The Holdovers (2023 Alexander Payne)

A quite wonderful film, which moves elegantly through dissolving from one scene to another, with wholly appropriate music (existing and composed), brilliantly acted, though perhaps a little hazily photographed (Phedon Papamichael was perhaps double booked).

That moment where Da'Vine Joy Randolph is upset at the party, and friend Naheem Garcia goes to touch her, and she turns - and is both angry ('Don't touch me!') and shattered and vulnerable at the same time - that same duality that I recently wrote that Adam Driver showed in Marriage Story - it's that kind of thing that shows us what great acting is. And the moment where Giamatti says 'We're not going to Boston' and that look on her face - the immovable object - 'Oh yes you are!'

'Crossing the Rubicon' means reaching the point of no return. 'Alea iacta est' = 'The die is cast'.

Loved also the misdirection in scenes with Carrie Preston.

Q's summary: 'Imperfect people being perfect'.

The Bishop's Wife (1947 Henry Koster)

Henry Koster was born Herman Kosterlitz, started out making films in Germany but fled in 1933 after knocking out a Nazi who had insulted him in a bank. I mean, that sounds like a film in itself. He started out at Universal where he did two things of note, hired Abbott and Costello, and introduced Deanna Durbin, then 14, and made her a star in Three Smart Girls. He also directed Harvey and Richard Burton's first couple of films, My Cousin Rachel and The Robe, but even that didn't stop him, and he carried on making films, whether anyone wanted to watch them or not, until 1966. Rabbit holes.. do I want to watch Winston Churchill's favourite film, One Hundred Men and a Girl? As a student of film I suppose I would watch something with Deanna Durbin, but that doesn't help much with the Bishop's Wife other than to suggest that Koster was something of a good guy to make all these most entertaining films.

In the scene above it looks like Grant is actually playing the harp. But we don't think that's really him in the arguably unnecessary ice skating sequence. Loretta Young does run up stairs beautifully.

Sam Goldwyn originally had William Seiter directing him but was fired. When Koster came in he realised that Grant and Niven were playing the wrong roles - Grant as the Bishop and Niven the angel - and talked them into swapping.

Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder did some rewrites on it, (including a think the final sermon); amusingly Brackett thought Grant 'wildly miscast'!

Q has still not seen Wings of Desire.

Such is the magic of this film that during it Q's phone rang. 'It's (cousin) Debbie' she said, and at that precise moment on the film Grant says 'Hello Debbie!'

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.

Jay Kelly.

Silents: The Student Prince. The Big Parade.

The Night Manager - we didn't know at the time - Season 1 (2016 Susanne Bier, scr David Farr)

Yes, David Farr had a dream, and in that dream was the germ of Season 2, the first non-le Carré le Carré sequel (if you see what I mean).

Ex army night manager Tom Hiddlestone keeps encountering fallen women who need his help, the first in Cairo (Aure Atika), then again, er, somewhere, and finally in Mallorca (Elizabeth Debicki).

And it's all Olivia Colman's fault.

'River House' etc seems to be the source for Slow Horses.

Great counter-casting - Hugh Laurie and Tom Hollander as nasties.

Must watch The Shadow Line again.

Natasha Little's the one I couldn't identify. Not sure where we know her from. Any Human Heart and assorted TV.

She's referred to as Susanne 'One Eye' Bier in this house. We didn't enjoy her last two things, The Undoing (2020) and The Perfect Couple (2024) at all.

With Russell Tovey, Adeel Akhtar, Alistair Petrie, Douglas Hodge, David Harewood, Tobias Menzies, Neil Morrissey, Jonathan Aris, Antonio de la Torre

DP Michael Snyman, editor Ben Lester.

Composer Victor Reyes is not doing Barry but did make me think that John Barry's Bond scores changes the way that thrillers sounded and remain still hugely influential.

The Magic of Belle Isle / Once More (2012 Rob Reiner)

Once More is the truly shit UK release title. The film died and is critically pipped.

