The Hot Rock (1972 Peter Yates)

Yes we are familiar with novelist Donald Westlake as the source for both Point Blank and The Outfit. And this one begins the same way - a man being released from prison. And then his brother-in-law tries to run him over. Amusing set of situations as stolen diamond keeps outmanoeuvring them. William Goldman writes playfully and cinematically.

Quincy Jones died November 3rd. His first film score was for the Swedish Pojken i Trädet in 1961, then more recognisably The Pawnbroker in 1964. Notable other scores included Mirage, The Slender Thread, In the Heat of the Night, In Cold Blood, The Italian Job, The Out of Towners, The Getaway, Roots and The Color Purple, which he also produced. This is a good representation, melodic, jazzy (Gerry Mulligan on sax), experimental, innovative.

Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, Paul Sand, Zero Mostel, Moses Gunn. Well directed and edited by Fred Berger and Frank Keller - Yates likes to protract his suspense scenes. Highlight is helicopter ride over Manhattan. Most entertaining film.

Mudbound (2017 Dee Rees)

Feels like a novel, and is - well, was - written by Hillary Jordon, thus the multiple first person voiceovers and two and a quarter hour running time. The screenplay is credited to the director and Virgil Williams and received one of the film's Oscar nominations.

Carey Mulligan marries Jason Clarke to get herself out of poverty, but ends up on a farm that she hates with a father-in-law who's just vile (Jonathan Banks). And as soon as she meets younger brother Garrett Hedlund she realises she's married the wrong one. On the farm labours black family headed by Rob Morgan and Mary J Blige. Eldest son Jason Mitchell goes off to war, as does Hedlund, and when they return they become friends, to the offence of the native Mississippians. All acting good.

So far, so good, but it's the terrifying racism of the elder townsfolk (Pappy being the instigator) and Klan that make me so angry. If I were a black American I would still be so angry. I mean, this is the 1940s. And that they could do that to a war hero. He does survive - misunderstood this, thought he was dead; maybe my eyes being averted from the screen had something to do with it - and is reunited with his German lover and child which is fine... as long as you don't mind not having a tongue. Hedlund has at least killed his grandfather.

Rachel Morrison's very dark natural light photography was also Oscar nominated, as was the song 'Mighty River' and Blige for her performance.

DI Ray - Season 2 (2024)

A six part 45m production for ITV. It seemed so routine to begin with, so dull, humourless, suspenseless, so exactly like most other cop TV shows. And Parminder Nagra not exactly the most charismatic of leads. But what seems like a routine drugs war isn't, and becomes more interesting as internal police personnel come under suspicion. So worth the effort. Set in Birmingham.

With Steve Oran, Gemma Whelan, Ian Puleston-Davies too shouty), Witney White, Sam Baker-Jones, Peter Bankolé, Michael Socha, Patrick Baladi, Taha Rahim.

The First of the Few (1942 Leslie Howard)

The story of R.J. Mitchell, the inventor of the Spitfire is - I'm afraid to say - rather boring. And I'm not sure it's the fault of the writers, Miles Malleson (who has a cameo) and Anatole de Grunwald (from a story by henry James and Katherine Strueby). Because in essence - how do you make the design of an aircraft exciting? Certainly not in the drafting or model-making phase. The speed races are dull also. So are attempts to get funding. He may have helped win the war, or at least not lose it, and actually that's the exciting story (which even The Battle of Britain couldn't get right).

With Leslie Howard (who was shot down in a passenger plane from Lisbon by German fighters in 1943) are David Niven, Rosamund John and Roland Culver.

Credit for 'lighting expert' Georges Périnal, operator Jack Hildyard. The opening is quite memorable as to an overlaid map of Europe the countries one by one turn black leaving the UK alone - but even that is undermined by a rather overuse of the overlaid image which also occurs later.

The Big Sleep (1946 Howard Hawks)

I'm beginning to follow the plot a little better.., give it another 5 - 10 viewings and I'll be there. I do know that really the only important thing to glean is what happened to Sean Reagan. And I'm afraid I missed it again.

I find it how funny how sexually attractive Bogie's character is to just about every woman he meets. And how mocking he is of anyone who tries to pull a gun on him.

December 2022:

Watched The Big Sleep again, properly this time - well as properly as you can after 15 brandies.

Thoughts? I got how good the script /dialogue is last time. (Forget the plot.) Bogie is like Poirot (always ahead of the game). "How do you like your brandy?" "In a glass."

