Frost Nixon

To see the film version of Frost Nixon, where Frank Langella gives an outstanding performance as Richard Nixon, as he goes head to head with Michael Sheen's David Frost for the 1977 interviews that made Frost's reputation as a result of his wresting as near to an admission to guilt for Watergate from the disgraced former president as anyone has ever managed.

I hadn't seen the stage version. But the film does a good job building tension in the lead up to the crucial admission, though there is a certain dramatic licence in presenting the young Frost as a naive talkshow host initially out of his depth. Sheen is less convincing as Frost than Langella as Nixon, though I find his Blair unconvincing too, while Matthew MacFadyen convinces as John Birt and Kevin Bacon does a good job as Nixon's minder. Overall, this is a great cast delivering as compelling a two hours of political theatre as you are likely to see on the screen this year.

Australia: the 1950s blockbuster reborn

To see Baz Luhrmann's sweeping epic Australia last night. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman shine in the story of a British aristocrat who finds herself on a ranch in the Northern Territory fending off attempts by a local mass cattle rancher to buy her late husband's estate with the help of his evil sidekick. Her doggedness leads her on a mass cattle drive north to win an army contract to supply the troops. But with the backdrop of the Second World War - which saw Japanese bombs strike Darwin - and the scene-stealing presence of the mixed race boy Nullah (played by Brandon Walters) and his efforts to assert the aboriginal side of his identity and escape the clutches of the missionaries, this is an epic on a grand scale. Like the best of the 50s blockbusters, it touches all the emotions, and while it may lack the 'message' of a Rabbit Proof Fence, it holds the attention for all of its 165 minutes.