The Great Van Robbery (1958, released 1959 Max Varnel)

Written by Hammer's Brian Clemens but an independent UA release. The print we saw screened on TPTV was rather jerky and hazy. 

It's not a good film. For example the scenes set in 'Rio' and 'Rome' are clearly buildings in England, the 'Rio' one with carefully arranged tropical plants around it! Between that there's lots of library footage of airports and planes, as Interpol detective Denis Shaw tries to track down the origin of some stolen money that has been found in Brazil. Also there are abrupt and pointless bits of narration thrown in, like we're watching Dragnet, in a weird mid-Atlantic accent (which are funny).

Yet somehow we were engaged by it. The fight scenes are terribly badly staged, it's cheap, but it moves along (it's only an hour and five) and the acting's OK. The only other name I recognised behind the camera is Nic Roeg, who's the camera operator. And the only actor I knew was bottom-billed Paul Stassino (from Thunderball), who's in it for 30 seconds.

And perhaps the main good thing about it is Denis Shaw, who's an unlikely looking leading man, thick set like a boxer but polite. Actually he was in The Colditz Story, but his career otherwise is playing doormen, butchers, taxi passengers and the like in B movies and TV.

We were both independently thinking Robbie Coltrane

With Kay Callard, Tony Quinn, Philip Saville, Vera Fusek.

Not quite sure though who the shady guy with the weird voice is at the beginning, who buys the 'hot' money.

The Chase (1946 Arthur Ripley)

It was great to see a restored version finally, screened by TPTV. I spent the whole film thinking that Steve Cochran seemed awfully like Robert Cummings, but of course I'd misread the credits. Robert Cummings is Robert Cummings. Cochran plays the baddie - and rather well, with intensity. He was in Best Years of Our Lives, briefly - the 'friend' that Dana Andrews' wife has brought home - also White Heat, then much on TV in the 50s/60s.

Michele Morgan is the femme fatale in this curious, dream-like film - and it's dreamlike even before the actual dream starts, for example the hood's Miami pad, with its cherub spyglass and strange statues everywhere. Philip Yordan adapted Cornell Woolrich's novel 'The Black Path of Fear' (based on his short story 'Havana Night') which sounds a more straightforward innocent on the run story, so it's Yordan who's introduced this twist dream element, which is also a timely commentary on emotionally disturbed returning war veterans.

Peter Lorre is at his most ruthless, too. With Lloyd Corrigan, Jack Holt. Photographed by Franz Planer. Interesting editing, with a couple of outstanding sequences of multiple dissolves, by Edward Mann. Music by Michel Michelet.

Interesting art direction too, Robert Usher, formerly many years at Paramount.

The African Queen (1951 John Huston & scr)

Betty Bacall accompanied Bogie throughout the whole African shoot, enduring all manner of insects, wildlife and improvised bathrooms. While she does report illnesses amongst the crew, she herself was not unwell, so I'm beginning to think this story about the contaminated water from Huston's book may be made up (he claimed that only he and Bogie weren't sick as they always drank Scotch with their water). No matter, it's a wonderful film, made so by Katharine Hepburn and Bogart's performances. (Bogart won the Oscar, Kate was nominated but lost to Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Names Desire.) We'd forgotten how romantic it is.

From a C.S. Forester story. Whilst credited, James Agee's screen play was largely rewritten by Huston and Peter Viertel; the writer was in the 'last phase of his alcoholic self-destruction' (Lee Server's Mitchum book.)

Guy Hamilton was assistant director, who burned himself when stopping the boiler fall over on to the two stars, Jack Cardiff shot it. The music's by Allan Gray and Ralph Kemplen edited.

Past Lives (2022, released 2023 Celine Song & scr)

Song was a theatre writer and this is her debut, inspired partly by her own life - her family emigrated from South Korea to Canada. It has a feel of Lost in Translation to me. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo were childhood sweethearts who reunite online twelve years later, then reunite in person another ten years later, by which time Lee has married John Magaro and they live in the East Village (how they can afford this I don't know). It's very sweet and ultimately moving.

The music by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen is an asset. Photographed by Shabier Kirchner (Small Axe), edited by Keith Fraase.

Trapeze (1956 Carol Reed)

Max Catto's novel 'The Killing Frost' was adapted by Liam O'Brien and written for the screen by James R Webb. Reed said they followed very little of the book. He made the film to work with Lancaster, who was then in the producer's role. It made more money than any of Reed's films - it covered its cost from Japan ticket sales alone!

Its romantic triangle takes place in Paris's Cirque d'Hiver and high above the circus audience as Lancaster and Tony Curtis are both manipulated by Gina Lollabrigida (her second American film).

Gina only died last January, aged 95. In the seventies she concentrated more on photography.

