Frasier (1993 - 2004 Created by Peter Casey, David Lee and David Angell)

It was a sad moment when we realised we had come to the end of our Frasier repeats, which had usually marked the start of every evening's viewing for months, but something had to be said about this sublime series, a comedy which dared America with its intelligence and wit. The common format - a beautifully set up comedy of disasters - made me think more than once of Fawlty Towers. Kelsey Grammer excelled in the title role whether through subtle reactions or barnstorming over-the-topness; indeed looks exchanged between he, David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Jane Leeves and Peri Gilpin become more nuanced the more they all got to know each other. Plus you have to rate Moose as the most incredible dog since Asta in the 1930s.

1998 Emmys won for Outstanding Comedy Show, Grammer and Pierce (Leeves nominated)

Bedecked with guest stars both heard and seen - the latter including such diverse folk as Derek Jacobi, Eve Marie Saint, Marsha Mason, Anthony Lapaglia and Millicent Martin, Patrick Stewart and Laura Linney.

Whilst it is clear that the two most educated characters in the show are also the dumbest, there's often a moment in an episode where there's a little moment of tenderness..

Did we really watch 263 episodes? Sometimes it was five a night... Loved the one with the butler. And the one in the lodge where all the characters keep dreaming. And the one where Niles shags Lilith. And the one where they think they've discovered a murder. And the one...

Shaun of the Dead (2004 Edgar Wright)

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright had fun writing a send up of horror and zombie films in particular, replete with sinister synth score. 'How's that for a slice of fried gold?' Pegg asks at one point, a line that could equally be about the film.

Wright has completed Baby Driver, whilst Shadows, co-written with David Walliams, is under development and due for release 2019.

Pegg sure looks like a character from The Deer Hunter in film's last act.

Halloween (1978 John Carpenter)

One of Carpenter's very best films glides knowingly through the suburban Autumn using the widescreen brilliantly in a way few others bother to do, so the shocks are often coming out at you without an edit in sight. Jamie Lee Curtis is clearly the star of the show, Donald Pleasance having a non part really ('I'll just wait outside this house all night').

Wonderful camerawork from Dean Cundey - if the night light is blue, on this occasion I'll let it go. Carpenter clearly had watched Hitchcock - it has Psycho written all over it, and he does a good moving POV scene like the Master would. It was one of the most successful independent films of all time, grossing $47m from a $300k production budget, half of which was spent on the Panavision cameras and the Panaglide system (a competitor to Steadicam) - more about this here. Certainly the way it is filmed is wonderful:

Debra Hill, who wrote it with Carpenter, is also the producer.

Elvis & Nixon (2016 Liza Johnson)

Written by Joey & Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride), an unlikely but true tale of Elvis seeking to become an FBI Agent At Large. Suffers somewhat from odd casting of Michael Shannon as Elvis, Kevin Spacey's Nixon is more successful. Good turn from Colin Hanks. Plus Alex Pattyfer, Johnny Knoxville, Evan Peters.

Stars and Bars (1988 Pat O'Connor)

William Boyd's comic novel - perhaps in part a reflection of being English in America, especially the wider America - adapted well is a treat, unlike anything else. Why it is 'lost' with no DVD release is a mystery, especially with cast of Daniel Day Lewis (climbing naked from a window), Harry Dean Stanton etc. 'Another character out of place', I noted in April '12.

Some losses through adaptation e.g. the theme of horrible food, but the grossly OTT Atlanta hotel scenes remain intact. Thoroughly amusing, with great scenes such as Martha Plimpton retaliating against horny reverend Spalding Gray, climactic fencing scene, 'blind' Glenne Headley and 'ape', cardboard box clothing. Perhaps scenes with fencing tutor Keith David don't quite work, and the classic line 'How do you like America now?' seems a bit swallowed.

With Laurie Metcalfe, Maury Chaykin, Matthew Coles, Joan Cusack, Deidre O'Connell, Steven Wright.

The Renoir featured is I think a reproduction...

Rosemary's Baby (1968 Roman Polanski & scr)

Rather silly story by Ira Levin given bravura treatment by director Polanksi, who with William Fraker uses wide (25mm) angle lenses to replicate human vision and deep focus so that the action is weirdly close and confining. ("Roman has been shooting his movies with one or two lenses all his life. He likes wide lenses because he  likes to see the characters integrated with the space. A wide angle lens gives you more depth of field, which is important when things that happen in the background have to be sharp." Pawel Edelman.) Also carries from Repulsion brilliant sound design (I'd swear it's that same person practising piano as in the last film) and interesting details and composition. Should have learned from Lewton though and not showed the devil's scaly hands, which are funny. Some wonderfully striking moments of dream sequences, a bed that seems at sea, convent. There's some kind of yellow theme running through it but I don't know what it symbolises.

