Lucky Star (1929 Frank Borzage)

A Frank Borzage production from 'Three Episodes in the Life of Timothy Osborn' by Tristram Tupper.

The third and final Janet Gaynor-Charles Farrell pairing (though the couple would appear in several other films together). I think he was great. Observe here the energy he puts into the (first) scene where he's trying to make his legs work with crutches. Whilst he made plenty of talkies, his career wound down in the thirties, when he established the Palm Springs Racquet Club with Ralph Bellamy! He's my favourite new discovery.

This is real sweet. Farrell loses the power of his legs in WW1. Develops relationship with poor farm girl Gaynor and teaches and refines her. And, of course, they fall in love. But her horrible mother (Hedwiga Reicher) wants her to have nothing to do with the 'cripple', preferring her to marry ex soldier Guinn Williams, who's in fact a fraud. And we've already seen he's a lowlife from his behaviour in the war (to local women and to his own men).

In a somewhat incredible third act, struggling through the snow, Farrell remarkably gains his lower limb motion and catches her just before the wedding. Hurrah! 'Why don't your legs work?' she had enquired earlier. 'I'm saving them for a special occasion.' In the end, where she sees him standing upright and without aid, she sinks to her knees grabbing him around the legs and asks 'Is this the special occasion?' SWEET!

Great Borzagy moments - he washing her hair; then suggesting she washes the rest of her! The two looking at each other through the window which she has broken. The breakfast which has to take place with her sitting outside the door.

Absolutely beautifully photographed by Chester Lyons (also Bad Girl and Mad Love) and William Cooper Smith, and designed by Harry Oliver.

Like all these other silent Borzage pictures a William Fox film. He lost his fortune in the Wall Street Crash followed by losing control of the company the next year; Fox merged with Twentieth Century in 1935. I'm amazed to find good copies of these great old movies on YouTube!

The second half as shot with sound but I guess there was a silent print made.

One thing - no idea why it's called 'Lucky Star'.

Two Weeks in August (2026 Catherine Shepherd)

Jessica Raine and Damien Molony, Nicholas Pinnock and Antonia Thomas (and Maria Almeida), Leila Farzad and Hugh Skinner, plus the laziest au pair in the world Florence Banks. And the most annoying man on the island Tom Goodman-Hill, and Dolly Wells.

Friends gather in rather run-down villa on Greek island (actually Malta). Husband A snogs wife B; wife A has always fancied husband B. Wife A keeps seeing Greek Moirai who predict fates.

A generally annoying 8 x 45 BBC presentation which feels like the writer made it up as she went along. OK, that's also the way I write, but I mean it in a bad, unthought-through way. Then there's a fire and everyone has to run away. The music makes it sound like it's trying to be The White Lotus.

The Guardian says 'it will give you a well-earned break from bad TV' but I've also seen 'BBC viewers beg 'make it stop' as loathsome new psychological drama is slated'. We did laugh, but not I think at things we were supposed to laugh at. I found Raines' transition from super-nice to empowered new woman entirely unbelievable. The whole thing gets more staggeringly implausible as it goes along. Also never seems as hot as Greece would in August. And one minute they're walking everywhere, the next they have hire cars?

The River (1928 Frank Borzage)

 .. at least what's left of it. The Cinémathèque Suisse have restored what's left of the film and added in stills and titles to fill in the blanks to its current 52 minute running time. Thus two of the main characters we never see on film, and what looks like the highlight of the film - he rescuing her from the whirlpool - no longer survives. (The picture was also adapted to add sound in sections.)

'He'? 'Her?' Where are my manners? She is the alluring Mary Duncan, also to be seen in Murnau's City Girl (1930), he the deliciously diffident Charles Farrell (Borzage favourite from 7th Heaven and Street Angel). What does survive is the undeniable eroticism between the couple (there's something about her in that first dress!), which is fine as the plot overall sounded a bit melodramatic.

Unseen: Ivan Linow, Margaret Mann, Alfred Sabato, Bert Woodruff.

I think Borzage liked his lead actor to be a lot taller than the actress.

The A team is in evidence: DP Ernest Palmer and designer Harry Oliver, whose mining camp is another work of art.

Dinner Rush (2000 Bob Giraldi)

Possibly the inspiration for The Bear. Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata have set the film over one night in a busy Tribeca Italian restaurant (that's below the Village and near the East River). Owner Danny Aiello is dealing with the murder of partner by rival bookies. His son Edoardo Bellerini wants to run it not just cook. (Funnily enough his dad thinks the food poncey and not good like the old days.) Two gangsters are trying to muscle in; the sous chef is in debt to them. There's a pretentious art critic, and an unpleasant food critic, a detective and a loner at the bar. It all wraps together very satisfyingly.

