The Killing (1956)

 "It isn't fair!"

This early film by Stanley Kubrick has no stars- hardly the last of his films to fit this description- and I took the quote from a parrot. The narrative structure is cleverly non-linear but the use of narration to explain this feels a little awkward in 2023. Yet this is a stone cold classic, a truly great heist film.

Heist movies are more intrinsically philosophical than you might think. A heist consists of an intricate, precise plan where all the many moving parts must work perfectly.  Yet even the best laid plans must take place in our chaotic little universe. Even in successful heists, little things go wrong that create ripples. As hrere, it's after the apparently successful heist that things go horribly pear-shaped for most. I suppose one moral is that crime doesn't pay, but more fundamentally that we do not live in a clockwork universe and there are no happy-ever-after. This film articulates all of that beautifully, the heist as tragedy.

It does this all the more so because of the very real characters, already tragic before anything happens. We know from the beginning that Johnny Clay's promises to his sweetheart are doomed to fail. Only just out ofv a five year stretch, instead of marrying her he will be going back inside. Then there's the horribly real unhappy couple that is Sherry and George- she's far more intelligent, greedy and immoral than the wet drip she married. The two relationships are quite the contrast, but both equally doomed.

Even the little characters are well crafted. I like Nikki's comeuppance for his racism, and that Maurice, the thug whose role is to start a fight, is a chess-playing intellectual.

This film has depth. It has characterisation. It is a masterpiece.

The Godfather (1972)

"He made him an offer he couldn't refuse..."

There's a school of thought, one I'm sympathetic too, that says this is the greatest film ever made, and that's a heavy burden to bear. Can any film survive such expectations? Best to ignore the whole question, I think, and just say that the film is superb.

Few films are as well directed as this, with every shot framed beautifully, and incredible cinematography. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino are both, of course, sublime. And the script is the perfect take of both the Mafia and of the Italian (or Sicilian) immigrant experience in America.

There are so many iconic scenes, from the infamous horse's head to the moment when the murders of all Michael Corleone's enemies are juxtaposed with him affirming his Catholic faith at his nephew' christening. But the scenes hang together perfectly in a tale of how war hero Michael, at first intended to be kept away from the business of the family, is slowly drawn in and takes over from his imposing yet declining father and his fatally hot-headed brother Sonny. The change is convincingly and carefully shown, with a brilliantly inscrutable performance from Pacino. The film pretty much centres on the tension-filled scene with Michael slowly retrieving the gun from the restaurant toilet, ready to Kill for the first time out of family revenge. A film right up there with the very best.

So, yes- this is quite the contrast from Barbarella!

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap."

This isn't the first time I've seen Dr. Strangelove, which is probably a good thing: this time I was able to look past the hilarious script and superb comic performances from, yes, Peter Sellers but the whole cast to Kubrick's superb direction and, perhaps, a slightly deeper context.

Still, it's worth emphasising that not only is this one of the funniest films ever but Sellers is utterly, utterly outstanding in all three of the parts he plays. Sterling Hayden deserves a mention, though, as does the utterly hilarious George C. Scott. And yet.... the Cuban Missile Crisis is less than two years ago and the film was made at what must have been the absolute peak of absolute nuclear annihilation. Strip away the comedy and this is a bleak and terrifying film (the concept of the Soviet doomsday device alone is existentially fearsome) which ends in absolute nuclear holocaust to the strains of Vera Lynn. And yet I think that both the humour and the underlying bleakness owe much to Catch-22 (the extraordinary novel: I haven't seen the film), another example of absolutely dark and horrible subject matter being leavened by a very mid-twentieth century absurdist style of humour which brings us back, again, to the existentialism which underpins this film, one of the greatest ever made.

Oh, and it's great, if weird, to hear the imperial tones of James Earl Jones in a film thirteen years before his signature role!