Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Director: Philip Kaufman
Screenwriter: W. D. Richter
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy

This film is about aliens. Technically. But also, it isn’t.

This is the second adaptation of “The Body Snatchers” by Jack Finney (following the 1956 Don Siegel adaptation, also titled Invasion of the Body Snatchers). It follows roughly the same plot, where strange, plant-based life forms come to Earth after travelling across the stars, where they grow replicas of human beings in huge pods, each identical save for the removing of emotion (and so no war, no pain, no love). Their infiltration of the community they find themselves in is the scene of paranoia, of the discovery of a conspiracy, of the terror of realising that your family members may look and sound the same, but that they aren’t actually them. A small band of survivors must battle the odds when the system has been infiltrated and turned against them. The novel and original film, taking place in the midst of 1950s Red Scare McCartheyism, is as thinly veiled an allegory for America’s fear of communism as you can get, though Finney denied this throughout his life (movies such as The Thing From Another World and It Came From Outer Space also follow the trend). Both of those texts are also seminal sci-fi horror reading/viewing. The question, therefore, is how does this version stack up?

Part of the genius of this interpretation is the decision to move the action from the small town of Santa Mira (in the film)/Mill County (in the book) to downtown San Francisco. The added chaos of urban life gives a sense of menace to the spreading contamination. The allegory here is of corporations turning people into shells of their former selves, and of the destruction of the natural world – a kind of capitalist updating of the red weed from H. G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”. Roger Ebert commented that it might also be influenced by the Watergate scandal, with tapped phones and wires. Whilst this is a possibility, those features were always elements in the novel and the first film. What is certain, is that by putting this viral personality takeover in the middle of a city, the danger is far more immediate. With the first film, if it gets out of the small town, there’s still a chance. There’s a larger civilisation out there to help. Here, if you’re dead in the city, with all that manpower and all those connections, with all that modernity, there’s not much chance that anywhere else is going to last. Along with this updating, the pod-people in their growing stage are much more organic, more tissue-like, adding to the ecological themes. It isn’t as strong a body-horror shift, but perhaps comparable to the way in which the 1958 version of The Fly (starring Vincent Price) was updated for modern audiences: a reimagining rather than a remake, as directed by David Cronenberg in 1986 (ironically, also starring Jeff Goldblum).

The air of being hemmed in is all around. The buildings impose, the close proximity that everyone is to each other (and in some sequences having several of the characters together in every shot one after the other), makes the idea that the people next to you aren’t who they say they are even worse. The main cast is terrific, bringing sufficient weight and drama to a terror slowly building up as the horrific realisation of what is going on dawns on them. The little things occurring in the background add to that paranoia, and is something Edgar Wright specifically mentions as an influence on the background details for Shaun of the Dead in his DVD commentary (ironically, Wright’s body-snatching film The World’s End actually has the ending of the original novel, in which the invading force realises humanity will never be converted, which is something no actual novel adaptation has kept). The occasional shots of the garbage compactors crushing the husks of used pods comes back time and time again unmentioned but always there, and when you realise what they are, by then it’s all too late. Everything’s already over.

Speaking of endings, Kevin McCarthy (who played Dr Miles in the first film) has a cameo in this one, playing very much a similar character (but not the same), slamming on Donald Sutherland’s car and screaming ‘You’re next!’, much like his famous ending to the first film. Even if it’s not Dr Miles, it gives the impression that Miles has been wandering for years warning us of the oncoming apocalypse. It’s so iconic an original ending that one wonders how this film could possibly one-up it. And yet it does, in an ending reveal burned into the public consciousness with just sound. Sound that has drained from the world as the film runs on, with characters fleeing through the streets, their feet slamming against the road. Somehow that’s the most disturbing thing of all. The takeover of the pod people, with their uniformity, has reduced the need for talk, for going anywhere unplanned, for noise. Despite their horrifying screech, the emptiness of the sound of the world is what truly scares. The naturalness of the world has faded. Now it is simply a factory of the pods, a greenhouse for empty husks.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has everything you could want. A great cast, direction that mostly stands up (there are unfortunately some parts when Kaufman decides to go for some egregious camera movements which betray the camp B-movie roots and lodge in the cinematic throat), an all-consuming tone, and some of the most iconic scenes of all science-fiction and horror. It has to be seen to be believed, and, even with the odd misstep, remains an all-time classic.

Score: 20/24

The Ten Commandments (1923)
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriter: Jeanie Macpherson
Starring: Theodore Roberts, Leatrice Joy, Richard Dix, Rod LaRocque, Nita Naldi

It is impossible to watch the first 45 minutes of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 silent epic The Ten Commandments without your mouth hanging open in awe. The sheer artistry on display is astounding, from the art direction, to the cinematography, to the technical effects. Helmed by one of cinema’s most successful and influential pioneer directors, The Ten Commandments offers the very best of what movies can be, and 100 years later stands as a testament to the innovation and technical achievement of the early days of moving pictures, a reminder of the shoulders that artists today stand upon. According to The Film Foundation, it was Paramount’s highest-grossing film for 25 years. While DeMille’s 1956 remake of the film starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner is probably the version best remembered by audiences, thanks in part to ABC’s yearly tradition of airing the film the week before Easter, the original 1923 version is just as spectacular and worthy of praise and appreciation. At times bewildering and heavy-handed, The Ten Commandments is a sprawling morality tale that often loses the plot, but nevertheless offers us a fascinating glimpse into the primitive days of filmmaking, as well as the ideals and expectations of post-war America.

The Ten Commandments begins with a title card that explains how the modern world considered the laws of God to be “old fashioned,” but following the bloodshed of the first world war, that same world, now bitter and broken by death and destruction, “cries for a way out.” What follows is a 45 minute prologue retelling the Exodus from the first testament of the Bible, in which Moses (Theodore Roberts) leads thousands of enslaved Israelis from Egypt. But when the Pharaoh’s son cannot be revived by his Gods, Ramses (Charles De Roche) chases after them. Moses parts the Red Sea, goes to the Mount to receive the ten commandments and inflicts the wrath of God upon the Israelis when he returns, because they have forsaken God while Moses was away and are now worshipping a golden ram. The sinners pay for their disobedience; they are struck down by lightening.

Fans of the 1956 version might be a little bit confused about what happens next.

As the frame fades to black, the film jumps ahead to modern day, where the devoutly religious Martha McTavish (Edythe Chapman) is telling the story of “The Ten Commandments” to her two sons, John (Richard Dix) and Dan (Rod La Rocque). While John is a lowly carpenter and content to remain so, Dan has big plans for his future; plans that do not include respecting the teachings of God, much to the horror of his mother. Dan and John soon fall in love with the same girl, Mary (Leatrice Joy), which sparks a chain of events that lead to a deadly conclusion.

