Marjorie Morningstar (1958 Irving Rapper)

Natalie Wood, Gene Kelly, Everett Sloane, Claire Trevor, Martin Milner, Carolyn Jones, Martin Balsam, Ed Wynn (uncle).

Harry Stradling would be turning in his grave if he could see Film Four's presentation, stretched in 1.85:1 (possibly from 1.66:1) and in a muddy, hazy print. It doesn't do Natalie's legs any favours either. OK, long drama. Music Max Steiner. I wonder where Gene got his scar from?

Warner Bros.

Cemetery Junction (2010 Ricky Gervais & Stephen Marchant & scr)

Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes & Jack Doolan, Felicity Jones, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, Ricky Gervais, Julia Davis, Anne Reid (gran), Matthew Goode (Match Point, Single Man, Brideshead), Steve Speirs (nice cop), Burn Gorman (nasty cop).

Not exactly original, with echoes of everything from Billy Liar to Saturday Night Fever and Good Will Hunting to Mean Streets, but convincing. Best scene: Cooke offering to dance with Mortimer (and ash in retirement bowl).

Wisely they chose Remi Adefarasin to shoot it (in Panavision).

Lisbon (1956 Ray Milland & prod)

Ray Milland, Claude Rains being nasty, Maureen O'Hara, Yvonne Furneaux

Music Nelson Riddle, ph. Jack Marta

Film Four cropped the 'Naturama' 2.35:1 print to 16x9, exposing the awfulness of the Trucolor print. It's mainly shot on location in Lisbon, and is a sort of Casablanca, not too bad. Milland is charismatic; we see how nasty Rains is when he kills some birds with a tennis racket! Marta has 221 credits and they're all B movies (even Duel).

Republic.

The Cranes Are Flying (1957 Mikhail Kalatozov)

Tatyana Samojlova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasili Merkuryev (father).

Ph. by Sergei Urusevsky.

Scene of air raid / seduction  is amazing. Also where she is about to kill herself and rescues little Boris.