It's still thrilling and tense, and you can't help notice that a lot of this high up stuff genuinely features the three stars - Lancaster actually worked as an acrobat when young, and Curtis was the type of kid to clamber up the elevated section of the subway. How they tempted Mrs L up there I don't... a large paycheck, no doubt.

Malcolm Arnold's music is an asset. Bert Bates is the supervising editor. Robert Krasker's fearless team photographed it.

With Katy Jurado (High Noon, Under the Volcano), Thomas Gomez, Johnny Puleo, Sid James.

When not up in the air, the frame is constantly packed with background circus action.

Curtis claims he had the suite under Lancaster's at the George Cinq and would climb up and surprise him for a drink. He was loaned out from Universal to United Artists for the picture and made him a much bigger star.

Mank (2020 David Fincher)

Fincher's film of his Dad's screenplay is too long and features too many characters - even if you know who people like Joseph von Sternberg and Ben Hecht are, it's still too populous. Simplify, simplify. And whilst Erik Messerschmidt's photography can look stunning, there's other times when it's so dark that (a) you don't know who we're seeing (b) it distances you from the action; the night time scene with Mank (Gary Oldman) and Marion (Amanda Seyfried) is a good example - it should draw you in, but you feel left out. 

And of course the premise is totally unsound - according to Welles' biographers, there's evidence from RKO's legal department that Mankiewicz was always to be given screen credit and thus Welles' (Tom Burke) outburst against the writer is ridiculous... Leaving the story that Hearst helped swing the elections by using faked film interviews - engineered by MGM - the strongest and most topical part of the story.

Thomasine and Bushrod (1974 Gordon Parks Jr.)

Badly written by its star max Julien - "Is that a car?" "Yeah." "Let's go take a look at it." - and badly acted, this black Bonne and Clyde is too tame to be a blaxploitation film and could usefully be remade (which it kind of has been in Queen and Slim).

Parks lets some of the scenes just play out, which is fine, though he equally fluffs badly chase sequences and the ending.

With Vonetta McGee, George Murdock, Glynn Turman, Juanita Moore (briefly).

Photographed by Lucien Ballard.

Say what now?

Don't Bother to Knock (1961 Cyril Frankel)

Randy racoon Richard Todd is fed up with his long term no sex affair with June Thorburn (The Pickwick Papers) and ventures off to shag the women of Europe - Nicole Maurey, Elke Sommer and Eleanor Summerfield, who all turn up unannounced to his Edinburgh apartment (well, Summerfield's daughter, Dawn Beret). It's not that funny; was probably considered quite risqué in its day. (Just realised I said exactly the same thing last time.)

I suspected the St Marks Square footage might be borrowed from David Lean's Summertime - if it was, I watch way too many movies.

Geoffrey Unsworth is on camera, Anne Coates edited it seamlessly.

'Americans' include future Carry On stars Amanda Barrie (2nd left) and Angela Douglas (4th left). Sheila Gallagher, in the glasses, looks familiar, but isn't.

Local Hero (1983 Bill Forsyth & scr)

"As it's Burns Night," I said to Q, "I wonder if we shouldn't watch Local Hero?"
"That's a coincidence" she said. "I'm literally just reading a post on that very film."
So that decided that.

Quite a leap from Gregory's Girl to this - a confident leap. Burt Lancaster brings a note of sympathetic fervour to an entirely sympathetic group (there's no bad guy - well there is - the oil company. And the air force...) Peter Capaldi, Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Jennifer Black, Jenny Seagrove, Fulton Mackay, Christopher Rozycki, John Gordon Sinclair (motorbike rider).

This useful Guardian article has Forsythe recalling the making of the film.

Loved the digital watch that the sea is covering and its plaintive beeping. And the rabbit. 

Pennan in Aberdeenshire

The beach is actually on the other side of Scotland: the Silver Sands of Morar

We did get somewhat carried away by Chris Menges' magic hour photography

It's a film you get lost in.

A Very Brady Sequel (1996 Arlene Sanford)

Worse then the original. Carol's former 'husband' Tim Matheson (Animal House, The West Wing) returns - only he's just trying to get his hands on a valuable stone horse. With a guest appearance by I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden.

The only funny moment is housekeeper Henriette Mantel claiming the magic mushrooms have had no effect on her and heads for bed - she opens the fridge and walks into it.

All About Eve (1950 Joseph Mankiewicz & scr)

Still relevant in its themes of women facing identity crises when they get older, and particularly if they're in showbusiness - though as great films like Nyad prove, there has been some change for the better over time. The parallel story of a star facing a threat from a younger contender is in a way a reworking of A Star Is Born, but we have the deceitful and manipulative character of Anne Baxter to enjoy as much as the juicily quotable dialogue. It's interesting how like Margo Eve becomes.

