The Knack (1965 Richard Lester)

If any further proof was needed that Lester had seen and was inspired by Louis Malle's crazy and influential Zazie dans le Métro (1960), this film is surely it, particularly in its chase scene. It is dazzling, extremely funny (especially in the cutaways of 'normal' British people commenting on unrelated matters, some of which are actually Tony Gibbs cleverly overlaying pre-recorded sound on clips which look like people saying the lines) and actually quite frightening in the critical scene where ingénue Rita Tushingham is submissed by cool ladykiller Ray Brooks, while Michael Crawford and Donal Donnelly stand on helpless.

'Rape' scene is also really funny and the whole thing is fucking brilliantly edited by the genius Tony Gibbs, who uses all the tricks (many lined up by Lester, obviously, e.g. chase moment with multiple doors). Weirdly - or perhaps not so weirdly - there's even foreshadowing of some of the editing effects from Performance, to come later (1969). Q says it's the most fun she's seen in editing. Also loved the white room and the bed that as it's being pushed magically becomes white! (This whole scene led to a Monkees version of the same thing.) It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Lots and lots of location London also fun.

Great score by John Barry (with Alan Haven on Hammond), seriously good black and white photography from David Watkin, very funny screenplay by Charles Wood, based - believe it or not - on a play, by experimental theatre writer Ann Jellicoe.

Strange that the MGM release is not anamorphic.

Those end credits sure look like acid tabs to me.

Sideways (2004 Alexander Payne)

Payne and Jim Taylor have adapted Rex Pickett's novel. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church on a sort of California stag wine-tasting holiday before the latter's marriage hook up with Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen.

"If anyone mentions Merlot I'm leaving!" Giamatti running down hill, slugging bottle of wine. The sadness of the alcoholic (moment where he steals from mother). A light at the end of the tunnel.

The usual team: Kent, Papamichael, Tent.

Excellent.

Nebraska (2013 Alexander Payne)

Another calm reflection on families and relationships, Payne's writer this time is Bob Nelson, who had written practically nothing before he won his Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Subtle writing in which we learn bits and pieces about these people's past lives gradually.

Payne is another of those directors who has built a good team round him: thus Phedon Papamichael for the lovely B&W Panavision (arguably, B&W has got as good as it's ever going to get); Kevin Tent one of our slow fade editors; Rolfe Kent's simple, mournful music.

Bill Forte and Bob Odenkirk are the sons, June Squibb as wife, Bruce Dern the dysfunctional father, both also very good. And Stacy Keach as a bastard.

It was when I realised the final shot is a clear homage to Paper Moon that I made the mental leap that the parallels don't end there...

Runaway Bride (1999 Garry Marshall)

Runaway Bride opens with Julia Roberts riding a horse whilst acting. I'm just saying.

Unfairly panned reteaming of Pretty Woman stars and director is very well written (Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott) and produced comedy. Lots of reviewers thought it was rubbish - no idea why. Has a particularly nice way of observing smaller character parts.

With: Joan Cusack, Hector Elizondo, Rita Wilson, Paul Dooley, Christopher Meloni.

On camera - Stuart Dryburgh (Panavision). Editor - Bruce Green.

We notice that Julia has her own bum editor.

Song for Marion (2012 Paul Andrew Williams & scr)

Terence Stamp comes out of himself after Vanessa Redgrave dies, through music, with help of Gemma Arterton. Film is OK.

One Fine Day (1996 Michael Hoffman)

Funny, successful romcom in classic style. Clooney rated script (Terrel Seltzer and Ellen Simon) and director Hoffman in contributing to his first major studio film. That he was a success in it was no surprise to anyone who'd seen E.R.

Michelle Pfeiffer.

A Long Way Down (2014 Pascal Chaumeil)

Wasn't entirely convinced by story's premise on reading Nick Hornby's novel, which has been adapted by Jack Thorne, best known for the two This is England sequels. So, Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul find themselves all on the same roof, planning to commit suicide.

Film is emotional, and fun.

With Sam Neill, Rosamund Pike, Tuppence Middleton.

The Big Wedding (2013 Justin Zackham)

Zackham has adapted French film Ma Frère se Marie by Jean-Stéphane Bron & Karine Sudan.