Exchanges between Bogie and Bacall are fantastic (e.g. 'in the saddle', 'comes from behind' etc.)

I like when they phone the police and he starts saying 'my daughter wouldn't like that'-  it's got the flavour of They All Laughed (or rather, the other way around). Both films have sexy girl taxi drivers also (is They All Laughed  a remake of The Big Sleep?) And this is kind of where the Coen Brothers come from (Fargo).

I mean, it's great casting. I particularly like Martha Vickers as the bad sister. And that's a young Dorothy Malone as the bookstore owner (is that the origin of the scene where a girl takes off her glasses, lets her hair down and looks fantastic, or had this been done zillions of times before?)

"She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up."

Maybe Max Steiner's best score, certainly my favourite of his. Orchestrated (uncredited) by Simon Bucharoff

Somehow I love all the character names even though no one ever understands the plot: Colonel Sternwood, Eddie Mars, Sean Reagan, Mrs Rutledge, Geiger. Bob Steele good as - here's another one -Lash Canino. John Ridgely also good as Eddie Mars. The cop is Regis Toomey.

Is this Bogart's only moment of camp?

"Would you happen to have a copy of a Ben Hur 1860?"

Elisha Cook Jr is in it briefly. That moment after he's been poisoned - "Nothing's funny" - is somehow haunting and eerie. Also that guy from It's a Wonderful Life, Tom Fadden.

The ear (he keeps pulling his ear).

Is it - to coin Paul Schrader - monocular? Bogie seems to be in every scene... It's certainly a film noir...

Photographed by Sid Hickox, edited by Christian Nyby.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993 Nora Ephron & co-scr)

Jeff Arch came up with satisfying, referential story which he, Ephron and David Ward (Steelyard Blues and The Sting) wrote for the screen, earning an Oscar nomination. Opens with Jimmy Durante singing 'As Time Goes By', much reference to An Affair To Remember. Ross Malinger (contrary to my expectations, still acting - I was expecting him to be a CEO or somesuch) is Tom Hanks' son; Meg Ryan is clearly with the wrong bloke, wimpy Bill Pullman. With Rita Wilson, David Hyde Pierce.

It's a wonderful film.

Love the long scene in the car with Meg listening (and reacting) to the radio interview with Hanks and Malinger (the interviewer is Caroline Aaron). This is the highlight of the film, Aaron being a great vocal presence. She's Shirley in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and lots and lots of TV, as well as Deconstructing Harry. The editing is especially good (Robert Reitano) as initially we're just on Meg, goofing along to, then getting sucked into the radio. Only then do we cut to the kid and Hanks, then bringing Meg back in just as you're forgetting she's listening in...

'Is it a bit sexist?' I have thought. 'Men are allowed to love An Affair to Remember'. But then I was 30 when this came out, and was probably more interested in watching a Lethal Weapon or spaghetti western then, and McCarey's film probably would not have beckoned - tastes change. But, no matter what you say about the film overall, those last two minutes are electrifying. Note faces of Ryan and Hanks when they do finally meet atop the Empire State Building, even as they're walking in to the lift, curious, exploratory faces...

Most impressive photography by Sven Nykvist. Jeff Cronenweth is his first assistant.

I thought it showed Hanks as a generous actor, letting the kid have his scenes.. That may be true, but I later found out Hanks was in a right sulk throughout, thinking the kid had all the best lines!

Meg Ryan's mum is payed by Le Clanché du Rand, a South African. It's a pretentious name, I feel. Have to name check Sidney Armus, on information desk at Empire State Building, and John Boylan as the aging elevator man (he was in Twin Peaks). Whether that's actually Hanks (or Rob Reiner) doing Cary Grant I couldn't track down, but whoever did it, it's very good! Ross Malinger's GF is Gaby Hoffman from Uncle Buck, or UB as she would put it.

In the gallery of great songs, that's Joe Cocker doing 'Bye Bye Blackbird'.

The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989 Steve Kloves & scr)

Good review here. Michelle sings well. Jeff and Beau could play the piano so they look like they are but in fact both were dubbed - Jeff by the film's composer Dave Grusin, who delivers a fine, jazzy score, with Sal Marquez on trumpet and Ernie Watts on sax particularly standing out.

Kloves is apparently in pre on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as writer and director.

