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Ron Howard’s movie Frost/Nixon is that rarest of things: a film that not only replicates the brilliance of the stage play that inspired it, but transcends the original. Peter Morgan’s drama about the unforgettable interviews between David Frost and former President Nixon in 1977 gives Howard magnificent source material, to which he adds all the energy and pace of modern film-making. Michael Sheen and Frank Langella as interviewer and interviewee respectively are irreproachably brilliant and even more combative than they were in the theatre, the close-ups of both men bringing much tension and nuance to the cinematic feast. The flashback structure involving interviews with the actors playing the principals works well, too, as does the mise en scene of the sweaty, adrenalin-charged filming sessions. As Frost himself has admitted, there is much elision, embellishment and downright fiction to speed things along, but the core of the drama remains authentic and riveting: can the cornered middle market television personality best the disgraced Commander-in-Chief in their final contest over Watergate? Unmissable.