You're Cordially Invited (2025 Nicholas Stoller & scr)

Reese and Will Farrell were on Graham promoting this piece of crap, saying how much fun they'd had. I don't know why she agreed to be in it. It's shit.

I laughed once.

The Pianist (2002 Roman Polanski)

 "I remembered a moment perfectly well in Warsaw before we went back to Krakow. I was with my father on this street and we saw the Germans marching, impeccable in their uniforms. And my father squeezed my hand and said, 'mother fuckers, mother fuckers.' And that's how I recreated that scene. And the scene where the father is slapped. One day my father came home and his ear was bleeding and he told us that there was a German officer who stopped him and said, "Why didn't you bow?" and hit him on the head. Some silly people say, "Why didn't Jews rebel?" Well, they did rebel, but it doesn't happen like it happens in the movies. Things happen gradually and you always think that it won't be worse."

The ruined city was not CGI but some deserted Soviet Barracks near Berlin that production designer Allan Starski was allowed to destroy. Pawel Edelman shot it, Hervé de Luze edited. Polanski deliberately shoots at arm's length, without cinematic flourishes, so it's more like you're there. The resistance attack on the police station for example is shot entirely from the point of view of the upstairs apartment, the ghetto uprising seen again just from this point of view. It's very effective.

Polanski himself escaped from the Krakow ghetto - his mother went to Auschwitz, his father survived. He'd wanted to make a film about this period and saw Wladyslaw Szpilman's autobiography was a way into it. Ronald Harwood is credited for the script but was quoted as saying that Polanski had contributed many ideas and bits from his own experiences. Some if it's quite hallucinatory - the soldier making the Jewish citizens dance, the boy crawling through the wall. But the cruelty of the Nazis  / Poles and the depiction of the Warsaw ghetto are horribly good.

And the moment when he meets the German officer, played by Thomas Kretschmann who saves his life, is so beautiful. (Though he's later almost shot as he's wearing a German overcoat - a great touch.)

Adrien Brody's great as Szpilman. With Emilia Fox, Ed Stoppard, Maureen Lipman, Frank Finaly, Jessica Kate Meyer, Ruth Platt.

Won the Cannes Palm D'Or, Oscars for Brodie, Polanski and Harwood, BAFTAs for Film and Polanksi. Edelman nominated by both.

But he's not allowed to make a noise...

Brian and Maggie (2025 Stephen Frears)

Encounters between journalist and PM make for quite the most boring thing we've seen in a while, despite performances of Steve Coogan and Harriet Walter (who couldn't stand Maggie!) we only watched one of two parts.

The Scamp (1957 Wolf Rilla & scr)

Adapted from a play 'Uncertain Joy' by Charlotte Hastings.

Colin Petersen is a wild child who has been badly brought up by no-good father Terence Morgan and no mother, finds a friend in schoolteacher Dickie Attenborough, who eventually shelters the boy when dad takes off for the Americas. Things don't go too smoothly with Dickie's wife Dorothy Alison and housekeeper Maureen Delaney, and especially a loathsome friend Margaretta Scott. Then Morgan returns, with 'American' wife Jill Adams...

Not schmaltzy. The kid's feelings / reactions seem genuine. Another nice performance from Petersen, who had very few film appearances.

Photographed by Freddie Francis.

Terrible title.

Runaway Jury (2003 Gary Fleder)

John Grisham novel adapted by 'Brian Koppelman & David Levien and Rick Cleveland and Matthew Chapman'... yes, one of those.

It's an engrossing film in which the central court case is the prosecution of the gun company whose product was used in a murder... yeah, good luck with that in real life. It's a bit far fetched really.

And - it's way over-directed. And accordingly, over-edited by William Steinkamp. Robert Elswitt is on camera.

John Cusack, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Bruce McGill (judge), Jeremy Piven.

A Cry from the Streets (1958 Lewis Gilbert)

A girl cries out for her mother in the streets at the beginning of this social drama, just to underline the point. Barbara Murray (who of course is Stanley Holloway's daughter in Passport to Pimlico) is an overly caring social worker who gets involved with three homeless kids - an authoritative older sister and her two brothers. Kindly electrician Max Bygraves gets involved (and sings a song about rain).