Rumor Has It (2005 Rob Reiner)

A rare Rob Reiner failure, for which I blame Ted Griffin's screenplay - how then did the stellar cast agree to it? I don't know what went wrong for Jennifer Aniston, Mark Ruffalo, Kevin Costner, Shirley MacLaine and Richard Jenkins.

According to Wikipedia, Griffin began directing it, fired cinematographer Ed Lachman, and was himself fired by producer Steven Soderbergh the day after. Reiner then came in and made hurried script and cast changes - not enough.

Jen thinks that her mother had an affair before her marriage and that she might not be her father's child, leading to the film's only joke, where Jen is caught kissing Costner by Ruffalo who says "I hope that's not your father". On paper that doesn't even sound funny.

The Old Oak (2023 Ken Loach)

In Paul Laverty's story, publican Dave Turner befriends Syrian immigrant Ebla Maris whilst various non professionals bitch about 'foreigners' - and it's the latter that's quite distracting - why not use actual actors, of whom there are I'm sure many wanting a job?

No one gets punished for anything bad and ultimately the community comes together because of the death of her father - which seems quite contrived really. So a film that makes lots of points politically but doesn't quite work dramatically. Her photos are the best thing in it.

It's photographed absolutely naturalistically by Robbie Ryan, who's also completed Andrea Arnold's latest Bird, which has been doing the festivals ahead of general release.

Some people would pair Loach with Mike Leigh but I really wouldn't - in fact I would say they are totally opposite in filmmaking terms. I find I'm not that much of a Loach fan.

What people?

Enys Men (2022 Mark Jenkin & scr, ph, ed)

A woman on a deserted island wearing a red mac. It's 1973. A Don't Look Now reference? Quite Roegy, but also bears something in common with Images, as the woman appears to be suffering from a breakdown. In fact at one point, the woman is the rock. So maybe she's not there at all. (Actually, the rock isn't there at one point either.)

Jenkin did the sound mix too, which is most creative. It's a striking film, with elements of Cornish folklore thrown in, puzzling and ultimately inconclusive.

'Enys men' means 'stone island', which we experience in intimate detail.

Halloween (1978 John Carpenter)

Considering that I've watched this film a million times, there are a surprising number of things I haven't figured out, like

1. Who is producer Moustapha Akkad? He was a Syrian who came to the US to study film and made The Message, before the Halloween series. He and his daughter were killed in the 2005 Amman bombing in Jordan. He was at that time producing a big budget film about the Crusades with Sean Connery.

2. I don't think I'd really twigged that that is Laurie's father at the beginning who gives her the key to the Myers' house, so we do meet one of her parents at least. Can't say they seem to have the warmest relationship.

3. After years of banging on about how great Dean Cundey was and what a brilliant innovation the Panaglide provided, it's about time to name check the camera and Panaglide operator, Ray Stella. He was a grip on Candy Tangerine Man back in 1975 and assistant camera - to Cundey - in other arthouse fare such as Creature from Black Lake and Satan's Cheerleaders (which incidentally has the incredibly eclectic cast of John Ireland, Yvonne de Carlo, Sidney Chaplin, John Carradine and Jack Kruschen!)

4. That comment of Laurie's - 'Well Kiddo, I thought you outgrew superstition" - is actually aimed at herself, a reaction to hearing the hijinks of trick or treaters.

5. According to this fan site, Donald Pleasance was actually paid $20,000 for his appearance. Jamie apparently earned $8000. The remaining $150,000 of the budget that wasn't spent on the Panaglide is reducing fast...

6. The unkillable Michael Myers actually brought his own editor to the film, which is why he is able to disappear from the frame so suddenly. To end the film in that cliff-hanger way was quite audacious...

The Uninvited (1944 Lewis Allen)

What a great artist Charles Lang was. If you closely look at the way he lights people lighting candles: he matches the flare up of the match, then dims it as being lit, then lights more for the candle to be bright. There's no electricity in the house, so this sort of thing happens a lot.

Brackett's diary indicates he was going through his usual emotions of elation and torment. About the rough cuts, he writes: "I made a great many notes - most of them on top of each other, due to a failure to turn a page in the dark." And another day, "The final day of real shooting on The Uninvited. Most of it Ray and the ghost..." It also reveals that Doane Harrison had brilliantly cut together the take where Gail Russell had really fallen as the cliff collapsed (injuring herself slightly) with a take of her being pulled up "in an incredibly credible way..."

