The thing about Golden Ages is we’re rarely talking about quality, instead just prevalence. Steven Spielberg caught a lot of flak in comment sections for daring to say “Superhero films will go the way of the Western,” as if for some reason this craze is impervious to the same natural decay all crazes, from the Dutch Tulip Bubble to the Wild West film, face.

Unlike the Superhero genre, sequels in Westerns were rare, and when they did appear they were most often able to stand perfectly well on their own two feet. You don’t need to have seen A Fistful of Dollars to make sense of For A Few Dollars More. You could skip one and not have any cause to worry. Somehow Superhero films have managed to convince us this is not so for them. If you miss Iron Man 3 how is The Avengers 2 or Ant-Man going to make a lick of sense? You’d better see them all lest you get confused. But beyond setting up future team-up movies, what really changes between these films?

On paper, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its promise of never-ending cross-film set-ups and pay-offs seems like the ultimate business model, but when the status quo is never really shaken, those set-ups and pay-offs, inevitably, start to dilute in value. Just like the Dutch Tulip Bubble, which saw the then rare Tulip bulb at one point reach prices ten times the annual salary of the average worker, the more a product of worth becomes inescapable, the closer you get to the inevitable crash.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier came like a shot-off adrenalin to what was, even then, starting to get a bit stale. All of a sudden, we were given a Marvel film with a different tone and, best of all, a twist that was genuinely unexpected. Audiences, myself included in there, left Winter Soldier seriously speculating what the ramifications of that twist would wind up being. Turns out they’d amount to next to nothing, really. The government agency that oversaw the Avengers went from being called S.H.I.E.L.D. to just The Avengers, and the villainous secret society that was Hydra became S.H.I.E.L.D. and then was back to being called… Hydra, again.

What were the long-term effects of Civil War? While, to be fair, we haven’t had much of a chance to know for sure yet, my money is on not much. A story, no matter how many super-powered obstacles you pack in for the heroes to face, is nothing if the endings are virtually inconsequential. How many times can you see John Wayne inevitably bring justice to those marauding bandits? After a while it just gets a bit tired.

Just like we never saw the “End of the Western” absolutely, we won’t be completely bereft of superhero films either. There will always be Batman films and there will always be Spider-Man films, and added to that we’ll always get films like Logan and The Dark Knight. Just like Unforgiven or McCabe and Mrs Miller, just because your genre’s well past it’s Golden Age or, in the case of the latter, at least on its way out, doesn’t mean you’ve not got some great films to look forward to. You just don’t have to worry about watching John Wayne do the same thing for the thirtieth time in a row. Instead you can enjoy him as Genghis Kahn.

While starting a film when you can feel yourself dozing off isn’t the best idea, it does wind up giving whichever film you’re watching a pretty good challenge. After all, if it keeps you awake, it must be pretty good. It’s not always the fairest of challenges, I don’t recommend you try it with a Tarkovsky or Ozu film or anything that really requires much patience. But when it comes to suspense thrillers, what better challenge could there be? Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 thriller High & Low was the last film I gave that challenge and it passed.

I’d just finished a long day at work, the seats in the cinema were way too comfortable for my own good and I could feel myself slipping. The first few minutes of the film aren’t bad, mind you, they’re just expositional. Toshiro Mifune plays an executive at a large shoe company and he’s angling for power. We learn that for the past few years he’s been playing a chess match, secretly buying up shares until he finally has the majority. He’s mortgaged his house, he’s put everything he owns up as collateral, he’s got it in the bag. He can’t lose. It’s as thrilling as talk of underhanded corporate dealings can be, and that’s not sarcasm, it’s great, it’s just not enough to keep me awake. But then the phone rings.

Mifune’s son’s been kidnapped and the ransom is thirty million yen. I’m wide awake. Not only is that enough to checkmate any corporate chess matches he’s got going, it’s enough to bankrupt him. There’s not much more I’m going to say about the plot of the film, as it’s so full of enough twists and turns that it’s worth going in blind. It’s one of the best suspense thrillers ever made, definitely the best film about a kidnapping I’ve ever seen.

