Thelma (2024 Josh Margolin & scr, ed)

Something of a tall story from Margolin, and dedicated to his own grandmother, who appears briefly at the end. The film was exec produced by stars June Squibb and Fred Hechinger. Captures rather well the feelings of the elderly, not wanting to be ordered about but aware that they aren't able to do the things they used to, and that friends are passing fast. Scammed grandmother goes after scammers who have deprived her of $10,000, aided by friend Richard Roundtree (his last film).

With Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell.

The film is meditative, tender and entertaining.

On guns: "How hard can it be? Idiots use them all the time."

Moonflower Murders (2024 Writer Anthony Horowitz)

Lesly Manville is back, trying to solve a disappearance that is connected to a novel by mystery writer Alan Conway (Conleth Hill) and his creation Atticus Pünd (Tim McMullan). Pippa Bennett-Warner is Pünd's useful associate.

So we're also seeing the novel play out and thus the rest of the cast have dual roles: Danny Mays, Adrian Rawlins, Pooky Quesnel, Will Tudor, Rosalie Craig, Joanna Bacon, Thomas Coombes, Mark Gatiss. And the setting of it in the 1950s means we're in that cosy Agatha Christie period.

Horowitz adapted his own  novel in  6 hour long parts. And it's an enjoyable ride.

The Mountains of the Moon (1990 Bob Rafelson)

An awfully big budget adventure film, an unusual choice you would have thought for Rafelson, who's memorably associated with lower budget Jack Nicholson films.

I didn't realise it's the same true story that William Boyd appropriated for his novel 'The Romantic' in which our hero gets involved in the crazy world of Burton and Speke as they journey to find the source of the Nile. It's based on their own personal accounts and written by William Harrison and the director. I didn't really recognise Patrick Bergin, who makes an energetic and charismatic Burton, nor Iain Glen as the more restrained Speke. Their growing friendship, loyalty but ultimate fallout makes the film.

Lots of recognisable people pop up including a young Fiona Shaw, Richard E Grant, John Savident, Peter Vaughan, James Villiers, Adrian Rawlins, Delroy Lindo, Bernard Hill, Roshan Seth, Anna Massey and Leslie Phillips. Paul Onsongo is the faithful expedition organiser. Couldn't work out who is the African king, who's rather good. And must mention One Foot in the Grave's Mrs Warboys, Doreen Mantle!

Fabulous on location work from Roger Deakins, who's also the camera operator (with Dick Pope shooting additional material). The sound designer gets an up front credit - there's a lot going on - production sound mixer Simon Kaye. Thom Nobel is the editor. Produced for Carolco.

Ellis (2024 Created by Paul Logue and Sian Martin)

A new invention for television in three ninety minute films for Channel 5. Sharon D Clarke is fabulous as the roving DCI who's sent to sort out ineffective stations. She picks up DS Andrew Gower in film one and he stays with her, and their relationship - he very polite, she rather brusque and private - is one of the things that males it work. She's also great with suspect whether vulnerable or plain nasty.

We've just seem her as the female lead of Mr Loverman! And was in the 2021 Showtrial. She's been around since the eighties - her first credit is The Singing Detective - so glad she's having her moment. Whether the creators wrote it for her I am unable to establish.

That Uncertain Feeling (1941 Ernst Lubitsch)

The Lubitsch that seems unfairly neglected is like music, with its rhythms and sporadic outbursts of 'Keeks!', 'Phooey!' and the like. And seems only to exist in fuzzy, public domain prints, a great shame as George Barnes' lighting is clearly beautiful, in Alexander Golitzen's sets. Maybe one of the French or Spanish releases is better. Where's Criterion...?

I loved the Amazon reviewer who said "Too many one-room scenes with characters opening and closing doors" thus missing one of the delightful features of a Lubitsch comedy, which are always focusing on doorways.

"Really darling, you talk as if you've never been in a meadow."

