SAS Rogue Heroes - Season 2 (2025 Steven Knight)

The problem here is that Knight wrote himself into a corner. He had three great anti-heroes in Season 1 in the shape of Jack O'Connell, Connor Swindells and Alfie Allen. Allen is dead and Swindells is barely seen, in prison, until finally being released at the end of episode five (scheduling clash meant he was time restricted, or was Knight just playing a black joke on the actor?) leaving too much of Jack waffling on about pretentious crap in Sicily (Croatia) and Italy.

Also the plot about not picking up drowning airman because it would delay their landing is nonsense. The series dwells on the psychological effects of war more than the first, and maybe for these reasons above isn't so good.

Does have good lines like "I have to retrieve a donkey and then have breakfast with the Mafia". And "Special Air Service? You deliver mail?"

With Sofia Boutella, Dominic West, Bobby Schofield (so good in The Suspect), Gwilym Lee (by-the-book commander), Corin Silva, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Jacob Ifan, Jack Barton, Con O'Neill.

Jack Barton

Series cinematographer: Stijn Van Der Veken

As Q observed, the archive footage is nicely cut into the action. And indeed some of this story is true, like the defense of Termoli. Ends on 6th June...

To Rome With Love (2012 Woody Allen & scr)

Some of Woody's own bits seem stilted. But Roberto Benigni is hilarious.

Woody twists the plot of The White Sheik beautifully into something his own.

Also the great twist at the end of the Eisenberg-Page story - the film invite. And Alec Baldwin's deadpan responses.

Fabulous atypical music tracks.

Beautifully photographed by Darius Khondji. (The other films he shot for Woody were Anything Else (2003), Midnight in Paris (2011), Magic in the Moonlight (2014) and Irrational Man (2015). I guess they filmed towards the beginning and end of the day to avoid the summer heat and to get that distinctive saturated look.

And - it rains again! Is there a Woody Allen where it doesn't rain? Probably.

Hacks - Season 2 (2022 Showrunners Lucy Aniello, Paul Downs)

So Ava has admitted blurting out horrible stories about Deborah and so her boss is suing her, and treating her like shit on the road.

Hilarious episode where Deborah wins over cruiser of lesbians, then manages to alienate them all.

Climaxes with Deborah returning to the Vegas hotel where she had her residency, putting on a one off hit show. It's so successful she fires Ava as she knows the young one is now hot and in demand.

It's too short! Eight half hour episodes.

Paul W. Downs, who is also the co-creator and a show-runner

Carl Clemons-Hopkins

As Time Goes By - Seasons 1 - 3 (1991-4 writer Bob Larbey)

In which Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer are reunited after thirty years and become friends again, and more. (They are wonderful together.) They are also being wooed by his most annoying agent Philip Bretherton and her daughter Moira Brooker. Also with Jenny Funnell.

The cover of the title song isn't the best. But the title 'A Drizzly Day in Holland Park' we thought quite good.

His flat is (was) Carlton Mansions, Maida Vale W9. Her house is 21 St James's Gardens, W11, near Holland Park Avenue. (No. 23 sold in January 2021 for five mil.)

Samuel West made an appearance in the Paris episode.

Muriel's Wedding (1994 P.J. Hogan & scr)

Another Billy Liar? Muriel hasn't much chance with terrible family, fathered by Bill Hunter, who's as corrupt as anything. Her mum, wonderfully performed by Jeanie Drynan, is in another world, though does know that her husband is up to something with Gennie Nevinson. She escapes (with stolen money) to Sydney with Rachel Griffiths, who we know best from Six Feet Under. And marries South African swimmer Daniel Lapaine.

It's got its feet in real people and relationships making it all the more successful.

Editor Jill Bilcock (who went on to work with Baz Luhrmann and Sam Mendes) gets a higher billing than the DP Martin McGrath.

It wasn't quite Toni's debut, and she didn't rocket to fame, but I'm sure it helped.

