Man of Steel (2013)

"What are you smiling about, Captain?"

"Nothing, Sir. I just think he's kind of hot."

Usually I'd write a review based on the general premise of the film in question being good, bad, or indifferent. That's a rather challenging thing to do here. I mean, yes, ok, the film is good. It works. It's a solid start to the DC universe. But there are flaws, real flaws. The film gets away with it, in no small measure because of a solid script by the ever-dependable David S. Goyer and, interestingly, Christopher Nolan and the inspired casting of (thankfully moustache-free) Henry Cavill. But...

Here's the thing. Zack Snyder is technically a superb director. The whole thing is well shot in the extreme, even if it's CGI'd to death. It looks amazing. But it all feels (Russell Crowe as Jor-El aside, oddly) not quite persnal enough. There's just enough charm to get away with, but no more. And the direction: yes, it's clever. But at the expense of the storytelling- not enough to damage the film, but I'd say Snyder needed to watch it if not for the fact that #MeToo seems to make any such advice irrelevant.

There's a lot to praise, though. Traditionally dull Krypton is given CGI alien beasts of burden, an internal politics and a genetically caste-based culture against which Kal-El's birth is a rebellion in the name of freedom. I like that. I also like the characterisation of Zod here; he isn't a moustache-twirling baddie but a general, with his fanatical followers, who only wants to save Krypton. At the expense of our little human species, naturaally.

Lois Lane is presented well here, as a tenacious journalist who figures out who Clark is early on, saving us an awful lot of tiresomeness. Perry White is a bit more nuanced. Jimmy Olsen, er, isn't in the film. But it's a well-done and thoughtful approach to Superman's origins and the ideal first film for the new DC Cinematic Universe. They need to run  with it, so what next. Batman? The Dark Knight? No, those are both taken. So how about Batman: The Dark Knight? Yes. Colons are good. And the next film is in no way going to be a disaster. Right?

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

"What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back."

A superb film, this, with a surprisingly subtle starring role from Russell Crowe as schizophrenic genius mathematician John Nash, whom we see from his brilliant if asocial youth, through the barbaric horrors of asylums and insulin shock therapy, to respected old age where, through sheer force of reason, Nash is able to accept that the delusions he still sees are false, and ignore them.

It's a deeply affecting film, although Nash's mental instability is rather cleverly demonstrated through some clever twists that I shall not spoil. Some are obvious from Ron Howard's obvious "dream sequence" directing; one in particular I didn't see coming. But this is a deeply affecting portrait of an incredible man, supported through everything by his loving wife Alicia right through to recognition by the Swedish Academy and his status, until recently, as the world's most famous living mathematician.

Sadly, John and Alicia Nash both died last year in a car crash, both in their eighties, but it seems their lives were well lived. 

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

"The lesser of two weevils!"

It's been far too long since I read Patrick O'Brian's superlative tales of Captain Jack Aubrey and his particular friend Dr. Stephen Maturin, and watching this unexpectedly excellent film adaptation has reminded me that I really need to start reading all twenty(!) novels all over again. It's a magnificent series of books, with both intense psychological depth for the extraordinarily well-rounded characters and a dizzyingly perfect evocation of time and place. A crude analogy would be Hornblower as written by Jane Austen, but the novels are much more than that. The language alone I can just get drunk on. Patrick O'Brian was a man of the Regency out of his time.

I've seen the film before, but it's only now, having read all of the novels rather than just the first few, that I can truly appreciate its excellent. It's odd to base the film around The Far Side of the World, one of the later novels, but that's a suitably representative plot of Jack captaining the Surprise in pursuit of a French privateer. Naturally this isn't really an adaptation of a specific novel; a franchise of twenty films was clearly not going to happen so they did the sensible thing and made a greatest hits album. Hence we see Maturin doing his famous bit of surgery with the coin, Maturin directing his own operation, Jack's anecdote about Nelson and the above joke from Jack. I'm surprised we don't get Stephen's "cur-tailed" joke which Jack brings up every bloody novel but you can't have everything! But the approach works; the plot, cobbled together from some of the best set pieces from the novels, makes for a gripping film.

I'm not generally a huge fan of Russell Crowe but he was seemingly born to play Jack, and David Threlfall deserves particular praise as the perfect Preserved Killick. Paul Bettany, though, seems to lack charisma somewhat, although I can see little actually wrong with his performance. But this is nevertheless a superb adaptation which has certainly succeeded in directing me back to the novels.