This last half of the film is a morality play about the dangers of falling from God’s grace, which the film never lets you forget. The dialog is so over the top it borders on self-parody. It’s way too on the nose and beats you over the head with its message. It’s hard not to laugh when Martha, horrified that Mary and Dan are listening to music and dancing on Sunday, dramatically smashes the record against her giant bible. As Shawn Hall pointed out in The Everyday Cinephile, “The choices of the characters are dictated by the morals the filmmakers are trying to teach the audience, not their inner motivations and desires.” Modern audiences, who are overwhelming less religiously minded than they were 100 years ago, might have a difficult time swallowing the film’s black and white morality, but this part of the film didn’t fare very well with audiences at the time of its release either, who saw it as a downgrade from the breadth and scope of the prologue. According the The Film Foundation, Variety at the time called it simply “ordinary.”

There’s a reason why, in DeMille’s 1956 remake, the Exodus and parting of the red sea serves as the climax of the story. It’s the most exciting part. Starting the 1923 version with this sequence, DeMille set his audience up for disappointment. There’s just no matching its insane spectacle and technical prowess. According to The Film Foundation, the sets for the prologue were built by 500 carpenters and 600 painters and decorators. The sets, including a 120 feet tall temple, were massive. This was a hugely expensive production, and it still looks expensive after all these years. It’s also worth noting that several scenes in the prologue were in color, including the parting of the red sea and the fire used to hold back the Egyptian chariot riders. According to The Musuem of Modern Art, DeMille used several techniques for adding color during the silent era including tinting, spot-coloring and techicolor. If anything, The Ten Commandments dispels one of the pervasive myths about older films: that they were all in black and white, and that color did not happen until decades later. These scenes thankfully remain in tact, thanks to restoration done by the George Eastman Museum, which used DeMille’s personal 35mm copy as one of the sources.

It would be unfair to say that the second half of the film, which overstays its welcome, isn’t entertaining and engaging, despite how seemingly mundane it is. There are several sequences of note, worthy of the same praise given to those within the prologue. The destruction of the church near the end of the film is stunning, as is the scene in which Mary takes the elevator up to top of the Church’s roof. This part of The Ten Commandments is also elevated by its lead performances, especially Dix’s. He is so deeply charming and handsome as John; his unbuttoned vest and buttoned up shirt, sleeves rolled up to the forearms, could probably make anyone see the light and convert. Several actors in The Ten Commandments eventually made the leap to talkies, and Dix notably became a big-box office draw for RKO in the 1930s and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in 1931’s Cimarron. The performances are nuanced and natural, which might come as a shock to modern audiences who might still hold false beliefs about how acting in silent films was generally over the top and goofy. While it’s true that screen acting was still in its infancy in 1923, and some of it was over the top, a lot changed between when the first pictures were released and the filming of The Ten Commandments. In the early 1900s, the craft of screen acting evolved at lightning speed, becoming more naturalistic, and it’s wonderful to see a glimpse of that evolution in The Ten Commandments.

Will Hays was officially named head of the newly formed Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1922, and his primary job was to quell dissent among Hollywood’s critics when it came to censorship and the increasing moral ambiguity of its stars. In the early days of filmmaking, various censorship boards in the United States would cut anything and everything that did not meet societal standards of decency and propriety from films, so it is worth noting that the Paramount did not cut a single second of The Ten Commandments (per The House of Fradkin-stein). This is astonishing considering there is a frame in which Miram, Moses’ sister, gets her breast fondled in full view of the camera. It’s interesting that, while on the surface, The Ten Commandments is preoccupied with telling us a moral tale in showing the downfall of Dan McTavish, the film also shows a lot of decidedly ungodly things including murder, adultery, and greed in great detail. As author and professor William D. Romanowski pointed out, “A devout Episcopalian and Bible literalist, DeMille was also a consummate Hollywood showman with a keen sense of audience desires.” Known for baiting the censors, one has to wonder if DeMille was trying to have his cake and eat it too.

It is a miracle that The Ten Commandments survived past the early 1900s. As Eva Gordon explained in her biography of forgotten silent film star Theda Bara, no one really cared about preserving silent films (the earliest of which had become obsolete far before talkies arrived) until it was too late. By the 1930s, the fragile nitrate film stock was already disintegrating or bursting into flames. Fox Films, which later became 20th Century Fox, lost all of their silent films in a vault fire. But The Ten Commandments is one of the lucky ones. It prevails as one of the Hollywood’s most dazzling epics. Even today, it surpasses some modern blockbusters in technical and artistic achievement. The runtime may be bloated and the second half suffers because of its one-dimensional characters and uninspiring narrative, but The Ten Commandments remains one of the best spectacles in Hollywood history, a film that paved the way for a generation of epic storytelling to come.

Score: 21/24

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Little Women (1933)
Director: George Cukor
Screenwriters: Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas, Edna May Oliver, Douglass Montgomery, Jean Parker, Frances Dee

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott, first published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, has been adapted for the screen seven times over the last 100 years. In 1933, following two silent films in 1917 and 1918, George Cukor, who would later go on to direct such classics as The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, and 1954’s A Star is Born, directed the first sound adaptation starring Katharine Hepburn. Cukor’s overly sentimental version of the novel was just what Depression-era audiences needed during a period marked by uncertainty and poverty. The film was a critical hit as well, and was nominated for three Academy Awards, winning Best Adapted Screenplay. Hinging on Hepburn’s superb performance, Little Women takes Alcott’s novel about four sisters coming of age during and after the American Civil War and remakes it for a Depression-era audience nostalgic for family values and desperate to relive a simpler time.

Little Women follows the March sisters – Jo (Katherine Hepburn), Amy (Joan Bennett), Meg (Frances Dee) and Beth (Jean Parker) – as they make the transition from adolescence to adulthood, against the backdrop of the Civil War. With their father away fighting for the North, the March sisters do their best to help their Mother (Spring Byington), who they affectionally call Marmee, keep the house in order. They all have their own hopes and dreams: Amy wants to become a famous painter, Meg longs to find love and marry, Beth yearns to stay right where she is and play her piano, and Jo dreams of traveling and writing great tales of romance and adventure. Together, they experience first love, marriage, and eventually tragedy.