With Mona Washbourne, Kathleen Harrison, Colin Petersen (harmonica playing kid) and Dana Wilson (big sister) - both Australian.

Vernon Harris adapted Elizabeth Coxhead's novel "The Friend in Need". Not as cosy as it might sound - the kids' father has murdered her mum. the other kid's mum is an alcoholic who kills herself, the couple running the kids' home are wholly unsympathetic.

Harmonica-led music from Larry Adler.

There's a strange James Bond connection in this film. Gilbert went on to direct You Only Live Twice, editor Peter Hunt edited the first Bond films and graduated to director on OHMSS, and dubbing editor John Glen ended up cutting OHMSS and others before himself graduating to director with For Your Eyes Only.

Shoah (1985 Claude Lanzmann)

Well. That took a while to watch. I started it on Monday - Holocaust Memorial Day. It's true what they say - it's the accumulation (and at times repetition) of the detail that ultimately makes it so overwhelming. And for everyone who goes "Yeah - the Holocaust - gas chambers and ovens", that's the obvious bit, but the true horror of what went on there - before they even arrived - from the witnesses, that's what makes it so shockingly painful. 

Lanzmann (a Jew who fought with the Resistance in WWII) particularly thanked Ziva Postec, "who worked beside me day after day for five years on the editing of the film".

The thirteen year old at the extermination camps who sang on the river. Knowing the Russians were coming, the guards shot every one of them left in the head - but somehow he still survived. (Was he in fact brain damaged?) One of two survivors out of 400,000 killed at Chelmno. "Why do you smile so much?" "I'm alive, and it's better to smile." That the town of Auschwitz was 80% Jewish - the irony. Lanzmann and his invaluable Polish translator Barbara Janicka, who's never fazed by anything she's translating.

For those who disbelieve - the evidence is all in the 'special train' reports.

The Jews' stolen property and possessions were used to pay for their transportation to the camps - they financed their own annihilation. The irony. "There was no budget for the extermination of the Jews." And by extension, they had also payed for the construction of the camps and the gas that killed them.

Often dispassionate testimonials. A calm camera. Its endless journey across country, on railways, filming often in bleak winter. Trains as instruments of death. The secrecy of the whole thing.

The ex-Nazis, secretly filmed. None seem regretful / aware. The Special Trains boss who claimed he knew nothing of Treblinka.

The scale of it all - so horrifyingly big. The brutality of the guards. How did the survivors cope? "By shutting down". But you can't unsee what you've seen.

The Poles who were aware what was going on. "Before the war, the Jews and the Germans ran all the businesses." Some definitely thought they were better off without them.

A Czech worker at Auschwitz was so appalled he stepped into the gas chamber - but a woman who knew him said "What good would that do?"

It was the above section of the film, beginning with Rudolf Vrba trying to get the healthier Czechs to revolt, ending in the gas chambers, that I found the most upsetting.

Raul Hilberg, preeminent Holocaust scholar

Vrba was the Auschwitz escapee. I read the publication of his co-authored Vrba-Wetzler report in 1944 probably prevented the extermination of 200,000 Hungarians who were destined for a death camp.

And through the nine hours I hadn't really thought about my own quarter-Jewish connection to the material. It was only after that I remembered once having a conversation with my mum about how the Holocaust had affected my family. She reassured me that her husband's family had immigrated from the Netherlands before World War One, way before Hitler.. but that some of the extended family left back there had been.. what's that word in the film? "Processed". So thinking about that was quite a kick in the gut.  (Yes - the euphemistic language. In one memorandum about the gas trucks the Jews are referred to as the "merchandise", and the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto aren't being sent to their death in Treblinka but being "resettled".)

But the single thought I was left with was how could the German / Ukrainian / Lithuanian soldiers, the guards, have gone through with their endless horrifying treatment of the people without objecting or rebelling? How could they live with their actions?

