Dan In Real Life (2007)

Dir.: Peter Hedges
Plot: A single father finds love in an unexpected (and awkward) place whilst holidaying with his extended family.

Not feeling particularly great and seeing it was on BBC iPlayer, I sat down to watch this on a whim with fairly meh expectations. In fact, it turned out to be one of the most engaging little movies I've seen all year. Quiet but charming widower Dan (Steve Carell) falls for a woman (Juliette Binoche) who he meets in a bookshop whilst visiting his parents for a big family reunion, but when he gets back to their house, there she is: unfortunately, she happens to be his brother's new girlfriend. Over the next few days, Dan becomes hopelessly infatuated with Marie, something which is increasingly difficult to disguise from his close-knit family.

Meet John Doe (1941)

Dir.: Frank Capra
Plot: A broke newspaper makes a naive hobo into a folk political hero, but shadowy forces are out to manipulate his influence to their own ends.

Remember how in The Big Lebowski, the titular tycoon hollers "The bums always lose!" at the Dude? Well, the bums win (sort of) in Capra's Meet John Doe. Barbara Stanwyck stars as a reporter who, trying to save her job after a takeover, invents a suicidal working stiff who uses her column to detail his discontent with the world around him. Her 'John Doe' unexpectedly catches on in a big way, so the newspaper finds a suitably malleable hobo, played by Gary Cooper, to take on the persona of the working-class philosopher. However, as the movement grows bigger and bigger, with inspired citizens forming John Doe clubs and organising a third party, Cooper begins to feel uncomfortable with his new, artificial, influence. Added to this, the newspaper's sinister proprietor (go-to guy for evil politician/businessman roles, Edward Arnold) seems to have shadowy designs of his own for the new movement.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Dir.: Matthew Vaughan

Plot: A young Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr must organise their mutant brethren to stop a mutant supremacist bent on causing nuclear war.

The year is 1962, people; and in case you forget, here’s a bunch of mobsters and playboy bunnies listening to rock and roll. Holocaust survivor Erik Lehnsherr is on a quest to track down the man responsible for his mother’s death, a sinister mutant supremacist using the name Sebastian Shaw. Meanwhile, promising scientist Charles Xavier is at Oxford (as a current student, background glimpses of the Sheldonian and Rad Cam generated much involuntary squealing on my part) preparing his thesis on, you guessed it, mutation. He is approached by Moira MacTaggert, a CIA agent who has witnessed Shaw’s shenanigans first hand and begs Xavier to help stop Shaw from provoking a nuclear war between Russia and the US. With Xavier and Lehnsherr’s paths now fully intertwined, the two set about training a group of young mutants to avert global disaster.