All of the screen adaptations of “Little Women” offer a window into the time they were made. Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation, for instance, put a strong emphasis on Jo’s writing and her search her independence during a time when women weren’t really allowed to be much more than wives and mothers. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women deconstructed the narrative, commenting on the very act of telling stories and how they help us to immortalize those we love. 1933’s Little Women is interesting because it doesn’t deconstruct the story as much as it twists it to fit the ideals of a country ravaged by The Great Depression, which began in 1929 and eventually affected the global economy. It threatened jobs and livelihoods, and it forced people out onto the streets. Because of this, Little Women is dripping with sweetness, with Cukor putting a strong emphasis on family values and domesticity. The Civil War is nothing more than a set piece, rarely mentioned in great detail, so that the March sisters’ trials and tribulations can be a stand in for the struggles of those living through current times.

It is also worth mentioning that the film was made only a year before the Hays Code began to be strictly enforced. Several Hollywood scandals, including the rape and murder of a Virginia Rapp by silent film actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and the still unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor, as well as the increasing moral panic over sexually suggestive themes in movies, led to the creation of the code in 1930 by studios desperate to get various religious groups and the government off its back. Given how tame and conservative it is, it’s not hard to see how Little Women might have been a breath of fresh air for certain audiences.

The script is pretty sparse and it speeds through plot points breezily, never stopping to really consider the consequences of any of them. There aren’t really any consquences in the film at all, just things that happen and then we quickly move on. The film doesn’t dwell on unpleaseantness very long, or at all, even when there is a major death towards the end of the film. Because of this, the March sisters – save for Jo – are all interchangeable and never really get a chance to shine on their own. Meg’s courtship and eventual marriage to Laurie’s (Douglass Montgomery) tutor Mr. Brooks (John Lodge) is sidelined, and Amy’s trip to Europe and her marriage to Laurie happen almost completely off screen.

The only character that truly gets the spotlight is Jo and it’s hard to complain when she’s being played by Katharine Hepburn, whose own outspokenness and firery personality mirror that of Jo’s. One can’t help but to think of Hepburn’s own defiance of Hollywood and society at large when she’s playing Jo, particularly her habit of wearing trousers before it was “okay” for women to do so. But modern audiences might be taken aback by Hepburn’s portrayal of Jo because she doesn’t resemble the version of Jo seen in later adaptations. Both Winona Ryder and Saoirse Ronan, who played Jo in the 1994 version and the 2019 version, respectively, exhibit a kind of passion and wit that just isn’t in Hepburn’s portrayal. Because these versions go to great lengths to showcase Jo’s stubbornness and her anger, her refusal to conform to society’s expectations, they make Hepburn’s Jo feel watered down, her fire extinguished. Even Hepburn’s own voice, so distinctive and loud, is softer and meeker in Little Women.

This is, of course, not Hepburn’s fault. The story doesn’t allow for her to really let go, to emotionally revel in any kind of emotion that isn’t happy and grateful and content. Meg is going to marry Mr. Brooks? That’s inconvient, but it turns out fine. Amy is going to Europe with Aunt March instead of Jo? That’s fine too, afterall, Amy deserves it more. Beth dies? Well, it’s sad, but she’s looking down on them and smiling from heaven, so that’s fine too. Every time Jo encounters an obstactle, a moment that should move the story along and change her in some way, she simply accepts what’s happening without much care. The movie seems to be saying, very loudly, everything is okay. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.

Little Women may not strike at the hearts of modern audiences the way it did with audiences during the turmoil of the 1930s. It may feel too simple, too clean. Too okay. For those who desire conflict and darkness and pain, this movie offers none of that. But for others, those who may need an umbrella during a sun shower, or a hand to hold when theirs is empty, 1933’s Little Women might be exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Score: 20/24

Frozen (2013)
Directors: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Screenwriter: Jennifer Lee
Starring: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana, Alan Tudyk

A frozen tundra reveals itself under a dramatic score inspired by Sámi-style singing. A world of jagged ice and frost sparkles under the Aurora Borealis. This is a world of magic, made apparent immediately by the children playing. A young princess, Elsa (Eva Bella) can wield snow from her fingertips. Her non-magical sister only sees the joy in this – gone are the themes of female jealousy that were once a Disney mainstay.

But the joy turns sour as Elsa strikes Anna (Livvy Stubenrauch) with an errant ice surge. Once the kingdom’s magical trolls are consulted and Anna is saved, it is decided that the only thing to do is wipe Anna’s memory and hide Elsa’s gift. Elsa is forced into a life of isolation, concealing her true power. After her parent’s death Anna also becomes subjected to this lonely way of living.

Now Spring, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) are grown. They wake equally giddy and nervous that it is coronation day, and their secretive castle has to open its gates to present its new ruler, Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel), to the surrounding kingdoms. Two young women without a King around should be easy to take advantage of. Many dignitaries seem to think so anyway.

The stress of the evening affects the sisters in quite different ways. Princess Anna (Kristen Bell) falls head over heels in love with Prince Hans (Santino Fontana), and Elsa (Idina Menzel) goes on an ice spewing rampage, buries Arundel in a thick blanket of snow, and runs into the forest without a coat. Though, rumour is, the cold doesn’t bother her anyway.

Anna (Kristen Bell) entrusts the kingdom to Hans (Santino Fontana) as she strides out into the snow drifts to search for her sister. A chance meeting with ice merchant, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) changes the course of her journey and of her life.

Remarkably, Frozen (2013) was the first Disney film to be directed by a woman. Jennifer Lee wrote the screenplay and joint-directed (alongside Chris Buck) both Frozen and Frozen II. These films made her the first woman to direct a film that made over $1billion. And Frozen attracted awards like moss on a rock troll’s behind.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012) was Lee’s first screenplay, and was a very clear indicator of Lee’s ability to write Disney princesses with a difference. Vanelope is more like Elsa than most other Disney princesses before her. Both have a potentially dangerous trait that threatens those they love, both need to accept themselves and embrace their power. Both choose to live alone in a castle of their own design.

There is no doubt that Frozen has been an unmitigated success. In fact, the only animated Disney film to beat it at the box office is its own sequel. The franchise has spawned short films, a mini LEGO series, more merchandise than anyone thought possible, a West End Show, and a critically acclaimed sequel (which is arguably better). Frozen became a Disney classic overnight, and it remains as popular as it ever was.

There are many reasons why Frozen appeals to audiences so much. Obviously, beautiful animation, humorous animal (or non-human) sidekicks, adult jokes flying over kids’ heads, and belting tunes are all to be expected of a Disney endeavour. But there is something about Frozen that gives it an edge over its Disney counterparts and has given it this remarkable staying power.

