Toy Story (1995 John Lasseter)

Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, Annie Potts.

Highlight: Woody coming to 'life' and scaring the hell out of toy torturing neighbour.

The Choral (2025 Nicholas Hytner)

Alan Bennett screenplay about a Yorkshire town in WW1, and the amateur choir's attempt to stage Elgar's 'The Dream of Gerontius'.

Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allum, Jacob Dudman, Amara Okereke, Emily Fairn, Mark Addy, Robert Emms, Alun Armstrong, Lyndsey Marshal, Reuben Bainbridge, Shaun Thomas, Ron Cook, Simon Russell Beale (as Elgar).

Mike Eley photographed it in Bradford. I did question a couple of Tariq Anwar's editing choices.

Jaws (1975 Steven Spielberg)

There's a 007 on the licence plate that Dreyfuss pulls out of Shark #1 - Q tells me this is a reference to Spielberg's desire to make a Bond film, but Broccoli turned him down... twice.

I was surprised when I saw it first how gory it was for an 'A' certificate - how did they get away with it? Maybe the censor thought the fake shark was funny.

Falling (2026 Jack Thorne)

I think that Jack Thorne did have some religion in his life - the singing on the bus thing - so he's not coming at at it from the total outside, useful when it comes to writing sermons, the last rites or confronting wife abusers in prison. But no - that isn't the main question. The main question is - how do you pronounce Paapa? It's apparently PAH-pa. And then Es-ee-AY-doo.

There's some meaty stuff in here - Paapa's revelations about being in foster care, for example. But this is a love story, or, as I prefer to think of it - a story about love. In particular between a nun and a Catholic priest.

Good stuff from deaf sister Sophie Stone and fellow priest Adrian Scarborough. Holly Rhys is the troubled teenager, Jason Watkins the Backwards Bishop.

It hasn't had the best response from audiences or critics. I thought it was different, and the two leads were good - Keeley Hawes is the nun, by the way - we watched all six 45 minute episodes in a run, and were enjoying the fact that the sound mixer had absolute freedom to drop that peacock call in to any scene whenever he or she wanted.

Niamh Cusack is the head nun, Tina Brown the battered wife. You can bet that Jack Thorne is writing something right now.

And I know it's in the wrong shape but I like this:

- because it reminds me of this:

It's Fritz Eichenberg's 1943 Jane Eyre cover, that we discovered from Definitely Maybe.

Tip Toe (2026 Russell T. Davies)

Yes, I think I know where Davies is going with this - it's an angry cry out at anti-LGBT feeling, but I'm not sure I buy it. I would have thought that attitudes - particularly in young people - would have softened towards these issues. Instead he chooses to paint a portrait of two innocuous Manchester neighbours, Alan Cumming and David Morrissey, and how one ends up murdering the other - something I find shocking but scarcely credible. Otherwise it's well written and acted, though I hated the ending, all these titles 'such and such got a life sentence' - I always feel that these aren't proper endings.

The references to all the shocking stuff online are quite disturbing. Overall it left an unpleasant taste in the mouth.

So - the always brilliant Emily Berrington is joined by: Pooky Quesnel, Paul Rhys (who tells us the world is doomed because of croissants), Jackson Connor and Joseph Evans (younger and older brother), Iz Hesketh (trans).

5 x 45 for Channel 4.

The Best Film Composers

Ennio Morricone.

John Barry.

Bernard Herrmann.

Thomas Newman.

Georges Auric.

Your Friends and Neighbors - Season 2 (2026 Jonathan Tropper)

Everyone's got so much money - "That house looks like a hotel" sort of thing, "This is my Tuesday Porsche". Then a charismatic billionaire moves in - James Marsden. Improves Olivia Munn's fortunes by giving her a house sale and restoring relations with neighbours, who are clubbed against her for framing Coop (John Hamm). But despite a promising meeting, Coop gets into deep trouble being filmed nicking the billionaire's book - and then is blackmailed into helping him in a giant money hiding scam.

