Little Fugitive (1953 Ray Ashely, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin)

Street Angel (1928 Frank Borzage)

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962 Robert Mulligan)

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962 Vincente Minnelli)

7th Heaven (1927 Frank Borzage)

A stunningly romantic drama, set in Paris in pre-WWI, based on a play by Austin Strong, adapted by Benjamin Glazer (Katherine Hilliker and HH Caldwell are credited as 'editors' and title writers). That a film can retain such power over almost a hundred years is impressive indeed.And indeed I have to attribute its success in part to Janet Gaynor, who is just great as the depressed and bullied sister of Gladys Brockwell, a monstrous drunk - the scene where the sister flees and is beaten whilst the camera tracks back into the street is incredible. Gaynor also won the Oscar.

Enter sewer worker Charles Farrell ("I am a remarkable person!") who grudgingly and reluctantly gets involved and transforms her life.

Memorable dialogue (OK, titles) - when he kisses her - "I didn't mean it. Don't think you can stay."

Full of so many good moments I don't want to list them for fear of spoiling my next viewing, but I was variously in tears, laughing out loud and on the edge of my seat. The war scenes are as strong as anything in The Big Parade. It's great to finally catch up with these great classics and find out how terribly good they are.

Great synchronized score and effects - innovative mix of soundtracks between domesticity and war, well edited (by Barney Wolf). Borzage won Oscar as Best Director for his masterpiece.

Photographed by Ernest Palmer and Joe Valentine in 1.2:1.

With Albert Gran, David Butler (fellow street cleaner), Marie Mosquini, Emil Chautard, Ben Bard, George E Stone (the 'Rat').

I have to rethink things: the first Golden Age of Hollywood was the twenties.

Silent Witness - Season 24 (2021)

Reputations. Pete Hambly. They seem to have introduced a load of new writers recently - who are all these people and where are the good old ones like Prager, Crompton, Appleton & Keeble and Whitmore? 

Murder in hospital, involving Karen Bryson (The Split), Nicholas Farrell

Silent Witness - Season 24 double bill (2021)

Did they film these in lockdown? Let's ask Emilia Fox:

"We were a week away from filming Series 24 when lockdown happened so there was a massive amount of disappointment and sadness not to be starting filming. When we were allowed to start up again, we felt very grateful. Silent Witness has always had a great loyalty from crew and production, so it was a lovely feeling to be able to work and be back together again.

The story lines had to adapt as we were filming under Covid restrictions, the writers tackled this by containing us in certain locations, as we couldn’t do as much filming around London. This series feels more about the conversation, characters, and cases."

Redemption. Lena Rae. Prison episode brings back characters from old story, Shadows (the University shooting one). Kevin Doyle, Kevin Eldon, Elliott Tittensor reprising his role as the killer.

Bad Love. Susan Everett. Jack has a niece, who's deaf. New pathologist Adam appears, Jason Wong - he knows sign language. Convenient, eh? Jack Deam and Patrick Baladi are familiar faces.

The Heiress (1949 William Wyler & prod)

Henry James' novel Washington Square inspired a play by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, which they adapted well for the screen: it doesn't feel play-like.

Father doctor Ralph Richardson considers his daughter a disappointment; when she falls for good looking but poor Montgomery Clift he shuts it down. But she fights for him...

Olivia de Havilland's transformation from lovesick sap to hardened father's daughter is remarkable - she won the Oscar, as did Aaron Copland's score and the art direction and costume design.

Miriam Hopkins is fine as the giddy aunt under Wyler's strict direction. With Vanessa Brown as the faithful maid.

Wyler's love of deep focus isn't too in evidence in Leo Tover's photography. (Gregg Toland had died in 1948, aged only 44 - heart attack brought on by heavy drinking.) It was made at Paramount.

Guess how much a house is there now! Twenty mil! (That's nothing. There's town house in Fifth Avenue going for sixty million!)

Junior Bonner (1972 Sam Peckinpah)

Am I right in saying that in this Arizona set film featuring big crowd scenes I saw not one black face? It seemed like it. Which is quite shocking. Also weren’t a high proportion of the original cowboys black? I should pay more attention next time.

But yes, this is good. McQueen is the aging rodeo star whose dad Robert Preston is still riding too, and going from one money-making venture to another, well distanced from former wife Ida Lupino; brother Joe Don Baker is making millions in real estate. McQueen circles the family warily and knowingly in the first of his two collaborations with Peckinpah. Don Johnson is the promoter.

