Juror # 2 (2024 Clint Eastwood & prod)

Apparently Warners had always intended that the film be straight to streaming but did give it a limited 50 theatre release.

Jonathan Abrams offers for us 12 Angry Men with a twist - one of the jurors committed the crime. So that's fine.

Clint shows no sign of making an 'old man's film', the set-ups are assured, he's not showing a tendency for long, single camera takes. On the contrary. Did the performances warrant cutting around? I doubt it. We have Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette and J.K. Simmons, and then Zoey Deutch, Adrienne C. Moore, Leslie Bibb, Cedric Yarbrough, Chris Messina, Amy Aquino (Judge), Gabriel Basso (the alleged murderer), Keifer Sutherland.

The only thing I found odd was how he managed to convince everyone to go with Guilty.

I thought Joel Cox had retired.- I don't know why as he's cut all Clint's recent films, here with (presumably) his son David. Yves Bélanger shot it.

Disclaimer (2024 Alfonso Cuaron & scr)

Alfonso: "The collaboration with Chivo is from start to finish, it is not only in the image. It goes beyond that." It was Chivo's idea to bring in Bruno Delbonnel as an alternate camera, who "was tasked mostly with shooting the sections that are told in the third person, which pertain to people in Catherine's life", using hand held and zooms. The stuff in Catherine's present were shot in long takes with Chivo learning to 'dance' with Cate Blanchett. "Chivo is an alchemist," Cuaron says. "He challenges creative and technological limitations."  (LA Times.) They don't consider it a series but a 'long movie' in 'chapters'. Cuaron's 300 page screenplay was written like that. It also contains extraordinarily detailed information about the light in a scene, the angle of the sun, the colour of the sky.

Stunning opening on train as the light bounces around the carriage. Alfonso's gone back to using iris dissolves!

The only thing is, we didn't really see why Alfonso needed these explicit sex scenes. Even the seduction - excuse me, we'd best start talking about actors here - the scene where Leila George as the young Catherine seduces Louis Partridge just is horrible, the poor kid looks so uncomfortable, she's so the vamp. And then - we got it, and I was thinking of Hitch's controversial 'lying flashback' in Stage Fright - a director we know Cuaron loves, and it all makes horrible sense. And why the first girlfriend doesn't want to know him. And even the Kylie reference is in there.

Have to mention the ever-present cats. And those skies!

With Cate Blanchett (she does this kind of role so well, cf. Blue Jasmine) are Sasha Baron Cohen and Kodi Smit McPhee (The Power of the Dog), Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville, Jung Ho-yeon, Liv Hill, Gemma Jones and Indira Varma as the narrator. The second person narration is an intriguing idea.

It's incredibly done, particularly the rescue of the boy (presaged by an umbrella floating along the beach, shades of Azkaban) and drowning - what seemed like 20 minutes of riveting television. (Like the end of Roma.)

With its sub-text of fake news and faked narratives, it couldn't be more timely.

New Amsterdam - Season 5 (2022 David Schulner)

Super-ethical doctor Ryan Eggold is back to help make NYC a safer, better place.

What? You can get child marriages in the USA? In some states as young as five??? What the fuck is going on? The more I know about the USA, the worse it becomes. And Roe v Wade - had to be addressed. Abortion is now illegal in 12 states, the only country in the world that's going backwards.

I suspect that Ryan and deaf surgeon Sandra Mae Frank - oh, sorry - you're probably not allowed to say 'deaf' any more - aurally challenged surgeon are falling for each other and in TV plot land that means Freema Agyeman will unexpectedly turn up again.

"Bigfoot ahead!"

Quiz Lady (2023 Jessica Yu)

Enjoyable sibling comedy with Awkwafina and Sandra Oh, written by Jen D'Angelo.

The plot perhaps doesn't warrant detailed analysis but Tony Hale is worth attention as 'Benjamin Franklin'.

With Holland Taylor, Will Farrell, Jason Schwartzman - and briefly, Paul Reubens in his final appearance.

Yu is a TV director for hire, e.g. 3 episodes of This Is Us. D'Angelo is a writer for hire. They'll be fine.

Bad Sisters: Season 2 (2024 Dearbhla Walsh, scr Sharon Horgan)

Sharon Horgan, Anne-Marie Duff, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene, Eve Hewson and Michael Smiley are joined by Fiona Shaw, Owen McDonnell and detectives Barry Ward and Thaddea Graham, who's extremely persistent to the point of irritation.