We loved it. 

"Don't forget you owe me 18 cents."
"The burden of the debt weighs heavily upon me."

Hungry-Man Dinners look horrible.

"Here's to you, Mrs O'Neil, for a face that gives the moonlight something worth shining on."

I loved the moment that the rather serious wannabe writer Emma Fuhrmann is dismissed by Morgan Freeman and we (Reiner) just watch her run off and past the garden fence and out of sight. It's a lovely moment.

And So It Goes (2014 Rob Reiner)

Mark Andrus wrote it - is it therefore his fault that the title is awful? I have told everyone this before - titles are important. What should this have been called? Even The Grandfather would have been better, even though it's not much better. My Grandfather the Cunt would have been a good title, but there might have been one or two marketing issues with that one. Grandpa Next Door? Shangri-Lasville? The Singer Not the Song? The Landlord?

But my most important jotting is about seat belts. When they come back from the fun fair I noticed the girl (Sterling Jerins) is not wearing a seat belt. I passed on this observation to my co-pilot Q, and she said 'Cars that old didn't have seat belts'. According to IMCDB, the car featured is a 1967 Mercedes 300 SE convertible. With a six litre V8 engine. And power steering. Which will cost you now upwards of $100,000. Now are you telling me that German car designers in 1967 would not have included seat belts? (The modern seat belt was invented in 1959.) Of course they would. In fact I have seen that model car being sold and of course it had seat belts.

At the end of the film the father picks up his son from prison and they drive off, not having put on their seat belts, and there's a crash and they both go through the windscreen and die.

Oh by the way it's 

...and he does play the pianist.

He even picks up the dog and lets it sit in the front without a seat belt. In fact that's what this film should have been called. Dog Without Seat Belt. By Jim Jarmusch. No - Aki Kaurismaki.

The apartments look identical - how come she doesn't have a spare bedroom then and he does?

A Spare Room. There you go. Great title.

(Actually I'm not 100% sure it had seat belts.)

The Shop Around the Corner (1940 Ernst Lubitsch) / You've Got Mail (1998 Nora Ephron & co-scr)

Some of the story is the same - they both are anonymously writing to each other, he finds out, then tries to make her like him for himself before revealing the truth. Clearly Ephrons Nora and Delia are not Lubitsch - no one was, not even Billy Wilder. (I have heard that even Lubitsch wasn't Lubitsch. But more on that later.) Obviously they were trying for another Sleepless in Seattle, and one thing they replicated from that is that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don't get together until the very ending, but that's actually true too of James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan.

Louise Brooks on Sullavan is always worth repeating: "Do you know my favourite actress? The person I wish I could be if I were anyone? You'll never guess.. She was very special in her appearance, her voice was exquisite and far away, almost like an echo. She was an excellent actress, completely unique. She killed herself... Margaret Sullavan. This wonderful voice of hers - strange, fey, mysterious - like a voice singing in the snow." (Kevin Brownlow, 'The Parade's Gone By'.) Don't you love that - her voice 'was almost like an echo'.

Every time Q sees Steve Zahn she says 'I like him but I don't know who he is'.

We both thought the new bookstore should have sold everything but children's books.

Class (1983 Lewis John Carlino)

Enjoyably bad romantic comedy-drama in which innocent.. Hang on, is this a prep school? Everyone seems too old?

Anyway, innocent student Andrew McCarthy (never the best actor in the world) befriends more worldly Rob Lowe and accidentally is seduced by his mum, Jacqueline Bisset. This was written by Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt. And includes the classic line, 'Well you look like a pretty sensitive turd'.

John Cusack looks so young he could double for Jonah Bobo in Crazy Stupid Love. However he's easily got more presence and acting ability even then than McCarthy and someone should have swapped those two roles over.

It's actually badly edited, which is a very unusual thing to see, and badly directed, and ends on the amazingly bad line 'Your mom called. The dog died.'