Black Doves (2024 Joe Barton)

Made special through good writing (an original written for the screen entirely by Barton) and characterisations of the Kiera Knightley and Ben Wishaw characters plus a couple of great female killers in the shape of  Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy (Operation Mincemeat, Three Women). Well directed by Alex Gabassi and former editor Lisa Gunning (three each).

Well acted all round. With Sarah Lancashire, Andrew Buchan, Adeel Akhtar, Andrew Koji, Sam Troughton, Kathryn Hunter.

I guess though it's still in the Killing Eve mode - slightly absurd black humour in the midst of violent action.

Could stand alone, but there's also room for one more.

It's Complicated (2009 Nancy Meyers & scr)

The one where the kitchen isn't so great, but only because it's a plot point - now all her children have moved out, Meryl Streep wants to extend her house (which makes no sense whatever) and have that fabulous big kitchen she's always wanted - maybe Nancy is sending herself up?

Nancy and Charles Shyer split up in 1999 but reportedly are still good friends. That may have inspired this screenplay, as Streep and ex Alec Baldwin get it on again, whilst Steve Martin hangs around and confuses things. (He's the third act.)

Was it John Krasinski's breakthrough role? No - that would have been The Office, which kicked off in 2005. With Lake Bell, Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson, Zoe Kazan.

ACE nominated Joe Hutshing and David Moritz's editing (toilet bowl to French Horn an amusing match cut!), BAFTA nominated Alec Baldwin. Photographed by John Toll.

Ocean's Eight (2018 Gary Ross & co-scr)

Yes - on something of a Gary Ross retrospective. He came up with the story, too (it was co-written with Olivia Milch) and if nothing more than a glossy heist movie, it is entertaining. Sandra Bullock is Danny Ocean's sister, who leads her posse of Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham-Carter, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina, Rihanna, Sarah Paulson and - ultimately - Anne Hathaway. With James Corden, Dakota Fanning, Elliott Gould.

The setting is the Met Gala, and involves a motorised toy submarine.

Photographed by Eigil Bryld, edited by Juliette Welfling.

Need to watch Big, Dave and Lassie.

Natalie Portman Double Bill: Beautiful Girls (1996 Ted Demme) / Leon (1994 Luc Besson & scr)

In Beautiful Girls, Timothy Hutton journeys from Chicago to Somewheresville, USA (don't bother telling us) and reencounters his high school buddies Matt Dillon (with Mira Sorvino but having affair with married Lauren Holly), Noah Emmerich (married to Anne Bobby), Michael Rapaport (a jerk who's been rejected by Martha Plimpton) and Max Perlich. After over an hour his GF Annabeth Gish finally turns up, but by this point Hutton has become somewhat besotted with thirteen year old Natalie Portman, who's literally the girl next door, and who steals the film. The final moment where he kisses her goodbye looked improvised as her response is so delightful - it's the highlight of the film. Mainly, screenwriter Scott Rosenberg isn't shining a very nice light on the male sex, and probably quite rightly.

Rosie O'Donnell has a scene stealing moment talking about faked models ruining men's perceptions of women. With Uma Thurman, Pruitt Taylor Vince, David Arquette, John Carroll Lynch.

Photographed by Adam Kimmel.

Mira Sorvino and Michael Rapaport had appeared together in the previous year's Mighty Aphrodite. Demme was Jonathan's nephew, died of a drugs overdose in 2002 aged 38, also directed Blow (2001), documentary A Decade Under the Influence (2003).

Somewheresville. Milwaukee? No - Stillwater, Minnesota.

Cut back to - Two years earlier. Portman's debut is a love story between a twelve year old and an assassin, subject matter which must have raised a few eyebrows in certain parts of the USA. It's wonderfully amoral, and the Portman - Reno relationship is beautifully etched - the screenwriter is Besson.

Gary Oldman is the baddie and Danny Aiello Reno's father-figure (who betrays him).

What would have been termed a Tragedy in the old days really deserved a ten-years-later sequel.

Music by Eric Serra, with a great ostinato recurrent theme.

