3. The Great Gatsby - Nick Carraway
Baz Luhrmann's latest attempt to make the most opulent modern movie succeeds on some levels: Leo DiCaprio is exceptional as the titular hero, and the film's visuals are stunning throughout, along with the score, but there are a lot of caveats to those statements of quality. The soundtrack is too invasive, the peripheral characters lack substance and focus and the story is badly unbalanced in its portrayal of different emotional flashpoints. And one of the biggest problems with the film, rather unfortunately, is Tobey Maguire's performance as Nick Carraway, which is too meagre and flimsy to add anything like the required balance to Gatsby's excesses. He is clearly designed to be our link to the events of the film - we are to live the experiences of the period setting through his inexperienced eyes - but he doesn't have the enduring everyman appeal required, and at times he feels a little wet. The worst part is that for about 40 minutes in the mid-section of the film, Maguire disappears from the film he initially narrates, which robs his character of any power he initially had.