John Cassavetes and Ruth Gordon are particularly good; with Mia Farrow, Sidney Blackmer (always shot miles away), Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy and Victoria Vetri (who's rather good, and amusingly is mistaken for 'Victoria Vetri') - and Tony Curtis' voice.

The fact that we had recently stayed in a place where you could also hear everything next door was quite funny.

Vetri in her other hat - or rather no hat - as 'Angela Dorian', Playboy's 1967 Playmate of the Month

In a weird after-story, Vetri was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2011 after shooting her husband...

Infinitely Polar Bear (2014 Maya Forbes & scr)

Mark Ruffalo must get offered a lot of parts; it's good that he continues to takes smaller and more offbeat things like this study of a man with manic depression trying to look after his kids Imogene Wolordarsky (the writer's daughter) and Ashley Aufderhide while mum Zoe Zaldana betters herself.

To answer my question, yes it is definitely most autobiographical as this fascinating quote from The New Yorker reveals:

"In 1996, when Maya Forbes was twenty-eight, an alumna of “The Larry Sanders Show” with a studio development deal, she introduced her future husband, Wally Wolodarsky [the film's producer], to her father, a descendant of two of the older and more prominent families in Boston. They were with Forbes’s sister, China—the singer of a band called Pink Martini—and China’s boyfriend at the time, the director Wes Anderson, who was working on “Rushmore.” The group picked up Maya and China’s dad, Cameron, at McLean, the psychiatric hospital outside Boston where he stayed during bipolar episodes, and took him to lunch. Cam ordered a mushroom omelette, mushroom toast, mixed mushrooms, and a giant mushroom that took up an entire plate. He was a heavy smoker. After lunch, they dropped him back off at McLean. He popped in to get something and emerged with two cigarettes in his mouth. Wolodarsky took a picture of him smoking both, an arm around each daughter. Anderson gave Bill Murray two cigarettes in “Rushmore” and told Maya she should forget about whatever movie she was working on and write the story of her father instead."

Restless (2012 Edward Hall)

Utterly absorbing and interesting, cutting between (sometimes in the same scene) Charlotte Rampling (fabulous), Michelle Dockery and Michael Gambon in the seventies and Hayley Atwell (brilliant), Rufus Sewell, Thekla Reuten and Adrian Scarborough (good) in WWII. Terrific writing (William Boyd - is that three-legged dog in the screenplay?) with sinister, open end. Good music, too, by Lorne Balfe, shot by David Higgs. The shocks are quite shocking, the laughs few. Summer of 39 came to mind more than once. Not sure why we took so long to watch it again. James Norton also has small part.

Say Anything... (1989 Cameron Crowe & scr)

This film just keeps getting better and better. Ione Skye falls for John Cusack because he guides her round some broken glass; John Mahoney is good as fairly tough father. Lily Taylor is the revenge singing girl and Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith from Frasier) is also in Seattle set film (as are Jeremy Piven, Joan Cusack and Eric Stoltz). Must make sure there's a CC worthy line as good as 'I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen' in everything. Polly Platt is producer and in cast. Shot by Laszlo Kovacs, edited by Richard Marks; first AD on Cameron's debut is Jerry Ziesmer who says 'the actors respected Cameron's script, and the respect for the writer flowed into respecting Cameron as director'.

The pen.

As to Ione Skye (who was born in Hampstead, incidentally) she has been working solidly... just not in anything I've heard of.

Manhattan (1979 Woody Allen)

There's a moment where Allen and Mariel Hemingway are talking and she says something like "It's not filthy" that we both loved - Q said it's the young girl trying to be grown up. She will make you cry.

Very artfully composed e.g. scenes where characters inhabit little boxes within the wide shot.

"You look so beautiful I can hardly keep my eye on the meter".

Aloha (2015 Cameron Crowe & scr)

Just can't leave it alone. Up there with the best Wilders. A perfect film. Didn't notice before the symmetry between the hands of Danny McBride and Danielle Rose Russell (who will make you cry).

In the incredible sound / vision montage at the end there's definitely a snatch of Bowie and (I thought) Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men and Pacino in Scent of a Woman.

Well disguised plot. And notice the tiny detail of the flag the right way up at the end. And the sky full of satellites.

And how about where she shows him her laptop with a picture of a cute dog saying "Can you imagine all of this with weapons?" (Another bit of disguised plot.)

It took $25m worldwide and cost $37m, in other words, a flop. What the fuck cost $37m??? Wasn't it marketed properly? What's going on? It did worse that Elizabethtown, which just about grossed its $54m production budget - but again - what the fuck cost $54 million???

A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012 Crispian Mills & scr, prod)

We found ourselves much more receptive to Crispian's debut than last time. It seems dark, but is in fact very funny, a sort of Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End mood pervades. Simon Pegg, Amara Karan, Paul Freeman, Clare Higgins. Chris Hopewell directed the animated scenes and was the production designer.

