about some of these characters when their stories are suddenly buried beneath others’ tales and don’t emerge for quite a while. There isn’t time to get attached to the characters in the first couple of hours of the film, since viewers are kept busy in trying to work out the relationships and characters – whether this is the first time they’ve encountered Mitchell’s creations, or are trying to see how the characters have been re-calibrated from the novel.

Off-putting though it might be at first, the swirl of ideas, relationships and themes do eventually cohere towards the end. Perhaps it’s a form of cinematic Stockholm Syndrome, but by the end, it’s hard not to care when the past, present and future they share are all tangled up in that singular moment when a calm, resolute Frobisher observes a desperate, heart-torn Sixsmith on the roof of a cathedral overlooking Bruges. That scene, more than any other, crystallises the notions Tykwer and the Wachowskis are trying to wrestle manfully into shape. So, even if the storylines are more jumbled and messy than they are in the novel (which isn’t the most clear-cut, linear of narratives as is), the film does do justice by the feel and core of Mitchell’s story.

Some elements, in fact, are stronger and more emotionally engaging when filtered through the prism of a camera – Ewing’s story takes on an urgency and life that largely eluded it in the (purposefully) turgid prose of his journal entries. The specific details of Frobisher’s tale, including his own motivations as a character, change the most from page to screen, but arguably for the better: his heartbreaking romance and subsequent dalliance with various members of volatile composer Vyvyan Ayrs’ (Broadbent) family actually fulfils the point of his narrative arc better on screen than in the novel. This is true as well of Sonmi and her relationship with member of the human resistance Hae-Joo (Sturgess). Anyone who thinks the end of her story in the film is bleak has not read the novel, which folds in an additional level of deception and heartbreak – one that’s removed to achieve, ironically, tonal unity for a pretty tonally messy movie.

In most other ways, Cloud Atlas is faithful to Mitchell’s vision – almost slavishly so. As a huge fan of the Sloosha’s Crossin’ section of the novel, which features the barely civilised Zachry meeting a more blessed race of humans in the form of Meronym (Berry), I appreciated the fact that Hanks and Berry spoke in the pidgin English Mitchell invented solely for his book – a literary feat that was fascinating in how it managed to retain its old links to the English language, almost as if it had been passed down third-hand (or at an even further remove) by non-native speakers, while developing its own poetry and cadence. If the actors occasionally sounded a bit strange wrapping their own accents around this apocalyptically strange new language… well, at least the film-makers tried.

Which is a sentiment that’s probably the biggest and best thing Cloud Atlas has going for it. Even if the film doesn’t quite connect or land as it really wants or ought to, the sheer dedication, talent and audacity on display is worthy of respect. This is cinema at its most daring and unapologetic: it doesn’t pander, or talk down to its audience, instead telling the story firmly on its own terms. It’s better, I would say, for the film-makers to have reached for the stars (or more accurately, the clouds) and fallen short rather have their eyes on the box office and their feet planted firmly on the ground.

As you can probably tell from this ambivalent-ish review, there’s a lot to like as well as a lot to dislike about Cloud Atlas. Visually, it’s an unequivocal treat – whether Henry Goose is farming teeth on a sun-bleached beach or Sonmi is on the run in a Tron-type futuristic landscape – but that’s pretty much the only thing about the film that will unite rather than divide audiences. In most other respects (be it story, adaptation, characters or finesse), there’s room to argue and there’s room for approbation as well as disdain. Overall, the film just about worked for me… but it could as easily prove to be a disastrous or transcendent experience for others.

Basically: This is cinema as art in every possible sense: its merits and failures can be discussed for years to come. Far from an easy, crowd-pleasing watch, but certainly a worthwhile one.