And he partakes in a rodeo that's come to his home town, anxious to get the better of a particularly viscous bull. Peckinpah and editors Frank Santillo and Robert Wolfe and DP Lucien Ballard make the most of intercutting action with lots and lots of footage of spectators, and in using editing on zooms interestingly. The occasional split screen is not as successful (I don't think it's ever been used that well).

Has a sweet ending. Written by Jeb Rosebrook. It's not so much about the passing of the old west (rodeos are even now still a big thing) but what happens to the people as they age (The Wild Bunch and Guns in the Afternoon are about this too). And about the Individual, the Loner. We like him at once as he buys apples for his horse. Moment where he's threatened by a bulldozer is memorable.

I used to have a book about Sam Peckinpah, I think. There are so many now. I read that Ida Lupino found him living in a shack and gave him a job on her TV show; he repaid the favour by casting her here.

Researching McQueen somehow led me to John Ford's Hurricane, which Maltin rates ***1/2.

Silent Witness - Jack in Danger! (2020)

What do you expect - it's the season finale. Nerve gas is the bad guy and suspects drop like flies - including a friendly DS (Adelle Leonce), then Jack himself. But Martin Crompton's screenplay for The Greater Good hides even worse to come, one of those end of season shock deaths. Goodbye Richard Lintern, yea though fly his kite did he.

With William Ash (Burn It, Clocking Off), Clare Higgins, Ben Bailey Smith, Richard Durden (Jack's dad).

I found some of David Head's editing a bit questionable.

Silent Witness (2020)

A body is found in a concrete pillar - turns out to be connected to girl who is cryogenically frozen. Hope, by Lena Rae, is thus something of a tall story and quite difficult to follow. In parallel Clarisse is torn when her mum has cancer and she doesn't know what to do.

Jemma Redgrave gruffly investigates. Anastasie Hille is up to something.

Silent Witness - Season 23 double bill (2020)

Close to Home. Ed Whitmore. Young boy found in Hertfordshire - all the locals assume it's paedo Andre Flynn, but of course as anyone who's seen this show before knows it's never the obvious suspect (even though, true to form, he does try and run away). Robert Pugh his violent dad tries to protect him.

No it's not until well into part 2 we discover who it is. With Tom Goodman-Hill (Humans).

As soon as you see the name Tim Prager you know what you're about to watch is hard hitting and socially topical. Seven Times - directed by Kate Saxon - is no exception, dealing with domestic abuse against women. Artfully woven into this is Nikki's own past in which her own mother suffered the abuse; and accordingly she bonds with a young witness, who in the shattering final line says to Nikki 'Tell me it won't happen to me'.

In a neat sub-plot, Thomas is somehow involved in a men only club of cunts and is expected to try to help the reputation of a judge who's assaulted a young woman.

Michael Maloney is the judge. Garry Dobson as disabled detective adds tang. Slightly bonkers ending though lets it down - has the mother gone psycho?

Silent Witness - Season 23 (2020)

A private plane crashes. Is someone trying to encourage suicide? Deadhead was written by Graham Mitchell.

Crazy / Beautiful (2001 John Stockwell)

Privileged but mixed up kid Kirsten Dunst gets herself involved with straight and hard-working Latino Jay Hernandez. And that's it, really, but it's engaging and well done. Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi.

Kirsten Dunst is good as the messed up kid (she would have been about 19). With Bruce Davison (dad), Taryn Manning (wild friend), Lucinda Jenney (step mom). 

Notes: Hernandez's mother isn't at all polite to Dunst. He pretty much abandons her at family party. She's lovely getting him his first flight. When she wants to have sex with him and her father's outside her window it's pretty gross.

Actually didn't mind the music soundtrack.

"That's your mother isn't it?"
"Yeah. She was in bed asleep, I thought. So I went downstairs and I stayed real quiet all afternoon so I wouldn't disturb her. And then I went back up and she was still lying there."

Shane Hurlbut photographed, Melissa Kent edited.

Silent Witness (2019)

Nikki's prognosis is challenged in court - turns out the evidence has been fiddled with - she's lost her heart. Betrayal was written by Michael Crompton and Virginia Gilbert.

