Stephen M (harrycaul)

To be honest, I was expecting more from this. Happy-Go-Lucky is funny and charming and, as you'd expect from Mike Leigh, the performances are terrific, but it's pretty lightweight stuff. Even Poppy's dramatically promising discovery that one of her pupils is being abused at home turns out to be just an excuse for a game of footsie with a lantern-jawed social worker. Taking nothing away from Eddie Marsan, whose performance as Scott, Poppy's perpetually angry driving instructor, is one of the standouts, would anyone, even somebody as kind-hearted as Poppy, persevere with such an aggressive tutor for quite so long? Even harder to swallow is Poppy's naive behaviour in that strange nocturnal encounter with the Irish tramp that seems to have crept in from a different movie altogether. Treading a difficult course between kooky and annoying, Sally Hawkins is excellent, though I was never quite as enamoured with her character as I felt I was supposed to be.

Jules et Jim seems to me to exemplify both the strengths and weaknesses of the Nouvelle Vague, and it shows how pro and con can often stem from the same root. The bold inventiveness with which these former critics of Cahiers du Cinéma tore up and rewrote the moviemaking rulebook makes watching their films an exhilarating experience, even today. Unfortunately, the flip side of this is that I sometimes find their movies rather soulless and artificial; I can't see the content for the style. Take Jules et Jim. There's that early scene in which Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) confounds Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) by dressing as a man - that's how the whole film feels to me: like three kids playing with a dressing-up box. As a period piece, I just don't buy it; it covers a period of twenty-odd years without ever managing to escape 1962. I still loved it though. In spite of the title, it's Catherine one remembers, and it's impossible to imagine anyone but Moreau playing her.

The most beautiful, imaginative and ambitious fantasy film ever made. Everyone should see it. Originally commissioned to improve Anglo-American relations at the tail end of WWII!

More of a character study than a thriller, though it does have a lovely twist at the end. Easily the best thing Coppola ever made and undoubtedly Gene Hackman's finest hour. I annoy people by declaring this Harrison Ford's best movie!