Perhaps it was the decision to have two female protagonists? The traditional fairy tales of yesteryear with damsels in distress are out of vogue. Yes there is distress in Frozen, but these damsels are going to sort it out by themselves. The non-prince charming, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) is a hugely likeable love interest, but he is not there to fix Anna’s (Kristen Bell) problems, and no one but Anna can save Elsa (Idina Menzel).

By having two female protagonists, Disney have allowed the more traditionally klutzy, hopeful romantic Anna to tick the boxes for fans nostalgic of the golden era. While Elsa is aromantic, empowered, a warrior. She just has to learn to love and trust. By splintering the facets of a traditional Disney princess, the creative team managed to create something with a wider appeal.

Disney has always been divided into two distinct categories: princess stories marketed at girls, and non-human (cars, toys, animals, elements) stories marketed at both girls and boys. Even with the more modern attitudes of audiences today this hasn’t really changed. If you look at it cynically, girls can be expected to enjoy stories with boys in while boys are not expected to enjoy the stories of girls. While the leads are women in Frozen, there is a strong supporting cast of male characters. Roguish Kristoff, reindeer Sven and magical snowman Olaf (Josh Gad – a man whose expressive and distinctive voice was made for animation) add humour and allow the film to be marketed at both boys and girls. There are monsters, wolves and bogey jokes aplenty for those who are less interested in love and all that mushy stuff.

Another strength of the film is the moving part of the villain. Up to the high note of “Let it Go”, we would be forgiven for thinking perhaps Elsa is the baddie. She doesn’t let Anna live her life, curses a kingdom to freeze to death, and sculpts ice weapons with a glint in her eye. The twist in Frozen, as the audience realises where the real threat lies, is up there with The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects. Nearly.

The past decade has seen Disney (and Disney Pixar) films shift to reflect the more progressive tastes of its audiences. Big Hero Six (2014), Inside Out (2015), Moana (2016), Luca (2021), Encanto (2021), and Turning Red (2022) are all coming-of-age stories that explore complex themes of grief, self-worth, difference, and acceptance, with barely a whisper of a love interest among them. While huge successes, none of them have managed the dizzying heights of Elsa’s success. But it is a fair suggestion that Elsa paved the way for these films of empowerment and learning to love yourself.

Frozen is a universal film with themes that are far reaching and enduring. Elsa shot to the top spot, and no matter what she says, she’s showing no signs of letting it go.

Score: 20/24

Blade (1998)
Director: Stephen Norrington
Screenwriter: David S. Goyer
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, Kris Kristofferson, N’Bushe Wright, Donal Logue, Udo Kier, Sanaa Lathan, Arly Jover

People only seem to have appreciated in hindsight just how revolutionary a film Blade was. A quarter of a century later, it has become much clearer just how much this vampire action movie changed the blockbuster landscape.

Blade tells story of Eric Brooks/Blade (Wesley Snipes), whose pregnant mother was attacked by a vampire, leaving her son to be born a “daywalker” with all of their strengths and none of their weaknesses, save for an insatiable thirst for blood. Trained by the grizzled vampire hunter Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) to become a living weapon, and provided with tools of destruction and a synthetic serum to keep his darker side in check, Blade battles creatures of the night in Los Angeles and, along with Dr Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright), begins to unravel an elaborate plot for vampire domination masterminded by Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff).

50 years ago, Marv Wolfman created Blade for Marvel’s “Tomb of Dracula” comic. The character, much like Morbius who first appeared around the same time, capitalised on the loosening of restrictions on supernatural monsters and vampires that had been enforced by the Comics Code Authority up to that point.

Screenwriter David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight), who would pen all three Blade movies and direct the disappointing Blade Trinity, really only uses the basic concept of the title character – a formidable black vampire hunter – and otherwise creates his own original backstory, a colourful supporting cast, and sets the rules by which this exaggerated world operates.

There’s plenty of appropriately gruesome horror imagery on show here, from particularly explosive vampire deaths to seeing just how much bodily trauma a vamp can come back from (with the expected accompanying jump scare of course). The upcoming Mahershala Ali MCU reboot would do well to maintain this combination of gore and chills to mark it out from the majority of tamer comic book adaptations.

By the late 90s, Wesley Snipes had already made his name with films like White Men Can’t Jump and Demolition Man, but Blade launched him into a whole other level of stardom and it’s frankly impossible to imagine anyone else bringing the effortless cool stoicism to this character in quite the same way. Kris Kristofferson is completely at ease as a cantankerous and resourceful mentor, and Stephen Dorff is a creepily boyband-handsome big bad and can handle the action choreography with aplomb just like Snipes. It is Donal Logue though, appearing 16 years before his true breakthrough in ‘Gotham’, who steals the show as the hapless vampire punching bag Quinn, hilariously forced to slowly regenerate multiple times after several costly encounters with Blade, most memorably meeting a subway train face-first.

This film did a lot to re-write vampirism from a supernatural affliction to something viral with a pseudo-scientific explanation as would be seen in series like ‘The Strain’. Vampires in this world (Blade aside) are not the troubled souls of more romantic fiction, but instead unfeeling killers; predators at the mercy of their hunger and usually gleeful in the misery their appetites cause humanity.

The plot keeps moving and keeps the tension up throughout, but perhaps loses something in the final act where the vampire master plan is revealed to be unnecessarily convoluted and threatens to unravel with the addition of any amount of real-world logic. Plus, a major character’s death loses its power when it would ultimately be ret-conned in Blade II.

Dishearteningly, this was the second major franchise after Men in Black that decided to ditch its strong female lead for the sequel, a particular crime here considering the key part haematologist Dr Jenson (given heart and attitude aplenty by N’Bushe Wright) plays in saving the day when Blade is down for the count. They don’t even “Fridge” her, just write her out of future films without ceremony. 

It’s quite tragic that Blade’s director Stephen Norrington stepped away from the profession following his disheartening experience making The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2003, because he has got a real eye for staging this kind of action. From Blade’s early extermination of a vampire nightclub through to the climactic sword duel with Frost, the staging and choreography always maintains a punchy rhythm and was clearly influential on the following decade of “Gun-Fu” action cinema from The Matrix franchise to Equilibrium. 

The release of Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man in quick succession proved comic book adaptations to be the lucrative, must-see extravaganzas for audiences a decade before Marvel launched their shared movie universe. Though the latter two examples probably represented a more seismic, industry-changing shift overall, arguably without Blade, and how it put such a prominent black hero front-and-centre, you might never have got to Black Panther, who funnily enough Wesley Snipes also harboured a desire to play.

Blade may have only launched a franchise with steadily decreasing returns, but its slow-burn impact on multiple genres, from horror to action and superhero movies, cannot be underestimated. A lot of action movies looked like this for years to come, and a more feral, unsympathetic take on the vampire became the most common up until Twilight shifted tastes once more. Blade may not be perfect but it has become iconic and is a good old violent time at the movies.