Mostly unknown cast. Kirk Acevedo, Ajay Naidu, Vivian Wu, Polly Draper, Jamie Harris (bartender), Alex Corrado, Michael McGlone, John Corbett, Lexie Spurduto, Sandra Bernhard.

Photographed by Tim Ives (Fosse / Verdun, Girls, How To Make It in America), edited by Allyson C Johnson, who together catch well the furious pace of the large and busy kitchen, chefs and waiting staff, perhaps even better than Boiling Point did.

Yeah - we thought it was pretentious too

Another one that we'd last watched so long ago it was like seeing it for the first time.

Family Plot (1976 Alfred Hitchcock)

Loosely based on Victor Canning's 'The Rainbird Pattern', which features the two parallel stories, but then very much Hitchcockized with Ernest Lehman. It's quite un-Hitchcocky in a way, more plotty, more scenes of exposition, but the story and performances are fun, and the ending moves properly into his famous 'pure cinema' mode.

Lehman greatly disapproved of the ending which we have now but I think Hitch was right to stick to his version - in particular Barbara Harris's into camera wink at the audience.

Nice track in to diamond (DP Leonard J South):

Good casting of supporting characters as usual: Cathleen Nesbitt, Ed Lauter, Katherine Helmond, Nicholas Colosanto and Charles Tyner:

Their Finest (2016 Lone Scherfig)

Must watch the same director's Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself again. And check out The Shift (Dag & Nat), two series hospital drama. Oh yeah... The Kindness of Strangers... that was good.

I thought about Blimp again whilst watching it and realised what an incredible achievement it was for the Archers to get that film made in colour in World War 2.

'Mustard under a bomber's moon.' It's very enjoyable.

'Cut it down by half.'
'Which half?'
'The half you don't need.'

The Goonies (1985 Richard Donner)

Frenetic, exhausting kids' adventure with highly questionable content, from a story by Steven Spielberg, written by Chris Columbus. With Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman (Stand By Me, The Lost Boys), Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton, Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once).

Can't believe it's by the director of Lethal Weapon. (He directed Superman too, which is why that gets a jokey reference.) Not funny and quite pukey.

Edited by Michael Khan.

Love Happens (2009 Brandon Camp & co-scr)

Grief counsellor Aaron Eckhardt has failed to face up to his own grief; Jen An helps. More serious than most rom coms; good.

With Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts, The Offer as Coppola), John Carroll Lynch, Judy Greer, Martin Sheen, Frances Conroy.

Bold and colourful photography from Eric Edwards. Edited by Dana Glauberman.

The Marriage Circle (1924 Ernst Lubitsch)

From the dates on the letters it was clearly filmed in 1923, at Warner Brothers. I think the most remarkable thing about this film today, over a hundred years ago, is the subtlety of the acting. There isn't a trace of theatrical over-gesturing - rather it's the slightest of expression changes and looks - no doubt all acted out for the cast by Lubitsch - that make it still fresh.

Adolphe Menjou is particularly funny in a deadpan way, from the outset where he can't find any clean socks, so goes back to bed. Marie Provost is his wife who develops a big crush on Monte Blue, himself married to her friend Florence Vidor (king's ex). She in turn is fancied by Blue's colleague Creighton Hale, leading to some delightful mix-ups, the best of which comes right at the end. Also features one of those awfully polite confrontations between rival lovers (cf. That Uncertain Feeling), decisive moments at doorways.

Paul Burn adapted Lothar Schmidt's play.

It was photographed by Charles van Enger. The first of Lubitsch's films at Warner Bros.

The Duchess of Duke Street (1976 John Hawkesworth)

Producer Hawkesworth brings his Upstairs Downstairs sensibilities (and filming style) to the BBC, as chef Gemma Jones defies the upper classes for her shot in early twentieth century London.

We seem to have missed the beginning (only the opening episode thankfully) and find herself already having made a good impression with a Major, Michael Culver (Roland's son) and Lord Bryan Coleman, but is pressed into marrying butler Donald Burton so she can be mistressed out to the Prince of Wales, Roger Hammond. That I find a bit much.

Familiar faces in June Brown, John Raply, Doreen Mantle, John Welsh, David Cater, Robert Hardy, Christopher Cazenove, Richard Vernon, Anthony Andrews.

