Mona Lisa Smile (2003 Mike Newell)

Scr. Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal

Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst (aged 20), Julia Stiles, Maggie Gylenhaal, Ginnifer Goodwin (Walk the Line), Dominic West, Juliet Stevenson, John Slattery (Mad Men), Marian Seldes (nasty president, many TV credits, lattery in The Visitor)

I think it was the first time I noticed Kirsten Dunst, here with Julia Stiles (left)

Handsomely shot by Anastas Michos.
Far too much, Hollywoody, music by Rachel Portman.
Editor Mick Audsley (British, many good credits).
Great editing in Julia's first lesson. Latterly could do with some concision? Film is two hours.
Roberts ultimately defeated by reactionary college and 50s mores. Not bad.

Mighty Aphrodite (1995 Woody Allen & scr)

Woody Allen, Helena Bonham Carter, Mira Sorvino (AA), F. Murray Abraham, Peter Weller

Ph. Carlo di Palma

Brilliant use of Greek chorus (shot in Taormina).

Brilliantly ironic story, very funny film.

the only one with end credits over the action. And a happy ending. I pity some actors in long takes who don't get seen (i.e. back to camera)!

If you look at his body of work, he's always coming up with new approaches and ideas, like Hitch.

Only these have directed more actors to Oscars than Woody:

Fred Zimmerman (7)
Elia Kazan (8)
William Wyler (13)

His are Mira, Diane Weist (Bullets over Broadway & Hannah and her Sisters), Michael Caine (Hannah), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall) and Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona).

A Little Romance (1979 George Roy Hill)

Screenplay Allan Burns, novel e = mc2 mon amour by Claude Kotz, who also wrote the Hairdresser's Husband.

Laurence Olivier, Diane Lane, Thelonius Bernard, Arthur Hill, Sally Kellerman, Broderick Crawford

Music Georges Delerue
Ph. Pierre-William Glenn (Day for Night, Coup de Torchon, L'Argent de Poche)

Charming love story is only a few inches from being a classic. Relationship of Olivier / Bernard is not quite right. Diane's stepdad is lovely. Hill's own films get a few clips!

Nostalghia (1983 Andrei Tarkovsky)

Written by Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra.

Oleg Yankovskiy

I described it to Q as being like a Terence Malick film, only more so, with its hypnotic scenes such as the hotel room when it begins to rain (no one does rain like Tarkovsky), and the steamy public baths, shot by Moretti regular Giuseppe Lanci. In fact the light was coming and going in the room too, like the film was spreading out into real life. There's also an outstanding montage involving a pregnant woman, and somehow, a man carrying a candle across an empty swimming pool is thoroughly gripping.

There's a feeling  which I think I only get from Tarkovsky where I actually feel a transcendence like I'm being moved into something better, like, I guess, experiencing a religious vision.

Water, and a dog. Where have we seen this before?

Go (1999 Doug Liman & ph.)

Sarah Polley & Katie Holmes, Demond Askew & Taye Higgs, Scott Wolf & Jay Mohr

scr. John August (after this many Tim Burtons)

Trio of stories intersect and connect quite successfully.

Excess Baggage (1997 Marco Brambilla)

Story & co-scr. Max Adams. Scr Dick Clement & Ian La Fresnais

Alicia Silverstone, Benicio del Toro (who's very good), Christopher Walken, Harry Conick Jr, Nicholas Turturro

Alicia gets kidnapped while faking her own kidnapping. Uncle Ray loves her more than her dad.

Jean-Yves Escoffier's next film was Good Will Hunting, but I don't think he's one of those Escoffiers (also Les Amants du Pont Neuf)

Towelhead (2007 Alan Ball & scr)

This film, originally called Nothing Is Private, about a girl's developing interest in sex, flopped badly, but is very good and blackly funny. She's a bit of a minx. Characters display lots of hypocrisy and double standards. From a novel by Alicia Erian (thus explaining how Ball gets into a 13 year old girl's head so well)

Summer Bishil (great; but her career hasn't really taken off; she was 18 here), Maria Bello (selfish mother), Peter Macdissi (the father, quite nasty but oddly charismatic too; another flat career), Aaron Eckhart, Toni Colette

Summer Bishil and Peter Macdissi

Mus. Thomas Newman - hardly any, though end credits are familiarly his.

Great dark lighting from Newton Thomas Sigel (Panavision)

Ball was a writer on Grace Under Fire and Sybill. Then he did American Beauty and a TV series called Oh Grow Up  in 1999, Six Feet Under, this and True Blood.

The Emerald Forest (1985 John Boorman & prod)

Scr Rospo Pallenberg

Powers Boothe (unfortunately not the best actor), Charley Boorman, Dira Paes, Ruy Polanah (who as the the chief has most of the best lines)

We think the Invisible and Fierce People were actors.

Great scene where he finds son (not improbable).

Has slight Boorman mythic feel (animal spirits) and plenty of strong messages (I love the way the girls take their clothes off to feel normal again).

Film often travels at 90 bums per minute.

We stupidly watched a BBC cropped print of Philippe Rousselot's widescreen photography.

Fargo (1996 Joel Coen)

Scr. Joel and Ethan Coen (AA)

William H Macy (brilliant, nominated), Frances Macdormand (AA), Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare

Ph. Roger Deakins - some lovely washed out snow shots, though I wondered in the night scenes if he has a tendency to light the foregrounds too much? (It was one of his TEN Oscar nominations!)