Score: 20/24

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The Piano (1993)
Director: Jane Campion
Screenwriter: Jane Campion
Starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin

Jane Campion’s The Piano begins with a monologue from Ada McGrath, a young Scottish woman who, for reasons that are never fully explained, stops speaking at the age of 6. She cautions us that the voice we hear, the high pitched, lyrical voice of Holly Hunter doing an impeccable Scottish accent, is not her speaking voice, but her mind’s voice. Ada’s father recently married her off to a man she does not know, and she and her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), are being shipped off to live with him on the coast of colonial New Zealand. Her new husband, Alistair Stewart (Sam Neill) says he does not mind her muteness, which Ada says is a good thing. “Silence affects us all in the end,” she cautions.

The Piano, released in the summer of 1993, earned writer and director Jane Campion the prestigious honor being the first female director to win the Palme d’Ore at the Cannes Film festival. 30 years later, The Piano remains one of Campion’s most recognizable and beloved films, revered for its performances – Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin both received Academy Awards for their work – score, and haunting cinematography. It’s a gothic tale of love and lust and the violent ways men seek to control not just women, but the world.

Ada may not physically use her voice to speak, but she is not silent. She communicates in many ways throughout the film using sign language, pen and paper, her piano. For Campion, the piano symbolizes Ada’s voice, and the way the men in the film treat her piano speaks volumes about who they are. Stewart is clearly ignorant and unwilling to truly listen to Ada, to learn to communicate in her way. He disregards her piano, leaving it on the beach, selling it off, and eventually taking an axe to it. In contrast, George Baines (Harvey Keitel), rescues her piano – he gets it tuned for her. He sits next to her as she plays. He learns her language.

The Piano features stellar performances across the board, but Holly Hunter is a particular knock out. She’s practically unrecognizable as Ada, truly embodying this maddening, strong-willed, opinionated woman, changing the cadence of her voice, her face pale and eyes dark. Hunter proves what audiences have known since the silent era – acting is more than just talking, more than just words. You have to put your entire body into it. Hunter’s physicality is loud and demanding – she breaks glasses, she twists her face in anger and disapproval, she signs with passion. The fact that Hunter does all of the piano playing in the movie by herself only adds to how authentic her portrayal feels.

Sam Neill and Harvey Keitel are equally as good as Ada’s possessive husband and her eventual lover, respectively. Neill gives a particularly nuanced performance as a man who takes out is own inadequacy on everyone around him. It is a quiet, burning performance that builds to a fantastic, terrifying explosion of repressed anger and jealousy.

The Piano is fashioned after the classic gothic romance that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, clearly inspired by many of the female voices that dominated the genre. Campion’s films in general borrow heavily from gothic horror and romance. Her films are often beautiful and horrifying at the same time, sex and violence and mystery all tangled up together. As has been pointed out by numerous critics in the past, the film feels deeply literary, an adaptation of a much older tale. In particular, Campion said that Wuthering Heights was one of the sources she drew upon for inspiration. It’s also worth noting that the play the children perform in the movie is “Blue Beard“, the French folktale in which a man murders his wives and hides their bodies away in a secret room in his manor.

While the film isn’t quite that bloody, it is violent and cruel. Stewart is uninterested in nurturing who Ada is. He doesn’t understand her, so he has to break her, to make her submit. Ada may not speak in words, but she is still the kind of woman who must be reigned in and caged. After a particular act of gruesome violence towards the end of the movie leaves Ada bleeding and covered in mud, Stewart says simply, “I only clipped your wing.” Vitally, Campion contrasts this brutality with scenes of gentle intimacy. Touch is a huge part of The Piano, and Campion highlights how in Victorian society merely touching someone through a small hole in their stocking is infinitely erotic. Campion uses the nakedness of her characters to show how vulnerable it feels to show someone that part of yourself. While the nudity in The Piano is by no means excessive, it does remind us of something we’ve lost in modern cinema: the ability to portray genuine intimacy and eroticism. The ability to feel.

While The Piano focuses mainly on Ada and her journey, the film also explores the detrimental effects of colonialism on the environment and its indigenous people, although Campion’s depiction of the Maori has been criticized for playing into racist stereotypes. And it’s true that Campion does not spend much time developing these characters. They are portrayed as simple-minded, sexually suggestive, and unrefined. Reshela DuPuis delves this and more in her essay, “Romanticizing Colonialism: Power and Pleasure in Jane Campion’s The Piano.“

Still, it’s worth noting that Stewart’s treatment of the Maori people is clearly wrong. He tries to take their land, bribing them with everything from guns to buttons. He can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to give up their sacred burial grounds. Just as with his treatment of Ada, Stewart is uninterested in understanding anyone who doesn’t speak his own language, believing them to be unintelligent and inhuman.

In 2013, Campion said that she originally intended for The Piano to have a much bleaker ending. “It would be more real, wouldn’t it?” Campion said during an interview with The Guardian. Perhaps it would be more real. As it stands, the ending is one of the most iconic sequences of the film.

The ending, like the rest of the film, sticks with you. It gets under your skin and crawls around. With The Piano, Jane Campion gives us one of the strongest female characters of the late 20th century, entangled in a story that is as vast, as dark and as deep as the ocean itself.

Score: 23/24

Recommended for you: Jane Campion Films Ranked

WALL-E (2008)
Director: Andrew Stanton
Screenwriters: Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon
Starring: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver, Fred Willard

WALL-E was Pixar Animation Studios’ ninth feature-length movie and 2008’s ninth highest-grossing film. But with worldwide takings ‘only’ a little over $521million, it doesn’t even come close to Pixar’s top-grossing movies – Incredibles 2, Toy Story 3 & 4, and Finding Dory have all raked in over $1billion. While it didn’t hit the top spot in terms of overall gross, WALL-E was the most expensive animated film to be produced at that time. Regardless of cost or earnings, what WALL-E achieved in storytelling makes it an outright classic. Disney, Pixar, or otherwise.

In a not-too-distant future, Earth has been left in an uninhabitable state by humans, so they flee to space while waste allocation robots clear up their mess. WALL-E (Ben Burtt) is one such robot. After countless years of solitude, WALL-E has developed a personality. He is sentimental, cheeky, curious, but most pertinently, he’s lonely. He is programmed to conduct his duty, but he cannot help but observe and collect things – intrigued by the human lives that once ran rampant on the planet he now calls home. He loves musicals and sees beauty in even the inanest of objects. One day, EVE (Elissa Knight) arrives with the simple directive of finding vegetation, thus proving that Earth is habitable again. The robots bond. WALL-E is obviously smitten.