Blue Velvet (1986 David Lynch & scr)

After which I watched the Mark Cousins interview from 1999 and it's funny how shy and unsure and amused and friendly he is, yet he can create these absolute monsters like Frank (Dennis Hopper) - one of the vilest in film creation (who also ruins any good associations you might have with the songs 'Blue Velvet' and 'In Dreams'!) "There are good things in life and there are bad things," he offers by way of explanation, but clearly there's some horror deep down in the man that he was trying to get out. His time in  Philadelphia, of it having a sickness in the air, was also a big influence - you sense that's where the hideous industrial sounds and images in his films come from.

The dog trying to snap the water from the hose of the heart-attacked man is bizarrely funny.

This is about the disturbances that lie under the surface of 'normal' civilization. The Isabella Rossellini character is quite disturbed too, masochistic and not seeming to be too concerned about her missing husband. Some of Lynch's outstanding montages include the way Kyle MacLachlan hits her and his dream following the nightmarish apartment visit. It's quite a film, still, very disturbing and uncomfortable viewing... but at least it has a 'happy' ending.

Great sound (designer Alan Splet). And the decors of all the bad places are quite distinctive, like run down 1940s, designer Patricia Norris. Great cinematography and editing also - Frederick Elmes and Duwayne Dunham.

With Laura Dern, Hope Lange (her mom), Dean Stockwell, George Dickerson (detective). 

The other funny thing in the interview was Lynch talking about the 'speed' of things. An empty room is a 2, but people are more like 7s. Electricity and fire are 9. A very busy and highly decorated room will be fast.

The BAFTAs 2025

It certainly provided us with reminders to see:

The Brutalist (nominated for Film, Screenplay,  Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, cinematography, editing, production design. Director, Adrien Brody, and music won)
Sing Sing (nominated for screenplay, Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin)
A Complete Unknown (the Timothée Chalamet Dylan film, he and Edward Norton were nominated, as was Film, Screenplay, Casting and Costumes)
A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg film with he and Kieran Culkin - won Best Screenplay and Supporting Actor)
The Last Showgirl (Jamie Lee Curtis was nominated)
Lee (Kate Winslet as war correspondent, nominated for Best Film)
Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, nominated for Jean-Baptiste and British Film)
Conclave (Pope film, won BAFTAs for Best Film & Best British Film, the screenplay and editing, nominated for Fiennes, Rossellini, music, production and costume design)
Bird (Andrea Arnold, Best Film nominee).

The editor and cinematography awards were rushed through in the 'awarded earlier' section, which is disgraceful.

Cemetery Junction (2010 Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant & scr)

So, after Extras. The ending made me think of Billy Liar - it may have been a deliberate evocation. Ricky and Stephen's film is about growing up and moving on, and class. They picked a cinematographer who knew his shit in Remy Adefarasin, who films with a sort of seventies palette in widescreen.

Our trio of lads are Tom Hughes, Christian Cooke and Jack Doolan. With Ralph Fiennes, Matthew Goode, Steve Spiers, Emily Watson, Julia Davis, Ricky Gervais, Burn Gorman, Anne Reid.. and where are my manners? Felicity Jones, by no means her debut. That was in The Treasure Seekers in 1996, aged twelve. And what happened to Servants, a TV mini series set in the 1850s?

Ricky and Anne's characters are particularly well written as Cooke's father and grandmother.

Doesn't Reading look lovely! It's actually the market place in Woodstock

None of it's filmed in Reading. The railways station is actually in Loughborough!

Runaway Bride (1999 Garry Marshall)

Does not, unfortunately, manage to emulate Marshall's Pretty Woman, with same stars. It's not as funny. The writers were Josann McGibbon  and Sara Parriott (both Desperate Housewives producers). But it's quite entertaining.

With Joan Cusack, Hector Elizondo, Ruth Wilson, Paul Dooley, Christopher Meloni, Martin Braverman (T-shirt seller, a Marshall regular), Larry Miller (barman, uncredited, Julia Stiles' father in 10 Things I Hate About You).

Nicely photographed by Stuart Dryburgh.

