Manchester By The Sea (2016)

Manchester By The Sea combines devastating tragedy with flashes of humour to create a film that is heartbreaking and emotional without ever being maudlin or histrionic.

Casey Affleck plays Lee, a gruff janitor living in a basement flat in Boston. After receiving the news that his older brother Joe has suddenly died, Lee has to make his way back to his former home, the snowbound titular Massachusetts town. Through a series of increasingly devastating flashbacks, we learn why Lee left in the first place, and why he is so reluctant to return.

Affleck's performance is astonishing, avoiding any showy, Oscar baiting wailing speeches. He is full of anger and pain, but it is always kept inside, hinted at with uncomfortable stares and gritted teeth.

The other main character is the town itself. The freezing weather drives one important element of the story, and the snow covered streets seem the perfect place for a character who keeps his emotions buried.

The film is ultimately about somebody coming to terms with what they have done and trying to find a way to move on. Kenneth Lonergan is smart enough (and respectful enough to the intelligence of his audience) to realise that this is a slice of real life. Lessons don't get learned, story strands don't get neatly tied up, but people change, and people learn about themselves and each other, and try to get on with life as best they can.

Cafe Society (2016)

After one or two recent misfires, Woody Allen is back on form with Cafe Society. More of a witty drama than an outright comedy, this is a film which harks back to the era of some of his earlier work such as The Purple Rose of Cairo and Bullets over Broadway, although with a completely different style to either of these.

Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) is the youngest child in a 1930s New York Jewish family, where elder sister Evelyn works as a school teacher, while his elder brother Ben is a gangster. Desperate to escape all of this, Bobby moves to Hollywood, getting a job running errands for his high flying agent uncle Phil (Steve Carell). From here, he falls in love with Bobby's secretary Vonnie, has his heart broken in a particularly cruel twist of fate, moves back to New York, starts managing his brother's high-end nightclub, meets and marries another woman called Vonnie - then meets the original Vonnie again.

The different story strands illustrate themes that have recurred throughout Allen's career, particularly in regard to chance, fate, and justice, summed up in Bobby's observation that ‘Life is a comedy written by a sadistic comedy writer.’

Eisenberg does a great job of channelling the tics and mannerisms of Allen's onscreen character. He is aided by Kristen Stewart, who as Vonnie number one, switches gear believably between lowly secretary and Hollywood wife, Steve Carrel, who brings both toughness and vulnerability to the part of Uncle Phil and Blake Lively, who makes the best of an underused part as Vonnie number two.

It is also interesting to see Allen return to a subject that he seems to have left alone for a while. Jewishness is something that defines the Dorfman family, and while it does fuel a few trademark Allen one-liners, the abandoning of this by one of their clan drives one part of the story.

Allen is not afraid to both explore and criticise two big American mythologises of the 1930s, Hollywood and gangsters. While both are undeniably glamorous for the people viewing them from a distance, and financially rewarding for those involved, any wide eyed naivety is undercut by unpleasant bitchiness for the former and gruesome violence for the latter. He also, and not for the first time in his work, ends the film on a somewhat bittersweet note, with lives changed for the worse, hopes and dreams left unfulfilled and characters left wondering what could have been.

Irrational Man (2015)

Another year, another Woody Allen film and sadly, Irrational Man is one of his lacklustre efforts, with the under plotted story, underwritten characters and clunky dialogue that mar the worst of his more recent efforts.

Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) is a tormented professor, starting work teaching philosophy at Braylin College in New England. Drinking heavily, and searching for meaning in life following the death of his mother and watching his wife run away with his best friend, he stumbles into two things that could provide what he needs. Firstly is a relationship with one of his students, Jill (Emma Stone, her second Allen film after Magic in the Moonlight). Secondly is the chance to do what he sees as a noble act for a desperate stranger – even if that noble act requires murder.

This is familiar territory for Allen, having explored the morality of murder, (and getting away with it) much more successfully in his 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors. That had all the positives that this film is lacking, with suspense, wit, and characters who engage us. With Abe Lucas however, we hear so much about how fascinating he is and how original his ideas are – but this all comes from other people, rarely from the words or actions of the man himself. Stone works hard to breathe some life into Jill, but this is an uphill struggle with such an underwritten character, someone who is little more than a perky but unremarkable student infatuated with her tutor. The only spark of interest comes from Parker Posey as Professor Rita Richards, the man hungry colleague of Lucas who starts an affair with him. However, it is difficult to fathom what she finds so fascinating about him, other than a desire to escape her own unhappy marriage.