Wonderful.

A Few Good Men (1992 Rob Reiner)

Reiner made a 2023 documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life which is not on Apple UK, nor DVD, which is not disappointing at all. 

This is the first in our retrospective filmed in widescreen Panavision.

They've had to put on camouflage when travelling near the fence. But as Q pointed out, the white caps make them still highly visible targets:

'Was it an intentional joke?', she wondered.

Apart from the courtroom drama and the examination of military protocols and thinking, what appealed to Reiner was the character study of a young man trying to pull himself out of the shadow of his father - with which he could obviously relate.

Jack Nicholson brought his great acting immediately to the table read and all the other actors were like 'Shit it's Jack Nicholson' and he had effectively put everyone on their best performance level.

The actor who plays the taller of the men on trial, Wolfgang Bodison, had been Reiner's assistant on Misery and had never acted before! His fellow soldier James Marshall was in Twin Peaks.

Was looking out for - but did not recognise at all - Christopher Guest, who's in court as the doctor.

One Foot in the Grave - 'Who's Listening?' (1990 David Renwick)

The first season Christmas special.

Seeing the surreal vision of the Meldrew's house covered in slightly sinister garden gnomes pointed me straight in the direction of Inside No. 9.

Barmy story of hostage situation at shelter is perhaps less successful.

Another Rob Reiner double bill: The Sure Thing (1985) & When Harry Met Sally (1989)

The Sure Thing owes a certain something to It Happened One Night. Which was the first comedy road movie. Was it? No idea. I think one of the earliest road movies I can think of - and I think the Road Movie is a very American construct - despite Europe being a large interconnected land mass it is comprised of several countries, thus (in the old days, anyway) prohibiting free travel, whereas the American land mass is all one country - might be Beggars of Life - must watch that again in a better copy than the shit one I have now.

It's one of John Cusack's earliest roles. (Might also have to watch Class again for a bit of retro nonsense fun.) And his best moment might be when he comes over like a psycho in order to frighten off a lascivious man who has picked up Daphne Zuniga, who seems to have been in a lot of TV movies.

The hilarious clip, by the way, is from 1965 Hercules and the Princess of Troy, which doesn't even merit a Maltin review.

Nora Ephron based Harry on Reiner and co-producer Andrew Scheinman, and Sally on herself and friends; Billy Crystal also became a contributor when he came on. The film does owe a certain something to Annie Hall (old tunes - even shares one song, 'It's Got To Be You' - New York, montages, love story). Harry Connick does some great interpretations of things.

I didn't realise before - and it was part of one of the news stories - that the famous split screen sequence when they're all in bed was actually shot live contemporaneously.

Rob's mum!

And Q tells me that the more realistic unhappy ending was altered (by Billy) when confirmed bachelor Reiner met and fell for his wife-to-be Michele. I can't imagine it ending any other way.

It seems to me that Reiner, as well as I'm sure being a reassuring and friendly presence on set, likes to keep things simple - will - if a conversation scene needs it - just stay on a two shot. Because why break it up? None of this over-the-shoulder shot-reverse-shot stuff. And works with good writers like Aaron Sorkin, William Goldman and Nora Ephron.

One of those romantic dramas that ends on a running-through-the-streets scenes that Cameron referred to so brilliantly in Roadies.

They were both edited by Robert Leighton again and both featured Tracy Reiner in small roles. Barry Sonnenfeld shot it. A Castle Rock production.

Afterwards I imagined Rob being in the room. "Guys, this is so sweet of you watching all my old films, but enough already.... What do you mean you haven't watched A Few Good Men yet??"

3 Godfathers (1948 John Ford)

I'd forgotten the fate of the other two godfathers, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey Jr. in John Ford's batty Christmas allegory.

It's stunningly photographed in the Mojave Desert, California, by Winnie Hoch.