The first half of WALL-E is essentially a silent movie, brimming with slapstick humour, olde time musical numbers and a loveable klutz in the spotlight. WALL-E’s screen presence is as powerful as any Hollywood A-lister. It is incredible how expressive the animators made WALL-E without dialogue, all the depth of emotion emanating from those adjustable eyes and saggy tracks. What they achieved with EVE is bordering on unbelievable. EVE is a sleek white robot with nothing more than arms, a gun, blue LEDs for eyes, and a green blinking light in the shape of a plant. And yet, we are left in no doubt when these two machines are happy, sad, furious, or falling in love. The montage of WALL-E caring for EVE after a brief shut down rivals any chivalrous Jane Austen hero.

How much we eventually become invested in this pair without conversation between them, without much action, is true testament to the skill of the team behind the movie. The small speaking cast of ten (and that includes MacInTalk, a text-to-speech computer programme, and the snippets of Michael Crawford and Marianne McAndrew who appear in the clips of 1960s musical Hello, Dolly! that WALL-E loves so much) allows for breathing space. It allows moments to linger and details to be sewn into the intricate setting.

The second half of the film sees EVE and WALL-E join the humans up in space on a giant ship called the Axiom. Their dalliance amongst the stars is beautiful, using techniques honed in the weightless underwater scenes of Finding Nemo (2003) – also directed by Andrew Stanton. Once aboard the Axiom, action kicks up a gear and it becomes a more typical children’s film. The two robots gather a motley crew of fellow service machines to deliver EVE’s directive and potentially start a revolution.

While centuries living alone made WALL-E self-sufficient and loveable, living in space has made humans lazy and dependant. The backdrop of these useless crowds bobbing along on their chairs amplifies the importance of WALL-E and EVE. The ship’s sort of ambitious captain (Jeff Garlin) realises how important these machines are and becomes the mouthpiece for all the words EVE and WALL-E are incapable of saying.

The film’s themes are broad and adult in nature – consumerism, environmental issues, corporate greed – but they are balanced beautifully with more typical features of a children’s film. Humour, music, a protagonist that isn’t an adult, and of course an animal sidekick. When tackling themes of this nature it is possible to appear didactic or alternatively, lacking in integrity. However, the strength of the storytelling supersedes any of those concerns, and the comparative lack of merchandise, spin offs or sequels linked to WALL-E make the fact that one of the planet’s biggest corporations is telling us about corporate greed just that bit more palatable.

WALL-E is beautifully animated, breathtakingly detailed, and includes all the humour and action we have come to expect from a Pixar feature. It has a moral tale in the forefront but isn’t saccharine or preachy and the message has sadly not become any less relevant in the fifteen years since it was released. But even with the heavy subject matter it is ultimately a film about hope. Hope and robots.

Score: 22/24

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Director: Nora Ephron
Screenwriters: Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, Jeff Arch
Starring: Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, Rosie O’Donnell, Rob Reiner, Victor Garber, Rita Wilson

One of the most tried and true tropes of the romantic comedy is the meet cute. It’s that pivotal moment when the two leads meet for the first time, usually under humorous or unconventional circumstances, sparking the development of their romantic relationship. Maybe they fall instantly, maybe their love needs time to grow, but one thing is always true: this encounter is the beginning of everything.

But what if this beginning happened at the end? Say, five minutes before the credits roll?

Sleepless in Seattle, directed by Norah Ephron and co-written by Ephron, David S. Ward and Jeff Arch, works not in spite of being a rom-com, but because of it. Upon its initial release, it was revered as an instant classic. In the decades since, it has remained beloved by audiences and critics. The film spawned countless spoofs and homages, and its final scene atop the Empire State Building is one of the most iconic and recognizable images in pop culture. It’s the film that cemented Meg Ryan’s status as ‘America’s sweetheart,’ with several critics quick to crown Ryan and co-star Tom Hanks as the new king and queen of the rom-com. Nora Ephron earned her third Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay following Silkwood (1983) and When Harry Met Sally… (1989). Released 30 years ago, Sleepless in Seattle has endured as a top tier romantic comedy that could turn even the most steadfast cynic into a believer in love, fate, and the magic of the movies.

When architect Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) loses his wife Maggie (Carey Lowell) to cancer, he and his young son Jonah (Ross Malinger) relocate to Seattle for a fresh start. While Sam continues to mourn the loss of his wife, Johan calls into a radio station one night, convinced his dad needs help finding a new wife. While Sam is hesitant as first, he eventually opens up about Maggie live on-air, and thousands of women across the country listen in, including Baltimore journalist Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), who is engaged to Walter (Bill Pullman) and firmly believes that there’s no such thing as fate. But, when Annie hears Sam’s voice that night on the radio, something changes inside of her, leading her to wonder if there is such a thing as destiny.

Though the script was rewritten countless times before Nora Ephron turned in her final draft, three writers are credited with the final product, each contributing an essential piece to the story. Jeff Arch’s sentimentality is utilized best when exploring the melancholy of grief, like in the scene when Sam imagines speaking to his late wife in the living room one night. This occasional heaviness is balanced with Ephron’s trademark wit and humor, and David S. Ward credits Ephron with contributing much of the film’s dialog. Like with When Harry Met Sally…, Ephron uses Sleepless in Seattle to explore the strange world of dating, with all its rules and contradictions, this time through Sam, who is terrified to date again after being married for so long. Rob Reiner’s character’s grim assessment of the dating landscape in the 90s might come across as sexist and outdated to some modern audiences, and it is, but it’s still a fascinating look at the state of relationships between men and women during a time when feminism was facing a severe cultural backlash. It’s especially interesting when Sam tells Jonah how the erotic thriller, Fatal Attraction, “Scared the hell out of every man in America,” showcasing just how much of a cultural juggernaut the film was at the time while exposing men’s obvious anxiety over women’s supposed empowerment.

Throughout Sleepless in Seattle, there is a running commentary on how movies affect our perception of romantic love. Seeing how distraught Annie is about the possibility of never getting to meet Sam, her best friend Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) pointedly tells her, “You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.” An Affair to Remember, the 1957 classic starring Carey Grant and Deborah Kerr that served as the inspiration for Sleepless in Seattle, is referenced several times in the film, bringing more than one female character to tears. What’s the point of movies like that anyway, Ephron seems to ask. That kind of love – the written in the stars, can’t possibly be a coincidence kind of love – isn’t real. But if that’s the question, Sleepless in Seattle itself is the answer. It’s a film that explores the affects that cinema has on our fantasies of love without ever denying its ultimate power.

