10 best films about fathers
As today marks Father’s Day, we have selected ten screen classics which celebrates fatherhood like no other.
1.Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back - The most distant of dads - Darth Vader. His twin babies have been shipped off across the galaxy, the girl to become an interstellar princess (Leia), the boy (Luke Skywalker) to become a lowly farmhand on the dustpit planet of Tatooine, its only point of interest being its extra sun.
2.Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Harrison Ford’s archaeological action man was doing perfectly well - wresting the all-powerful ark of the covenant from Nazi hands in Raiders of the Lost Ark, retrieving the magical Sankara stones from a bloodthirsty cult in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - but to come and call his son junior and snatching his girlfriend was rather shocking.
3.The Sound of Music - Captain Von Trapp seems a bit of a stickler. Well, humourless disciplinarian, actually. A widower, he rules his seven singing offspring in brisk naval fashion, ordering them about with the aid of a ship’s whistle. But once free-spirited young nun Maria (Julie Andrews) arrives as governess at the family schloss in the Austrian Alps, his soft centre is revealed.
4.Paper Moon (1973) - Although Moze only takes the girl, Addie on for the $200 attached, it’s a touching relationship with the girl proving a natural at helping him to con widows. It turns out Addie really is the brains of the partnership.
5.The Godfather - Hard to say on the evidence of Marlon Brando’s Don Vito Corleone. He espouses strong family values: ‘A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can ever be a real man,’ he says at a sun-dappled family wedding party, while behind the scenes he is the most cunning old fox of a mafia boss. No wonder his youngest son, Al Pacino’s Michael, proves to be ruthless and brilliant at the family’s dirty business.
6.To Kill a Mockingbird - As Atticus Finch fearlessly defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in the racist town of Maycomb, Alabama, he is the embodiment of incorruptible moral probity. But he’s also the kindest, most affectionate widower-father of young Jem and little Jean Louise, aka Scout. He lets them call him Atticus and speaks lovingly and honestly to them.
7.Silver Linings Playbook - Robert De Niro, on the other hand, displays pretty dodgy parenting skills. His Pat Solitano Sr is none too happy when his son Pat Jr (Bradley Cooper), who has bipolar disorder, returns to the family nest after an altercation with his ex-wife’s lover and a spell in a psychiatric clinic. Pat Sr. finds his son’s angry search for life’s silver linings an unwelcome distraction from his first love for illegal football gambling.
8.Mrs Doubtfire - Voiceover artist and devoted father of three Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) is hugely irritating. But you have to give him credit for the effort he makes to see more of the kids when his wife (Sally Field) understandably divorces him, and wins custody. Any dad willing to dress as a nanny to win back his family cannot be that bad.
9.Finding Nemo - Here’s a dad willing to go the extra nautical mile for his kid. In Pixar’s animated adventure, Marlin is an anxious fish who lives in the Great Barrier Reef. He’s anxious because little Nemo is his last surviving offspring, the other fishkids and their mum having been snapped up by a shark. Guess what? Dad’s right: first chance Nemo gets, he’s swept up in a net and packed off to a dentist’s tropical fishtank in Sydney. So Marlin and his short-term-memory-challenged girlfriend Dory (motto: ‘Just keep swimming’) set out on an epic search-and-rescue mission.
10.The Pursuit of Happyness – Will Smith’s insane journey as Chris Gardner is as motivational as it gets. He should have received an Oscar for ‘Best Father’s Role’ if there ever was one.
Source – The Guardian