Charlie Wilson’s War (2008)

I’m pretty sure my little fangirl heart exploded when news first broke that Aaron Sorkin, renowned scribe of ridiculously intelligent, banter-heavy TV hits like The West Wing and Sports Night and movies such as The American President and A Few Good Men, was attached to adapt the story of how Texas congressman Charlie Wilson singlehandedly expanded the US’ defence budget for Afghanistan in the 1980s, allowing for a build-up of weapons and training that eventually allowed the Americans to win the Cold War. (Dramatic, yes? But apparently, a true story.) When it became clear that Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman had been cast in the film, my life was complete – imagine, two of the best actors of their respective generations, going toe to toe with each other while trading words and barbs written by surely one of the best wordsmiths of his generation. With expectations already sky-high, even though I tried to tell myself that something bad could yet happen, this film could so easily have disappointed me. Thank goodness it didn’t!

Charlie Wilson (Hanks) was, by all accounts, a moral degenerate of a man – a politician who dabbled in women, wine and song and could only have survived back in the 80s when personal scandals had started to but hadn’t completely taken over the way in which the news media approached political coverage. But a man with a drinking problem isn’t necessarily one hampered by a lack of political acumen: uniquely well-placed on the defence sub-committee and able to trade and barter votes in Congress, he suddenly finds himself the sole champion of the need to bring the proper defense munitions to the war-torn, uncivilised Afghanistan so that they can fight off the Soviet Union. This, of course, involves Charlie hooking up with the mostly ostracised CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman) to navigate scandals, egos, the demands from born-again Christian and ridiculously rich Texan socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), as well as the warring countries of Pakistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia… never a more complicated minefield of potential religio-political strife.

Sorkin, of course, makes light work of squeezing in detail, richness and complexity into his crafting of the characters and dialogue: Charlie comes across as every bit the walking contradiction he is – at once a man who delights in hiring pretty girls to populate his office and drinks openly (and even in Islamic countries, if he’d have been allowed), but also a smart cookie who knows where, when and how to get the funding and support he needs for a war the US wasn’t prepared to fight at all. It’s a lot of fun to watch him and Gust meet and establish boundaries and understandings – both of them prickly characters, Gust in particular having publicly trashed his boss’ office twice for not being given the assignment in Europe he had been training for and expecting. One particularly well-observed sequence – reminiscent of early West Wing at its best – combines political intrigue with pure, simple farce: Charlie and Gust’s first conversation keeps getting interrupted as Charlie’s aides explode in on them in flurries of horror that he is about to be implicated in a drug scandal, and Gust soon learns to automatically depart from the room each time this happens. The way the scene ends – Gust surprising Charlie just the way he had to to prove to Charlie he was the real deal – is an excellent grace note, and beautifully played.

This is true of all the characters in the film: Sorkin drops in hints about Joanne as well, and her strangely open sexual relationship with Charlie, even as she pressures him into looking into the situation in Afghanistan, convinced that the way forward is to break the Soviet spirit by arming local insurgents against the Russians. The dance between them is wonderfully drawn out, laced with a detached affection and spiky banter slicked over by alcohol and the promise of cash. Similar attention is lavished even on minor characters, like Charlie’s remarkably discreet, devoted secretary Bonnie (Amy Adams) – who knows just when to fade into the background, and when to leap into action with news for her boss or with attempts to protect his reputation as he battles for the cause they all come to believe in.

Laced through with Sorkin’s brand of fantastically erudite, sparky humour, CWW, of course, is also blessed with performances from a dream cast. Hanks, edging away from his good-guy reputation that would more comfortably peg him as James Stewart’s successor for Mr Smith Goes to Washington, relishes the chance to play a guy living on that thin moral grey line most human beings find themselves treading everyday – and he carries the film as finely as you’d expect Hanks to do, straddling the comic and dramatic moments perfectly. The end of the film does require a tonal shift that might be too jarring for some – Hanks, however, moves from silly to sombre with such skill that I personally had no problem accepting the change as the film closes on the outcome and implications of the titular war that Charlie started to fight.

Hoffman, as always, is an electric presence, whether he’s flinging chairs through windows or revealing just how intimate his knowledge of the Afghan political scene (or lack thereof) is. The moments when he goes head to head with Hanks are the kind that spin cinematic gold out of little more than two actors sharing the same scene. Roberts, though in a smaller role than you might be used to seeing her in, is excellent as the hard-as-nails, smart and determined Joanne – the driving force that changes the course of history whose fashion choices du jour include a blonde beehive and bright red lipstick.