Suddenly Last Summer (1959 Joseph L Mankiewicz)

Absolutely fascinating and fairly gripping adaptation of Tennessee Williams play, by Gore Vidal. (Williams gets a screenplay credit without having worked on it.)

Montgomery Clift is the brain surgeon called in to lobotomize Elizabeth Taylor at the insistence of her aunt Katharine Hepburn, who by the time her first long scene is over, we begin to suspect is bonkers herself. It all revolves around the death of her (never seen) son, who we also think is probably extremely suspicious. Madness, incest and homosexuality are stirred together in a merry stew.

With Albert Dekker, Mercedes McCambridge, Gary Raymond.

Jack Hildyard on camera, Arthur Ibbelson operating, William Hornbeck the supervising editor (John Jympson did the assembly). Oliver Messel was the production designer. Music: Malcolm Arnold, Thomas Stanford.

It was in 1956 filming Raintree County (also with Taylor) that Clift crashed his car into a tree and had to have his face rebuilt. By this time he was uninsurable, but Liz came through for him.

A Columbia release. Most enjoyable, especially Taylor kissing Clift and then his boss walks in.

The Good Place - Season 2 (2017 Michael Schur)

The philosophy angles are quite intriguing.

In a good twist our four humans entice Ted Danson onto their side. He manages to get them to a presiding Judge (an amusing turn for Maya Rudolph) who agrees they can have another shot at living.

Pleasantville (1998 Gary Ross & scr)

Pleasantville is about everything. That seems like a sweeping statement, but as I was tumbling about in its various sub-texts and themes and images, I noticed there's even an Adam and Eve moment. And for sure, the film's about education, and self-improvement. And race. And art and music, sex, the 1950s, TV vs. reality. And even... and I was getting that the hands shaking symbol of the Chamber of Commerce - even that starts looking weirdly like some dictatorship / Nazi symbol, the way it's designed and shot.

It seems that after the seventies, Hollywood had quite a trend for fantasy, with films like Big, Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married, The Witches of Eastwick...

Ross carried Tobey McGuire and William H Macy forward to Seabiscuit... and composer Randy Newman and editor William Goldenberg. It's beautifully photographed by John Lindley. For more info see here.

It's very good.

Q reminded me that Bowie also had recorded a version of 'Across the Universe'. It was for the 'Young Americans' album.

The Spider and the Fly (1949 Robert Hamer)

See here. Just so enjoy the relationship / acting of Eric Portman and Guy Rolfe, who I don't recall seeing in anything else.

And you can't argue with the Hamer / Unsworth / Auric combination either.

Seabiscuit (2003 Gary Ross & scr)

"You can have five hundred great dialogue writers, " Billy Wilder once said, "but in there only five people who are great at construction." And that comes to mind when you think about how well written this film is (the screenplay was Oscar nominated). For one thing, the whole is set against the Depression and that story, with narration by David McCullough, recurs at appropriate moments - the whole story is about not writing off losers, and the Second Chance. Then look at how the stories of three disparate characters - played by Chris Cooper, Jeff Bridges and Tobey Maguire - are told and cross cut until they finally are all together - which, by the way, doesn't happen until a sweet fifty minutes in. Cooper's rescue of an injured horse is in there early - in fact it's one of the things that endears Bridges to him in the first place. And the child's game, in there so early, there again later, basically saying that Maguire has become Bridges' substitute son.

"Is that Tom Newman?" I queried over a particular passage of music. Well, no, but close - it's Randy Newman. So love that theme that kicks in at 1:07 when 'Biscuit' opens up. And with John Schwartzman on camera and William Goldenberg editing, it's a classy production.

And William H Macy, always so good, a really distinctive personality, who's great as the radio broadcaster.

Tobey's in 2009 Jim Sheridan film Brothers, which looks good.

Out There (2025 Marc Evans, Ed Whitmore)

Martin Clunes is a farmer with somewhat unwise welsh accent. Son Louis Ashbourne Serkis gets mixed up with drug dealer Gerran Howell and his sister Carly-Sophia Davies. With Mark Lewis Jones, Natalia Kostrzewa (who gets in on the action rather too easily), Michael Obiora, Eiry Thomas (PC).