There is a coziness to Sleepless in Seattle, a quiet contemplativeness, accompanied by a soundtrack packed with Jazz hits from artists like Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket on a cold night, drinking hot cocoa and gazing up at the stars. It feels intimate and grand at the same time. Sleepless in Seattle has long been described as the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, but it also works as a Christmas movie as well. Because the majority of the film takes place in between those two holidays, there’s a magical quality to it that makes it feel warm and inviting.

Watching it now, Sleepless in Seattle feels nostalgic in a way that it probably didn’t when it was first released. It’s the kind of film that couldn’t be made now, considering how far technology has come in the last three decades. 1993 feels like such an alien world, a time before smartphones and Facebook, when someone’s very existence could still be shrouded in mystery – when you had to pay for long-distance calling, when there wasn’t instant messaging, when you couldn’t google someone’s name and 100 search results come up – although Annie’s investigation of Sam does seem an awful lot like a primitive version of looking someone up on Facebook or Google. Sleepless in Seattle transports us back to when we could feel the miles between us, when there was a very real possibility that Sam and Annie would never meet. Because of this, the stakes feel higher and the idea of them actually getting together against all odds does feel a little like fate.

Sleepless in Seattle would not be half as charming and funny if it wasn’t for its strong supporting cast. Watching the movie now is like getting a crash course in who’s who in the 1990s. There’s Rob Reiner, who appears briefly as Sam’s friend Jay, who directed When Harry Met Sally…, The Princess Bride, and the classic 80s coming of age film Stand by Me, all within a few years of each other. Contemporary viewers are sure to recognize him as Jess’s dad from ‘New Girl’. There’s Victor Garber (a few years out from his performance in Titanic) and Rita Wilson, who delivers a monologue about An Affair to Remember that deserved an Oscar nomination on its own. There are also blink and you’ll miss them cameos from Frances Conroy (‘American Horror Story’) and Gaby Hoffman, the latter of whom appears as the younger version of Demi Moore in Now and Then and more recently played Adam’s (Adam Driver) sister on the HBO show ‘GIRLS’.

But really, none of this – the supporting cast, the writing, the direction – would mean a single thing if it wasn’t for Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. They’re endlessly likable, and their chemistry is somehow apparent even though they spend the majority of the film thousands of miles away from one another. Sleepless in Seattle hinges on their relationship. We need to believe that they’re meant to be and, although they have less than 10 minutes to convince us of that, they manage it flawlessly. It’s true that Sam and Annie don’t officially meet until the end of the film, but there is a moment towards the end, when Annie travels to Seattle in search of Sam, when they briefly come face to face with one another. Love at first sight is a tricky thing to accomplish. It relies almost entirely on the actor’s ability to just look at each other, to express a depth of emotion without saying anything at all. Afterward, Sam tells his friends that, “It was like I knew her or something.”

Sleepless in Seattle dares us to believe in the magic and power of the movies, to live for just a moment in a world where everything works out. Where the stars align and fate intervenes, and the person you’ve been looking for has been looking for you too. But the movie continues to endure because of one simple, universal truth: when it comes to love, sometimes you just know. And, if you’re really lucky, a trip to the top of the Empire State Building feels a lot like coming home.

Score: 24/24

The Bling Ring (2013)
Director: Sofia Coppola
Screenwriters: Sofia Coppola, Nancy Jo Sales
Starring: Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, Emma Watson, Claire Julien, Taissa Farmiga, Georgia Rock, Leslie Mann

Ten years on from its initial release, the social media landscape depicted in Sofia Coppola’s satirical thriller The Bling Ring (2013) has changed significantly. The film’s sentiments towards celebrity culture and our collective need for external validation have, however, held up, making The Bling Ring a timely pre-cursor to the world we live in now, and a continually relevant film.

Set in Calabasas, California, The Bling Ring follows five teenagers as they burglarise multiple celebrity homes, including those of at-the-time A-Listers Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. It was based on the true story of the ‘Bling Ring’ robberies that inspired the article “The Suspects Wore Louboutins.” The article is referenced directly by Coppola’s film, with Israel Broussard’s Marc and Emma Watson’s Nikki being interviewed throughout in accordance to journalist Nancy Jo Sales’ original work.

From the opening line, “let’s go shopping”, we are immersed into the teens’ fame-obsessed ambitions as they treat the wardrobes of celebrity homes like all-you-can-eat buffets, flagrantly disrespecting the possessions of celebrities in the callous way that only teenage rebelliousness can inspire. It is interesting to note that these teens are incredibly affluent themselves, so their motivation for these robberies comes in the form of the prestige of the celebrity name, rather than the product itself. They could probably afford luxuries from the top designer brands, but it doesn’t matter unless a celebrity has endorsed it. The most illuminating example of this is when the teens rob Lindsay Lohan’s house – Coppola uses a slowed down long take of Rebecca (Katie Chang) trying on her idol’s perfume. It’s not the perfume itself, it’s the fact that it’s Lindsay Lohan’s that makes it so special to her.

And this is still true nowadays, but on an even larger scale. We now look to ‘influencers’ on social media, who peddle all sorts of products ranging from tummy teas to hair extensions. A Zara jacket is just a Zara jacket until Molly Mae wears it.

Although it is one thing to be wearing a celebrity’s clothes, it really doesn’t matter unless it has been photographed and shared for the world to see. The film is populated with shots of the teens taking photos of each other with flash flip phone cameras. A notable example of this is Marc taking a photo of Rebecca as she lies on Paris Hilton’s bed, documenting her trespassing like it’s a trip to Madame Tussauds. The excessive showing off of their crimes is what ultimately leads to their downfall, as the police are able to identify the perpetrators and the stolen goods through the photographs they share to social media.

Whilst Facebook albums might be out in 2023, Instagram dumps are in, and everyone is in competition with each other to prove who is partying the most or having the most ‘aesthetically-pleasing’ month. This competition for likes and for followers makes us needy for external validation. Whilst this isn’t a prison sentence, it does lead us to having a poor sense of self and has been acknowledged as a contributing factor or cause to many a person’s mental health struggles.

This concept is primarily explored by Sofia Coppola through the character Marc (Broussard), who discusses his struggles with his self-image in his interview early on in the film. A turning point comes in a rather amusing scene in which Marc records himself on his laptop, smoking a joint and lip-syncing to “Drop it Low” – a moment notably not too far from the lip-syncing popularised on TikTok over recent years. This is the first time we see Marc genuinely happy on his own, viewing himself with admiration through the laptop’s low-quality gaze. It is a very early example in cinema of how social media can inflate our sense of self and gift us external validation. It was only the celebrities that got photographed and had coveted lifestyles prior to the era The Bling Ring depicts, now it can be anyone.