She later starts a hotel, despite her husband trying to ruin her; has a baby, exposes fraudsters and adulterers. Entertaining series. Great scene in Lottie's Boy (writer Julia Jones) - argument between Louisa and Mary - Gemma Jones and Victoria Plucknett - great work from both. Plucknett's probably best known to Welsh audiences for Pobol y Cwm - the longest running Welsh soap!

There's also something insanely catchy about Alexander Faris's theme tune.

Calvary (2014 John Michael McDonagh)

16 August 2014:

Certainly hooks you in right from the off. Sinewy, brilliantly written and performed film addresses all sorts of issues and in Brendan Gleeson portrays the antithesis of the corrupt, child-abusing Irish Catholic priest - a type who we are reminded does actually exist (and from that point of view, it's quite refreshing). Has the same terrific sense of humour as The Guard but is considerably darker, deceptive, in fact, in the same way as Giu La Testa. One or two minor niggles over the editing (particularly in climactic scene) and feel it may have been over-directed (in church hall scene there are two too many shots) but these don't really detract from film's corrosive power and intelligence, which left me really moved.

24 July 2018:

Calvary is not as funny or entertaining as The Guard but boy oh boy, this is a serious and seriously impressive work, laced with laugh out loud moments of black humour, around the subject of a Good Priest in a time when such things don't seem to exist. And it's not just about religion either.

Brendan Gleeson's been sentenced to death ('How's Sunday week?) and it seems just about all the bastards in the village are potential suspects. These are Aiden Gillen, Chris O'Dowd, Dylan Moran, Isaach de Bankolé, Orla O'Rourke, Marie Josée Croze and Gary Lydon. Meanwhile Brendan's daughter Kelly Reilly has attempted suicide, writer M Emmett Walsh wants to go the same way, and Mícheál Óg Lane is a kid on the beach. David Wilmot is the crap priest.

And Domhnall Gleeson has a key cameo as a murderer.

Larry Smith shoots interiors warmly and exteriors bleakly. Chris Gill edited, Patrick Cassidy composed.

Is this a deliberate Ryan's Daughter reference?

It's just awesome - the ending and that lateral tracking montage and the final act of virtue that's so important - forgiveness. Gleeson is in awe of McDonagh's writing, which is 'so honest'. Interesting also to hear that McDonagh was at one point working the seven stages of grief into the script, and that he didn't himself know who the killer would be until the last 30 pages of the screenplay.

23 May 2026:

You just can't help but to love Larry Smith's images.

Who did kill the dog then?

Didn't even recognise Gleeson Jr.

An Education (2009 Lone Sherfig)

It had been so long since we'd seen Nick Hornby's adaptation of Lynn Barber's memoir that we'd forgotten what happened - which was very refreshing. Schoolgirl Carey Mulligan is seduced by older Peter Sarsgaard and introduced to culture and good things (though his mate Dominic Cooper is actually more suited to the girl). His girlfriend, Rosamund Pike, is elegant and thick. And of course they're not what they appear at all.

He manages ever so smoothly to get her parents Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour onside, despite his insistence that all she must do is work for an Oxford education. Thus the hypocrisy when she announces she's getting married and he says in that case, you don't need to go. And rather foolishly throws her education aside, much to the consternation of teacher Olivia Williams and headteacher Emma Thompson.

Mulligan is great; she won the BAFTA and was Oscar nominated. She had been in quite few things beforehand including Pride and Prejudice, Marple The Sittaford Mystery, The Waking Dead And When Did you Last See Your Father, My Boy Jack and The Greatest (2009).

Photographed by John de Borman, edited by Barney Pilling. James Norton is briefly glimpsed right at the end.

Dogfight (1991 Nancy Savoca)

Who? 1963. Nineteen year old Marine en route to Vietnam River Phoenix and buddies Richard Panebianco, Mitchell Whitfield (My Cousin Vinny) and Anthony Clark stop off in San Francisco and organise a 'dogfight' - trying to pick up the least attractive woman they can. River pulls folk singer Lili Taylor. Yes of course we've seen her before. She was in Mystic Pizza, Say Anything, Born of the Fourth of July and Short Cuts. Anyway despite his anger and constant bad language they fall for each other. The two leads are good (River has never not played a scene convincingly) and there's a moving ending - a very long embrace.

Bob Comfort wrote it. Good folk music soundtrack.

The Trouble with Mimi is - as I guessed - a made-up film.

Tim Squyres was supervising sound editor and assistant film editor.