Hitchcock (2012 Sacha Gervasi)

Loved Helen Mirren's performance, others good too. Written by John McLaughlin from Stephen Rebello's factual book.

Psycho (1960 AH)

Beautifully cinematic in a way that few films achieve.

Brilliant performances all round though Anthony Perkins' is his best.

It lies like hell though - the 'mother's' voice is clearly not that of Perkins - but Hitch didn't care as he raked in the cash.

The Choice (2016 Ross Katz)

Very familiar Nicholas Sparks material (unsuited couple, fair ground, seaside setting, inevitable tragedy), adapted by Bryan Sipe. Enjoyed performances of Teresa Palmer and Benjamin Walker as they fall in love; went downhill after car crash. Rest of cast good: Maggie Grace, Alexandra Daddario, Tom Wilkinson.

Shot in Panavision by Alar Kivilo in North Carolina.

Starter for Ten (2006 Tom Vaughan)

Very good, believable (based on real experience?), well acted, For cast see here. There's a David Nicholls fan club in this house.

Fedora (1978 Billy Wilder)

Typically well worked out and detailed, Wilder and Diamond return to the former's meditation on fame in Sunset Boulevard, using the same star, an aged William Holden. Whilst the story is kind of nuts (there's no way Holden would mistake Fedora's dash up the villa stairs as the physique of a 67 year old woman) its commentary on the sickening lure of stardom is well told and timely, and the film carries a melancholy weight, no doubt aided by Rozsa's score (mixed a little too low for me).

The construction, in which the second part of the film consists of each character giving a different flashback, is a bit pedestrian, and you expect Holden's character to be the voice of reason and pass judgment on all this craziness, but it doesn't go that way.

There are of course some very smart gags both visual and spoken.

Gerry Fisher on camera, Trauner's designs.

Marthe Keller, Hildegard Knef, Jose Ferrer, Frances Sternhagen, Mario Adorf, Hans Jaray, Michael York and Henry Fonda.

One Day (2011 Lone Scherfig)

Smart move of David Nicholls to end his screenplay at the beginning - though does make you ask why he (Jim Sturgess) wouldn't have phoned her (Anne Hathaway) the very next day, and they would have gotten together immediately. But that, I suppose, would have been no fun. Also liked the once a year idea because what's happened in the interim is often not stated but picked up somehow visually. Very nicely acted by the couple and Ken Stott, Patricia Clarkson, Romola Garai and Rafe Spall, who gives it a quirky spin.

National Treasure (2016 Marc Munden)

Great acting in This Is England's Jack Thorne's uncomfortably topical drama about former TV stars accused of sex crimes, starring Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters, Andrea Riseborough (Party Animals) and Tim McInnerny, who are all wonderful, but I think Andrea deserves a special mention. With Babou Ceesay (foul mouthed lawyer), Mark Lewis Jones (Stella), Graeme Hawley, Nadine Marshall (D.I.), young Cara Barton, Lucy Speed and Ruby Serkis (yes, daughter of Andy) as the babysitter.

Munden keeps his camera at a distance, further back than is usual. Also unusual is the distinctive score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer.

Mother's Day (2016 Garry Marshall)

We just saw Jack Whitehall on Jonathan Ross, who described the film as 'not that bad', which Jack said was the best review he'd heard. Garry Marshall's last film is decently acted but for an hour I didn't feel at all engaged with the material; then it warmed up. All the plot is relayed through dialogue, and it's pretty guessable.

Julia Roberts. Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Timothy Olyphant, Shay Mitchell, Britt Robertson, Margo Martindale and, as the credits so charmingly put it, 'and as always Hector Elizondo '.

Money Monster (2016 Jodie Foster)

There's no bad acting in Jodie's efficient film, though you wonder if the premise is credible - ask Alan DiFiore and Jim Kouf, whose story it was (Jamie Linden also on screenplay). No matter, becomes increasingly involving.

Cast then comprises Clooney, Roberts and the incandescent Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Denham (producer), Lenny Venito (cameraman), Dennis Boutsikaris, Emily Meade and Condola Rashad.

It's shot by Matthew Libatique and edited by Matt Chesse, who so confused us with Quantum of Solace but also brought us Finding Neverland, Monster's Ball and The Kite Runner.

The Nice Guys (2016 Shane Black)

Not prime Black, co-written by Anthony Bagarozzi - compare characters to Lethal Weapon for example - but good fun, benefiting immeasurably from the involvement of Ryan Gosling's daughter played by Angourie Rice (who is rumoured to be in Sophia Coppola's The Beguiled remake). Gosling and Russell Crowe are good in relaxed form.

Ph. Philippe Rousselot in Panavision.