Akira Kurosawa is no doubt one of the most legendary and influential filmmakers of all time, with everyone from Sam Peckinpah to Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet to George Lucas, all praising him and citing his influence. With the often imitated Seven Samurai and Yojimbo under his belt, he’s understandably most well-known for his samurai films. But more than just a master of the action film, Kurosawa seemed to make anything work no matter what genre, style or story. Shakespeare adaptation, got it. Humanistic drama, got it. Film Noir gangster flick, got it. High stakes suspense thriller, got it.

Even though High & Low runs for a total of almost two and a half hours, as soon as it’s got the ball rolling it never lets up. It doesn’t take long for the police to get involved, led by the effortlessly cool and collected detective played by Tatsuya Nakadai, and when they do the film becomes an edge-of-your-seat thriller. For the first hour or so, the film barely leaves Toshiro Mifune’s living room. That’s a little under half of the film dedicated solely to the police and the man with the ransom to pay hiding from and contending with the kidnapper on the phone who’s watching through their window from who knows where.

The screenplay is impeccably well crafted and any screenwriters would be well served by watching High & Low closely and then one more time. From the set-up, to the turning points, to the action sequences, characters, themes, motivations and conclusion, it’s all pitch perfect. Adapted from a book by Western writer Ed McBain, it’s one of the best examples of Kurosawa’s keen ability to recontextualize Western works. It’s almost absurd, in a way, that Kurosawa’s own films like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo while widely imitated with Western remakes like The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars were themselves heavily inspired by the films of John Ford, the hardboiled fiction of Dashiell Hammett and of course William Shakespeare.

High & Low doesn’t break much ground, it doesn’t revolutionize the genre or anything like that, instead it stands as one of the most solid examples of the genre ever made. It’s a rare film purely in that it’s a completely wholly satisfying experience. It knows what its genre’s conventions are and what the audience wants from it and so it delivers. It’s one of Kurosawa’s best and the Blu-Ray well deserves a place on your shelf.

Lawrence of Arabia

The film that inspired Steven Spielberg to make movies, that has more versions than some directors have films, and one of the most enduring and undeniable classics of all time, Lawrence of Arabia is one of the best ways to spend an afternoon. Directed by David Lean and the greatest Epic film ever put to celluloid, Lawrence of Arabia follows Peter O’Toole as T. E. Lawrence fighting on the Arabian front in the First World War. Whilst I’m a bit cautious suggesting you watch this film on Netflix rather than getting to the Astor to see it, I can’t pass up any opportunity to recommend this film.

Barefoot in the Park

Neil Simon is a writer who doesn’t seem to be talked about much anymore. Once upon a time he was one of the biggest names on Broadway and in Hollywood. One of the finest comic writers of the era, Neil Simon penned The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl and Lost In Yonkers, for which he won the Pulitzer for Drama. Starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford, Barefoot in the Park has, like The Odd Couple, a sense of fun that Neil Simon contemporary Mel Brooks shared but today is rarer than a Black Rhino.

In the Line of Fire

You don’t need me pointing out that Clint Eastwood is one of the most enduring Hollywood stars of all time, perhaps the most enduring. Actually no, he is, no question. In the Line of Fire came relatively late in his career as an action film star but it’s one of his best. As the last Secret Service agent on active-duty who was with JFK in Dallas, Clint Eastwood must track down a former CIA agent bent on killing the President.

The Way We Were

One of the best romance films of the 1970’s, The Way We Were stars Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in the era of How To Spot A Communist McCarthyism. Written by Arthur Laurents and directed by Sydney Pollack, The Way We Were is one of those special films that sees some of the most talented artists in many different films converge to make something truly memorable.

Let There Be Light

Completed in 1946 yet not released to the public until 1981, Let There Be Light is a war documentary directed by Hollywood legend John Huston. Expecting more a piece of propaganda, Let There Be Light’s uncompromising look at soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress disorder was suppressed by the U.S. Government for close to forty years. A short yet haunting film, this documentary was a big influence on Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2012 film The Master.

If you ask me, Stan is starting to seriously out-perform Netflix as a place to watch classic movies. From Midnight Cowboy, to Thief, to The Birdman of Alcatraz, Stan is killing it at the mo. I began to make a list and soon found the list to be over three pages long so… Instead of inflicting that on you, here’s a few good films you may have looked past.

