Elizabeth (1998)

 "It is no easy thing to be loved by the Queen. It would corrupt the heart of any man".

Before I praise this wonderful film, I'll get a few criticisms out of the way. 

So... the opening text- in a terrible font, incidentally- misspells the word "fervent"and has "halfsister" with no hyphen. And the closing text has England as "the richest and most powerful country in Europe"... er, no. Pre-industrial England, indeed pre-agricultural revolution England, was a middling country whose population was never going to be as big as a France or a Spain- England, I suppose, was more of a Netherlands or a Portugal.

Also, a lot of history is telescoped into a short time and the chronology is inevitably off. William Cecil is shown asan old man in the 1550s and dismissed early in Elizabeth's reign. Francis Walsingham is spymaster and Machiavel from day one. And did the future King Henri III of France really wear dresses and have sex with his aunt, the Queen Regent of Scotland?

And yet, I think, we have to accept this as a creative necessity. History is not easily crammed into two hours of screen time without being adjusted to fit. And this film, text aside, is magnificent.

Too often, history in cinema is shot in a dull, staid, Merchant Ivory way. Not here. Shekhar Kapur uses light, colour, claustrophobia and perspective wonderfully. We open with a truly shocking scene of three martyrs being burned at the stake, the sheer horror of it all being emphasised. Mary's court is dark and without joy, Kathy Burke giving us a Mary who has always been the underdog, and even as queen is humiliated by her neglectful husband and the nature of the cancer that kills her. She is bitter, resentful... yet cannot sign her sister's death warrant.

Elizabeth's accession is symbolised by two flashes of white light. We see the aftermath of the bloody battle in Scotland via the camera panning across the River Tweed running with blood. The look of the film is exquisite. Yet so are the performances. Cate Blanchett is, of course, a revelation, but the performances of Joseph Fiennes, Christopher Eccleston and Geoffrey Rush are equally superb.

This film is a triumph. Just try and ignore the text.

Jurassic Park (1993)

 “An interactive CD-ROM!”

“An interactive C-D ROM!” 

I had a vague impression I’d seen this film 🎥 before. I hadn’t. It is, to avoid all beating around any bushes, brilliant. Oh, the cast is superb. Sam Neill and Laura Dern star with great brightness. Dickie Attenborough gives us a real career highlight. Jeff Goldblum gives us the prototype of the splendid maverick scientist role that he would come to own. Bob Peck, a find actor, finally makes it in Hollywood.

The CGI is dated. The science, perhaps, too: dinosaurs ARE birds. And, yes, Ian is highly charismatic. Yet his spiel against John’s sci-fi dinosaur DNS nonsense is subtly religious, objecting not only to John’s playing around with the ecosystem but to his perceived blasphemy- and “blasphemy” is a concept accepted only by tyrants who despise freedom and crave theocratic absolutism. Also, there’s an amusingly obvious subplot of getting the kid-hating Alan to begin to tolerate the little soda.

That aside, though, this is a solid blockbuster from the esteemed and too often snobbish my dismissed Mr Spielberg. Long may he direct.

The Great Escape (1963)

"They are the common enemies of anyone who believes in freedom. If the high command didn’t believe in Hitler, why didn’t they throw him out?”

This is, of course, a classic and I trust we’ve all seen it. It’s the gold standard of prisoner of war films,  with a magnificent story, all-star cast and brilliant pacing and direction. It’s a superb action film that keeps you gripped for a full two hours and forty-eight minutes.

But it is, perhaps, more than that. Interestingly, it’s a study in fanaticism, but suggests that in extreme cases- against Nazi Germany- fanaticism is justified. The human cost of the escape is huge, with the slaughter of the fifty. And yet, with the sheer damage to the German war effort, it is worth it. Roger (a superb Dickie Attenborough) is a thoroughgoing fanatic, but he’s right, and is allowed a happy death. And he’s right in the quote above; the Luftwaffe may not be the SS and Gestapo, and the Kommandant may be visibly uncomfortable with Nazism, but he’s still working for Nazi Germany and is the enemy.

The human cost isn’t just shown via numbers in terms of the fifty, though; we get to see Ives crack up after months in the cooler and get himself shot, all after the only day of fun the prisoners have had for months. This film may be entertaining mainly because of the mechanics of the escape, but the human cost is shown and. characterisation is very believable.

Ultimately, though, it’s how the plan is carried out that entertains you as much as quirky characters like Hilts, Colin, Mac, Hendley, Danny and many more. The film takes its time to show us the ups and downs of the escape plan, getting us to know the characters in the meantime. And, at the end, we’re overjoyed to see that at least some of them made it.

Yes, I know: the historical accuracy is a bit pants. But war films don’t get much better than this.

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

"The lights are going out all over Europe..."

The cast for this film is ridiculous. Aside from the people I've tagged at the bottom we have the Master himself, Anthony Ainley, as a British staff officer. We also have Thorley Walters, Nanette Newman, Gerald Sim, Edward Fox, Angus Lennie, Dirk Bogarde, Derek Newark, Ralph Richardson, Maggie Smith, Susannah York, John Mills and (uncredited) Jane Seymour and John Woodnutt. All in the same film. It's absurd.

This is Dickie Attenborough's epic film version of the famously improvised musical by Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop. It's a thing of magnificence but it does, of course, present a very Marxist view of the First World War. You certainly don't have to be a Marxist to subscribe to the view that this was not a "just" war but just a silly dynastic struggle between old empires, the War of the Spanish Succession with trench warfare and mustard gas; I'm not, and I do. But it certainly helps. However, this film is a strong proponent of the old "lions led by donkeys" view, an unpopular view in many quarters these days. From the arrogant xenophobia of the British officers towards their French allies to a doddering and uncomprehending Franz Ferdinand declaring war on Serbia this is not a flattering portrait of those in power.

Thing is, though, it's magnificent. As a musical (all the songs are versions from the trenches) it revels in the freedom from realism while maintaining a clever structure through the use of one family's ground level point of view and of the sinister photographer figure.

There are so many fantastic set pieces, from the British recruitment propaganda to the moving Christmas fraternisation between the British and Germans in 1914 (the top brass cancel their leave!) .But the structure, message and intricacy of the whole thing is quite something to behold. A thing of magnificence.