Not as bad as I was expecting, with good turns from deNiro, Sarandon and Keaton.

The Devil and Miss Jones (1941 Sam Wood)

Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn, Spring Byington, SZ Sakall, Edmund Gwenn, William Demarest, Rebecca's Florence Bates.

Funny overlooked Golden Age comedy written by Norman Krasna - hilarious scene in police station (with Edward McNamara, also a cop in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Regis Toomey). Great cast. Sam Wood a talented director, e.g. cramming the frame in beach scene (the same trick from his 1935 Night at the Opera), interesting compositions and angles throughout.

Difficult now to be certain, but it appears that the Romanée-Conti 1903 which nobody likes was from "a messed up wine year of unsatisfactory quality by the cold weather. The wines were watery and short also within young years. No wine has survived well from this weak volume today and one therefore hardly finds drinkable copies." (Source: european-fine-wine.com.)

Shot by Harry Stradling.

Not to be confused with The Devil in Miss Jones, which is another matter all together!

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943, released '44, Preston Sturges & scr)

The most remarkable thing about this mad, screwball, censor-defying, racy and hilarious comedy is that it is composed of so many long takes, often with old pro cameraman John Setiz masterfully tracking couple Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton down the town's streets - indeed sometimes the odd cutaway really interrupts the pacing, which has given the editor little to do.

Though it has a great all-round cast including William Demarest, Porter Hall, Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, we usually agree that Diana Lynn's older-than-her age sister steals the film.

Her (2013 Spike Jonze & scr)

Frequently astonishing, mad, Oscar/BAFTA-winning, funny script has you frequently open-mouthed as Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his computer's operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johanssen, who is excellent. (The great Amy Adams is in it too.) It was amusing that she won Best Actress at the Rome Film Festival, especially when you think that Italian films are usually dubbed (she was ineligible for the Golden Globe who rule that you must be visible, which would have just made Claude Rains OK for The Invisible Man!)

Hearing Scarlett reminded me of Woody Allen saying how funny she was, and that whatever smart joke he came out with she would go one better.

Problem with a film of such a weird concept is knowing how to stop / get out of it. Ultimately it can rather disappear into its own crazy world.

The Monuments Men (2014 George Clooney)

Why was this so slagged off? OK, it does seem a bit fragmented at the start, but essentially it's The Magnificent Seven but fighting Nazis to regain art treasures, not a normal subject matter, though will ring bells with anyone who has seen Sydney Pollack's strange 1969 film Castle Keep.

No, we thought it had a lot of lively, funny moments, e.g. scene where Damon is standing on an unexploded mine. And some seriousness too. A good balance.

Written by Clooney with his co-producer Grant Heslov, shot by Phedon Papamichael, edited by Stephen Mirrione who has cut all of Clooney's films, scored by Alexandre Desplat.

With Hugh Bonneville, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Kate Blanchett. And in a nice touch, George's dad Nick plays his older self at the end.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974 Sidney Lumet)

Having one of the most amazing casts ever assembled it's a slight shame we don't see more of Bisset, Connery et al. However we can't complain, and nor can Bergman, who won Oscar - note how in the key scene with her, Anne Coates doesn't cut at all - it's one sensational uninterrupted sequence. Compare this to a few scenes later - the Belgian sleuth roughly interrogating Vanessa Redgrave, and the intervention of Sean Connery - quite an amazing moment of cutting from our Ms Coates (we had to watch it not twice but three times), once again beautifully shot in super-diffused style by Geoffrey Unsworth, who I would have guessed had won more BAFTAs than anyone else ever (five), though I see that a certain W. Allen has received eight!

Albert Finney (who with writer Paul Dehn won Oscars) is so good that you forget it is he most of the time.

And not credited above, George Coulouris (Citizen Kane), Colin Blakely.

Benefits enormously from Richard Rodney Bennett's music - memorably queasy in the flashback scenes but bursting into majesterial melody when the train pulls out.

The Sapphires (2012 Wayne Blair)

We were expecting a comedy with singing, and didn't expect the emotional punch the film delivers, nor indeed the good singing. Chris O'Dowd is an alcoholic manager of aborigine group comprising Kylie Belling, Miranda Tapsell, Deborah Mailman and Jessica Mauboy.