Without the characters to drive it, the drama falls flat, becoming one simply one set of events after another, with no sense of urgency or suspense, culminating in a hokey twist straight out of Murder She Wrote. The dialogue is another disappointment, awkward, obvious and expositional. The gag writer in Allen usually keeps some sparkle in his words, but here his talents seem to have deserted him. As is so often the case, is the script that makes or breaks a Woody Allen film, and, as he has shown recently with Blue Jasmine and Midnight in Paris, (two wildly different films in style and subject matter), when he bothers to put some effort in with the writing, he is as brilliant and original a film-maker as he ever was.

Victim (1961)

Controversial when released and still absorbing viewing today, Victim was made at a time when homosexuality was still illegal, and reminds us that this country has made great strides in gay rights in the last 50 years. It also helped Dirk Bogarde make the transition from matinee idol to art house darling.

When a young gay man commits suicide in his police cell, it sets off a chain of events that sees high flying (and closeted) London barrister Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde) become a victim of a pair of blackmailers. Wracked with own guilt at the death, Farr risks his career and marriage to try to bring them to justice.

Rather than resort to tired old clichés of presenting gay men as deviants or limp-wristed comic relief, screenwriters Janet Green and John McCormick, along with director Basil Dearden take time to build compassion and sympathy for the characters, dispelling any accusations of exploitation and avoiding heavy handed moralising. Cleverly, placing this in the familiar context of a standard crime film plot may have helped them introduce the themes to the mainstream audience of the time.

The complex character of Farr, and the dignity that Bogarde gives him, helps make this more than worthy but dull soap opera. He is driven by a sense of justice and a wish to make amends for his part in the suicide and so does not undertake his sacrifice lightly, nor does he expect a very happy conclusion to the tale. Nevertheless, there is a noticeable ambiguity in his feelings towards his wife Laura, (played by Sylvia Sims) that implies he may genuinely love her, but he could also have married her for the sake of appearances.

Laura is, unexpectedly, just as fascinating a character. Rather than just being the archetypal 60s middle class stay at home housewife, she is independent enough to get a day job working with troubled schoolchildren. She is also not naive about her husband, knowing full well that he had been in relationships with men before they had got together, something that does not change her love for him, and gives the script an emotional maturity that acknowledges that real feelings are not turned on and off like a light switch.

Some aspects of how sexuality is presented feel a little dated or patronising nowadays. This question of where Farr's attraction lies is presented as an either/or choice and, nowhere is it considered that he could be bisexual. Meanwhile, the other gay characters are depicted as helpless and passive victims of the law and the blackmailers, victims unable or unwilling to help themselves and victims who need to rescued, by Farr and the police.

The anti-gay characters, whether blackmailers or police, are one-dimensional and never really given much screen time or depth, beyond a few brief "it's not natural" style speeches. Fascinatingly, when unmasked, the blackmailers turnout to be a puritanical bigot, and a man who, with his leather jacket and slightly camp manner seems to be, the film is suggesting without ever confirming, gay

Not surprisingly, getting Victim made was not an easy process given the subject matter, which, regardless of how acceptable it may or may not have been in the eyes of society, was still illegal in the eyes of the law. The common practise at the time was for producers to submit scripts to the BBFC in order to tackle problem areas before they made it to the camera. In his book "Censored - The Story of Film Censorship in Britain", Tom Dewe Matthews tells of BBFC memos stating "the acceptance of homosexuality is too ready in this script" and after filming the censors still demanded the removal of key scenes that challenged stereotypes of gay men as upper class fops who are helpless slaves to their sexual urges. Nevertheless, Dearden managed to keep one key scene intact, where Farr admits to his wife that he got involved with the man who committed suicide because he was attracted to him. However innocuous this may seem nowadays, it was, according to Matthews, the first time that a gay man had come out in a British film.

The film would also prove to be a defining moment for its Dirk Bogarde, and although it would not completely lead to the end of lighthearted fare such as the “Doctor in...” series of films that he had become associated with, it certainly would lay the groundwork for the next phase of his career. His commitment to starring in films with controversial subject matter would see him in projects ranging from the creepy mind games of The Servant to the Nazi S&M themed The Night Porter.

It is impossible to quantify the extent to which Victim contributed to the eventual passing of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised homosexuality. Despite being the X certificate, it was reportedly a success at the UK box office, buoyed by publicity from the ensuing media coverage, and may have acted, like Farr, as a catalyst for change. However, with the liberal or at least laissez-faire, attitudes of the police depicted in the film, it may have just been reflecting the increasing acceptance and desire for change in the wider public. Either way, viewed as a social document or a very English piece of liberal agitprop, it remains a great thriller and a reminder that the "good old days" were not always good for everyone.