"Was it a dull party?"
"No, I'd say she was about your size."

Victorien Sardou and Emilie deNajac's play 'Divorçons' (1883) was adapted by Walter Reisch and screenwritten by Donald Ogden Stewart who found fame mainly through adapting the work of others (won Oscar for the Philadelphia Story) - he emigrated to England in the 1950s Communist witch hunt, and died here. It was previously filmed by Lubitsch as Kiss Me Again (unfortunately no known prints exist) in 1925, with Marie Prevost, Monte Blue and Clara Bow. It's an independent Sol Lesser production,

Great cast: Melvyn Douglas, Merle Oberon, Burgess Meredith, Alan Mowbray, Sig Ruman, Harry Davenport, Eve Arden (who basically sets her character for the next 40 years (she was in Grease - not that that's enough of a reason to watch it), Olive Blakeney.

Hard not to imagine Lubitsch acting out the parts for everybody. That scene where Douglas confronts Meredith - they're so polite to one another. It's another Lubitsch trademark isn't it, if you think the beard scene in To Be Or Not To Be or the confrontation over the swords in The Merry Widow.

Brilliant Lubitsch touch (on three) when he has to slap his wife. Notice shots of closed doors / action happening off-screen. Inspired use of "Keeks!" Many sour-faced photos of Meredith (one being put out of the bedroom like it's a cat). Douglas / Meredith funny. Witty. Photographed by George Barnes with a lovely rain pattern on a bed. Phooey!

P.S. "Keeks!" has since become a much used general purpose expression in this house.

Rye Lane (2023 Raine Allen-Miller)

Extremely quirkily made film, with a crazy soundtrack. Vivian Oparah and Daviod Jonsson make frinds one day in Brixton.

Examples of very weird wide angles, and background action:

Edited by the sublime Vioctoria Boydell, who we know loved her experience of working on the film.

The Man With the Gun (1955 Richard Wilson & co-scr)

Starts memorably when town tough guy Leo Gordon shoots a boy's dog dead. The Marshal does nothing. So that sets things up nicely.

But 'town tamer' Robert Mitchum is on hand to sort out the bad guys - and try to reunite with his little girl, offspring of town madam Jan Sterling.

Meanwhile hot head John Luton is standing up to them too, to the concern of fiancee Karen Sharpe and her father Emile Meyer. Memorable ending to impressively modern Alex North score.

Mitchum was a 'sweetheart' to newbie Sharpe. When they went to New York to publicise it he carried her off the airplane:

Photographed by Lee Garmes.

The title isn't great. Written by Wilson and N.B. Stone. Wilson worked with Orson Welles on It's All True, Macbeth and Lady from Shanghai.

Two Rode Together (1961 John Ford)

James Stewart agrees to accompany soldier Richard Widmark in a mission to restore kidnapped white people back from the Comanche... which proves not to be the greatest idea in the world. Frank Nugent's screenplay comments on the problems of assimilation.

It feels slightly uncertain in tone - Widmark and Stewart are supposedly friends, but Stewart pulls a gun on the other. Repatriated Indian kills his 'mother', turns out he was Shirley Jones' long lost brother all along, before he's lynched. Linda Cristal isn't allowed to fit in anywhere. Andy Devine provides comedy relief. I suppose all Ford's films are something of a jumble but this one feels a little more uncertain. It turns put he didn't like the script, did the film as a favour for Harry Cohn.

Great moments include the opening, Stewart's mercenary girlfriend Annelle Hayes, long take of Widmark and Stewart by the river. With Woody Strode, John McIntire, Paul Birch.

Ford in conversation with PB: "We've got this big screen... If i can play a scene in a two-shot, where you can see both faces very well, I prefer it that way." Photographed by Charles Lawton.