Labor Day (2013 Jason Reitman)

Reitman's script is based on Joyce Maynard (who at age 18 had affair with J.D. Salinger) book of the same name. Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gattlin Griffith, Clark Gregg, J.K. Simmons. It's extremely well cut by Dana Glauberman (using some nice dissolves), and we were shocked when the meaning of the flashbacks became clear; nicely shot by Eric Steelberg and scored by Rolfe Kent, exactly the same team in fact as Up In the Air.

We were feeling quite sick with dread, especially when Gattlin's new girlfriend evokes the memory of Bonnie and Clyde.

Don't Bother to Knock (1961 Cyril Frankel)

Not the Marilyn Monroe thriller; instead the energetic Richard Todd is a randy slut who falls out with his girlfriend June Thorburn because she won't shag him, then goes round Europe, rather easily getting into the knickers of Nicole Maurey, Elke Sommer and other women, who then all come to stay in his Edinburgh apartment (luckily of a reasonable size) and thereby complicate matters further with aforementioned Thorburn. That is, incredibly, Rebecca's Judith Anderson as his swinging older lady friend, plus Ronald Fraser and John Le Mesurier in support, with fleeting appearances by Graham Crowden, John Laurie, Kynaston Reeves and Carry on Cleo's Amanda Barrie. We thought we also recognised Fulton Mackay as a waiter, but he's not credited as such.

Music is by Elisabeth Lutyens - it's rather different from the norm. She was a pioneer of discordant music and thus I suppose wrote the very strange bit that is performed to an audience of about two! Anne Coates cut it, invisibly, and Geoffrey Unsworth is on camera. More about those two later... Interestingly Frederic Raphael provided additional dialogue...

Must have been quite risqué when released.

In the French Style (1962 Robert Parrish)

Featuring the fabulous Jean Seberg, who was persecuted to death, and who kept making us think of Scarlett Johannson, in clearly two conjoined stories about the same expat in Paris, written by Irwin Shaw, who one presumes spent some time there. In the first she is romanced by a somewhat odd young man, Philippe Forquet; a few years later her dad Addison Powell comes to visit and she's in love with intense Stanley Baker while scarily the surgeon she's going to marry instead is the spit of daddy (who comes out with line "I don't drink, but when I'm retired I'm going to soak it up and let my hands shake like Autumn leaves").

Jack Hedley is another lover, Thunderball's Claudine Auger has a bit part as his girlfriend, Moustache is the barman.

It's rather good and actually is set in Paris, as viewed by the prolific Michel Kelber.

Sony release shows opening credits in 1.66:1 then crops it to 1.85:1, which is frankly a stupid thing to do.

We Bought a Zoo (2011 Cameron Crowe)

Yes, yes.

http://nicksfilmjottings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/we-bought-zoo-2011-cameron-crowe.html

A Single Man (2009 Tom Ford)

Is Tom Ford the best-dressed film director ever? he's certainly the least prolific, showing no sign at all of venturing into his second film, the first being based on a Christopher Isherwood story he always loved. Colin Firth is simply sensational (winning BAFTA but missing Oscar) and we really believe in the romantic relationship between him and the fleetingly glimpsed Matthew Goode. Julianne Moore and Nicholas Hoult are there to help him not end his life at the end of the day.

The warming up of scenes (Eduard Grau) is absolutely beautiful, never seen this before except of course in Vertigo... Psycho is referenced in a big poster, Abel Korzeniowski's music is also reminiscent of the former. Slow motion scenes e.g. when Firth kisses the dog, sound (only sound is rain when he visits Julianne with the terrible news).

Now Voyager (1942 Irving Rapper)

Bette Davis sags under the weight of Perc Westmore's eyebrows, but Paul Henreid comes along with two cigarettes, thereby changing smoking fashion (at least for the moment). Casey Robinson has adapted a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, and Claude Rains is perhaps the most sympathetic doctor ever. The wonderful Max Steiner tells us what to feel, but we don't care, bathed in Sol Polito's light. The horrendous mother is Gladys Cooper, and it's a true five hankie number.

Rapper, not known for much in this household, lived until 101.