‘I lost my job, my house, my Rolls Royce, my family left me… what else can possibly go wrong?’ ‘Hi, Dad!’

Director Michael Schultz’s 1981 comedy drama Carbon Copy stars George Segal as straight-laced, rich, white corporate executive Walter Whitney, who discovers he has a long-lost son, black teenager Roger Porter (Denzel Washington).

This uneven, predictable comedy swings from the occasional sharp and pointed jibe to more obvious and stereotypical easy laughs. Conscious of his awkward subject, writer Stanley Shapiro keeps the humour lightweight and pleasant and is helped by the likeable duo of Segal and Washington (in his cinema movie debut, aged 26).

The comedy is given added irony by the unlikely plot device that Segal has hidden that he is Jewish from his stuffy colleagues.

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Director Jon Hess’s 1993 Excessive Force is a forceful, tolerable but excessively routine and commonplace action thriller, with martial arts star Thomas Ian Griffith as Chicago cop Terry McCain, who must clear himself of charges of theft and killing when he is wrongfully accused of big-time robbery and corruption.

Excessive Force is a conveyor-belt product tailor-made to the usual, unsurprising formula, written and produced by its star. Some good action and the strong cast help it limp along, but the lack of surprises in the story means you can have a long doze in the middle and not miss very much.

Excessive Force is all quite adequate, and boosted by its above-average support performers, though it is all done with excessive ordinariness.

Also in the cast are James Earl Jones, Charlotte...

Director Richard Quine’s 1960 romantic drama The World of Suzie Wong stars Nancy Kwan as the alluring Hong Kong prostitute Suzie Wong, who is hired as a model by émigré American businessman turned artist Robert Lomax (William Holden) and becomes the object of his affections.

This soapy melodrama is written by John Patrick, and based on a novel by Richard Mason and the play version by Paul Osborn.

The good-looking but low-fizz movie fails to capture the vivacity of Hong Kong life and the essence of a growing relationship between people of two differing cultures. However, Holden and Kwan are excellent, and Sylvia Syms, Michael Wilding, Laurence Naismith and Jacqui Chan support strongly.

Geoffrey Unsworth’s colour cinematography and John Box’s production designs are classy and special.

N...

Director Julien Temple’s 1988 Earth Girls Are Easy stars Geena Davis as scatty Southern California manicurist Valerie Dale, who has a close encounter with three hairy extra-terrestrials who crash-land in her swimming pool, and in particular with kindly Mac (Jeff Goldblum, then Davis’s real-life husband).

The four of them set off to the local hot spots after the furry aliens have visited a beauty parlour to look a bit more human.

The attractive cast, funny one-liners and sight gags, and the first-rate music from Daryl Hall and John Oates, The B-52’s and Depeche Mode, turn director Temple’s comic-strip musical comedy into a cosmic treat.

Also in the cast are Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Julie Brown, Michael McKean, Charles Rocket, Larry Linville, Rick Overton, Diane Stilwell, June C E...

Director Clint Eastwood’s outstanding 1988 film about America’s renowned Forties Kansas City, Missouri, jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker – jazz’s most venerated artist – is obviously truly a labour of love.

Bird is beautifully atmospheric with its sharp-eyed depiction of the smokey clubs and seedy hotels of the period. Forest Whitaker won the best actor award at Cannes for his wholeheartedly credible performance, and Diane Venora is almost as good as Parker’s long-suffering wife Chan.

The film won an Oscar for Best Sound recording, and Parker’s classic playing on the soundtrack has been enhanced by having all the accompanying music re-recorded for the film. Eastwood won the Golden Globe for Best Director – Motion Picture.

Bird is not perfect...

Director Martin Ritt’s interesting, underrated 1961 movie stars Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as Ram Bowen and Eddie Cook, American ex-pat jazz players in Paris who cuddle up to two American tourists, Lillian and Connie (Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll). Duke Ellington was Oscar nominated for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.

The admirable actors and impeccably liberal-minded director Ritt do their very considerable best to bring atmosphere and style to the unsurprising, slim tale with a message, though Newman and Woodward get the best of what is going, while Poitier is left to dignify a role that seems underwritten, sometimes sidelined and can be accused of being slightly tokenist as scripted. The drug references are interesting for the time.

The Duke Ellington score is a real ...

Director John Landis’s 1983 delightful movie is a wonderful old-style comedy with rousing star-making performances from Dan Aykroyd as Louis Winthorpe III, a rich, snobbish, well-bred American investor executive and Eddie Murphy as a poor, wily, low-born street con artist.

Good as they are, they are both outclassed by practised old-timers Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche as the conniving, callous, old rich cat bothers, Randolph and Mortimer Duke, who settle a heredity-versus-environment argument by making Aykroyd and Murphy trade places. The title of course is also a play on words about their stock exchange place of work.

Then there is Jamie Lee Curtis as the streetwalker who helps destitute, desperate Dan, and Denholm Elliott as Coleman, the snooty English butler who shows Eddie how to be...