Why Primary Colors is the late Mike Nichols' best film

At the beginning of Mike Nichols' Primary Colors (1998), Governor Jack Stanton (John Travolta), a southern politician considering a run for the US presidency, visits an adult literacy class in Harlem, New York. After hearing some of the students' humiliations and struggles, he shares a story about his Uncle Charlie, who won a Medal of Honour in the second world war but refused all offers of work after he returned home.

"He just laid down on his couch and smoked his Luckies. You couldn't get him off that couch," Stanton explains. "Was he messed up in the head, you know, from the war?" one of the students asks. "No. It was just that he couldn't read," Stanton replies. The class goes wild.

Later, young political idealist Henry Burton (Adrian Lester) visits Stanton's entourage in a hotel suite. Among the people hanging around is an older man named Charlie. "Are you Uncle Charlie, the Medal of Honour winner?" he asks, having seen Stanton's performance earlier. "Well, I'm Uncle Charlie," the man tells Burton. "And whatever else he says, he's a master."

It is because of extended jokes like that one that Primary Colors is my favourite film by Nichols, the director-producer-actor who died on November 19 aged 83.

The Graduate (1967) and Heartburn (1986) - horror movies disguised as relationship dramas - are magnificent. The Birdcage (1996) remains warm and funny, even as the rapid progress of gay rights history has made it look a little dated. But Nichols' adaptation of Joe Klein's novel about a fictionalised version of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the dangers of political "true-believerism" deserves its due as an important entry in the pantheon of the man who also made Oscar-nominated whistleblower drama Silkwood (1983).

All of Nichols' movies are well-cast, but the ensemble in Primary Colors is particularly outstanding.