You might take issue with the way the film segues from comedy to drama at the very end, as the aftermath of Charlie Wilson’s war becomes clear to the main players as well as the audience who, with the benefit of hindsight, realise – of course – that the arming and training of Afghan rebels was one of the key reasons that Osama bin Laden could build up his al-Qaeda network after beating back the Soviets. But I contend that this is actually a powerful point: for much of what has come before, dealt with fizzy political manoeuvring and schmoozing – most clear in a scene when Gust and Charlie cut a deal with the deputy defence minister of Egypt as his boss is charmed by a belly dancer Charlie knows – is the stuff of life. Funny, stupid, ironic, messy… and yes, finally, painful and sad. The ending couldn’t have been upbeat, really, to do the film justice. Sorkin built a fantastic television series just out of this juxtaposition of comedy and drama – so while this film is emphatically not The West Wing, it does treat issues and ideas in the same uncompromisingly intelligent, but lighthearted and sincere way.

Unquestionably one of the smartest, funniest political comedies of the year – oh wait, is it the only political comedy this year? Well, then, CWW has no problem defying genres: it’s also one of the smartest, funniest films I’ve seen in ages. Here’s hoping Sorkin keeps his pencil sharpened and his wit honed to produce more of such delightfully mature, charmingly funny fare in future.

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Conventional wisdom, it appears, means nothing at all when it comes to dream-making machine and animation giant Pixar. After all, conventional wisdom would suggest that a sequel is pretty much always half as funny and twice as lame as its predecessor, made simply to cash in big-time at the box office. Well, Pixar only went and made Toy Story 2, widely recognised as one of the handful of sequels that might actually surpass the original film in quality. Certainly, way back in 1999, TS2 received a rapturous critical welcome and went on to cement Pixar’s standing as the animation studio with the greatest likelihood – among all its competitors – of dethroning long-reining, practically unchallenged king Disney. (Turns out it was an inside job, after all…)

We’re re-introduced quickly to the toys we loved so much in the first film: after their earlier misadventures, sensible cowboy Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and once arrogant astronaut Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) are getting along just fine… until their owner Andy (John Morris) leaves for cowboy camp but breaks with tradition in bringing Woody along after the toy’s arm is practically ripped off. This doesn’t mean Woody stays home pining (ha ha!) after Andy, however: through a fluke, he is kidnapped by toy collector Al (Wayne Knight), who recognises Woody as the invaluable star of a merchandise chain from decades ago and, dollar signs in mind, needs him to complete a set to be shipped to a museum in Japan. Brokenhearted and concerned that he will inevitably be consigned to the dustheap of memory as Andy grows up, Woody convinces himself that he’s better off becoming a matched set with yodelling cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) and Stinky Pete the Prospector (Kelsey Grammer). But he doesn’t count on the determination of his friends, led by the determined Buzz, in returning him to Andy’s side…

As with the best Pixar movies, the film-makers have prided story over special effects. The animation, of course, remains world-class, and even eight years later still holds up marvellously. But Pixar has always been intent on having the visuals service the story, and in this regard, has come up with a corker of a tale that’s achingly simple and resonates with both children and adults. In fact, with the benefit of age and some maturity (hopefully, anyway), it’s easier to appreciate the delicate themes layered into the story, behind the cute new characters (bug-eyed aliens who adopt Mr Potato Head as their saviour), snarky banter and madcap action as Buzz leads a troop of toys across town to save their friend. It’s a remarkably clever, sensitive look at pretty ambitious themes: what you leave behind when you grow up, the need to make difficult choices for the sake of the one you love (in a platonic sense – Woody has to decide between feeding his own ego and remaining steadfast to a boy who might, in a matter of weeks, forget about him entirely).

