Act of Violence (1948 Fred Zinnemann)

Running, running... When we hear why Robert Ryan is pursuing Van Heflin, our loyalties are switched. But when Heflin gets picked up by Mary Astor (didn't recognise her at all) in a bar, and she introduces him to Taylor Holmes and brutish Barry Kroeger, things get a lot worse. Beautifully done ending in railway station.

With Janet Leigh and Phyllis Thaxter.

Photographed by Robert Surtees, music by Bronislau Kaper.

Is it a noir? Well it doesn't have the great language of Double Indemnity nor a femme fatale (Astor is more of a run down barfly who gets 'kicks'), but... yes, definitely. And in that it's one of those ones that totally undermines what seems to be the typical happy American family it's definitely subversive, and it also has that angle about how the war is still seeping into post-war lives.

Somewhere in the Night (1946 Joseph Mankiewicz & co-scr)

Ah, yes, the "Who is Larry Cravat?" one, co-written with Howard Dimsdale who was blacklisted by HUAD and committed suicide with his wife in 1991.

War-damaged amnesiac John Hodiak (Desert Fury, Lifeboat, Battleground, A Bell for Adano) has only one clue to his identity and seeks Cravat, but it turns out he's connected to a missing two million dollars. Nancy Guild (very few credits) falls for him, Richard Conte gets involved, as does smooth-talking Fritz Kortner (stage actor, then films such as Pandora's Box). As you'd expect with Mankiewicz it's quite dialogue heavy but certainly invokes a nicely noirish world of LA mystery, well rendered by Norbert Brodine. Lloyd Nolan is the friendly copper, Margo Woode in femme fatale role, Whit Bissell as barman, Lou Nova (tough guy), Charles Arnt (man with glasses), Harry Morgan.

Nice touches e.g. long take over crystal ball, Hodiak meeting Josephine Hutchinson, who claims she knows him, and that definitive noir image of a suited man emerging from the window of a mental hospital. Quick simply directed by Mankiewicz.

The night docks scenes sound like they're accompanied by the sound of someone's iPhone ringing on silent.

Music by David Buttolph. Fox.

Back in Stars Hollow

 Lorelai and Rory summoned us.

Loved when Rory's fractured her arm and Lorelai sleeps in a chair at the end of the bed and we cut to her asleep later and then the camera shows Chris is also there and also asleep. (He's let himself in unbeknown to the girls.) Lovely touch.

'Oy with the poodles already!'

Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy (2025 Michael Morris)

A needy film which wants you to like it, specifically through reusing elements from the first - and best - Bridget Jones film (the 'wrong' relationship while the 'right' one is staring her in the face, the ending in the snow, Christmas jumper etc.) And rather depressingly, Bridget is only impressed my men's physiques. Still, enjoyable though whilst a little obvious in places. 

Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Mila Jancovic and Caspar Knopf (the children), Sally Phillips, Sarah Solemani, Gemma Jones, Emma Thompson, Shirley Henderson, Jim Broadbent, Colin Firth, Nico Parker.

Suspicious screenplay credit: written by Helen Fielding and Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan. Good array of pretentious childrens' names. Hazily photographed by Suzie Lavelle, well edited by Mark Day.

The silly tree scene. How can Bridget be stuck there when her kids are much higher up?

Double Indemnity (1944 Billy Wilder)

Yes, no matter who wrote what (Billy or Raymond Chandler) - and let's not forget those choice lines of dialogue were probably co-written - you can pretty much be sure that the clever construction is all Billy's, for example the demise of the first Mrs Dietrichson, which isn't revealed until an hour and a quarter in, and the stuff with her step-daughter (Jean Heather).

I was noticing in the Hollywood Bowl sequence quite how well the classical (Beethoven or someone) goes with the dialogue.

Mrs D is like a Venus Fly-Trap.

But when Edward G gets going, in those long takes, it's poetry in motion.

Oscar nominated for Picture, Director, Screenplay, music and sound recording, and Actress.

See How They Run (2022 Tom George)

Written by Mark Chappell who co-wrote Netflix series Flaked, which is well rated. But this didn't work for me at all. It's in that category of British farce which hasn't worked for decades, nary a laugh in sight. Gimmicky direction (split screen) doesn't help - has it ever?

Good to hear Sam Rockwell with British accent but in a way he has no charisma or presence, good also to see Saoirse as WPC and David Oleyowo as camp writer. Good production values even though half the time you think you're looking at CGI.

With Reece Shearsmith, Adrian Brody, Ruth Wilson, Harris Dickinson, Pearl Chanda, Shirley Henderson, Tim Key.