A Bridge Too Far

The perfect entre for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Dunkirk, Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far is as big as war films get. Written by Misery, Marathon Man and Butch Cassidy and the SundanceKid screenwriter, William Goldman, this film managed to amass an ensemble cast that, for my money, hasn’t been topped. I’m talking about James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Lawrence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford and more…

Heaven’s Gate

Give it a chance. I know, I know, “Notorious Heaven’s Gate”, the film that single-handedly destroyed United Artists, but give it a chance. When Michael Cimino finally got to see his 216 “Director’s Cut” screen at the Venice Film Festival it was received with rapturous applause. Cimino is far from the one trick pony he’s made out to be and Heaven’s Gate is one hell of a way to spend an afternoon.

In the Realm of the Senses

Perhaps still the most widely known film by Nagisa Oshima (whose film A Cruel Story of Youth I wrote about a couple of weeks ago), it was a bit of a surprise hit in the West when it was released in 1976. This was helped in part by the film initially being banned, which is a sure-fire way, we all know, to guarantee the making of a cult classic. Great erotic cinema is rare, with the true masterpieces being able to be counted on only one hand, and Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses is one of the greatest examples of the genre.

Peeping Tom

“All this filming isn’t healthy”, a quote from the film about a boyish compulsive serial killer with a fascination for film cameras could easily be attributed to any number of great directors in the past. This is the film that would, upon release, be dismissed with disgust by both critics and audiences and put a permanent stain on the name of Michael Powell. But that’s not to say the film deserves it. It’s a fascinating watch, just as intoxicating as The Red Shoes, or The Black Narcissus, or any other of the Powell & Pressburger films. Peeping Tom would later find a new home with the adoration of the New Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma.

Marty

Starting life as a teleplay starring Rod Steiger, made during the original Television Golden Age, Marty would later be adapted to the silver screen, this time starring Ernest Borgnine in the title role. One of the greatest love stories ever told, Marty is short, sweet and absolutely heart breaking. Never one to avoid writing “messages” into his films, Paddy Chayefsky (who would go on to win two more Oscars for Best Original Screenplay in The Hospital and Network) gives us one of the most timeless stories ever put to screen… It’s like I’ve been saying for years, Rocky is just Marty with more punching.

And it’s that time again when we get ourselves a new Astor Calendar! A little shorter than usual but just as fantastic. So, for what it’s worth, here’s a little list of my must-see films for the next two months.

-The Last Waltz (10^th of June):

One of the best concert films of all time. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz documents The Band’s last concert with guests like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters and more… Shot with the help of Vilmos Zsigmond and Lazlo Kovacs, this features some all-time great performances by some of the world’s greatest musicians.

-Heat (17^th of June):

I don’t think there’d be many people who’d argue against me saying this is Michael Mann’s masterpiece. The first film ever to set Al Pacino and Robert De Niro face to face, this is a film that’s so sharp it still feels fresh 22 years on. Don’t miss the greatest heist film of all time now in a stunning 4K restoration.

-Do the Right Thing (23^rd of June):

If you judge a film by its title sequence, you better love Do the Right Thing. Back before Spike Lee was in a perpetual beef with Quentin Tarantino, he was just as inventive and energetic as QT himself, perhaps even more so. While there’s any number of Spike Lee’s early films that demand to be seen, Do the Right Thing is the one you cannot miss.

-Goodfellas (5^th of July – 35mm):

Easily one of Scorsese’s best, based on the life of real life gangster Henry Hill, there’s no better way to see Goodfellas than on the big screen. Anyone who’s seen it knows how frenetic and wild a ride this flick is and in 35mm on the big screen it’s unforgettable… Just don’t call Joe Pesci funny…

-Fantasia (16^th of July – 35mm):

There’s never a day I’m not in the mood for Fantasia. For those few who don’t know it already, Fantasia is Disney’s attempt to pair beloved classical music from Bach to Beethoven, Dukas to Ponchielli, with the best animation they’ve ever achieved. While today Disney may, in the minds of some people, make one think of “dumbing down”, this is absolutely not the case here. Disney rise to the music’s level and give us some of the greatest animation ever put to film.

It was tough to restrict myself to only five, but things like this have a tendency to get a little out of hand for people like me…