Coop's ex Amanda Peet is dealing with peri-menopause and her daughter Isabel Gravitt rebels by not wanting to go to Princeton. The son Donovan Colan is having affair with billionaire's daughter Erin Robinson.

Coop's oldest friend Hoon Lee (Ming the Merciless) recklessly decides to go into the burglary game much to the annoyance of Coop's partner Aimee Carrero.

10 episodes for Apple, ending somewhat loosely. Marsden has been disappeared after a humorous meltdown but you feel the ramifications aren't yet felt. It's fun trying to identify the classic films Coop is watching. It's well written - every time Coop goes into a voiceover you know it's worth paying attention.

Bollocks of 2026

It's sadly early to start this list (5 January) but unfortunately we have a contender already, Hunting Wives, some crap about a woman who finds herself in the gun packing heart of Texas Republicanism. The title indicates how crap it will be.

Can You Keep a Secret? Dawn French, Mark Heap 'comedy'.

The Lady. True story of Fergie's dresser-turned-murderer. Just wasn't engaging.

The Fortune. Terribly written crap with Eleanor Tomlinson, set in Hartlepool. She inherits from someone she doesn't know and behaves implausibly from the off. Channel 5 bollocks.

The Lion in Winter (1968 Anthony Harvey)

James Goldman adapted his own play, but a mix of location shooting and artful staging makes this quite cinematic; editor John Bloom knows what he's doing. It's basically a family power play as aging king Henry II, Peter O'Toole, manoeuvres around his now imprisoned wife Katharine Hepburn and three competing sons: Anthony Hopkins, John Castle and foolish John Terry, also involving the king of France, Timothy Dalton. Jane Merrow is the king's mistress who's being optioned out as a marriage bait for different parties. All the acting's great.

The funniest moment is when various parties visit the king of France and all get variously hidden behind curtains as more people come to visit. And Hepburn's line 'All families have their problems'.

I wasn't going to watch it, I was just editing the ads out, but I saw the name Chic Waterson and I just sort of fell into it. He does his usual great smooth job camera operating and his guvnor Douglas Slocombe is lighting the castles artfully (back then, it had to be lit). (Robin Vidgeon is camera assistant.) The zoom is used judiciously.

Also benefits for an unusual and mature score from John Barry. Gerry Humphreys is the sound mixer. Barry and Hepburn won Oscars and BAFTAs, Goldman won an Oscar, O'Toole was nominated for both

It goes on a bit, though (2 hours 10).

You would have guessed that some of the cast were also in the stage version but that wasn't the case.

It's apparently a favourite of Aaron Sorkin, but I can't actually substantiate that.

I guess it's also the unlikeliest Christmas film!

Taxi Driver (1976 Martin Scorsese)

Marty and Paul Schrader's best films. For all Travis's madness and disgust, he somewhat surprisingly becomes the saviour (the Knight) of Jodie Foster's teenaged prostitute (the Princess in the Castle). (Considering she's second billed, she's not in it much.)

A process called Chemtone was used to saturate those opening shots.

Clueless (1995 Amy Heckerling)

“Anything happens to my daughter, I’ve got a .45 and a shovel."

Alicia Silverstone's character Cher is quite sweet really - she doesn't have a bad bone in her body and is trying to look after her father (Dan Hedaya) as best as she can. He's very gruff but good ("I couldn't be more proud of you if you'd really achieved these grades") and when he sees Paul Rudd's interested in her he's secretly pleased.

With Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Donald Faison, Wallace Shawn, Breckin Meyer, Jeremy Sisto, Twink Caplan (also associate producer).

Snaps to the costumer designer Mona May!

Vice (2018 Adam McKay)

I had the day planned well: Strangers When We Meet, Petulia and Taxi Driver, but Q decided she wanted to watch Vice. The only problem with Adam McKay’s films is that they’re a bit like documentaries with lots of characters and lots of complicated information which combined with Hank Corwin hurling lots of images at you is quite exhausting and changes the shape of the day. (And somehow couldn't then be followed by Petulia.)