The Lodger (1927 Alfred Hitchcock)

A print originally screened on Channel 4, in the days when they did risky and great things like that, with a good score by Paul Zaza.

This still works very well, has a wonderful fluidity and early evidence of the Master at work, just through different camera set ups and editing. And of course some of those bravura tricks like the glass floor and the quasi-religious almost-lynching ending, and a notable love scene. Film specialist Ivor Montagu was called in after producer C.M. Woolf shelved the film (Michael Balcon was the other producer); he removed many of the film's intertitles (there are refreshingly few left) and suggested the final mob scene needed reshooting to maximise the tension, all of which Hitch accepted happily.

Begins exactly the same way Frenzy does forty-five years later - a woman's dead body found by a group of people on the Embankment. Mysterious Ivor Novello rents a room nearby at the home of Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney and their daughter June Tripp (good; billed actually just as 'June'). Her boyfriend, also a detective, Malcolm Keen, become suspicious.. then jealous. Based on a novel by Belloc Lowndes, adapted by Eliot Stannard.

I wondered if Chesney was Edmund Gwenn at one point...'No, too old'. In fact he's his older brother!

An overhead shot of the mother descending the stairs is almost identical to one in Psycho.

Nicely photographed by Baron Ventimiglia in the German Expressionist style. Alma is credited as assistant director. Interesting designs of titles as well. C Wilfred Arnold designed the huge house sets.

Missed Hitch in room full of journalists. Thought I saw him in mob at end - he both confirmed and denied it was him.

Those baroque doors in the ball flashback...

Makes me think of something we've seen in Hitch's films before.

It's very good - has a certain feverish intensity to it.

Silent Witness (2026) - up to date

Grace of God by Dudi and Jim puts Jack in prison, for Wilder's sake! Yes, he has tried to restrain himself but thinks he has killed Chris Coghill in a street fight and confesses - only after he's been in the squeaky position of investigating his own crime. (We've seen this somewhere else recently - can't think where.)

It all links to crime boss Joplin Sintain and henchman Ben Batt, who we also find in the same prison, where most of the guards seem to have been corrupted by the criminal (I doubt that went down too well at HM Prison and Probation Service). Vinette Robinson (Boiling Point, Sherlock, The A Word) investigates.

IT's a tense one, and leaves Jack angrier then when he went inside.

And finally, out 266th & 7th episodes this year bring us up to date having watched 267.5 hours' worth of the show, just over 11 days. (One episode, Gone Tomorrow, was a single story over an hour and a half.) Actually I tell a lie. iPlayer does not contain the Season 1 story Darkness Visible (episodes 5 & 6), so we'd have to knock those two off.

I like the way they've kept commissioning the same good writers. The series concludes with another pointed statement by Tim Prager, Guilt, which features the innovation of hearing the main characters' inner thoughts, at some length - Tim's gone all philosophical on us. The theme is AI, and if we can't trust what we can see then we can't develop knowledge or find truth. Can't argue with that.

Silent Witness (2026)

The Enemy Within. Tom Prager handles the distressing upsurge in racism. It appears that an Equal Rights activist (Phaldut Sharma) has called for the murder of an innocent man, but we pretty much straight away know he's been deep faked - something which the Team should have guessed as it's happened before (the 'Ndrangheta episode). Jack's started in a new boxing gym, but unfortunately it's peopled by 'Keep our country great' racist thugs. Then more AI causes an attack on the investigating DI Selin Hizli but it's her teacher husband who is killed. Turns out this all originated from a server in Cyprus that's been used by Russians influencing elections.

They catch the culprit for this murder but not the first, nor the gang that assaults Jack. And in that audacious ending - Jack himself has been deep faked - I was thinking 'What? Is there a Part 3??'

Gerard Kearns is the DC who hits on Kit but turns out to be something of a confused person himself. Nikolaos Brahimllari is the friendly one in the gym. George Somner, Chris Reilly, Tom McCall.

Oh, small point. If a lovely neighbour came round with flowers and food when you moved in, don't you think you'd introduce yourselves?

I liked 'There are more canals in Birmingham than in Venice' and where that line of thought leads. A thought provided by the burned out restaurateur who invites them all over for a meal (Bhasker Patel).

The cinematography in this series has gone a bit Netflixy i.e. dark and fuzzy.

Rooster (2026 Bill Lawrence / Mark Tarses)

New Steve Carrell comedy for HBO revolves around University. Carrell is a best selling pulp fiction author who drops in to look after recently separated daughter Charly Clive, finds himself sequestered (the wrong word I know) by college professor Danielle Deadwyler. Brit Phil Dunster is the ex, who's now with Lauren Tsai ("I'm funnier than everyone thinks"). Eccentric Dean is John C McGinley.

