Twelve Films At Christmas - 7 to 11

Another year is nearly done and I have been keeping up my diet of films. Just one more needed to complete the requisite dozen. We shall start with a good film of a very good book, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. The movie (1949) won the Best Picture Oscar and is undoubtedly very good as it comprehensively makes its point that all power tends to corrupt and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not quite in the same league as the source novel, though probably more accessible. 76/100. Not to be confused with the 2006 remake which the critics hated.  

The industry engaged in attempting to make a tele-ready Christmas classic is a vast one - for evidence one need look no further than the dedicated Christmas film channels that pop up from September onwards. A Boy Called Christmas is thankfully a good few steps ahead of the general dross. It is captivatingly filmed and, a few limp attempts at liberal politics aside, it marches on rather nicely. It has Maggie Smith and Jim Broadbent in it, always reliable signifiers. Not a great film but miles from being a bad one. 62/100.

I was reluctant to watch the BBC's prize offering on Christmas Day, the final ever Gavin and Stacey. I had an uneasy feeling that it would not be up to the standards that had preceded it in this admirable comic sequence. I was wrong, it was superb. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that the other pillar of the Beeb's Christmas Day schedule was Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. This too transpired to be a joy. The patience of the stop-frame animating is awesome and the quiet wit at play in the script has you smiling throughout, that is when you are not plain laughing. 77/100. 

In amongst all this joy (my reviews thus far have been generally favourable, I think you would agree) a little rain must fall. Cromwell (1970) is a failure of a film. The source history certainly has potential for drama but what we get here is an austere plod through the Civil War and an awful lot of Richard Harris (Cromwell) being bad-tempered and Alec Guinness (Charles I) being effete. There is potential in both of these characters but these fine actors are ill-served by the pedestrian script. A pity. 54/100.   

Let us finish for today (indeed, unless a I get a sudden fit of imagination, let us finish for 2024) with the joyous interlude that is Field of Dreams. Unless you understand something of the American obsession with the poetry of baseball, you may find this picture slight and rather silly. It is not. All of us who obsess over silly games and couple that obsession with a love of literature will find something redeeming in this film. 77/100.

And now we shall leave it until 2025. Thank you for humouring me with your presence. Happy New Year.