Ended somewhat unexpectedly after eight episodes (we thought there'd be ten) but satisfyingly as both Shaw and Graham turn out to be good guys.

Interactions of the sisters are fun. But I wouldn't study the plot in too much detail...

Young Man with a Horn (1950 Michael Curtiz)

Young man (Orley Lindgren) is taught jazz trumpet by Juano Hernandez (this is one of the best bits of the film), grows up to be Kirk Douglas, who takes on the role seriously - you never once think he isn't playing that trumpet (it's actually Harry James, who taught him the fingering). He also goes through the same sort of mad intensity Kirk's known for. However everything goes wrong when he meets icy, messed up intellectual Lauren Bacall, and he hits the slides, or whatever the expression of the day was. Buddies Hoagy Carmichael and Doris Day make sure he comes out OK.

A somewhat clichéd story in a way with some good numbers (a couple too many from Day). The scene where Kirk gets messed up by some bad guys looks like it's going to go somewhere else but doesn't, feels like it's from the wrong film.

Some nice on location stuff - though I guess they had to try and avoid it looking too much like The Lost Weekend, which it starts to.

Dorothy Baker's novel, purchased by Warners in 1945 as a vehicle for John Garfield, is loosely based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke (who was a friend of Hoagy's). Carl Foreman and Edmund H North wrote the screenplay.

So a bit of a disappointment, but just fabulously photographed by Ted McCord.

You'd think with the amount that Hoagy smoked in all these old movies that he would have died young - not at all - he made it to 82 in 1981.

The Diary of Anne Frank (1959 George Stevens)

Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich were approached to write a play based on Anne Frank's diaries. They travelled and exhaustively researched around the subject. It was the hardest thing they ever wrote, Frances crying throughout, and it took eight tries before they had the play they were happy with, striving always to find the humour and vivacity which Anne displayed. They also needed the approval of Otto Frank. When Garson Kanin came on as director he came up with two invaluable suggestions: to have Anne reading diary entries over the set changes, and to construct an 'outside world' soundtrack.

Albert and Frances also wrote the screen version. Joseph Schildkraut repeated his role of Otto Frank; Susan Strasberg, who had played Anne on Broadway, was then too old and Millie Perkins was cast, though Albert and Frances were disappointed with her and the picture itself. It should have been produced by Sam Goldwyn and directed by William Wyler, but Goldwyn became pissed off when Otto Frank demanded script approval and backed off.

We didn't mind Millie. I'd seen her a bit older in the sixties, making a mark in two Monte Hellman films, The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind. Schildkraut is the oily bad guy in The Shop Around the Corner.

With Gusti Huber and Diane Baker as Anne's mother and sister, Lou Jacobi, Shelley Winters (winning Oscar) and Richard Beymer, and Ed Wynn as the dentist. Plus Douglas Spencer and Dodie Heath. Photographed by William C Mellor (Oscar) with exterior Amsterdam scenes well caught by Jack Cardiff. Music by Alfred Newman, though quite rightly the tensest scenes play out without music. Interesting editing with long dissolves - not all of which work - the most effective Anne's bedroom ceiling turning into women prisoners of war.

It's long (2 hours 44) but doesn't feel it and is rather special.

Fox even dispensed with the fanfare over their logo at the beginning.

Солярис / Solaris (1972 Andrei Tarkovsky)

Despite its sci-fi trappings, this might simply be Tarkovsky's most profound statement about love, as psychologist Donatas Banionis encounters the reincarnation of his dead wife Natalya Bondarchuk aboard the space station circling the mysterious planet Solaris, and somehow circles back to his parents.

The station - when we finally arrive there - is like being in some Roegian thriller, with mysterious glimpses of people who shouldn't be there, and sudden shocks. Her tearing through the door - and herself - is memorable.

Stuffed full of typical Tarkovskian symbols - dogs, remote country houses (dachas), art, nature, people who float, rain, water inside. And that's a definitive scene isn't it, the drifting through the Bruegel to Bach's choral prelude on organ. It's where something mysteriously comes into focus.

A numinous film, like all of his. Written by he and Fridrikh Gorenshteyn from Stanislaw Lem's novel.

A complex image

Photographed by Vadim Yusov, in Eastmancolor, Sovcolor (earth scenes) and in monochrome and tints.

Also great soundtrack. Notice for example in the long sequence driving in to the city, it's not traffic noises you hear but all sorts of industrial, mechanized and spacey stuff.

Like people, I don't think films should be over-analysed. I can't claim to know exactly what Tarkovsky's thinking, but I think he would be content to know the way the films make me feel.