Six part drama for ITV at least offers us something different, though as the plot develops it seems to be turning into Breaking Bad, with the former innocent having to partner with the evil drug dealer.

It also doesn't resolve, leaving us all in mid-situation.

Nicely photographed though, by Sam Thomas.

The Cider House Rules (1999 Lasse Hallstrom)

I wonder what John Irving's fascination was with hospitals (and other institutions like hotels)? He had a similar upbringing to the character in Garp, but hospitals don't seem to figure greatly. I suppose any institution is a good novelistic device because of the number of characters you can introduce and how they interact.

Irving won the best screenplay Oscar for his adaptation, and Michael Caine received his second Oscar as the tough and tender pro-abortion doctor. A timely rewatching with 12 US States now having totally outlawed abortion - the old back street days will of course reappear.

Bridget Jones's Baby (2016 Sharon Maguire)

Patrick Dempsey joins cast and is one of two possible fathers of Bridget's baby. I don't think it's ever confirmed who the real father is.

Photographed by Andrew Dunn.

Emma Thompson steals the film as a no-nonsense doctor. As she's credited as one of the scriptwriters it's probable that she wrote her own dialogue.

The Making of The Ipcress File ( 2006 Tim Meadows, Tim Mallett)

Short, twenty-minute interview with Sir Michael is very interesting:

1. Sidney J Furie hated the script and set alight to it.

2. Much of the humour was improvised.

3. Harry Selznick was very supportive. Gave Michael a big break with a seven year contact. As his popularity rose, he tore up that contract.

4. The studio wanted the scene with Michael cooking cut as they thought it made up seem gay. (Which is fairly ridiculous as he's seducing a woman at the same time.)

5. Michael could see Sean Connery being overtaken as Bond. He rightly assumed that the minute he took off Harry Palmer's glasses, he'd no longer be Harry Palmer.

6. German-Jewish cameraman Otto Heller stayed working in Germany until 1939. It took one of his crew to come in to work in an SS uniform for him to leave.

7. It was this film that made Michael famous.

8. Says he was at an early screening of Dr No with Saltzman and Broccoli, without music, and they were tearing their hair out. "Music makes all the difference."

Produced by Luciano Chelotti for 21st Century Films.

The Wild Robot (2024 Chris Sanders & co-scr)

Robot crash lands on island, becomes more human in bringing up orphaned gosling with the help of an increasingly less wily fox, and manages to unite the island's animals. These are voiced by Lupita Nyong'o, Kit Connor and Pedro Pascal, with Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill.

Randy Thom, who led the sound design, also has one of the voice parts.

We enjoyed it.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004 Beeban Kidron)

Even its four writers can't make the story particularly believable, e.g. Bridget spying on Darcy's house near the beginning, but it's fun anyway.

On camera: Adrian  Biddle

Flaminia Cinque, in the Rigby and Peller scene, was in Any Human Heart.

'Mooking Night', in the quiz, is made up.

A Very Royal Scandal (2024 Julian Jarrold, scr Jeremy Brock)

A three part Amazon / MGM show. We'd seen the interview, of course, and the Rufus Sewell / Gillian Anderson version Scoop and this one does seem like overkill. Michael Sheen and Ruth Wilson take on the lead roles, and the focus is a little more on Emily Maitliss and the knock-on effect on her career. We're led to believe that people were then afraid to be interviewed by her and she quit the BBC.

Looking at the facts as we know them, it doesn't seem very likely that the US justice system would have secured a conviction - there didn't seem to be any evidence, even of the Prince being at Tramp nightclub with the young woman. So in a way, the 'Firm's' decision to do a deal rather than go to court seems crazy, well, cowardly, at least. But I guess Andrew's association with Epstein alone had done enough damage to him and the Firm.

With Alex Jennings, Eanna Hardwicke, Joanna Scanlan, Claire Rushbrook, Nicholas Burns, Sam Troughton, Honor Swinton Byrne, Sofia Oxenham.