Fox Searchlight.

Extreme Measures (1996 Michael Apted)

Has a truly memorable opening. Two naked men escape into the night New York streets. They's clearly something very wrong with them. And someone's after them. They split up. What's going on?

Tony Gilroy adapted Michael Palmer's novel.

I couldn't help but think some studio execs fucked the film up somehow, but I don't really know why.

Hugh Grant is - I fear - badly miscast as the idealistic New York doctor. With Gene Hackman, Sarah Jessica Parker, David Morse, Bill Nunn (Regarding Henry), John Toles-Bey, Shaun Austin-Olsen (who has to give a very physical performance as the first victim).

The film's central plot, and the ending, seem entirely implausible.

Photographed by John Bailey.

Also I didn't like Grant's hairstyle.

Clint Eastwood's 95th birthday double bill: Honkytonk Man (1982 Clint Eastwood) / The Beguiled (1970, released 1971 Don Siegel)

It's also a Bruce Surtees double bill.

There's something about Honkytonk Man  that seems personal to Clint, who was born in the Depression, and aged 16 would sneak down to this bar in LA to play piano in exchange for pizza and beer. And the fact he has his son Kyle playing his nephew (he's second billed) also makes it a most personal work.

After it had finished I concluded that John Ford would have liked it. It is still a criminally underrated film.

Verna Bloom said of the title character "If Clint were a failure, he'd be Red."

The part of the grandfather was offered to James Stewart, who though only a year shy of the character's age, declined.

And, the skill of Bruce Surtees , who must have inspired camera operator Jack Green and gaffer Tom Stern:

The next film was so strange that nobody could get their heads around it and it was a critical and commercial flop. Clint had been spellbound by Thomas Cullinan's novel, and he saw it was an opportunity where he could really do some acting - and as such, it's one of his best films. And regardless of that, one of his best films.

A weird film, a kind of Gothic horror film set in a girls's school in the American Civil War, with certain similarities to Misery. Lalo Schifrin's strange score and Carl Pingitore' s distinctive editing are major contributors to its style. You can also see it as a film about male chauvinism, and in that the man brings all the misery in on himself, a moral black comedy.

Great cast comprises Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris, Mae Mercer and little Pamelyn Ferdin. Indeed Clint's biographer Richard Schickel comments on how shocking it is that right at the beginning Clint kisses the 13 year old on the mouth. And talking of beginning, former montage king Don Siegel creates something special out of Civil War photos for that credits scene.

Lots of interesting stuff about it here.

The 'Where's the rest of me?' moment

And Siegel promoted camera operator Bruce Surtees (he'd worked on Coogan's Bluff and Two Mules for Sister Sarah) to DP and his work in the low light / candle lit scenes is Alison A. Amazing.

Arena: Clint Eastwood (2000 Bruce Ricker & prod)

Two part two hour documentary shown ahead of Clint's 95th birthday. Overuses some 8mm footage badly, stock footage also quite bad, all film clips shown in 16:9, thus most of them cropped. Not good. Also part two lifts a huge chunk of Iain Johnstone's 1976 documentary The Man With No Name and doesn't credit it.

Anyway luckily it had some good bits, like Scorsese saying his films looked straightforward and like they were easy to direct - which no film is. Loved the clip of Clint directing a guy on a horse and he says ' you come forward a bit more' and then he addresses the horse - by name - and says 'come here'.. he's always loved animals.. someone said he knew what every single job on set was, because he's always paying attention to everything, but to know the name of the horse...

And then  Meryl Streep, saying that in a scene in Bridges he's crying , and he hides that from the camera... and she's saying most actors, if they're crying, stick their faces in the camera, y'know, like, 'look, give me the Oscar' so after the scene she says, 'Why'd you do that?' and he said 'No one wants to see Clint Eastwood crying'.

And Bird, Forrest Whittaker saying that because of Clint he's really given his all to the role, and when filming it, Clint whispered into Jack Green's ear 'I don't care if no one sees this, it's a great movie.'

And of course what it doesn't cover, what came later, would astonish anyone in 2000... Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Changeling, Sully...

Hacks - Season 4 (2025 Aniello / Downs / Statsky)

There's a great pull going on here because Ava has blackmailed her way into Head Writer position on Deborah's late night TV show, so there's huge conflict between them, though at the same time, there's a connecting pull of friendship that's trying to break through the hostility. And whilst they're being really horrible to one another, they're also trying to teach each other lessons. So it's beautifully balanced.

Eventually (let's call it episode 6) Ava has a meltdown, Deborah goes to her aid in the sea (though she's not actually in the sea), they restore balance... I think.