For me the problem with this film is Christian Bale / Cheney - uninteresting. But what he did was shocking and appalling (and laid the way for Trump's 'executive' behaviour now).

‘Did Americans watch it?’ Q asked. They did - it grossed $47m domestically.

Good cast otherwise: Amy Adams, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carrell, Eddie Marsan, Alison Pill, Jesse Plemons.

Won Oscar for Make Up and Hair - Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe and Patricia Dehaney. Adams, Bale and Rockwell were nominated, as were film, director, screenplay and editing.

Little Man What Now? (1934 Frank Borzage)

Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Montgomery share a bed - this is just before the Hays Code really clamped down. They are a couple who are struggling, she is going to have a baby. His employer is a right bastard, DeWitt Jennings, who only has him employed hoping he will marry his daughter; that game's soon up. His step mum offers them a room in Berlin and a job; she's a right cow - Catherine Doucet, wants to be paid for the room, there is no job, and regularly has 'parties' i.e. runs a brothel. There the couple meet charming rogue, Alan Hale, a winning performance. Then he gets a job with a total cunt Etienne Girardot, and following a disastrous encounter with actor Alan Mowbray he's fired. Luckily Sullavan has at least found lodgings with nice furniture dealer Christian Rub. Though basic, their little flat above the furniture shop at least has a Borzage Balcony.

So yes, another in Borzage's stable of lovers who triumph through love.

We're in Germany -  there are signs of social unrest and near the end our hero is assaulted by the police. It's the first in Borzage's 'Weimar trilogy' which continued with Three Comrades and The Mortal Storm.

Photographed by Norbert Brodine, art director Charles Hall, editor Milton Carruth, score by Arthur Kay. A Universal picture produced by Carl Laemmle Jr.

Vertigo (1958 Alfred Hitchcock)

 I like all the profile shots: https://nicksfilmjottings.blogspot.com/2019/08/vertigo-1958-ah.html

This is definitely one of Hitch's most complex pictures, in which he effectively makes James Stewart the bad guy. Think about what happens after it's over: there's a good case that having found out what happens, Stewart drives her to the point of the first murder and then murders her. It's not hard to make that stick because he is obsessed (and has been ever since he first started following 'Madeleine'). (And the fact that he has implicitly stripped her naked after the 'fall' into the bay is another unspoken element.) When he struggles then succeeds to make Judy into Madeleine and she's 'Will you love me now?' it's one of the saddest and most haunting things in any Hitchcock picture - it's almost a case of domestic abuse. It's that that makes the film so chilling.

And here. it's not just the red / green, but that overly ornate ironwork that we've seen before:

Also that animated / dream scene is totally out there and once again puts Hitch way ahead of his time.

That isn't Novak though in the opening credits scene is it?

Oh, by the way, what's Hitch up to with his wall art in this one?

No idea about the tall one on the right. The bottom left could be a Klee or a Miro, same applies to the one above it. 0 / 4.

Good supporting cast as always, particularly Barbara De Geddes, but also Tom Helmore, Henry Jones (coroner), Ellen Corby, Konstantin Shayne, Lee Patrick (now owns Madeleine's car). Car? Did someone say car? Hers is a 1957 Jaguar Mk VII (Morse's was a Mk II 2.4) -

- his a 1955 Desoto Firedown Sportsman:

A good condition one will cost you about twenty grand, the Jaguar rather more.

The Four Seasons - Season 2 (2026 Fey / Fisher / Wigfield)

Much to everyone's surprise, Kerri-Kenney Silver helps look after Erika Henningsen's baby. Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani decide against adoption. Will Forte has hidden anger issues, and in flashback episode with Steve Carrell, gives everyone Covid. Tina Fey gets high.

City Girl (1930 F. W. Murnau)

From the inserts it looks like it was filmed in 1928. Must have been one of Fox's last silent film releases.

This obviously can't compare to Sunrise. but is nevertheless a fine film and another meditation on city vs. country life. Loved the sequence of him chasing her through the wheat.