Patience (2025 Maarten Moerkerke, scr Matt Baker)

We immediately fell for this new Channel 4 six-parter and particularly Patience herself, played by Ella Maisy Purvis, who in real life is autistic and has ADHD. So in a way it's in the mould of Professor T and The Bridge and even Monk, but better, because I guess the whole autism thing is more to the fore, taken more seriously. As such, it's very Channel 4, in a good way, though received generally poor reviews.

Also, we know immediately that Laura Fraser's son is challenged in a similar way, and look forward to his interactions with Patience.

Also good to see Mark Benton in a  serious role for a change. Fraser's no. 2 Nathan Welsh is annoyingly resistant to our neurodivergent sleuth.

Flashbacks to younger Patience are welcome.

Good music by Ruben De Gheselle and Hannes De Maeyer. Whilst set in York, the series was also filmed in Antwerp with a Belgian crew. It was adapted from a French TV series Astrid et Raphaelle.

Scopolamine can produce psychoactive effects, and was used for this purpose by certain Native American tribes.

Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger (2025 Chris Foggin)

Dave Fishwick really did take on the Payday Loan arseholes and helped shut down Wonga, though he now says it's worse than when he started.

As a film it's fairly rudimentary, with the addition of Chrissy Metz coming in from NYC and bonding with Citizens Advice chap Amit Shah.

North Shore (2023 Mike Bullen)

Not realising it was Bullen, I found some of the dialogue quite clunky - sorry Mike. Watchable story, though, with fish-out-of-water London detective John Bradley lent to Sydney police force to investigate murder of politician Joanna Froggatt's daughter. (It turns out she is not her father's daughter but a politician's.)

Froggatt and Kirsty Sturgess as the resistant local detective are both a bit one-note for me, leaving Bradley to give us the humanity and likeableness. His major credit is in GOT. Think the only thing we've seen him in is The Railway Children Return.

'Would she make a good Prime Minister?' someone asks. Well she seems emotionless, lies, has had an affair, and makes a dodgy trade deal for her own ends. So, yes, she'd make a great Prime Minister.

The ending - with his wife turning up just as he's embarking on a relationship with her sister - is a classic 'watch season two'.

Look Homeward (1965 Jack Hively)

So this begins with Ranger Corey with Lassie in a light aircraft which runs into bad weather. 'Where's Lassie's parachute?', we were both wondering, when the inevitable happens and he parachutes, holding the dog in his arms. It's like the last one - don't take the dog fishing.

You have to hand it to this grand-pup of Pal, who bravely falls down a mountain, ends up in the rapids, encounters a (hopefully) stingless scorpion, is stampeded, lies right by a speeding train (clearly not a trick shot) and fights a wolf in order to get home to her beloved master. (The ending - is the eagle some kind of spirit guide? According to lassieweb it makes more sense if you saw the earlier episode 'Lassie's Odessey'. Also the early stuff in the rapids is lifted for the Disappearance!) I mean you have to acknowledge the great Rudd Weatherwax of course for his training and handling of the dog - but what a dog! According to Wikipedia the dog 1960-66 was Baby.

Slow Horses - Season 4 (2024 Will Smith)

Good opening as River (Jack Lowden) has his head blown off by clearly disoriented grandfather Jonathan Pryce, then finds himself recklessly in danger in a rather run down part of northern France.

New additions: Joanna Scanlan, Ruth Bradley and James Callis as the truly useless new First Desk or whatever it's called. Plus Tom Brooke as the new Slow Horse (or whatever, 'Joe'?)

They're very bingeable. A variety of writers and directors. Though elements with seemingly indestructible assassin seem unbelievable, as does whole psycho making women pregnant and bringing up their children as army thing, and River's parentage. Still very watchable though and the final moment where River and Lamb meet up after the latter had left his grandfather in a care home is the closest to bonding they may get. Good humour also in final shoot out e.g. the key's stuck, I've dropped the cartridges etc.

Disappearance (1964 John English)

Originally broadcast as four episodes of Lassie, thus we end up with a long feature length TV movie. In sequence this lies before The Wayfarers as Lassie is still Timmy's dog. She gets lost in a big fucking lake but is rescued by nice Ranger Corey Stuart (Robert Bray), who it seems to me is living in a long term gay relationship with a friendly author. He whisks her off to other adventures where people keep doing stupid things, like when there's a big forest fire and he's told to get away from the area he rushes straight in and succumbs to fumes - Lassie saves him for the first of two times.