As to the late night show itself... a guest chef? A middle aged dancing woman? Where are the great Guests?

Good ending in which Deborah is forced to fire Ava but then quits.

Your Friends & Neighbors (2025 Creator Jonathan Tropper)

Though various writers credited over nine episodes.

In episode one, everything conspires against John Hamm. Following his wife's adultery (Amanda Peet) he's divorced and having to pay alimony so his wife and kids and stay in his house. He has an affair with a co-worker and is promptly sacked and his share of the firm's capital stolen. Takes to theft.

Two shows us a little more of the ex and her relationship with the kids and new boyfriend. Then plot shifts into more interesting waters when he realises the South American network of maids to the wealthy are a useful source of knowledge for a burglar...

As we near the end, the police investigate, and Hamm and his wife reconnect...

"Sometimes I just walk around the house and I just look at the sheer volume of shit we have and it fucking mystifies me. I mean when did we become these people? When did our lives get so empty that we have to constantly stuff them with all this shit?" Written (probably) by Bryan Parker.

The mystery of the murder is ingeniously explained. Filming of Season 2 has begun already.

This Town (2024 Stephen Knight)

Will music win out over terrorism? is one of the questions this intriguing and non-conformist drama poses. Music unites, terrorism divides.

1981. The year of 'Ghost Town'. Birmingham. Levi Brown decides to be a poet. Nicholas Pinnock is the previously bad lad father.

Coventry. Ben Rose plays his cousin, aspirations to dance. But his dad Peter McDonald, is an IRA cunt who forces him into the life. And his mum, Michelle Dockery, is a drunk.

Northern Ireland. Jordan Bolger, the brother. Former hard man. Is recruited - no, forced - by MI5 to spy on the IRA lot by John Heffernan.

The music - ska, reggae, old time stuff - is well to the fore. And there's something very distinctive about Knight's dialogue, for example he writes "I shall do this thing" instead of something more colloquial like "I'm gonna do this thing". Maybe it's not so much the writing but the Birmingham accent?

"Everywhere God lives there's brilliant acoustics. he must really like music."

And "the devil's the sniper on the roof".

They get to debut - and do sound quite Specials-like, and the wrong person was fingered as the IRA grass, so that's OK. Season two may be following. Good lyrics, and music.

September (1987 Woody Allen & scr)

The film Woody Allen made twice. Yes, he wasn't happy with Maureen O'Hara's performance, and as he related to biographer Stig Björkman, also realised that he'd miscast Charles Durning as the neighbour. (It's quite funny to think he had to tell his girlfriends's mother that he'd recast her.)  He was definitely in a casting maze, because he'd also made Christopher Walken the writer, then replaced him with Sam Shepard. And though Sam was good, he didn't really like acting, he preferred writing plays, so when it came to remake it Woody felt he couldn't ask him to do it again. But Sam Wanamaker was available and he was more the right kind of actor Woody was looking for. So Santo Loquasto's set was still standing, the other actors were still available, so he completely reshot it.

The other actors are Mia Farrow, Diane Wiest (one of five collaborations), Denholm Elliott, Elaine Stritch and Jack Warden, all often caught in long takes.

Stig: I talked to Carlo Di Palma the other day, and he said that for him September was the best picture he had made together with you.
Woody: He did beautiful, beautiful work on it.

Like Annie Hall, there's no music score, it's what occurs from the scene - thus Art Blakey on the record player or Weist playing the piano.

It's (according to Allen ) Chekhovian, 'a similar atmosphere', and one he knew in advance audiences wouldn't come to see. He loved Andrej Konchalovsky's Uncle Vanya, but when he and Diane Keaton watched it they were the only people in the cinema. It's essentially about people longing to be with people who themselves long to be with other people, and the atmosphere is definitely that of melancholia (which is maybe why Q said she wanted to cut her wrists when it was over).

Stig wonders if it evokes the Lana Tuner story where her daughter shot her mother's abusive boyfriend Johnny Stompanato, but Woody, though 'aware' of the story denies he based it on it. It does sound very similar, however.

And... it rains! Woody: "I love rain!"

Magnolia (1999 Paul Thomas Anderson & scr)

Why is this called Magnolia? Q asked. It should be called 'Big Turgid Spider's Web'. She did enjoy it though. It's something of an epic but isn't a minute too long.

Oscar nominated for Tom Cruise, the screenplay and Aimee Mann's song 'Save Me'.

Is it, in fact, about forgiveness?