Sent to Chicago to sell the corn crop, Charles Farrell bumps into waitress Mary Duncan and falls for her immediately. They marry but when he gets home the brutish father David Torrence is outraged that the son's made a loss and immediately accuses the girl of bring a gold-digger and hits her. The son sees red but his beloved mummy stops him from retaliating - giving the girl a major problem from the get-go.

The harvest begins and all the workers lust after her, especially Richard Alexander, who we fear is going to rape her at one point.

Murnau has borrowed Borzage's DP and art director Ernest Palmer and Harry Oliver, thus the farm has a distinctive design and the night scenes are memorably well lit.

The horses - at one point a single horse is pulling a cart with about six people on it. Later about twenty of the noble beasts are dragging a combine harvester along.

Palmer was Oscar nominated for Street Angels and 4 Devils, both 1930, and Broken Arrow, 1951, and won for Blood and Sand  in 1942. First credit 1918, shot many lesser films. This and his work for Borzage represent his best work.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More (1974 Martin Scorsese)

Ellen Burstyn and son Alfred Lutter are skint; she dreams of happiness in Monterey, and to be a singer. They get stuck in Arizona and she has a close call with psycho Harvey Keitel, then finds more comfort with farmer Kris Kristofferson and waitress Diane Ladd.

Jodie Foster had been in absolutely tons of things before this: many TV appearances, including The Courtship of Eddy's Father, Gunsmoke, and Ironside, and some movies such as Napoleon and Samantha  and Kansas City Bomber (both 1972) and Tom Sawyer (1973), and right after this took the lead in a TV version of Paper Moon, the pilot of which you can see here. She's very cool in this.

Kent Wakeford's operator Owen Marsh is somewhat flighty. Marica Lucas edited.

This Life + 10 (2007 Amy Jenkins)

The group reunite at Miles' huge country pad. Egg and Millie are still together, amazingly, but it seems only a pretence; Egg has written a hit novel based on the group. Miles appears successful and remarried but both are a fraud. Warren seems to he running his own business but it's a failure. Anna's only regret is not having a baby; turns out she wants Warren's sperm. Jodie Whittaker films everything.

It was an hour and a half - no wonder everything seemed to take so long.

A Taste for Murder (2026 Matt Baker)

Fairly cheesy crime / family drama / food thing set in Italy (Croatia). A (police) man, Warren Brown, who's recently lost his (Italian) wife goes back to her home town to visit Nonna and Nonno Phyllis Logan and chef Urbano Barberini, with stupid 17 year old daughter Beau Gadsdon (The Crown) in tow.

I don't mean stupid intellectually, she just picks the worst guy on the (unspecified) island (somewhere near Napoli) to date, and keeps doing stupid things.

Anyway Brown gets involved with local detective Christiana Dell'Anna (Napoli-born, British trained) who grudgingly starts to respect him because he's a bit of a super sleuth, interspersed with Italian cookery lessons.

There's a new case in each 45 minute episode and an over-arching story involving the Gomorrah and Nonno's restaurant.

Hacks - Season 5 (2026 Aniello / Downs / Statsky)

The last season. Deborah has been branded 'the woman who killed late night', still banned from getting a gig. But announces when the ban's over she will sell out Madison Square Gardens, finds her fans still behind her.

She has a brief fling with a young pop star who turns out to be ridiculously over-sensitive; Ava gets together with a sex worker, but when she finds out he's really into magic (and isn't very good at it) she goes off him.

Deborah and her daughter (Kaitlin Olson) go on 'The Amazing Race' - cue amusing sequence where they're trying to perform a Mexican routine in clown costume. 

Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins)  decides to buy a landmark Vegas Casino and refurbish it. Deborah almost makes the mistake of working with an AI entrepreneur who was planning to gather all of her material - realises the mistake she's making.

Jean Hart's changes of expression, and the restrained sarcastic way she says things like 'Oh my God' are wonderful, as is the repartee between her and Hannah Einbinder. Which is tested in the end as Deborah decides she's dying, doesn't want treatment but does want a European holiday with Ava before going to a Swiss clinic.