It would be unjust to write about this film without mentioning the unbelievably brilliant soundtrack. Opening with the screeching guitars of Sleigh Bells’ “Crown on the Ground” and closing with Frank Ocean’s masterful “Super Rich Kids”, the film is jam-packed with songs from the 2013 party scene, with the most notable being “212” by Azealia Banks, which features Emma Watson dancing like a maniac.

The increasing intensities of the musical choices mirrors the spiralling decline into notoriety the ring endure. At the peak of their crimes, there is a slow-motion wide shot of the teens strutting down a street lined with clothing stores top-to-toe in their stolen goods, as Kanye West’s “POWER” blasts. We are encouraged to mock their attempts at being ‘iconic’. The transparency of this scene encapsulates The Bling Ring’s core thematic exploration of the lengths people will go to in order to feel special, like a celebrity, even if it is all fake.

Whilst the film certainly doesn’t condone the robberies, it does take a critical stance regarding how excessive celebrity lifestyles are. As Nikki points out, ‘why does she need two [dresses]?’ This is a part of the very current issue surrounding the redistribution of wealth, and ensures an unfortunate timely relevance to this decade-old feature. Ultimately, we still feel no sympathy or alignment towards the Bling Ring, as their motivations are purely self-serving regarding their thirst for fame – it gets to the point where Marc has to ask Rebecca if she’d ever rob him; she says no, but somehow we don’t quite believe her.

Disappointingly, the themes and commentary surrounding The Bling Ring are more interesting than the film itself, with much of Coppola’s offering becoming repetitive – the club scenes are particularly egregious (clothes, photos, dancing, coke – we get it).

The Bling Ring is, overall, a tight 86-minute film with a killer soundtrack, thrilling pacing and darkly funny one liners delivered by a great leading cast. Ten years removed from its release, this contemporarily relevant film is still worth a watch, even if it is just to read the commentary surrounding it. The Bling Ring is a time capsule and yet still unbelievably relevant.

Score: 18/24

Recommended for you: Sofia Coppola Movies Ranked

Written by Grace Laidler

Follow Grace Laidler on Twitter: @gracewillhuntin

Mud (2013)
Director: Jeff Nichols
Screenwriter: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Michael Shannon, Sarah Paulson

Mud is a coming-of-age tale which is as bleak as it is beautiful. It is a formidable addition to the gallery of McConaissance art (the array of films Matthew McConaughey featured in between 2011 and 2014 such as Dallas Buyers Club, Killer Joe and Magic Mike that proved he was indeed a very good actor). Children and animals are infamously difficult to work with and Jeff Nichols’s directing prowess is clearly on display as he works with both. The young actors in this film are brilliant, both of whom went on to receive various nominations and wins for their work. Mud is atmospheric and touching, it’s well-written, well-acted, and well worth a watch.

On the banks of the Mississippi, two teenagers find a boat in a tree. It’s a strong opener for any story. When the boys discover Mud (Matthew McConaughey) living in said boat, they are thrown into a tale of love, revenge, murder and heartache. Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are on the cusp of adulthood, trying to make sense of an adult world that barely makes sense to the grown ups around them.

Mud (Matthew McConaughey) is in town to reunite with the love of his life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), but this is made almost impossible by the fact he is a wanted felon. McConaughey’s languorous voice and manner is perfect for the strange drifter. Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), the needed injection of realism and cynicism, is wary at first and almost mercenary in his interactions with Mud. He’s only happy to help if he gets that boat. Ellis (Tye Sheridan), however, is completely drawn in by Mud’s charm. Tye Sheridan’s portrayal of the hopeful, innocent, heart-on-his-sleeve boy, Ellis, is a tour de force. His emotions bubble under the surface like snakes in murky water – only ever half submerged. The film is titled Mud, but really the story belongs to Ellis.

Like so many coming-of-age tales, Mud is about love. Or it starts out that way. Ellis is unhappy that his parents want to separate, and he is still the age where everything is black and white. Right or wrong. No middle ground and no grey areas. He is so desperate to believe that love will triumph that he throws himself right into Mud’s world. Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) is more a notion than a fully-rounded character – entirely intentional and not an indictment of Witherspoon’s acting. She is an unattainable dream in Daisy Dukes. She represents a fairy tale to Ellis, and he is willing to risk his life to reunite her with Mud.

The unique beauty of stories told from a child’s perspective is that the viewer understands more than the character. Sometimes this means that the plot becomes too formulaic or predictable, but when done well it’s something special. Part of the enjoyment then comes from watching the characters journey from naivety to understanding.

We know that Ellis wants to fix Mud’s problems because he is entirely unable to fix his own. Ellis’s journey to realising this becomes the main thread that keeps all the other themes knitted together. Tye Sheridan’s outburst at this realisation is heart-thumping-in-your-throat powerful.

After a slow burn of a build up, the climax of the film is long and intense; it wouldn’t be out of place in a Western. This is where Mud, a man caught in arrested development and seemingly incapable of change for most of the film, shows how much he has actually come to care for the boys. And his impact on their lives becomes cemented.

There are parallels made between women and snakes in Mud, which could easily be seen as problematic. But the notion of men being bitten (by either) is sensitively handled by Nichols. It is true that the women characters in Mud are on the periphery, but that makes sense. Mud is a story about boys becoming men. Unfortunately, the men these boys have as role models are left somewhat wanting. However, Ellis’s enduring belief in love suggests that women are going to be an important and prominent part of his life, that pursuing the chance of love is worth any heartbreak that might come with it.

The cinematography in Mud is impressive, expertly handled. The Arkansas delta is a similar style of setting as Where the Crawdads Sing and Beasts of the Southern Wild. And like those films, this landscape becomes an additional silent character, almost as important as those with speaking parts. The too-bright light and eerily vast water ways are the perfect setting. Everything is dizzying, disorientating and seemingly unmanageable. It adds a palpable tension to an already dramatic tale. The characters in Mud live on the fringes, they are hemmed in by the perils of both human life and the wilderness that surrounds them.

This is a community in which people are poor, and their circumstances are written all over their faces. The burdens they carry can be seen in their tightly clenched jaws and their heavy brows. The decisions they make are driven by their lack of opportunities, the smallness of their world. Ironically, the huge open water is what traps them. The themes of Mud are all well-trodden, but given the strength of the acting cast, the originality of the script and the stunning direction, the end result is something pretty remarkable.

Score: 20/24