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.

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Dir.: Buster Keaton
Plot: An amateur detective falls asleep at his job as a projectionist and dreams himself into the movie, as the great Sherlock Jr.


To be honest, after seeing a couple of his movies I didn't think Buster Keaton was for me, but this absolute gem has changed my mind. I couldn't have felt more differently than I did when I watched The General (bored and drifting into a coma. An undercranked man running up and down a train for an hour, for Gawd's sake...). Anyway, for those yet to see it, Buster plays a detective-obsessed cinema projectionist who gets framed for pilfering his girlfriend's father's timepiece (it was really his rotten, moustachioed rival, of course). Too shy to properly defend himself and deeply depressed, he drifts off in his projection booth and, in a groundbreaking moment in cinema history, his dream self emerges from the sleeping body and takes a running leap into the movie screen. Inside the film, he scrambles to solve a missing jewellery case not dissimilar to his own - but this time as suave, canny detective 'Sherlock Jr.'.

Mean Streets (1973)

Dir.: Martin Scorsese
Plot: A young man in Little Italy tries to keep his head above water whilst protecting his unpredictable friend from loan sharks.

For me, Scorsese is a director who, bafflingly, reached his peak before he’d even really got started. Mean Streets is a mesmerising exhibition piece which vividly highlights every quality which has since made Scorsese a legend. Shot through with both pathos and humour (the whole 'mook' sequence still gets me), it's an intensely personal but unromanticised look at life in Little Italy.

Winchester '73 (1950)

Dir.: Anthony Mann
Plot: A tough sharpshooter scours the plains in search of the man who killed his father, with a seemingly random assortment of characters slowly dragged into the quest.

Jimmy Stewart ditches his ever-comforting impersonation of warm molasses to play hard-bitten avenger Lin McAdam, on the trail of Dutch Henry Brown, the man who killed his father. On paper, it sounds like it's been done a hundred times before. However, this is a uniquely clever revenge western, revolving not around a simple pursuit, but rather around the titular rifle. Won in the opening scenes by Lin, stolen by Dutch and passed through a succession of people, all of whom contribute in some way to the bigger picture of Lin's quest, it ties the story together with peerless elegance. Everyone who comes into possession of the rifle seems almost supernaturally to become embroiled in the story as it unfolds.

Meek's Cutoff (2010)

Dir.: Kelly Reichardt
Plot: A band of 19th century pioneers led astray by a manipulative charlatan start to unravel in hostile terrain.


Described helpfully in the accompanying leaflet as an ‘indie Western’, cult filmmaker Kelly Reichardt’s latest offering is a bleak, bleached-out odyssey following a cluster of lost would-be pioneers in 1840s Oregon plodding hopelessly through untamed territory. Tempted off the main trail by Stephen Meek, a colourful frontiersman with promises of a shortcut, the three couples come to bitterly regret their decision, their spirits ebbing away in conjunction with their supplies. Distrustful of their guide and of an Indian captive they cannot decide whether or not to kill, their fragile hopes start to crumble into an existential dread.

Friendly Persuasion (1956)

Words cannot express my love for this tagline...

Dir.: William Wyler
Plot: A Quaker family in the 1860s try to reconcile their pacifist beliefs with the danger of the approaching Confederate forces.

You'd really have to have a heart of stone not to like this simple but accomplished picture about a Quaker family trying to cope with the Civil War in rural Indiana. Gary Cooper and Dorothy Maguire turn in career-best or near career-best performances as the father and mother of the house. Maguire is an actress I've never really cared for, but she really sells the primness of her character without losing her likeability. Cooper, on the other hand, I've always liked and he has some of the best scenes of his career here - the battlefield sequence in particular stands out as a beautiful piece of acting from the often unfairly-maligned Coop.