Něco z Alenky / Alice (1988 Jan Svankmajer)

We were talking about how our simple 2D animations were still a primitive form of stop motion animation, which led us to put this one at a rather later time than might be considered harmonious. There's something strange, surreal, eerie and slightly frightening about this treatment.

We agreed that we'd never seen a more sinister White Rabbit, and that Kristyna Kohoutova who plays Alice was really good.

The mix of live and stop motion animation, amidst Svankmajer's curiously designed, crumbling world is fascinating, but eventually chatter took over - difficult to sustain a film like this over a length of time (86 minutes, for the record).

The title translates as 'Something from Alice', which is a good enough description.

No music. Photographed by Svatopluk Malý.

Jan Svanmajer is 91 and still living in the Czech Republic.

Rob Reiner double bill: The American President (1995), The Princess Bride (1987)

It was not the best start to the day to wake up and find that Rob Reiner and his wife Michele had been murdered, apparently by their son Nick, who'd co-written the drug addiction drama Being Charlie in 2015 which his dad directed.

Rob and his films were never far away from us. We lately saw him in Sleepless in Seattle. We were thinking how great it must have been to have this former actor and son of a great comedian and genuinely nice guy direct you.

In Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, there's an American President who couldn't be more unlike the present one, who's already hit the headlines making thoroughly disparaging remarks about Reiner that even Republicans have abhorred. Would a President's ratings really start falling if he began dating? I wouldn't have thought so. Nor do I believe that just because a President was in a wheelchair (Woodrow Wilson) he wouldn't have been voted for - this is a slight distortion as he suffered the stroke while he was still in office, which left him incapacitated.

Reiner (I read) thought Stand By Me his first real achievement as it was a film unlike any his father had made.

William Goldman's beloved story The Princess Bride was the second choice. Billy Crystal as the medicine man is hilarious. "Andre was by far the most popular figure I have ever been around on a movie set." (William Goldman.)

"As you wish."

It was also an editor Robert Leighton double bill. And he is I'm sure as gutted as the rest of us.

Kinds of Kindness (2024 Yorgos Lanthimos & co-scr)

I'd watched Yorgos's Criterion Closet picks, some of which were fairly predictable, e.g. Inland Empire, Buñuel ('my favourite filmmaker'), less so Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky ('raw, crazy and intense', which he used as reference for Emma Stone for Bugonia) or Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge. He was excited to pick up a copy of Black God, White Devil and remembered seeing Persona in Bergman's theatre in Faro. 

So Phantom of Liberty was something of an inspiration for Kinds of Kindness, not so much the film but the structure, and I realised as we (just) still had Disney+ I should watch it.

An unfortunate decision, perhaps. Because despite a sterling cast (boy does Emma love Yorgos) it's more reminiscent of his early, weird and somehow unpleasant films like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. And is two and three quarter hours, to boot.

In story #1, Jesse Plemons does literally everything his boss and father figure Willem Defoe tells him - but he draws a line at murder and is rejected. (He's even contraceptized his wife so they won't have children.)

In #2, his wife Emma Stone has gone missing. She returns home but he thinks she's someone else, gets her to to cut off her thumb for him to eat, you know the sort of thing. I did laugh when cop Jesse shoots an innocent man in the hand and then tries to lick the blood. I don't know what that had to do with the plot but it was funny.

And in #3, some crazy dystopia where Emma and Jesse are searching for a special woman who can bring the dead back to life, while some kind of contagion spreads. Despite being infected by her ex husband, Emma finds such a woman (two more of Margaret Qualley's incarnations) but smashes her through her windscreen (by accident), which is also kind of funny. (Qualley also deliberately diving into an empty swimming pool also blackly funny.)

The other recurring characters are Hong Chao and Mamoudou Athie.

It is gorgeously shot by Robbie Ryan and the far out music is by Jerskin Fendrix (I think this is supposed to be funny too, but I'm not sure).

I prefer to think of it as Yorgos Lanthimos's Twilight Zone. As usual I have no idea what they were about.