Inland Empire (2006 David Lynch & scr)

David Lynch died on January 15th. Rather than doing what most sane people would do (watch Blue Velvet again) I went for his longest and least accessible work, Inland Empire. How can this film - which is impossible to interpret - have an IMDB rating of 6.8 when Aloha has 5.4? I'll tell you. It's because the majority of voters are pretentious arseholes who would rather praise a pretentious, indecipherable film  than a simply beautiful and wonderful film from a filmmaker at the top of his game (both as a writer and director).

Inland Empire doesn't follow any sort of logical narrative structure. Or to put it another way, it's batshit crazy. It starts plots that go nowhere, has scenes that make no sense. This is beyond Mulholland Drive, which seemed to me like a dream. This is .. Is it even deeper into the dream state? It doesn't feel like it. If that's what Lynch was going for, he went too far. the initial set up, people enacting a film, is quite fun because we're slipping between the filming and the film itself, but that is soon eschewed in favour of an explosion of meaninglessness. But I did appreciate the little touches - her collapsing in pain and her husband's T-shirt covered in ketchup both foreshadow her murder.

One thing I can tell you is that it has a committed performance from Laura Dern. She's an actress and her character, a hooker and / or a tough woman with a nasty background, and a suburban housewife.

And that it doesn't have much (any?) of those amazing Lynch moments where it feels like he's doing something incredibly advanced and serious in filmmaking, nor does it display almost anything of his black humour - the sole bizarrely funny moment is when Dern, stabbed and dying, falls next to some homeless people, who start discussing whether you can get a bus from there to Pamplona or somewhere.

It doesn't help that it has a weird look, like it was shot on video. Also often deliberately too close into people's faces. There's no credit but Lynch shot it himself, on digital, which isn't great. (He also edited it.) There's all sorts of music going on, including Penderecki, and Nina Simone behind the end credits performing 'Sinnerman'.

With Justin Theroux, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, some Polish people.

When I say David Lynch died on January 15, he may have simply shifted into another dimension.

The usual ominous soundtrack is present.

Aloha (2015 Cameron Crowe & scr)

And in introducing us to The Blue Nile's 'Hats' Cameron has done us even more of a favour than simply delivering a masterpiece of a movie.

Perfect description of Bradley Cooper's character as a 'sad city coyote'.

There are two romantic triangles at work, so accomplished is the writing. Note that IMDB with your 5.4 rating. 

27 Dresses (2008 Anne Fletcher)

Written by Aline Brosh McKenna. Somewhat formulaic but perfectly enjoyable. Katherine Heigl and James Marsden are well coupled.

Co-starring the Brooklyn Bridge

The Parent Trap (1998 Nancy Meyers)

I happened upon Patrick Tomasso's YouTube film Why Don't Movies Look Like *Movies* Anymore? and interestingly he cited this one, photographed by Dean Cundey, as a great example of when movies did look like *movies*, for a variety of reasons. One was that it was simply a great cinematographer who took the time to light it carefully - there's a couple of thoughts around this, that with green screen filming it's necessary to have the humans shot blandly as you don't know what the background will be. Also, to save time, the set is lit and then all scenes are covered by that lighting scheme so you don't have to keep relighting every shot - which even I know is not the way you do it. Also that digital is making things too detailed and cameramen are forgetting about things like contrast, and also that films are now shot 'raw' so they can be colorised later, which I have experience with and is a nightmare.

Anyway it made me want to rewatch this film for that reason, which is just as well, because The Parent Trap is arrant nonsense and always will be, and this version has particularly retchy moments, especially those involving butler Simon Kunz. Still, you can't help going 'Ahh' at times and it's mindlessly enjoyable.

It's also so smoothly edited by Steve Rotter, so that's another plus.

There seems to be bits of My Favourite Wife and some Hudson-Day movie in it too, And yes, it really suffers from too much music throughout. There's only about ten minutes of it in total that don't have any. The script also neglects to explain what drove Mr & Mrs apart. The special effects / post production process however is quite remarkable.

So, over to Mr Cundey:

A Man on the Inside (2024 Michael Schur)

So this was the next Schur - Danson project after The Good Place, in which he poses as an investigator in a retirement community for PI Lilah Richcreek. Just eight parts. Fun.

