FILM FILINGS: October 2025
POSS: NOTES ON NOLAN’S THE PRESTIGE
Over at his blog Jordan Poss has some illuminating notes about Christopher Nolan’s 2006 (nearly-twenty-years-ago!) film, The Prestige, based on the book by Christopher Priest. Poss writes…
The book and the film are quite different (Priest was, it’s worth noting, in awe of the movie) but I don’t intend to examine those differences here. The movie has been one of my favorites since it came out and has rewarded years of viewing. But what I’ve realized now, to my surprise, is that after almost two decades and seven more films, The Prestige remains Nolan’s best movie.
I write this as a fan of Nolan—not a fanboy, but a fan, someone who likes and appreciates what he does and looks forward to each new Nolan project. I don’t intend to disparage his more recent movies, most of which I’ve liked. I just think that, with hindsight, The Prestige stands out as a work produced 1) at the height of Nolan’s powers and 2) before he became distracted by some of the qualities that have defined—and occasionally weakened—his subsequent movies.
A great read— check out the whole thing!
SAM STEPHENS: THE FILMS OF DAVID LEAN
Back in 2023 I watched every film by legendary British director David Lean, chiefly of Lawrence of Arabia fame. This was somewhat conveniently done, as Lean only made 17 movies. I started, but did not finish until recently, my magnum opus write-up on his magni opera. I have now done so, and it’s long enough on its own, so it has its spot here. I was spurred to finish the piece also because, as of late 2024 and early 2025 and up to the present, my review of Hitchcock’s corpus of feature films is on page 1 of Google’s search results when you google “alfred hitchcock movies.” There aren’t so many Lean fans compared to Hitchcock ones. Lean made three, maybe four, famous films that people can recall, while Hitchcock made about ten really famous ones that most can name. But, the essence of my little review for Lean (and the title of the essay) is that he never made a bad film in his whole career. They are all, each of them, worth watching. The review is here.
NATHAN GILMORE: THREE ICONIC FILMS OF THE 1980s
Chariots of Fire (1981), dir. Hugh Hudson
Run and not grow weary.
Chariots of Fire has rather suffered the indignity of entering the pop culture lexicon. Not without its effects: I usually laugh when movies parody the running scene and play the iconic Vangelis theme.
But for a movie about running fast, Chariots of Fire is pretty sedate, and pretty serious for a movie so often parodied. Eric Liddell is a devout Christian who runs (and declines to run) for the glory of his God; his rival Harold Abrams is a Jew who runs as a way to exorcise his bitterness at the anti-Semitic prejudice that permeates the collegiate world.
Though Liddell is a noble figure, completely sympathetic and easy to root for, I actually find Abrams the more interesting of the two. Liddell grins and waves to fans and signs autographs for passersby. Abrams is a tortured young man who knows he’s been bested but cannot live with that fact. He is the purer athlete, a student of the game, where Liddell is raw talent— God-given, he says. You can see the resentment in Abrams, and imagine his bitter retort: “Some of us had to work to be good.”
Liddell, for his part, could been played as self-righteous, smug and sanctimonious. But he isn’t. His sole motivation is religious conviction. Running is his passion, but not his purpose. The well-known “God made me fast… when I run I feel his pleasure” has provided much solace to many a Christian athlete, but it also speaks to a different sort of pleasure, and that is the pleasure of the gifted in discovering his gift. Which, again, grates on Abrams, who has to coax every ounce of speed out of himself by sheer effort. His running is not done for the pleasure of his God, but for the honor of his people. And that is a heavier burden to bear.
These contrasts are the pleasure of the movie, as well as the excellent ensemble cast of British character actors, who bring a sense of moment and gravitas to the story: they know that a race is never just a race. There are matters of personal, academic and national pride at stake. Much of the movie takes place in the banquet hall rather than on the race track. But that is contrasted by the way the movie treats the race itself. Vangelis’ iconic theme is upbeat, more than dramatic, joyful more than tense.
It brings a sense of sprightliness to a somewhat ponderous film, the same way the running scenes lighten the narrative.
“Chariots of Fire” is a great movie that wears its greatness lightly. It’s a weighty movie that manages to be light on its feet.
