Jekyll & Hyde (1990 David Wickes & scr)

There's a scene in the opening moments of a crazy man running through Victorian London, pushing past a young girl - quick cut to 'falling' girl, looks really fake, with her arms stretched over her head. Made me laugh out loud. And there you have it - you know something is going to be rubbish just like that. Why then watch any more? Well for one thing, it's enjoyably bad. And for another, Michael Caine plays the titular hero / antihero and as usual he is able to transcend any material he's given... Just about.

It is badly directed and written and therefore all the other performances seem crap. Which are given by Charley's Angel Cheryl Ladd, Ronald Pickup, Joss Ackland, Diane Keen, Kim Thomson, Kevin McNally, David Schofield, Lionel Jeffries and (fleetingly) Lance Percival.

"Do you think we'll find him?"
"This is Scotland Yard. We'd find him at the North Pole."

"Only God can help you now."
"Then why doesn't he??"

"Evil is not a scientific word. Perhaps that's why he fears you."

Also, it may have been that the bustle on Ladd's dress or whatever it's called - that thing that pokes out of her bum - it may be historically accurate but it looks ridiculous and therefore is distracting.

An ITV production.

Remind me not to watch the other Wickes-Caine collaboration Jack the Ripper.

Riot Women (2025 Sally Wainwright)

Sally's new 6 parter for the BBC features:

Joanna Scanlan, Amelia Bullmore, Tamsin Grieg, Lorraine Ashbourne, Taj Atwal (Line of Duty, Trying), and Chandeep Uppal and leading them on vocals the striking strength of Rosaline Craig (The Queen's Gambit, Moonflower Murders). (I missed her slashed mouth when it had healed up.)

With Jonny Green (the adopted son), Ellise Chappell (his wife), Macy Seelochan, Anne Reid, Ben Batt, Tony Hurst, Sue Johnstone, Peter Davidson, Kevin Doyle, Claire Skinner, Natalia Tena etc. It's a big cast.

Has I think the most upsetting scene I've seen this year.

Not what I was expecting. Powerful, and good. The key confrontation between mother and son has some really powerful big close ups and a beautiful sound design - just (well, not just - who knows how many layers of sound are in this quiet confrontation) but all I noticed was a distant and faint owl.

Quite neatly resolved (though we never did get to the bottom - excuse the pun - of why the producer thought Tamsin would want to rim him - some predictive text mistake. I was thinking) though with gangster Jonathan Pryce popping up at the end with the identities of Kitty's abusers definitely points to a second season.

Rubbish of the Year

Too Much. Lena Dunham thing. Did at least finish it.

Etoile. Amy Sherman-Palladino thing about ballet. No! Couldn't get past first episode! Didn't even finish the first episode!

Insomnia. Very daft Vicky Mclure thing.

Cold Water and The Guest. Both linked by Eve Myles, who should know better. Both unbelievable rubbish.

Dope Girls. Just couldn't get into it.

Girl Friend. More unbelievable rubbish... but I think audiences realise it is. Certainly the ones on Gogglebox seem to.

Zero Day. Robert de Niro President thing. Just never went further than episode 1.

The Iris Affair. Giant super-computer thing? Who commissions this stuff?

Paradise. Dan Fogelman's gone mad. Or it's just not our thing.

Hostage. Farcical Suranne Jones thing.

Suspicion. Oh yeah - that one. More fucking rubbish.

The Assassin. The Williams Brothers. One episode enough.

Des (2020 Luke Neal, Lewis Arnold)

In 1983, Dennis Nilsen, magnetically performed by David Tennant, admits rather casually to the murders of fifteen young men. Danny Mays (in a dogged and weary way) leads the team that tries to identify the victims. Then Nilsen's position changes, partly in reaction to biographer Jason Watkins, and he pleads not guilty to the charges.

Watkins plays (also rather well) the writer whose book formed the basis for the screenplay.

A sombre treatment by ITV in 3 x 45m. There sure was a lot of smoking going on in 1983.

Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue (2025 Anthony Horowitz)

Horowitz has authored a 6 x 45m show for BBC, a somewhat unsubtle repurposing of And Then There Were None. It's extremely far-fetched and the Mexican jungle set makes if seem quaintly old-fashioned. I wonder if this was all intentional. I loved Foyle's War but think his more recent stuff has been more childish and playful. I mean, he gives a knowing wink at David Ajala being shot twice, then falling off a mountain, and surviving, but it doesn't stop it being the most far-fetched thing ever. Some flashes of nasty violence tip it away from harmless pastiche.