What's Love Got To Do With It? (2022 Shekhar Kapur)

There are a few 'roms' in these pages, such as Never Been Kissed, Love, Rosie, Isn't It Romantic and What If? This one, though like the others not funny, is quite enjoyable as it goes towards the conclusion we know it will go towards, and in talking about 'assisted' marriages ('like assisted suicide?' Lily James asks Shazad Latif) has a certain point of difference.

Whether James and Latif are any good is a moot point.

Noticed the good editing - Guy Bensley and Nick Moore. Written by Jemima Khan. Enjoyed Lily's descriptions of her love life as various fairy tales. And the 'continent' that is between their two houses.

With Emma Thompson, Shabana Azmi (a noted Indian actress and activist), Sajal Aly (the bride), Oliver Chris. Also liked the two empty headed producer types.

DP Remi Adafarasin.

It's a Canon EOS C70, though we both thought she needed separate sound recording

The Hardacres (2024 Loren Mclaughlan)

Something a bit different - family of Yorkshire herring workers strike out on their own and become rich. They buy a local manor and then of course find it tough to mix with the posh lot in society.

Can't help but finding it somewhat ropey and clichéd, however (groundskeeper pointing shotgun at two unarmed women, for example). 6 x 45 for Channel 5.

The Family: Claire Cooper, Liam McMahon, Julie Graham, Adam Little, Shannon Lavelle, Zak Ford-Williams. The neighbours: Holly Sturton, Cathy Belton, Owen Roe. The staff: Ingrid Craigie, Mark Doherty. The financial advisor: Taheen Modak.

From C.L. Skelton novel.

It all ends happily. Hurray!

The Stars Look Down (1940 Carol Reed)

We seem to be seeing a lot of Emlyn Williams recently. Here, he's a total badun out only for himself and money. A.J. Cronin's story is about a mining town (again). Miner Edward Rigby knows there is a plan of the mines showing where the danger from underground water lies, but the owner Allan Jeayes denies any knowledge of it. It's this that leads to the film's climactic disaster. In the meantime Michael Redgrave falls in with Williams' cast off, Margaret Lockwood, who talks him into not finishing his Uni degree and becoming a lowly teacher, thus ruining his life.

It is in fact rather a downbeat film which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Reed's direction is occasionally clunky - in fact I would have dated it earlier than 1940. It was screenwritten by J.B. Williams and A. Coppel.

Nancy Price makes an impression as the tough-as-nails mother.  (We might know her from Mandy, and rather more recently, IKWIG! One of her earliest appearances in 1921 is in the fabulously titled Belphegor the Mountebank!)

Showtrial: Season 2 (2024 Ben Richards)

Adeel Akhtar plays a damaged lawyer who takes on case of policeman Michael Socha who has been charged with killing a climate activist - and he does have a motive and a previous relationship with the man.

Nathalie Armin is the prosecutor, Joe Dempsie the investigating DI. Fisayo Akinade is a climate activist. With Zoe Telford and Nina Toussaint-White. And Kerry Hayes as the female PC.

Quite interesting points of view being expressed, such as that the police can't do anything nowadays without doing something wrong. And the lot of a female PC. Also that a climate change protest has caused the death of a pregnant woman.

Richards wrote the last one, which impressed us back in 2021.

Marvellous playout to episode 3 c/o Fink, 'Warm Shadow', who also provided a fine ending to The Responder.

The Deep Blue Sea (1955 Anatole Litvak)

Written by Terence Rattigan, from his play, another grouping of characters in a single residence, this time a huge house on the Embankment that's been converted into individual flats. The story jumps around in time.

We found the Vivian Leigh character rather wet and unlikeable, and the ending downbeat. Kenneth More is in serious mode, for a change, reprising the role he played on stage. Rattigan's play is allegedly a mirror for his own closet relationship with Kenny Baker, its failure and aftermath. Which is actually more interesting than the play itself.

With Eric Portman, Emlyn Williams, Moira Lister, Dandy Nichols, Jimmy Hanley, Alec McCowen, Sidney James.