The Right Stuff (1983), dir. Philip Kaufman
Rocket men.
You don’t hear as much about space these days. I remember chuckling to myself at the proposal of a Space Force, and then forgetting about it immediately afterward. It’s not like the 1960s, in the thick of the Space Race, where families gathered around the television to watch every single launch and waited breathlessly for any scrap of news from the shuttles.
For an ‘80s movie, The Right Stuff does a really good job of capturing the zeitgeist of two decades earlier, down to the grainy images and cat-eye glasses. There are two sections of the story: the first centers on Chuck Yeager and his attempts to break the sound barrier. That’s thrilling enough to be the right stuff for its own movie, but the government, desperate for skilled pilots to take their place in the Cold War’s space theater, all but conscript him. He joins a band of astronaut-hopefuls who form the classic motley crew, among them John Glenn, already on his way to becoming a legend at this point, and Virgil “Gus” Grissom. These men are already entrenched in world history, and the actors (Ed Harris and Fred Ward, respectively) neatly pull off the difficult trick of disappearing into their roles and reacting to history as it happens. There is a lot of history, and The Right Stuff takes its time with the details— presidential speeches, the 1964 Democratic convention.
The movie does feel scattered. Yeager seems like he’ll be the main character at the outset, then the focus is sharply jerked away as the other team members are rapidly introduced. Then, the perspective zooms out a little too far and tries to deal with the social landscape of America at the time. All these aspects could have been done, and should have been done, but they aren’t done effectively. The movie feels every bit as long as it’s 193 minutes. Still, if you stick around, you’ll be rewarded with some truly amazing photography of outer space that throws humanity into bewildering perspective. I started watching the movie on my phone, and pretty soon switched over to my bigger computer screen. I recommend watching The Right Stuff on the biggest screen you can find.
Driving Ms. Daisy (1989), dir. Bruce Beresford
Picture me rolling.
Bruce Beresford has a knack for creating self-contained characters who would be exactly themselves if they were plucked out of their times and into another. They are often elderly, and Beresford does them a great service by not infantilizing or making clowns of them. Remember Mac Sledge in “Tender Mercies”. Robert Duvall always brings an aged quality to whatever character he plays, and his quiet maturity is the defining element of that man.
It’s almost a shortcut, then, for Beresford to cast Morgan Freeman as Hoke Colburn, a chauffeur to Daisy Werthan, an elderly white woman. Freeman is squarely in his element. Affable, gregarious, Hoke is a perfect foil for Daisy Werthan, a crusty old woman whose self-reliance hardly admits the need for a family, let alone a driver. However, when Ms Daisy wrecks her car, her harried son insists on a driver.
A lot of the personal dynamics of this movie revolve around accommodating and appeasing Ms Daisy, and characters do it more or less successfully. Her son loves her, but is too busy to involve himself in the down and dirty details of taking care of her daily. Hoke turns out to be exactly what she needs. He has a way of agreeing with her without acquiescing to her every whim; a demure “yes’m” both covers and sidesteps a whole lot of unspoken conflict between these two stubborn and independent characters.
Not that Hoke is a doormat. Precisely the opposite. the uncomfortable, slightly tense scene when Hoke pulls over to go to the bathroom and Ms Daisy doesn’t want to be left alone. A man is a man, and when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go.
It goes deeper than that. Ms. Daisy prides herself on being a Southern Jewish liberal, but being stuck in the car with an actual black man exposes prejudices she doesn’t even recognize in herself. She has an extra ticket to see Martin Luther King speak, and she leaves Hoke in the car while she goes inside.
But the movie doesn’t make Hoke out to be very complex beyond a quiet pride and the one instance of sticking up for his right to go to the bathroom. Very little of his life outside of his job has an impact on the movie, and while that might be obvious, it does feel constricting.
Still, one is left to marvel again at how Beresford, an Australian, can be so adept at capturing the American south. There are echoes of Flannery O’ Connor here, and of Eudora Welty. There are less inspiring echoes as well, of broad late-80s comedy and mild hokiness, but Tandy and Freeman more than do justice to the material. Not a great movie, and not a bad one, but a near-miss.
