Stephen Arnell

The Tory leadership race may already have supplied plenty of entertainment – but sometimes the real drama begins when a new ruler actually takes power. Many films have examined what can happen when an inexperienced leader assumes control, from the Biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) to sci-fi blockbuster Dune (2021). Others have explored the challenges that face new leaders at the helm – whether it’s being duped into invasions, subduing those who don’t accept your rule or catching conspiracists. Here are ten that might make informative (or cautionary) viewing for the next Tory leader: The King (2019) – Netflix https://www.youtube.com/watch?

This week Mad Men celebrates the 15th anniversary of the show’s debut. Elmer Wheeler’s famous phrase about the science of advertising holds as true today as it did when he originated it almost a century ago: ‘Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.' Matthew Weiner’s series cast the advertising profession under a jaundiced eye, examining the mores and morays of Madison Avenue advertising executives from 1960 to late 1970. The show made Jon Hamm (as Don Draper aka Dick Whitman) a star, as well as boosting the careers of other regular cast members including Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery, Jared Harris, and Christina Hendricks.

This December Brad Pitt will hit the grand old age of 59. Hard to believe, considering that he has retained much of his youthful appeal, despite a well-documented penchant for cigarettes, weed and booze, habits apparently now finally kicked to the kerb. As he approaches his seventh decade, Pitt has discussed his desire to transition from acting to a production-focused role, which has already long been a feature of his career. Pitt’s impressive production credits include many pictures where he didn’t appear onscreen, including Running with Scissors (2006), The Departed (2006), Kick-Ass (2010), Selma (2014), Moonlight (2016) and The King (2019).

Wednesday saw a new entrant into the streaming world with the UK debut of Paramount+. The launch event in London on Tuesday didn’t hold back on star power, with Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Gillian Anderson, Viola Davis, David Oyelowo, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Naomie Harris and Jessica Chastain all in attendance. Unlike BritBox and Apple TV, who have built up content slowly, Paramount+ have decided to come out all guns blazing with their programming. Apple TV+ boasted a limited slate of big-name originals when it kicked off in November 2019, but the likes of The Morning Show, See and For All Mankind were starry but not especially enthralling, as the service took time to find its feet with Ted Lasso, Severance, Mythic Quest, and Slow Horses.

Amazingly, at least to this reviewer, the first film in the popular Bourne franchise was released 20 long years ago. A fresh-faced Matt Damon (then aged 32) played the titular character (real name David Webb), a memory loss-afflicted master assassin with more than a little red in his ledger. In Robert Ludlum’s Bourne novels JB is masquerading as a hit man to infiltrate a terrorist cell, unlike the film series, where he actually is former assassin with many kills. Richard Chamberlain (The Thorn Birds) played an older, less intense Bourne (he was 54 at the time), hewing closer to the novel in a largely forgotten 1988 TV movie, which is currently available to watch on YouTube.

Along with films about real life authors, poets, comedians and artists, biographies of musicians are notoriously difficult to translate successfully to the cinema screen. Why? Writing and painting aren’t inherently cinematic; live music has more visual potential (hence the greater number of motion pictures). But the challenges of lip-synching and the existence in most cases of plenty of original concert footage raise the stakes for any actor prepared to take on such a role. There's a real danger of performances falling into pastiche and mimicry. Directors face an even greater predicament when music rights are refused, as was the case with the recent Stardust (2021) where actor/musician Johnny Flynn had to come up with songs in the style of David Bowie.

When Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth I of Scotland) began her reign on 6 February 1952 (after the premature death of her father George VI) the British Empire was still very much in existence, with more than 70 overseas territories, despite the independence of India/Pakistan (‘The Jewel in The Crown’) in 1947. But, in the words of Harold Macmillan, there was soon an inevitable ‘Wind of Change,’ as the UK relinquished its colonies and embraced the woolly concept of The Commonwealth of Nations (formerly The British Commonwealth). Aside from the United Kingdom, the Queen is Head of State in 14 other nations – although, as recent Royal tours of the Caribbean have demonstrated, this may well decrease in the not-too-distant future.

After over a year of delays, Tom Cruise’s keenly anticipated sequel to the iconic Top Gun (1986) is released on 25 May. TG: Maverick’s seat-of-your-pants aviation sequences have whetted the appetite of both fans and non-fans for the picture, which has picked up almost universally positive reviews. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SvPJ0oEWR0 Not unexpectedly for Cruise, he handled some of the flying himself in the picture, returning as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, a US air force test pilot and flight instructor, purposely stuck at the rank of captain to indulge his addictive 'need for speed.'Cruise dials down the cockiness of the first picture to deliver a more mature, nuanced take on Maverick – although he retains his authority-bucking attitude.

The BBC3/Hulu 12-part adaptation of Sally Rooney’s debut novel Conversations with Friends (2018) comes hot on the heels of the success of Normal People (2020) – the author’s second work (2018). Normal People surprised some with its graphic but sensitive depiction of sex but won over even older viewers (well my mum liked it) due to the finely drawn characters and convincing acting by the two leads, relative newcomers Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. Indeed, for Edgar-Jones, Normal People has provided a calling card with producers, leading to her being cast in comedy-thriller Fresh (2022, Disney+),  true crime drama Under the Banner of Heaven (2022, FX) and upcoming adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing.