So I'm not sure, but it was engrossing while it was on. The participants: Eric McCormack, Lydia Wilson (from About Time and a small role in Any Human Heart), Jan Le, Siobhan McSweeney, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Peter Gadiot, Adam Long, Carolina Guerra.

Also, never mind all the other incongruities - like what sort of torturing doctor is Eric McCormack?? - can someone tell me where that hooded cape came from? Was it in the hold, left over from a Scream convention? (Was it, in fact, a Scream reference?)

"Am I really in this show?"

Oh, I see - it's a parody of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!

The Morning Show: Season 4 (2025 Creator Jay Carson)

Er... what now. Deep fakery. Paris Olympics. A mysterious chemical leak cover-up.

Jen's done something weird to her lips - not recently - this isn't News - but she shouldn't have done.

Brings Reece back in from the cold. Finds story of the environmental cover-up. Turns out annoying Chief Exec Marion Cotillard was responsible. How can Billy Crudup turn this to his advantage? Is series three leftover John Hamm involved?

Amusing sub-story - amidst many sub-stories.. or are they all sub-stories? Is there one overarching story?

Anyway. Greta Lee's AI version of herself blows up her career. Very good. Lee from Russian Doll, Past Lives.

State Secret (1950 Sidney Gilliatt & scr)

Takes place in a fictional European country, with its own fictional language, which is distracting, especially when people like Jack Hawkins start mouthing it.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr is a doctor who operates on a foreign dignitary - when said dictator dies, Fairbanks can't be allowed to leave and tell anybody. But he flees and takes up with feisty showgirl Glynis Johns and shady entrepreneur Herbert Lom.

Earlier Launder-Gilliat coproduction Night Train to Munich also climaxes on a cable car. Just saying. Robert Krasker shot it, Thelma Myers edited, Guy Hamilton is assistant director, Ted Scaife camera operator, Gerry Fisher assistant.

The film doesn't credit where it was shot. I thought it might have been Italy, and it was.

Fairbanks had an interesting life. Highly decorated in the war, he mainly resided in England and often entertained the Queen and Prince Phillip!

Danny Green, Anton Diffring recognisable in small roles.

Not bad. Especially liked moment where doctor demands to see the patient he's operating on, and realises it's someone else!

The Goodbye Girl (1977 Herbert Ross)

Hugely enjoyable. Gay Richard III hilarious - Paul Benedict is the theatre director.

Dreyfuss also won the Golden Globe. César didn't give awards to foreign actors.

The apartment is off Amsterdam Avenue though as that runs the entire length of Manhattan, that's not too helpful. According to this it's West 78th Street.

Imitation of Life (1934 John M. Stahl)

First version of Fannie Hurst novel which according to Maltin's Movie Guide was adapted by Preston Sturges (William Hurlbut is credited). Struggling single mum Claudette Colbert takes on Louise Beavers and her daughter and their life is never the same, especially when visiting down and out Ned Sparks suggests packaging their pancake mix. Race relations angle brave for a film of this era.

Eventually Colbert is romanced by wooden Warren William, but her by then grown up daughter Rochelle Hudson falls for him (it's this bit of the plot that you start thinking - hang on - isn't this Mildred Pierce? It may have been that James M Cain lifted some of it for his 1941 novel.). 

Fredi Washington was a very light skinned African American, didn't have much of a film career but did co-found the Negro Actors Guild.

Er, what else? Merritt Gerstad photographed it for Universal with some style. It's most enjoyable.

Ruth & Alex / 5 Flights Up (2014 Richard Loncraine)

First of all, I thought this was going to be an elderly couple in Brooklyn meet cute - but no, it turns out Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman have been in a relationship for decades, one which we see in flashback, where they're played by Claire van der Bloom and Korey Jackson.

Should they sell their (great) apartment? No, of course not, even though horrible niece Cynthia Nixon thinks they should. Whilst a 'terrorist' is the victim of a city-wide manhunt, various offers come and go, duing the course of which he encounters cute Sterling Jerins, who we've encountered before, and thought we would again by the end of the film, but didn't. Though their dog does make a recovery after a ruinously expensive operations. The film ends rather suddenly, and we both would have watched more.