An entertaining and amiable show. Carell ends up being a much liked professor and wants to stay on, despite his constant tripping over of political correctness traps. Enjoyable relationship with student Maximo Salas. Amusing policeman who keeps losing his gun, Rory Scovel.

Filmed at the University of the Pacific, California, Stockton Campus. That library I liked was the Hoose Library of Philosophy at the USC (University of Southern California - I would link to their website but it's really boring). 

Would watch more. Despite Q's fraudulent claims it has nothing to do with Brett Goldstein. But Bill Lawrence is the showrunner - perhaps this is the link to Ted Lasso. Littered (for some reason) with eighties music.

Silent Witness (2026)

A downbeat episode about mental health, the homeless and drug addiction, well caught by Vivienne Harvey, Creekwood. And it all goes back to the barbaric practice of Lobotomy procedures, performed in the titular hospital. Some searing information contained here - you can't get a prescription without a fixed address, that one in four kids have been in care - quite staggering.

Good performances from Joe Barber, Lydia Wilson (who we've just seen in About Time), Yasmin Davies, Mark Stobbart, David Webber, Cat Simmons and Chris Gordon.

Simmons and Stobbart

Webber

Barber and Davies

The last moment - Davies now without partner, off her head, dancing the night away on a lonely rooftop - is poignant indeed.

'Monkey dust'? A synthetic stimulant.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005 Andrew Adamson)

A generally faithful adaptation which Disney probably put into production in the wake of the huge global successes of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series. (Though I should point out that tell-tale screenplay credit, written by Christopher Markus & Andrew McFeely and Anne Peacock & Andrew Adamson.)

I remember when I first watched it being excited to learn that Tilda Swinton was the White Witch, then being disappointed by her lack of menace; it's a good performance but I felt the same way. The big battle scene at the end is faintly ludicrous and frankly boring; we want Peter 'the magnificent' to despatch the Witch himself. Aslan's voice is all wrong - instead of Liam Neeson we needed James Earl Jones.

There are one or two nice moments of magic (the flames that become characters) but overall this is a little dull. They were right to keep it in period. What I do find exciting though is that The Magician's Nephew is in production, adapted and directed by Greta Gerwig!

Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, James McEvoy, Jim Broadbent. Voices of Ray Winstone, Dawn French, Rupert Everett.

DP Donald McAlpine, composer Harry Gregson-Williams, editors Sim Evan-Jones (also the voice of the wolf) and Jim May.

The Best Silent Witnesses

Divided Loyalties. Niall Leonard. Dead woman and baby. Drugs. 'Stukie'.

The World Cruise. Tony McHale. Auschwitz resurfaces.

The Fall Out. Tony McHale. Multiple vehicle pile up. And a spare arm.

Closed Ranks. Tony McHale, Season 6. Leo's wife and daughter are visiting when a case similar to one of his old ones appears.

Answering Fire. Dusty Hughes. Fire in hotel. Dodgy politician.

Choices. Doug Milburn. Harry befriends kid who's involved in night club drive by shooting.

Cargo. Doug Milburn. Boat of illegals capsize. Infectious disease on board, and little missing girl who Nikki just will not give up on.

Body of Work. Rhidian Brook, Season 10. Harry and Nikki are starting to get it on when an old flame of Harry's turns up dead.

Schism. Christian Spurrier. A bit far-fetched, but Nikki is kidnapped.

Hippocratic Oath. Tony McHale. Two bodies in one coffin...

Shadows. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble. Killing spree at Uni. Season 13.

Bloodline. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble again. Harry in The Third Man. 

Death Has No Dominion. Ed Whitmore. 'The wraith'!

And Then I Fell In Love. Timothy Prager. Young girls being groomed. Season 15 finale - Harry's last appearance in one of the toughest to watch.

Then lost its edge a bit, Harry sorely missed.

Perks up from Season 20. Awakening. Dudi Appleton & Jim Keeble. Nikki buried alive in Mexico. 

One Day, Timothy Prager. Abuse in care home. 

Family. Michael Crompton. The Christmas Special! 

Lift Up Your Hearts. Tim Prager again - drug dealing to school kids. And his Seven Times - domestic abuse.

Vanishing Point. Jim and Dudi. Nightmare flight from Mumbai.

I Believe in Love... Tim Prager. After-effects of war.