Margo is of course Bette Davis, who had just broken her contract with Warner Bros and stepped in to replace Claudette Colbert, who had hurt her back. (Mankiewicz had initially imagined it for Marlene Dietrich.) It's impossible to think about it without Bette. Her behaviour is terrible at times, she's a nasty and unhappy drunk. And Baxter is also wonderful as such a seemingly nice girl, evil on the inside. Both were Oscar nominated but Judy Holliday won for Born Yesterday.

I also liked the anti-cliché that Baxter is unable to seduce Margot's husband Gary Merrill or Celeste Holm's Hugh Marlowe. She thinks she's leading on George Sanders (one of his best performances), but he turns that around and makes it clear that she's his property.

The very ending, in which Eve encounters her first 'Eve' (Barbara Bates) is wonderfully circular.

Bette actually did marry Merrill a short time later. Her career did not immediately revive after this unfortunately and the fifties were not kind to her.

Great score by Alfred Newman, lovely though quite shadowy photography from Milton Krasner. Edited by Barbara McLean. With Gregory Ratoff as the producer, Thelma Ritter, Marilyn Monroe, Walter Hampden, Steven Geray. Won Oscars for Best Film, Writer and Director, Costumes and Sound. Ritter and Holm were nominated; Sanders won. Editing, photography, music, art direction all nominated.

Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948 John Paddy Carstairs)

A cobbling together of plot elements from 'Stamboul Train', 'Murder on the Orient Express', Rome Express and The Lady Vanishes, with the central McGuffin of a stolen diary which can start wars.

Jean Kent and Albert Lieven are the couple on the trail of the diary, which has been stolen by their former accomplice Alan Wheatley. David Tomlinson is the Most Annoying Man on the Train. Derrick de Marney and Rona Anderson are having an affair, Bonnar Colleano is there for (an ounce of) comic relief, Finlay Currie is the cruel employer of Hugh Burden, Paul Dupuis is the French Inspector, Gregoire Aslan the chef, who has to listen to recipes of disgusting British classics.

Allan Mackinnon wrote it, from an 'original idea' by Clifford Grey. Jack Hildyard shot it. There isn't much of Benjamin Frankel's music in it.

Nyad (2023 Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi)

A recreation of a true story - that initially uses a lot of actual newsreel footage of swimmer Diana Nyad - and her failed attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida in her twenties. Now sixty, Nyad (Annette Bening) announces to her best friend Bonnie (Jodie Foster) that she's going to attempt it again, which she sets out to do with the help of skippers Rhys Ifans and Karly Rothenberg. Very pleased to hear both leads are Oscar nominated

Editor Christopher Tellefsen has a lot to deal with in combining the newsreel stuff, flashbacks and the complexities of the swimming scenes. (An apprentice first to Ralph Rosenbloom, then Thelma Schoonmaker, he's responsible for such films as Smoke, Changing Lanes, Capote, Moneyball, Joy and A  Quiet Place.) Sound design interesting and good also.

From the end footage you can see that Bonnie was quite a powerful character too. I can see why they wrote it the way they did - two strong forces might have been too much - but it would have been intriguing had they related it like that. Julia Cox is the screenwriter.

Photographed by Claudio Miranda. Music by Alexandre Desplat and lots of classic sixties artists.

The Little Stranger (2018 Lenny Abrahmson)

A perfectly well enough made and acted film, but the story is frustratingly without resolution. We think that repressed doctor Domhnall Gleeson is the reason tragedy comes to the crumbling aristocratic pile, and if not, it's the ghost of the malignant younger sister of Ruth Wilson who died there many years before. The screenplay is by Lucinda Coxon but we have to blame Sarah Waters, for this is a fairly faithful retelling of her novel, which she claimed to be about the social order changing post-War. Well, we got that, but try writing a decent plot. (The house represents the state of the nation, also.)

We seem in a bad run of films that we either can't finish or do but are left disappointed. And to think that Abrahmson made Room.

Photographed by Ole Bratt Birkeland, edited by Nathan Nugent, production design Simon Elliott.

With Will Poulter, Liv Hill, Charlotte Rampling.

I think actually Domnhall may have been miscast, or mis-directed. He's so inward, and his voice also has to carry the narration, that after a while it's a bit numbing.

The Way to the Stars (1945 Anthony Asquith)

Pretty much nailed this before in prior reviews; splendid scenes involving unspoken words and emotions, quintessentially British. Good editing by Fergus McDonell. The film that taught us about John Pudney.

John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Rosamund John. Oh - also I wanted to see the young Renee Asherson, having started the day off with her older (what a young face she had - she's 30 here, looks much younger, was 77 in Memento Mori, lived till 99, 1915-2014. Her last performance was in The Others in 2001.) And Basil Radford, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Douglass Montgomery, Felix Aylmer, Bonar Colleano, Trevor Howard, Bill Owen.