It sounds like that's all there was in Jill Ciment's (short) source novel 'Heroic Measures', though in that the elderly couple are Jewish and live in the East Village. From where, if you wanted to get to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the film version of the couple hang out, you'd take the Williamsburg Bridge, photographed here by Jonathan Freeman:

Joe (1970 John G Avildsen)

I'd seen this before on TV on 25 November 1979 - a 'TV version edited by George T Norris' according to my filing card, but still surprising it was shown at all. (Same running time as the theatrical version: 107 minutes.) Quentin first saw this film when he was seven. Thought like most of the audience that it was a black comedy - you're laughing at redneck Peter Boyle, though it's difficult to laugh about now. Anyway, into his orbit comes exec Dennis Patrick, who has just gone crazy and killed his daughter's hippy drug-dealing boyfriend, and they become unlikely sort of friends, notably in scene where they join a hippy session and experience pot and free love... though very quickly that all goes wrong. The Boyle character is vile - probably still exists as a MAGA type - but so is Patrick's.

A dirty, cold, snowy NYC is the backdrop, photographed by Avildsen himself. Written by Norman Wexler (Serpico, Saturday Night Fever).

Really quite queasy scene when the two couples meet - the wives are Audrey Caire and K Callan - the clash of cultures, with Peter Boyle on the knife edge of violent rage and a basement full of guns.

The ending is still absolutely shocking and ironic and ends in that sudden bitter taste way that somehow only films of the seventies had the power to do.

Also ironic are certain songs on soundtrack. Edited by George T Norris - ah! So he supervised the TV version - very good. Though the film was cut down from its original 150 minutes by William Sachs, who cut off the first chunk of the story and ended it more abruptly, and made more of Joe as the main character - all the right choices.

Young Susan Sarandon is the hippy daughter, who takes probably the moist pointless bath in the history of movies (and thus also possibly the most exploitative).

The Post (2017 Steven Spielberg)

The Washington Post was sold to Jeff Bezos in 2013.

Liz Hannah and Josh Singer wrote it.

Well I have just read two reviews of The Post in the Observer, and neither of them says 'One of the best films ever made' with which it is attributed on the cover of the DVD. Breaking news! (Well it would be had I not uncovered that fact on a previous jotting.)

Meryl Streep - Tom Hanks works beautifully. There's lots of lovely Spielberg oners. 

Babyteeth (2019 Shannon Murphy)

One of the favourites of Film Club's co-writer Ralph Davis. A quirky film to be sure, though as the story progresses things become clearer. Essentially, young Eliza Scanlen (fabulous) who's extremely ill falls for a no-good homeless young man Toby Wallace, to the consternation of parents Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis.

Divided into titled chapters, written by Rita Kalnejais from her own play.

Shannon was nominated by BAFTA. Scanlen was in Greta Gerwig's Little Women and HBO mini-series Sharp Objects.

Rolling Thunder (1977 John Flynn)

One of Quentin's favourites, and he explains why in 'Cinema Speculation'.

A somehow very watchable revenge thriller (from opening song 'San Antone' on) with William Devane a returned soldier who's been imprisoned and tortured by the Vietnamese. So when violent criminals torture him and kill his wife and son, he goes after them for revenge, with a hook hand. (They didn't make as much use of this as I would have thought.)

Didn't expect wife's lover / cop to be wasted.

Considering he's 'dead' already (events pre-capture were when he was 'alive'), I'm surprised he bothers. Linda Haynes is the lovesick fool who tags along.

Written by Paul Schrader (and reputed to be 'unfilmable') and rewritten by Heywood Gould for AIP. Devane also contributed, getting rid of much of his character's dialogue. In Schrader's original ending, the two ex soldiers converse in  Vietnamese through the final shootout, which I think would have been a great touch.

A big credit for editor Frank Keller, who did Bullitt and The Hot Rock. Photographed by Jordan Cronenweth.

The Diplomat - Season 3 already

So Allison Janney has gone from being the Press Secretary (in The West Wing) to the President Herself! Does she appoint Keri Russell as her VP? Does she fuck. She gives it to her husband Rufus Sewell. amidst courtship / Iraq flashbacks.