Ray Milland is perhaps a shade too flip for us to take the ghost stuff as seriously as we might. (I am reminded that despite his Oscar for Lost Weekend, Wilder didn't really rate Milland as an actor - "I can say that now he's dead".) With Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Alan Napier.

Good script by Dodie Smith and Frank Partos. Good music from Victor Young.

Joan (2024 Anna Symon)

Based on a true story, a single mum in the eighties turns to crime to try to reunite her with her daughter.

Some of her outfits are hilarious.

But trying to do a deal with the IRA starts a downward spiral, culminating in a disastrous jewellery store robbery and imprisonment, leaving her much further from being reunited with her daughter. Then in an abrupt ending, it's four years later, she's back in Spain, her former accomplice gives her money, and she's going to start some kind of crime dynasty... It's not a very satisfying ending, to say the least.

Sophie Turner, Kirsty Curtis, Frank Dillane, Laura Aikman, Gershwyn Eustache Jr.

6 x 45m for ITV.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955, released 1956 Don Siegel)

Siegel liked working with producer Walter Wanger - they had made Riot on Cell Block 11 together - a producer who inspires creativity and doesn't try to direct. Siegel worked on the script with Danny Mainwaring, which was based on a story by Jack Finney - "A damned good one. We just translated it into cinematic terms. There was a real effort to make it completely believable. This is probably my best film and I felt that this was a very important story. I think that the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them. I think that many people have no feeling about cultural things, no feeling of pain, of sorrow. I thought I shot it very imaginatively, as in the cave I found..." The opening and ending were stuck on (at the studio's insistence), and actually really dilute the film, which would have ended with Kevin McCarthy pointing at the audience and screaming "You're next!"...

Whilst Siegel (in conversation here with Peter Bogdanovich) acknowledges the reference to McCarthy and totalitarianism, he thinks it's not specifically about America but the world in general.

That scene in the mine shaft - with the aliens running over the boards with the couple beneath - does stand out, as does the sequence where they observe the townspeople, seemingly behaving normally, then suddenly are all called to order to disperse pods.

Apart from Kevin McCarthy - who we know from Hotel - I didn't recognise any of the cast names nor the crew. For the record, the cast includes Dana Wynter, Larry Gates. King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes... and Sam Peckinpah!

On camera: Ellsworth Fredericks, music Carmen Dragon, editing Robert Elsen.

Cake (2014 Daniel Barnz)

Written by Patrick Tobin, whose only other credit is for the unreleased 1994 drama No Easy Way. In good drip feed writing, we learn why Jennifer Aniston is so injured and drug addicted and what has brought her there. Her maid / carer Adriana Barraza (Babel) really is a long-suffering marvel. To add to the fun, Jen keeps seeing suicide Anna Kendrick appear and interact with her.

Jen's excellent.

Photographed by Rachel Morrison (Seberg, Black Panther, Mudbound).

With Sam Worthington, Mamie Gummer, Felicity Huffman, William H Macy, Lucy Punch.

Deadline at Dawn (1946 Harold Clurman)

A most interesting post-war drama with noirish notes, it takes place in NYC one night between 2 AM and 6 AM - and that alone makes for fascinating stuff. Who are all these people and why are they up so late - the City that never Sleeps* - makes you feel exhausted. There's a soda parlour still open, and a nightclub hosting a police retirement that's still going after 4...

There's quite a confusing number of characters and a jumble of a plot derived from Cornell Woolrich (as William Irish) novel, as on leave sailor Bill Williams and jaded dance hall girl Susan Hayward get involved in murder, and European cab driver Paul Lukas (not the only foreign cab driver here) helps them. There's a nasty villain, Joseph Calleia, and several dodgy women of the night, Osa Massen and Lola Lane, plus an early stalker in the shape of Steven Geray. The ending - changed from the novel - is quite nuts, but the film is interesting enough for you to go with it.

Lukas was in many silent films in his native Hungary; latterly in Little Women (1933), Dodsworth, The Lady Vanishes, Watch on the Rhine, Lord Jim, Berlin Express.

Clurman hadn't directed before but he's accompanied by the great Nick Musuraca on camera. The screenplay's by Clifford Odets, who had worked with Clurman in The Group Theatre. Includes the lines "This is New York. Hello means goodbye" and "Remember - speech was given to man to hide his thoughts".