Rattigan was a tail gunner in the RAF and used this experience to write the stage play 'Flare Path', which is the basis for this screenplay. It was a reasonable box office success in the UK but audiences were probably tired of seeing films about war.

Spanglish (2004 James L Brooks & scr)

Spanglish is great fun, up until roughly when the daughter Shelbie Bruce goes to posh school - then it becomes wayward and overlong. Overall though an entertaining ride, with Paz Vega becoming the new maid to Tea Leoni, Adam Sandler and Sarah Steele, plus granny Cloris Leachman (making her the second of two Last Picture Show alumni we see today).

Edited by Richard Marks (who was also a producer), shot by John Toll.

The scene in which Bruce interprets her mother is perhaps the highlight:

Shane (1952, released 1953 George Stevens)

A quadrangle. Stevens is particularly good with his blocking in this, best evidenced in a scene with all four - Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Alan Ladd and Brandon de Wilde - at table. In a fixed, static camera, father leaves the room, leaving the three, then Arthur takes her son to bed. Only Ladd in shot. We hear the son say he loves Shane. Ladd walks out - for a moment there's no one in shot. Then Arthur comes back in the room, surprised Ladd has left. Then Van Heflin comes back in - husband and wife reunited. This kind of blocking occurs throughout - it's very clever, and it's an elegantly filmed film, by Loyal Griggs (winning Oscar). But according to John Douglas Eames in 'The Paramount Story', the photography 'lost much of its beautiful composition during an unusually long post-production period (16 months) when wide-screen became the rage and Shane was cut to fit the new format.' Our copy is as it should be in 4x3.

With Jack Palance, Ben Johnson, Elisha Cook Jr., Emile Meyer, Edgar Buchanan, Douglas Spencer.

Well edited by William Hornbeck and Tom McAdoo, noticeable not only in splendidly cut saloon bar fight but also in interchanges between adults watched by the young boy.

The dirty West

Lots of good day-for-night too in stunning Wyoming locations. Music by Victor Young. Paramount.

Here Woody Allen tells the New York Times why Shane is his favourite American film. He calls attention to that great night scene where the bad guys come to the farm and try to reason it out, but we (and the boy) have all eyes on Ladd and Palance. He also notices that there's a little dissolve on Palance's legs as we seem him for the first time, that can be for no other reason than to disguise a mistake - interesting.

Memento Mori (1992 Jack Clayton)

A BBC TV film adaptation of a Muriel Spark novel, featuring a gallery of British grotesques, painted rather too broadly. In particular the lusts of aging Michael Hordern are quite hard to take, as are certain batty women in hospital. Renee Asherson is delightful as his slightly forgetful wife, John Wood enjoyable as friendly detective trying to find out who is phoning and saying 'Remember you will die', and Maggie Smith wonderful as a bitchy blackmailer.

With Thora Hird, Stephanie Cole, Barbara Hicks, Robert Flemyng, Cyril Cusack, Maurice Denham, Zoe Wanamaker. Music by Georges Delerue, photographed by Remi Adefarasin, edited by Mark Day. And the dubbing mixer is the fabulously named Aad Wirtz, familiar from things of that time. Its a real (Dutch) name.

헤어질 결심 / Decision to Leave (2022 Park Chan-wook & co-scr)

Winning the Best Director Award at Cannes, Decision to Leave is a bit like watching Vertigo as directed by Nic Roeg. It has the same tricky brilliance as that director's films of the seventies, the same use of the zoom lens, the flash forwards and intriguing match cuts that bring two unrelated things together. And also that Richard Fleischer-like device of putting a character into a scene they're imagining or witnessing,  But its story - a cop becomes obsessed with a woman, who he suspects may be involved in a murder, followed by a part two, in another part of the country, with the same woman, is creepily like Vertigo.

Yes - place. There's that song, isn't there, a suitably haunting one, 'Mist' performed by Jung Hoon Hee and Song Chang-sik, ('I walk alone on the street filled with mist') supposedly written about the gloomy city of Ipo, where the latter action takes place. And Mahler's Fifth, used as a love theme.

Excuse me, I haven't introduced the principal players. Tang Wei is particularly good as the femme fatale, Park Hae-il is the insomniac detective. With Lee Jung-hyun and Go Kyung-Pyo. And the detective who accompanies him in Part 2 - comedian Kim Shin-young in her debut as an actor - offers a touch of humour.

A dazzling experience. Edited by Kim Sang-beom (who has 131 credits on IMDB, one of which is Oldboy) and photographed by Kim Ji-yong.

Talking of Oldboy, the director seems to have calmed down a bit after his success as an enfant terrible - I'm glad to say.