Lots of talking ensues. Then the Yanks nick the Russian super-weapon that may or may not exist.

Bradley Whitford and Aidan Turner join the merry party at Chequers. There's another season been commissioned already. Aren't we lucky?

Film Club (2025 Aimee Lou Wood & Ralph Davis)

Davis plays the doctor.

Aimee has had a breakdown and can't go out but with the help of her best friend Nabhaan Rizban she does!

Sweet exchange with delinquent kid Owen Cooper.

With Liv Hill, Suranne Jones, Adam Long, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Owen Cooper. Lisa McGrillis.

Films of the Year 2025

Coup de Grace

Shoah. And, while we're on the subject, The Zone of Interest.

Adolescence

A Real Pain

The latest season of Blue Lights.

The old films of Anthony Mann and John Alton like Border Patrol and T-Men. And Body and Soul.

Disclaimer.

The Girl on the Pier (1953 Lance Comfort)

An independent British 'Royal Films' picture, not particularly well made or acted, but somehow watchable. Quintessential fifties British family - pop Scotland Yard detective Charles Victor, mum Marjorie Rhodes, daughter Eileen Moore and sleuthing son Anthony Valentine (yes - from Performance!) visit Brighton. Get mixed up in murder plot involving Veronica Hurst, Ron Randell and Campbell Singer (who, when dressed as harlequin, comes over all stunty!) Weirdly young looking Brian Roper plays a journalist.

Good use of Brighton pier; Metropole and Grand Hotels visible on seafront.

The Zone of Interest (2023 Jonathan Glazer & scr)

Apparently only distantly related to Martin Amis' novel (it's dedicated to him). It won Oscars and BAFTAs as Best Foreign Film and for Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn's ominous sound design. For me, the production designers Chris Oddy, Joanna Kus and Kataryzna Sikora also should have won.

It's most chilling in its detached view of everything, in the accumulation of detail (the little girl who's obviously not right, the clothes that come into the house, even the ever-present dog) and the casual acceptance of the horror around them. Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller do a most convincing job.

Wasn't quite sure what the woman was collecting from the ashes in weirdly filmed night scenes, turns out she was planting food. (she was inspired by the story of a 90 year old woman who was present during filming.) Nor Friedel's coughing fit at the end - was he on his way out? Bonus points if he was. 

Without showing anything, it leaves you feeling sick.

It's photographed by Lukasz Zal, who's often associated with Pawel Pawlikowski.

That final bit of music over the credits by Mica Levi evokes for me the horrific mechanized weapons of mass murder and the screams of the victims. It's truly chilling.

Glazer made the famous Guinness 'surfer' ad and many music videos, which he still does; plus Sexy Beast (2000), Birth with Nicole Kidman (2004) and Under the Skin (2013, Scarlett Johansson).

Well done to Wendy Ide of The Guardian who said in her review 'If you haven't seen it yet, stop reading now'.

Blue Lights - Season 3 (2025 Declan Lawn, Adam Patterson)

Season highlights. Dearbháile McKinney experiencing road fatality; narrowly escapes Republican attack. Later saves women from being abused by her husband (in a curiously unexplored story). 

Sian Brooke steals acting honours confronting young girl in care - they both have been. Episode 4.  Great editing here also.

Then: hit men after Brooke as she transports a witness to a safe house. 

Rest of great cast: Martin McCann, Katherine Devlin, Nathan Braniff, Joanne Crawford, Andi Osho, Frank Blake, Michael Smiley. Bad guys: Cathy Tyson, Abigail McGibbon, Charlie Maher.

Lawn was an investigative reporter who had written plays at school then nothing since. A friend, an editor called Tom Lindsay, put on the short Bullet in the Brain which Lawn loved, and his fiend said to him "You should do that." Lawn then formed a relationship with photographer turned documentary make Adam Patterson, who - again impressed by seeing the same short film - suggested they work together as writers.  First success - The Salisbury Poisonings, led to short film Rough (2020) - about Belfast punishment killings, which they had come up with first - and they coaxed editor Tom out of retirement (he's given up work to look after his little boys) to cut it. Declan tells this story rather well here.

They then co-wrote The Undeclared War,  the feature Rogue Agent (2022) with James Norton, then this.