Music: Malcolm Arnold. Photography: Jack Hildyard. Editing Bert (as 'A.S.') Bates. Production design Vincent Korda. Our extremely blurry and jumpy copy broadcast on TPTV didn't help.

I think we found the Terence Davies version from 2011 more satisfactory.

Madigan (1968 Don Siegel)

Richard Widmark and Harry Guardino play detectives on the trail of a murderer. Simultaneously, Henry Fonda is the commissioner who finds something dirty on Chief Inspector James Whitmore, who we perhaps recognise from The Shawshank Redemption and earlier, The Asphalt Jungle (also Them and much on TV).

Peter Bogdanovich thought the "fatal shoot-out at the end is among the most brilliantly shot and cut pieces of action ever made".

I'd anticipated that happily married Guardino would be killed, but got that totally wrong.

Unfortunately the music is terrible - makes it sound like a sixties TV drama.

Siegel and the producer did not get on and the latter made stupid changes. Siegel had loved the book (by Richard Dougherty) which was adapted by Howard Rodman, then reworked by Abe Polosnksy and Siegel himself. 

The cars look like they're in a widescreen process all of their own.

With Inger Stevens, Susan Clark, Michael Dunn, Don Stroud (impressively Methody).

I doesn't look like a Russell Metty picture, perhaps because it's not studios set. Universal.

Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2016 Joseph Cedar & scr)

I'm afraid I just didn't get this film this time - I don't even really understand what happened. 

Interestingly done and good cast in the shape of Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Hank Azaria, Steve Buscemi, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Michael Sheen, Dan Stevens.

Saving Private Ryan (1998 Steven Spielberg)

The perfect choice for Remembrance Sunday. The Dirty Eight: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies. With Matt Damon, Paul Giamatti, Ted Danson, Dennis Farina... and, Kathleen Byron!

Janusz Kaminski's photography is marvellous and the decision to shoot hand held absolutely the right one. For the record the camera operators are Seamus Corcoran, Mitch Dubin and Chris Haarhof.

Written by Robert Rodat, inspired by four brothers killed in the American Civil War.

The first 25 minutes are  certainly visceral, filmed in Southern Ireland.

It was funny to see that some of Steven's home movies are little war films. This stands as a correction to the types of John Wayne gung ho war films like Back to Bataan that he had grown up with, and it's a tribute to his Dad, who served.

Michael Khan edited it on a Moviola and won the Oscar as did John Williams  and the director (also Sound). Hanks was nominated.

Hope and Glory (1987 John Boorman & scr, prod)

Based on  Boorman's own recollections of seeing World War 2 (he was born in 1933) through the eyes of a young boy, and filmed on a specially created street set. Quite rightly first billed are Sebastian Rice-Edwards as the boy and Geraldine Muir as his little sister, who's fabulous. (She gave up acting after the next year's Just Ask For Diamond.) Parents are Sarah Miles and David Hayman, with Sammi Davis, Derrick O'Connor, Ian Bannen, Jean-Marc Barr and Charley Boorman as the German pilot.

Sammi: "Who said anything about love?"

"The time's come to smash things up."

Photographed by Philippe Rousselot, costumes Shirley Russell, production designer Anthony Pratt, editor Ian Crafford.

A suitable choice for Remembrance weekend.

The Last Picture Show (1971 Peter Bogdanovich & co-scr)

31.1.15: First saw this film one Saturday night on TV - the 21st January 1978 - and remember everyone talking about it at (boys') school the next week - being 14 we were of course all delighted with the nudity and sex scenes. Though for me the sense of time and place - and particularly the quiet, remote, run-down (and black-and white) location - was as equally memorable, and even then I realised the acting was good, and in my film filing card I see now that all the actors - Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cloris Leachman (AA), Ben Johnson (AA), Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn - were underlined in red, signifying notable performances - how could the kid be so smart?