The best movies boil a world of ideas and emotions down into something so simple and touching you can’t help but be affected by it, and TS2 boasts just such a classic scene that perfectly encapsulates this particularly rare kind of movie alchemy. Set to a gentle, heartrending ballad When She Loved Me performed beautifully by Sarah McLachlan, drenched in autumn colours, the scene that delves into Jessie’s back story is luminous, almost shining with a level of artistry and quiet grace that you hardly see in films these days. I defy anyone to remain dry-eyed when Jessie leans into her owner, a look of sheer bliss on her face, as McLachlan’s dreamy, sad melody wraps itself around the moment.

Throw this scene in with a cracking script, fantastic action (Buzz tumbling through scenes reminiscent of any Indiana Jones movie, or facing off against his nemesis in a moment that consciously recalls Star Wars), and humour that plays beautifully whether you’re 7 or 70. Pixar really takes the idea of its main characters being toys and runs with it, coming up with inventive gag after gag as Buzz’s crew struggles across what, to them, are gargantuan canyons (really streets) or try to navigate Al’s toy store while looking for Woody, meeting Barbie doll tour guides and Buzz’s alter ego along the way. The voice talent, as always, is memorable: Hanks and Allen, of course, relishing their roles with Hanks in particular managing to lend shades of emotion to the words he puts in a toy cowboy’s mouth. Cusack makes a welcome addition to the fold, as do Grammer’s buttery-smooth vocals and delivery – at once charming and slightly sinister as Stinky Pete.

Pretty much the only problem with this film is its rather rushed ending. Presumably having finally run out of gags and steam, the final rescue sequence is a bit far-fetched, and the writers don’t even seem to have bothered to devise a way to explain how most of the main characters wind up back at Andy’s place. But, honestly, this is a tiny quibble in an otherwise pitch-perfect film. Perhaps what’s so great about Pixar is how they’ve so clearly recognised what made Disney films such a success: it’s not about the visuals, or being particularly hip and avant garde. What it comes down to is that particular magical glow you get from a good story well-told, with believable characters and big ideas that aren’t afraid to be just that. And all this you get in spades in TS2 – which, without a doubt, ranks not just as one of the best of Pixar’s films, but is definitely in the running to be one of the best, most heartfelt and surprisingly lovely films of all time.

You’ve Got Mail (1998)

It’s pretty frightening to think about it, but it’s been almost a decade since You’ve Got Mail first hit the silver screen. It’s possibly even more frightening when you hear – possibly for the first time in close to a decade! – the once-ubiquitous, shrill buzz of the modem dial-up as one-time rom-com golden couple Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan log onto the Internet to exchange missives and, well, fall in love. But, in a weird way, the movie’s now anachronistic form of communication only adds to its quaint charm, and is actually quite fitting in a way, since the movie is so much about the nostalgia, pain and sheer inevitability that accompanies the replacing of the old (a charming kids’ book store a.k.a., the ‘Shop Around the Corner’) with the new (a mega-book-chain à la Borders).

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. It’s frequently the quirkiness and spark of the characters in a rom-com that sets it apart from the rest of its brethren. Fortunately, writer-director Nora Ephron gets the protagonists just right here: Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) is the adorable owner of a kids’ bookstore she inherited from her mom. Smart and passionate about her life’s work in children’s literature, Kathleen seems to be with her self-absorbed journalist boyfriend Frank (Greg Kinnear) for no reason other than that she hasn’t found that someone else who really gets her. Except perhaps for NY152, the mysterious guy she met through AOL in the guise of Shopgirl, and with whom she trades smart, chatty, sweet e-mails… even as her little shop fights for its life against the mega Fox bookstore opening up right across the road. Of course, it wouldn’t be a deliciously complicated rom-com tangle unless her arch-enemy Joe Fox (Hanks) turned out to be NY152… but Kathleen doesn’t know this. And when Joe, who is also already embroiled in a relationship with shrill publisher Patricia (Parker Posey), realises that the woman he’s fallen in love with online is his nemesis in real life, can the two penpal sweethearts battle their lives and business rivalry to find happiness?