The cast are listed in alphabetical order. They are Jeremy Blackman (quiz show kid), Tom Cruise, Melinda Dillon, April Grace, Luis Guzman. Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, William H Macy, Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore, Michael Murphy, John C Reilly, Jason Robards, Melora Walters (coke girl). TV personality Henry Gibson plays the older man at the bar. He's very low down the cast list in Kiss Me Stupid.

Robert Elswitt and his operator Paul Babin (collaborators also on 8MM, The River Wild) are responsible for those elegant tracking shots, filmed on celluloid. Edited by Dylan Tichenor. Jon Brion's propulsive score is also a key asset.

There are apparently pictures of magnolias throughout but I didn't notice one.

Hitchcock at the NFT (1970 Producer Tony Staveacre)

Hosted by Bryan Forbes but mainly consisting of audience questions, a noticeably long-haired audience.

Like, why was the art direction on Marnie so bad? Yes, it was terrible.

Was Torn Curtain miscast? Yes, we should have had a singing scientist.

What are your best achievements? Shadow of a Doubt (partly because it was shot on location) and Rear Window) 'my most cinematic picture'.

You seem to have a good sense of humour. Why don't you make comedies? All my films are comedies.

Have you thought of working in different genres? The only problem if I made a musical would be that the audience would be thinking which of the chorus girls is going to be murdered and how.

Someone complained that the murder scene in Torn Curtain was gratuitously violent and tasteless. Hitch replied that it showed how difficult and unpleasant murder was, and added the oven ending was Auschwitz, a comment that the audience didn't know how to deal with at all.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946 William Wyler)

The way Teresa Wright tenderly dries Dana Andrews' face. When Frederic March is drunkenly dancing with Myrna Loy there's a sudden, brilliant moment when he looks like he doesn't recognise her. The way Gregg Toland's camera very elegantly moves in the ladies' scene to find a more intimate mirror shot with focus on Teresa Wright learning what Andrews's wife Virginia Mayo is really like. When March confronts Andrews in the booth at Butch's and tells him he can't see Wright any more, the length of time the camera just rests on Andrews' face, such a long linger, while he's furiously thinking. And the way he tears the foursome photo in half, so it's just he and Wright, but then tears that up as well (a perfect show don't tell). And throughout it all, that emotive, brave, proud score by Hugo Friedhofer (one of its seven Oscars).

The film is exalted at a level few films reach.

I first watched it on TV on 2 April 1978, aged 14, and gave it 7/10.

The Madness of King George (1994 Nicholas Hytner)

As well as relating a fascinating moment in history, I sense Alan Bennett is also discussing the wider issue of how anyone can through mental illness be deprived of their liberty and suffer mistreatment. Here, King George, perfectly played by Nigel Hawthorne, is taken away and subjected to a bullying treatment by Ian Holm, and whilst he does get better, it's probably that his physical symptoms went into remission.

Great cast features Rupert Graves, Rupert Everett, Helen Mirren, John Wood, Amanda Donohoe, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Adrian Scarborough ('Fortnum'), Julian Wadham (good as Pitt), Jim Carter, Geoffrey Palmer.

Beautifully shot by Andrew Dunn, with amazing production design (Ken Adam) and costumes (Mark Thompson) and well edited (Tariq Anwar).

Boxcar Bertha (1972 Martin Scorsese)

A surprisingly clumsily made film produced by Roger Corman for AIP, a sort of sequel to Bloody Mama. The female protagonist is a young Barbara Hershey who falls in with union organizer David Carradine, cowardly card sharp Barry Primus and Bernie Casey. One or two stand out sequences, usual exploitation elements, cool black character, though ending - crucifixion of Carradine on a train - is gratuitous, and there's a then-fashionably downbeat ending.

The blues music's good.

Sweet Liberty (1986 Alan Alda & scr)

Perfectly amiable comedy in which historian Alda realises his historical book is being turned into a cheesy comedy by director Saul Rubinek and writer Bob Hoskins. Romantic complications  arise between he and mercenary actress Michelle Pfeiffer and his girlfriend Lise Hilboldt and actor Michael Caine.

The opening music is horrible 80s crap but actually the rest of Bruce Broughton's score isn't bad.

Luckily these two scenes aren't connected:

Wicked Little Letters (2023 Thea Sharrock)

"Mind your own business and there will be no rows" was actually the content of the first letter received in Littlehampton in 1920, but they reportedly did become filthier. The Guardian lists one of the later letters as containing "You bloody fucking flaming piss country whores, go and fuck your cunt.” Much more like it. And the target of the first letters did turn out to be the author.

Great cast. Edited by Melanie Oliver, photographed insincerely by Ben Davis, music from the Waller-Bridge sister.