Love most of Robert Surtees photography though did (and still) think that the lighting in some of the interiors is ugly. No composed music score, all diegetic, making the sense of time and place even more pronounced - closure of cinema all the more significant for this film lover / historian who became the wunderkind director - notably, Hawks' Red River is the last film played there. Considering it was only his second film, PB directs with great maturity and sensitivity: particularly loved the scene where Ben Johnson talks about his past, and camera very gently moves in, then out (like in Blimp) - the same shot works for Eileen Brennan's waitress (she's also fantastic; I forget to mention her when I was a teenager); the jump cut to the broom when Bottoms realises it's his 'brother'; editing of fight between Bridges and Bottoms*. The love-making scenes between Bottoms and Leachman (their faces) and Shepherd and Clu Gulager (on the pool table) are both extraordinary.

I was thinking as I watched it that Bogdanovich is a director who doesn't make me cry ... then he did... Like Truffaut, he fell in love with his leading lady.. He adapted Larry McMurtry's (Brokeback Mountain / Hud  - that's why the scenes with the waitress seem somehow familiar!) novel with the author - I'd call it a Masterpiece of Melancholy (so then is Daisy Miller.. interesting).

I'm going to tell Mr B that his next book - about his own career - should be called 'What the Fuck Happened?'  I guess it was his own experience as an actor (under Stella Adler) that enabled him to get such fabulous performances.

*I read afterwards that this fight was well rehearsed and then broken down and filmed in shots, so that it was in a sense edited in the camera - no additional material was shot that wasn't used. It's quite a remarkable talent in one so young and new.

26.5.19: It's a sad tale, very truthful about relationships and sex, with a wonderfully strong elegiac atmosphere, photographed by Robert Surtees (Oscar nominated). Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman were both Oscar and BAFTA winners though the Brits also gave it to Peter and Larry McMurtry's screenplay.

It was actually only the debuts of Cybill Shepherd, Sam Bottoms and Randy Quaid, although Timothy had only been in Johnny Got His Gun; Jeff had had more experience having appeared in several TV series (including Lassie),

It was in the last AFI Top 100 list, but only just. (Lists are rubbish - The Apartment  was only #80!)

30.5.20: A lot has been said about Jeff Bridges' first star part, and Cybill Shepherd's debut, but what struck me on this viewing is how good Timothy Bottoms is - his face as he's struggling with inner conflicts and picking up on those around him. That last look between 'Sam the Lion' Ben Johnson and Bottoms and Bridges as they set off for Mexico... It's fatherly, man-to-man, still annoyed with them because of Billy (Sam Bottoms), the old to the new...

Considering it was Peter's only second film, made when he was in his early thirties, it's a really mature film, very melancholic, like the work of someone much older. The fact that his dad died during filming probably contributed. I feel its sadness more and more each time I see it. 

It's very well acted by everyone. Peter ends his film like Ambersons - a film with which it has a sense of melancholy and nostalgia in common - with each cast member receiving a solo credit at the film's conclusion. Cloris Leachman's impassioned outburst to Bottoms at the end - "You didn't even have to be careful of me" - she said after the first take she could do better - "No you can't" said Bogdanovich - she won the Oscar - but still maintained she could have done it better. 

"I'm round that corner now - you've ruined it."

Written by Peter and Larry McMurty and based on the latter's novel. With: Clu Gulager, Sharon Ullrick, Randy Quaid. I must go and sob into my cereal now.

10.11.24: Loved the story that Ben Johnson felt he wasn't right for the part. "It took me three or four months to convince him. John Ford intervened."

When we interviewed Peter for our Verna Fields film he told us: "Come to The Last Picture Show, Verna wasn't available for either sound or picture - she was off somewhere doing some Government stuff, so I edited it myself - there is an editor credited, but he didn't do anything..." So you get this feeling, particularly at the beginning of the film, with all these lively quick cuts, that you're watching a French New Wave film that's finally made it to the USA.