Ephron appears to have dutifully checked off every box on the rom-com to-do list, at least when it comes to mining the situation and her characters for comedy: quirky supporting characters (Kathleen’s aged and loopy accountant Birdie, played by Jean Stapleton); cute kids (namely little Matt, whose ability to spell ‘F-O-X’ should really give Kathleen a big clue about Joe’s association with a certain soul-eating conglomerate); angry sparks flying between the main couple (Kathleen, after discovering that Joe is the one set to put her out of business, lashes out at him: “What are you doing? You’re taking all the caviar? That caviar is a garnish!”); and finally, comic misunderstandings galore (standout scene: Joe, upon realising that Kathleen is Shopgirl, meets her as himself, and goads her into a hilarious verbal fight that she wins but later apologises for… over e-mail!). YGM is also blessed with smart, delightfully quoteable banter, delivered by a couple of old hands who have more chemistry just sitting across a table from each other than do some far less inspiring rom-com couples in recent memory.

But, and I’m sure this is a debatable point, especially by those who didn’t enjoy this movie half as much as I did, where Ephron really keeps the movie from being a simple cash-in on the then bankable Hanks/Ryan brand name (which hit its arguable zenith in Sleepless In Seattle) is in her careful development of a genuinely affecting little story in which their real lives get hopelessly entangled, even as they try to seek each other out to provide support over the Internet. It’s a fitting metaphor still, for a generation increasingly wired and therefore increasingly inclined to find love and companionship in virtual ways utterly unthinkable just two decades earlier. It’s a genuinely nice touch that the movie’s central relationship is founded in the advent of new technology, even as it explores the sheer amount of lost history and heartache that goes into the demolition of something as small as a corner bookshop on a busy Manhattan street.

Perhaps more importantly, for all the schmaltz that she sneaks into the movie (it wouldn’t be an Ephron movie if it didn’t include at least one achingly sentimental scene – such as the one of Kathleen bidding her emptied little bookshop farewell as she watches her mother and her younger self twirl innocently in the shadowy darkness), Ephron is admirably tough-minded about the necessity and value of change in a world that’s occasionally too romantic for its own good. Change may frequently be heartbreaking, but it’s just as frequently necessary and even good: Ephron doesn’t take the easy way out by completely demonising Joe and Fox Books, instead giving Joe some leeway to make valid points about how he’s democratising the book-buying process and making more books available at a cheaper price to more people than Kathleen ever could.

Good story is ably abetted by genuinely great characters, brought to life by two actors who really seem to believe in the entire enterprise. (Sometimes, despite the $20 million paychecks, big stars in rom-coms can barely disguise the disdain in their eyes as they go through the motions to earn the cash – see, for example, John Cusack in America’s Sweethearts.) Kathleen is cute and charming, especially as played by the unfailingly adorable Ryan. If I’d reviewed this movie when it was released in 1998, I’d probably have said that Ryan might well have delivered one of the best performances in her career, and hoped for better. Unfortunately, Kathleen appears to be Ryan’s last really appealing role. Joe Fox, meanwhile, is certainly one of the best male leads ever created for a rom-com – he doesn’t break moulds, per se, being as snarky and apparently offputting as Mr Darcy in that cornerstone of romantic comedy, Pride and Prejudice (which, cannily enough, Ephron cites throughout the movie, alongside The Godfather). But he is very recognisably real: neither a dashing pipe dream of a Prince Charming, nor one of those roguish jerks that film-makers occasionally try to pass off as appealing rom-com leading men. Add to this already promising-on-paper character the everyman charm of Hanks, whose comic skills are so frequently neglected in favour of heavy drama, and you’ve got a winner.

Filled with a sweet, easy charm, YGM is one of those movies where just about everything went right, when pretty much everything could have gone wrong. It’s pretty close to a sequel, for one thing, and there are still people who can’t forgive it for coming after Sleepless. Who’s to say that Hanks and Ryan, for all their inimitable charm, could have saved a potentially cliche-ridden script by Ephron? Thank heavens that wasn’t even an issue. Instead, you’ve got a clever, heartwarming little movie that’s as romantic as it is funny – even ten years on.