Inside Man review

 Number 642 on the top 1000 films of all time is Spike Lee's crime-thriller 'Inside Man.'

Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) robs a bank in New York City. Keith Frazer (Denzel Washington) is the NYPD's hostage negotiator sent to deal with Clive. Meanwhile, the bank's owner Mr Case (Christopher Plummer) is harbouring a dark secret in one of the bank's security boxes. He sends fixer Madeline White (Jodie Foster) to stop this box getting into the wrong hands.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It was a clever take on the heist genre. I have seen a few other heist films on this list that made me wonder whether the genre was dead-and-buried, but that was not the case for Inside Man. It was a refreshing reinvention of the heist genre. But also a far deeper imagining of it.

While the money is obviously a bonus for Dalton, he is more interested in the artistry of creating the perfect bank robbery. And that made him an engaging character to watch. He and Denzel Washington were very good together as they play a deadly cat-and-mouse game. I find Denzel Washington very hit-and-miss, but he was very engaging as the maverick, rough-around-the-edges cop Frazer.

Yet underpinning this all is Mr Case and the mystery he was trying so hard to hide. *Spoiler alert* 

It's revealed that during WW2 he collaborated with the Nazis trading high-profile Jews in exchange for diamonds. It's a dark secret that he does not want coming to light. It added another layer of intrigue to this film.

While Owen and Washington were good together, I was less convinced by Washington and Foster. Both Frazer and Madeline were a similarly cat-and-mouse relationship, but thought there scenes were more on-the-nose with less imprecise dialogue.

And I know that Spike Lee's trademark is the dolly-tracking shot making it look like the MC is on a travellator, but I always thinks it looks a bit silly. I was also very confused as to why the theme tune was some late 80's Bollywood song. It was very out of place.

But these are minor criticisms of what was a very good film.

Gosford Park review

 Number 992 on the top 1000 films of all time is Robert Altman's 2001 period drama/murder mystery Gosford Park.

Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) is a wealthy industrialist, married to Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) who invites a group of equally wealthy Britons and one American to dine in his country estate. Some of these guests include Sylvia's aunt Constance, Dowager Countess of Trentham) (Maggie Smith,) William's brother-in-law Raymond, Lord Stockbridge (Charles Dance,) film star and William's cousin Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam) and American film producer Morriss Weissman (Bob Balaban.) However, when one of the party is discovered dead, everybody becomes a suspect. This includes all of the downstairs staff. Richard E. Grant, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson, Eileen Atkins and Helen Mirren star as some of the butlers, valets, cooks and housekeepers.

I can totally understand why this film is so low down on this list. It was so boring. When things actually got going, it did start to pick up, but it takes over an hour for things to get going. Prior to anybody being murdered, it was an endless onslaught of rich, pretentious people talking about rich and pretentious things. All of the characters very much blurred into one and it was difficult to distinguish between them all. The cast was far bigger than it had any right to be.

This is a period drama and I bloody hate period dramas, so, no doubt, I do have some bias toward this film. Period dramas have never been something that's interested me. They're full of unrelatable characters with unrelatable problems. And I don't know why they're called dramas. There's nothing dramatic or remotely interesting about them. That criticism very much applies to Gosford Park too.

 Julian Fellowes wrote Gosford Park, so it's no surprise that the film turned out the way it did. He's part of the House of Lords and a member of the British landed gentry. Originally, Downton Abbey, which Julian Fellowes also wrote, was supposed to be a spin-off of Gosford Park, before it became its own show. I haven't watched Downton Abbey and I have no bloody intention to now.

As I said, once somebody actually dies, things become interesting, because we have a mystery to solve. We're treated to Stephen Fry playing the incompetent Inspector Thompson. He really helped to liven up the stuffy atmosphere. But why do we have to wait over an hour to get to this point? By this point, I had almost lost interest in the film. It was all so pretentious.

I really did not care for Gosford Park at all. It was overly-long, boring, pretentious and a sheer waste of the acting talent involved. But I am biased toward period dramas, so maybe that's just me.