Anyhoo - so all this explains why dog and Ranger have the great bond we saw exhibited in The Wayfarers.

They Won't Forget (1937 Mervyn LeRoy)

Unusual, hard-hitting and memorable small-town drama. It's Memorial Day in the South and a young woman is murdered. Her college professor who was in the building at the time is arrested, along with a black caretaker. This sets in motion a local politician, eager to make political ground with a big courtroom conviction, and a very slimy newspaperman who's in league with him. The case goes national and suddenly it's also the North vs the South and the case of prejudice against the suspects. The lynch mob ending is horrifying in its understatement, but most innovatively, we don't even find out who the murderer was.

Variable performances from Claude Rains (unbelievable Southern accent), Gloria Dickson and Edward Norris, Otto Kruger, Allyn Joslyn memorable as yellow press, Lana Turner is the victim, Elisha Cook Jr. and Clinton Rosemond as the janitor. Photographed by Arthur Edeson, music by Adolph Deutsch. Written by Ward Greene (based on his novel), Robert Rossen and Aben Kandel for Warner Bros.

A powerful symbol of mob law by lynching

In reality back then, they probably would have lynched the black man, whatever anyone said.

Playing Nice (2024 scr Grace Ofori-Attah)

Niamh Algar and James Norton find out their son was switched at birth with that of James McArdle and Jessica Brown Findlay. What larks!

Worthy undercurrents of post natal depression and controlling husbands, but does turn into the sort of thrillery bollocks you get used to, with a clifftop "No. No. No. No. No. Yes!!!" ending. Good acting. With Sunetra Sarker.

Mr Sunshine (2011-12)

Created by Matthew Perry, Alex Barnow and Marc Firek. A fairly pleasing series in which Perry is the manager of a huge stadium dealing with erratic boss Allison Janney, her maladapted son Nate Torrence, marketing director Andrea Anders and love rival James Lesure (also in Studio 60), and arsonist Portia Doubleday.

Exec producer Thomas Schlamme was known to us as a West Wing producer.

But it wasn't good enough and you can see why after 13 episodes it wasn't recommissioned.

Q laughed most times at the 'Mr. Sunshine' jingle. She thought Matty (who's the main reason for watching it) was 'wired'.

Actually, I say the main reason, but it gives you a chance to admire Allison Janney again, a hard-working, always reliable performer who finally achieved the big time with I, Tonya in 2017.

The Children's Hour (1961 William Wyler)

Another director who remade his own film (These Three, 1936, also with Miriam Hopkins). You think of Hitch, don't you - The Man Who Knew Too Much - and Leo McCarey, who remade Love Affair as An Affair to Remember. I'm sure there's others.

So - Lillian Hellman's debut play, a powerful work, in fact based on a true similar story that occurred in Edinburgh in 1810. Unlike the early version, this one honours the source and keeps the lesbian angle in, which had to be removed from the 1936 version, which therefore can't be as good. It doesn't feel play-like. Of course the performances are immaculate: Audrey Hepburn Wyler had worked with before, Shirley MacLaine fresh off The Apartment, Miriam Hopkins (I still think too theatrical), James Garner, Fay Bainter, and particularly Karen Balkin as the hideously destructive girl and Veronica Cartwright as her victim.

Despite firing him from Roman Holiday, Wyler does work with DP Franz Planer again, perhaps at Hepburn's insistence (he had since photographed her in The Nun's Story and Breakfast at Tiffany's). He gives him the deep focus that Wyler had enjoyed with Gregg Toland. Wyler's blocking is marvellous.

There's a similar shot to this in Wyler's Mrs Miniver

It would be interesting to write the horrible child Mary Tilford as a grown-up.

Films of the Year 2025

 Coup de Grace

I Walked With a Zombie (1943 Jacques Tourneur)

Funny that on the same day we watched Fred Zinnemann's Julia, we see a film co-written by one of his Berlin / People on Sunday buddies Curt Siodmak. Actually (according to Chris Fujiwara, author of 'Jacques Tourneur: Cinema of Nightfall') Ardel Wray rewrote it and introduced the slavery element which makes it so resonant. (The original idea is credited to a short story by journalist Inez Wallace, her only film credit). This is the beautiful restored Criterion Blu-Ray on which J Roy Hunt's glorious images finally are seen as they should be. Had to thank Lee Kline and Giles Sherwood who managed the restoration for Criterion.

It was a bit weird because we only normally watch it in super-hot weather.