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.

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.

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.

Lethal Weapon (1987 Richard Donner)

It was a Richard Donner evening. I was quite amazed to see that I had re-edited the Director's Cut so it was in the correct aspect ratio (though wondered if I'd compromised the image quality a bit). I think we'd better get it on 4K Blu-Ray as both versions are included.

Yes we all know my thoughts on Mel not being able to hit the helicopter, but it seems he doesn't even hear it arrive. Oops.

The editing is seriously sensational. It's Mel's best performance.

Scrooged (1988 Richard Donner)

Managed to recall most of cast names though couldn't remember Alfre Woodard - tut, tut. Or Karen Allen (Animal House, Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels, In the Bedroom, King of the Hill, Shoot the Moon).

Weirdly Michael J Pollard sees Murray as a drunken Richard Burton and even quotes the film we just watched, The Night of the Iguana! Bit of a strange coincidence. Prompted me to suggest we then watch Where Eagles Dare.

Photographed by Michael Chapman and edited by Fred and Bill Steinkamp, though I noticed the credit for Stuart Baird as 'Post Production Consultant'. In typical rabbit hole fashion I Googled to see what I could find out and ended up on a chat about bad directing and came across the legendary Foglers ‘incest’ ad, which is rather funny. (Read the comments too.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMwFWDIFVCU

I guess it meant that Baird recut it?

The Night of the Iguana (1964 John Huston)

A Ray Stark production - perhaps this is how Margaret Booth and he became acquainted (it's an MGM release).

Originally a Tennesse Williams play, adapted for the screen by Huston and Peter Viertel.

Wonderful pot of characters, really well played: Richard Burton a chastised priest, Ava Gardner an effervescent, world-weary hotelier, Deborah Kerr an itinerant artist and her father poet Cyril Delevanti, man crazy teen Sue Lyon and embittered tour leader Grayson Hall (That Darn Cat). With Skip Ward as the driver, and Emilio Fernandez in a cameo.

Gabriel Figueroa shoots Mexico lovingly, good (uncredited) operating. The hotel is a set in Mismaloya, the stars had houses nearby; Liz and Richard ended up buying their's. Benjamin Frankel score, Ralph Kemplen edited.

Most entertaining. Attempt of Ward to fight the Mexican boys most amusing.

Last Christmas (2019 Paul Feig)

Emma Thompson good fun as Armenian (or something), a part she wrote for herself. Michelle Yeoh also good as Christmas store owner.

"Have you come back for the gibbon?"

Wake Up Dead Man (2025 Rian Johnson & scr)

A new priest - Josh O'Connor with a fabulous accent - joins congregation run by Son of a Cunt Josh Brolin, who's murdered. Benoit Blanc drops in to investigate.

Congregation: Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Thomas Haden Church, Cailee Spaeny.

Mila Kunis is investigating. With Jeffrey Wright.

Good production design Rick Heinricks and photography Steve Yedlin.

It was rather long (2 1/2 hours). It was quite fun. Craig has said he'll keep doing them as long as Rian keeps writing them. To be honest, I think the first one was the best. And he's as insecure as any other actor, whilst O'Connor is a mixture of insecurity and ego!