Daughter Mary Elizabeth Ellis could be Shirley MacLaine's daughter. Her children 'bro' are just indescribable. Danson makes friends with Stephen McKinley Henderson.

Noticed Veronica Cartwright in the cast - well, I didn't recognise her, just the name - from The Birds (1963), through Alien (1977) to here.

Unforgotten - Season 6 (2025 Andy Wilson, scr Chris Lang)

A dismembered body is found on Whitney Marshes, belonging to a man who was reported missing, leaving wife Victoria Hamilton and daughter Pixie Davies. It turns out he wasn't a nice guy, and there's some connection forming with MyAnna Buring and her crippled partner Emmet J Scanlan and autistic Maximilian Fairley (his debut and he actually is autistic). Eltham Esas is an Afghani immigrant who's also involved.

Touches on so many social issues: overly-woke student at school, the immigration crisis, the mental health crisis, the effects of COVID, police corruption, dodgy landlords... It's all kicking off. Most engaging.

Sinead Keenen is thinking her husband is cheating on her, whilst Sanjeev Bhaskar is in a friendly relationship with a colleague. Carolina Main, Jordon Long and Pippa Nixon are the detectives.

Pixie was in Mary Poppins Returns, Humans. Hamilton we know from as far back as 1999's Mansfield Park and more recently as the Queen Mother in The Crown

Sanjeev in interview said that it was reassuring that Wilson and Lang had worked on every single episode of the series.

Hacks - Season 1 (2021 Lucia Aniello)

In which an ageing stand up comic Jean Smart is paired with a much younger comedienne Hannah Einbinder, and how it affects their lives and that of the daughter, Kaitlin Olson.

Useful secretary is Carl Clemons-Hopkins. The agent is Paul W. Downs, his useless assistant Megan Stalter, Chris McDonald is the ex.

Smart was in Babylon, Mare of Easttown, Life Itself, Fargo, Youth in Revolt, Garden State.

"I thought of adult swimming classes but that would be sadder than just drowning."

Ends sweetly when Deborah attends Ava's dad's funeral, and says she wants the two of them to go on the road.

Music and Lyrics (2007 Marc Lawrence)

Both Hugh Grant and Haley Bennett are funny taking the piss out of their different musical genres - he the ex-eighties popstar and she the Billie Piper sex dancer. The Pop! video is fabulous.

Brad Garrett is from Everybody Loves Raymond.

Susan Morse edited again. Her last film for Woody had been Celebrity in 1998. A Castle Rock film.

Composer Adam Schlesinger also wrote the lyrics of 'Way Back Into Love' and 'Don't Write Me Off', Lawrence wrote 'Love Autopsy'. The music and lyrics do work well.

Sense and Sensibility (1995 Ang Lee)

Emma won the Best Actress BAFTA but lost the Oscar to Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking - I haven't seen that for a while but would still contend Emma should have won it. And whilst the Academy gave her the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, BAFTA instead awarded John Hodge for Trainspotting, another robbery. Emma's screenplay (and possibly Miss Austen's novel) is a masterclass in dramatic irony.

Michael Coulter's photography is great, and I don't just mean the 'pretties'. For example there's a scene where Emma gets out of bed with a candle and walks down a corridor and you can see it's not just the candle that's providing the light but lots of other subtle flourishes of lighting - very clever. He was BAFTA and Oscar nominated but lost to John Toll for Braveheart.

Hugh Grant's hesitancy when entering a room kept making me laugh.

I love the scene where Emma and Gemma are talking and the camera tracks back down a corridor where a curtain is being blown in by the wind - I don't think we can see the women any more - and they stop talking, and the camera just stays there for a second longer than you think it will.

The Lost City (2022 Aaron Nee, Adam Nee)

Sandra Bullock is a romance novelist who is kidnapped by Daniel Radcliffe - he wants her ancient language translation skills to find some priceless artefact. Book cover model Channing Tatum comes clumsily to the rescue after real rescue guy Brad Pitt is knocked off. Manager Da/Vine Joy Randolph comes after them.

It's as bad as it sounds.