The news that Dave Chappelle has the unwelcome distinction of being the second big-name stand-up comic to be attacked on stage this year has the worrying signs of a possible trend. The first of course was when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock after the comedian made a tasteless joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair (or lack of it) at the 2022 Academy Awards. There is an odd twist of fate about these confrontations though. Back in 1996, Jada Pinkett (as was) played Carla Purty in the remake of Jerry Lewis’s The Nutty Professor. In one scene, she watches with tears of laughter in her eyes as boyfriend Buddy Love (Eddie Murphy) mounts the stage to beat up cruel night club comedian Reggie Warrington – Dave Chappelle. Spooky.

Until recently a ‘special military operation’ typically referred to a particular action/plan rather than all-out war. Unless you happen to live in Putin’s Russia, that is. John Madden’s (Shakespeare in Love) take on the real-life Operation Mincemeat is a solid entry in the canon of WWII movies that concern themselves with a particular military objective and the various forms of subterfuge that are used to achieve it. The plot of Operation Mincemeat centres on a ruse designed to distract the Germans from the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 by secreting false plans for the landing in Greece on a civilian corpse kitted out as a Royal Marine courier.

This June will mark half a century since police arrested five of Richard Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington DC’s Watergate complex. This anniversary appears to have given TV executives the impetus to commission a wave of shows about the break in and its world-changing (if not an overstatement) after-effects. Both upcoming drama Gaslit (STARZ, from April 24th) and Netflix's documentary The Martha Mitchell Effect concern the outspoken spouse of Nixon’s loyal Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who (to her husband’s ire) helped blow the whistle on Watergate.

Joe Mankiewicz’s classic Olivier/Caine two-handed mystery thriller Sleuth will mark its 50th anniversary later this year, fortuitously in time for the release of Knives Out 2, which promises to be a similarly intriguing whodunnit – at least on the basis of 2019’s initial movie. Based on Anthony Shaffer’s Tony award-winning play, Sleuth depicts a battle of wits between snobbish mystery writer Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) and hairdressing salon owner Milo Tindle/Tindolini (Michael Caine).

The sad news that Bruce Willis is ‘stepping away’ from acting due to an aphasia diagnosis came as a surprise to fans, but the film industry has been rife with rumours about his possible medical problems over recent years. The slew of cheap straight-to-DVD action thrillers (with relatively little screen time) he starred in since 2014 made observers wonder whether Willis was making as much money as he could to ensure both care in his retirement and a decent inheritance for his family. The fact that the famously motor mouthed actor of Moonlighting and his long run of hit movies opted for increasingly taciturn roles led insiders to wonder whether something was wrong.

This August will see the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic crime drama The Godfather. The picture and its 1974 sequel raised the cinematic depiction of The Mob from being crowd-pleasing shoot ‘em ups to a subject worthy of serious filmmakers and subsequent movies in the genre made explicit comparisons between organised crime and wider society, specifically government. Indeed, thanks to The Godfather, the mobster movie has become a permanent Hollywood fixture – a genre that top directors seek to reference, if not wholeheartedly embrace, at some point in their careers. 2022 is no exception: this month sees the release of Graham Moore's The Outfit.

Jane Campion’s BAFTA-winning western The Power of the Dog is distinguished by both great acting and a surprising ending, which I won’t reveal. The strength of the picture’s denouement is that it doesn’t come across as an M. Night Shyamalan-style contrivance, rather as a logical development of the characters. Of course, twist endings are nothing new; witness the likes of Psycho (1960), The Planet of the Apes (1968), Soylent Green (1972 – Heston again), The Wicker Man (1973), The Parallax View (1974) and more recently Se7en (1995). The Power of the Dog is a relative rarity in being a cowboy movie with an unexpected conclusion; the device is usually employed in sci-fi, horror and thrillers.

The tragic ongoing events in Ukraine have highlighted the plight of refugees, with over 2m people (mainly women and children) fleeing the country since Russia invaded on 24 February 2022. Sadly, refugee crises have been occurring since the dawn of what may ironically be called ‘civilisation’, most notably the Biblical Exodus from Egypt and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, which began when the Swiss Helvetii confederation, under pressure of Germanic tribes, sought to cross into Roman territory on their westward journey to safety.

With an added ‘The’ for extra gravitas, Matt Reeves’ fresh take on The Batman is picking up generally favourable notices both for the movie and Robert Pattinson’s interpretation of the character, which apparently makes Christian Bale’s dour Bruce Wayne a happy-go-lucky scamp in comparison. The Spectator's Deborah Ross wasn't convinced by yet another dark twist on the superhero but elsewhere the film has received solid reviews. The Caped Crusader has seen many iterations on film, the most recent being Ben Affleck’s constipated billionaire, which never really caught on with audiences.

The trope of a loner, either new in town or returning from years away, who is forced to confront the corruption and violence of the bad guys now in charge, is a familiar storyline in both film and TV. Westerns such as Shane (1953) and the classic TV series Kung Fu (1972-75) revolved around this scenario, but it also plays out in a variety of other settings ranging from Ancient Rome (Gladiator, 2000) to outer space (Soldier, 1998). And all points between. Amazon’s Jack Reacher adaptation is only the latest in this long line of wrong-righting protagonists and has been picking up positive reviews for beefy star Alan Ritchson’s depiction of the titular character.

The news that film censors from China’s Tencent streaming service have restored the original ending of David Fincher’s cult classic Fight Club will be warmly welcomed by cineastes around the globe. If you, recall, the picture ends with Edward Norton's narrator offing his alter ego Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and initiating a lethal city-wide bombing spree. The Chinese authorities had previously decided in their collective wisdom that it was better to go with an end board that stated: 'Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to a lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.