Also a team of researchers are experimenting on themselves with perilous results. Clarissa tangles with pharmaceutical boss Art Malik.

And Dirvla Kirwan is having naughties with Thomas.

All Through the Night (1942 Vincent Sherman)

Made in the Autumn of 1941 and released after Pearl Harbor in the New Year. Minor criminal 'Gloves' Humphrey Bogart discovers filthy Nazis at work in Manhattan in this jocular crime drama, produced by Hal Wallis and featuring pre-Casablanca Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre, who met his wife-to-be Kaaren Verne on the picture. (It didn't last.)

Bogart's buddies William Demarest and Frank McHugh provide laughs. It's a cracking cast, actually, also with Jane Darwell, Judith Anderson, Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Barton MacLane and Edward Brophy. And Sam McDaniel.

Written by Leonard Spigelgass and Edwin Gilbert. Photographed by Sid Hickox. Music by Adolph Deutsch (actually born in London). Edited by Rudi Fehr (German-Jewish; in the USA from the mid-thirties, became head of post-production at Warner Bros in the fifties.)

Interesting though to hear Dachau being referenced so early on.

Bogie's fights are tough and difficult and awkward, which makes a nice change.

Abraham Orovitz wanted to be an actor and changed his name to Vincent Sherman. He won a few small roles in the thirties (acted alongside Richard Quine, funnily enough) then became a writer before moving up to director. He had affairs with Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth. Was greylisted in the fifties as a result of HUAC investigation, came back as a TV director. Other notable films: Mr Skeffington (interesting, considering its subject matter), Old Acquaintance.

Anzio (1968 Edward Dmytryk)

Opens with a terrible song - not the way to do a war film. Robert Mitchum is the war correspondent who finally has to pick up a gun, and decides that the reason for war is that 'men love killing'. I see.

Peter Falk is a crazy soldier. Robert Ryan, Arthur Kennedy, Reni Santoni (who would get stoned with Mitchum), Earl Holliman; didn't recognise Giancarlo Giannini.

The Italian (Dino de Laurentiis) production was a mess, with script changes being made up to and during filming. It was at least photographed by Giuseppe ('Peppino' ) Rotunno.

This Life (1996 Amy Jenkins)

Meet yuppie lawyers Jack Davenport, Amita Dhiri, Andrew Lincoln, Daniela Nardini and Jason Hughes.

Davenport alienates everyone by getting involved with druggie bulimic model Charlotte Bicknell; he can't see that she's vile.

Shot in that same verité style as Cops with the camera close on people's faces. Interesting style with the camera (not hand held, I thought - turns out it was) whipping to and fro to actors' faces, or cutting energetically between shots / takes (more than one camera rolling?)

With Luisa Bradshaw-White (Hughes' bubbly cousin), Paul Copley (Lincoln's dad), David Mallinson (senior solicitor), Steve John Shepherd (clerk), Ramon Tikaram, Mark Lewis Jones.

The Best Things in 2026

I Swear

Say Nothing.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

One Battle After Another. Far fuckin' out, brother!

Bird (Andrea Arnold)

Le Notti de Cabiria

Materialists

Hamnet (and, come to that, Hamlet)

Hamnet (2025 Chloe Zhao & co-scr)

Written with Maggie O'Farrell, based on her novel. And an interesting change of pace for Zhao, whose previous two films were very naturalistic; a departure also in that she's no longer (working) with her DP/ partner Joshua James Richards. This is shot in the lowest light imaginable by Lukasz Zal, who we know from Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War and Ida, and The Zone of Interest. (Interestingly he wasn't nominated for any awards for this - perhaps it was too dark. Weirdly the clips shown in the production video look sharper than in the film itself.)

Max Richter provides the score (L'Amica Geniale, Taboo, Miss Sloane, The Lunchbox). Beautifully designed by Fiona Cromble. Edited by Zhao and Affonso Goncalves

Looking at the production video is was indeed a happy set, with actors dancing between emotional scenes, Zhao acting as stand-in mother to young cast - Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes and Jacobi Jupe - who's amazing. As is Jessie Buckley, who found under Zhao's direction she was capable of even more than she thought possible - and won all the awards.

With Paul Mescal, Emily Mortimer, David Wilmot, Joe Alwyn, Noah Jupe (Hamlet, brother of Jacobi).

"The rest is silence."