The quintessential noir staircase / hallway shot

*There's a 1953 thriller of this title with Gig Young that might be worth watching...

Jamaica Inn (1939 Alfred Hitchcock)

An atypical Hitchcock period drama, though not without suspense. Also features a highly gutsy and strong willed female lead - good stuff. It's Maureen O'Hara, in not quite her debut. And a quite wonderfully sinister and urbane Charles Laughton.

Rest of cast good too, especially Emlyn Williams in the pirate gang. With Robert Newton, Leslie Banks, Marie Ney, Horace Hodges (butler), Basil Radford, Mervyn Johns.

Hitch is having fun with height, shooting down - not only in the tense hanging scene but in the cave also.

It's well put together and edited by Robert Hamer - first wrecking scene for example is very lively. Photographed by Harry Stradling and Bernard Knowles, great design - of roads, inn, manor house and shipwrecks - by Thomas Morahan. It was an independent Mayflower production, produced by Laughton and Erich Pommer, and a big hit. The source is Daphne du Maurier, adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Joan Harrison with additional dialogue from JB Priestley.

Laughton's eyebrows are pretty crazy. He had cast Maureen O'Hara, fresh from the Abbey Theatre, and when he left for Hollywood took her with him, where she immediately won the lead role of Esmeralda in Hunchback of the Notre Dame opposite Laughton.

Misery (1990 Rob Reiner)

My wife's choice, a suitably scary and gruesome one, and if not a little funny.

William Goldman wrote the part for Kathy Bates, having been a fan of hers from her theatre work. (One of her performances he admired was in 'Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune'). And Reiner agreed. And it was an asset being an unknown movie actor because the audience didn't know her and therefore would be scared of her.

Casting the writer was harder. Here's a list of people who turned it down: Kevin Kline, William Hurt. Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfuss, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford. de Niro, Pacino, Hackman, Redford... Caan had been in a drugs wilderness but came to the project clean. Goldman says that he's an actor who's always on the move, and so the desperation of being stuck in a bed for months is genuine and comes over on the screen.

Robert Leighton is the skillful editor at work. He frequently teamed with Reiner: The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, The American President.

Red Rock West (1993 John Dahl & co-scr)

Unemployed Nicolas Cage turn up at a Texas bar and is mistaken by J.T. Walsh for a hitman he's hired to bump off his wife, Lara Flynn Boyle. Then she pays him to bump off her husband. But we know he's a proud man of integrity and so tries to sort the mess out without bumping off anybody. But somehow he keeps getting sucked back to Red Rock, eventually and unwittingly coming up against the real hitman, Dennis Hopper.

Didn't know Dahl or his co-writer brother Rick, or in fact anyone at all behind the camera, but it's perfectly competently shot, edited and scored. And really quite an enjoyably noirish tale in the Blood Simple vein. (Welcome to Red Rock would also have worked.)

Duel in the Sun (1946 King Vidor)

Another epic David Selznick production (we heard him shouting 'More horses! There aren't enough horses in this scene!' - I wrote that as a joke, but it's actually in one of his famous memoranda - 'I wish we had more horses'...).  Luckily this one's only just over two hours. It's a strange and overheated film - the ending is just somehow hysterically funny and overwrought. (Q's comment: "Oh how ridiculous, but marvellous.") Jennifer Jones overacts somewhat, though was awarded an Oscar nomination - beaten by Ethel Barrymore for None But the Lonely Heart. It ran into all sorts of censorship problems. Gregory Peck is a bad guy, for a change. With Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Butterfly McQueen, Charles Bickford, Walter Huston, Harry Carey, Herbert Marshall, Joan Tetzel, Otto Kruger, with opening narration from Orson Welles.

Selznick repeatedly rewrote scenes and fiddled with Vidor's direction to the point where he walked out. William Cameron Menzies directed that amazing single crane shot take at the party, and William Dieterle was brought in to do retakes following a disastrous preview of a then four hour film. Hal Kern led the editing. It was based on a sensational novel by Niven Busch.

It looks amazing. Lee Garmes and Selznick must have had a complicated relationship - Selznick memorably fired Garmes after he'd shot the first hour of GWTW, but then hired him back on other projects like Since You Went Away. Here he's credited as the lead cameraman, with Ray Rennahan and Harold Rosson, with additional (uncredited) footage from W Howard Green and Charles Boyle. Jack Cosgrove adds his customary trick skies.

Selznick and Jones were not married until 1949.