Music Carter Burwell (most Coens from Blood Simple on and other interesting credits)

Someone called Roderick Jaynes was nominated for editing! (i.e. the Coens).

Probably their funniest film, which was not based on a true story!

Apparently all William H Macy's ums and ers were written into the script

The Trial / Le Procès (1962 Orson Welles)

Written by Welles from Kafka's novel.

Anthony Perkins (his other great role), Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Orson Welles, Akim Tamiroff, Michael Lonsdale.

An extraordinary film that oddly seems like a product of the Polish New Wave, though in style it easily surpasses Wajda and later experimentalists like Lynch. Incredible that it's Edmond Richard's debut, with no previous experience behind a camera. Weird sets and locations look phenomenal on Blu-Ray.

According to the extras, the editing was (luckily for us) undertaken by Welles himself on three Moviolas running at 48 fps, though at this double speed he remained very accurate. (The editing is actually credited to Yvonne Martin and Fritz H. Muller.)

Locations include Zagreb (thus, perhaps, the Polish New Wave feel), including a fine long take with a trunk at Magic Hour (which Richard charmingly refers to as 'Mystery Hour' in an interview on the Blu-Ray) with brilliantly handled street lights. Welles was clearly all over the lighting: in the opening long incredible single take there was a huge amount of then trendy diffused light. He only wanted one key light, so if the light source needed to change during the shot, he would allow a 'black hole' to appear between the lights so there would be no shadow problems, and demanded 'artificial suns' everywhere.

Richard also revealed that Welles didn't like being filmed as he was always forgetting his lines, so he would improvise, and developed that sideways look of his. Also that he and Romy fooled around and laughed a lot under the eiderdown (Richard tells this with a straight face), and that she became good at reattaching his false nose!

Thanks DVD Beaver

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962 Robert Mulligan)

Produced by Alan J. Pakula. Scr Horton Foote (AA), novel Harper Lee.
Mulligan won Gary Cooper Award at Cannes ('The award is given in recognition of the human valor of the film's content and treatment.')

Various Oscar nominations including Russell Harlan (photography), Elmer Bernstein (music), Gregory Peck (won).

Mary Badham is Scout, Phillip Alford is Jem, both great. They didn't do much else. I love that Badham remained friends with Peck and would always call him 'Atticus'!

Mary Badham on location with Harper Lee

The whole film is from the kids' point of view.

I'd forgotten the sad fate of noble, dignified Brock Peters. Robert Duvall looks quite cool with blonde hair!

It's in Q's Top 50. I enjoy it more each time I see it.

Hannah and her Sisters (1986 & scr.)

AA and BAFTA for screenplay.

Michael Caine (AA), Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, Diane Wiest (AA), Woody Allen, Max von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Maureen O'Sullivan (who I didn't realise was Mia's mum), Lloyd Nolan (the cop in Tree Grows in Brooklyn, died before film's release), John Turturro (spotted by E.E. Qued), Julie Kavner

'Looser' style of shooting with Carlo di Palma (his first for WA) in evidence, particularly in moving, roving dinner scene. Can't always see faces of award-winning actors e.g. Caine. I think my favourite moment is when Caine's inner voice is telling him to be very cool and careful with Hershey, then he leaps on her.

Barbara Hershey, E.E. Cummings and Michael Caine

"Michael Caine, I've often said, is incapable of an unreal moment. He's just one of those actors who was born graceful in front of the camera, and he's a truly, truly fabulous movie actor. ..Nothing ever seems like acting." Conversations with Woody Allen, Eric Lax.

 Titles between scenes unique for WA? (And presumably the inspiration for Frasier.)

Diane Wiest

Killer combination of F Minor Bach and E. E. Cummings. "Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands".

Maltin points out for a WA it has a rare 'warm hearted' feel.

Religious journey ending with Marx Bros. superb.

The Barefoot Contessa (1954 Joseph Mankiewicz)

Mankiewicz's screenplay won an Oscar nomination.

Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Edmond O'Brien (AA), Marius Goring, Rossano Brazzi, Elizabeth Sellars.

Beautifully shot in the recognisably melancholy pallette of Jack Cardiff.
Music Mario Nascimbene.

Similar in structure to Bad and the Beautiful with different characters taking on plot rotation.

Long, has scenes which seem to me too talky, but holds the attention.

My Brothers (2010 Paul Fraser)

Scr. Will Collins (debut)

Timmy Creed, Paul Courtney, TJ Griffin.

A bully, a watch, a flat tyre, a beached whale.

Marnie (1964 Alfred Hitchcock)

Now, about that Marnie. Hedren and Connery are good, as is Martin Gabel as the wronged employer. (Diane Baker is the sister-in-law, Alan Napier the father.)

Still: DVD Beaver

Starts great and has good scenes e.g. robbery with deaf cleaner (where we see Marnie at the safe and the cleaner appears in the same frame Q says 'Only Hitchcock can do that'), but seems very talky compared to other Hitchcocks, as though the pseudo twaddle from the end of Psycho has infected the script (by Jay Presson Allen). Has one stunning shot at the outset of the flashback scene where the room seems to contract, like Vertigo's staircase, but in other places is marred by oddly unrealistic background paintings* and fake horse riding. It's not without interesting camera angles, fades to black and amusing red pulsings though, and is well cast down to the bit parts.

If Hitch was obsessed by Tippi it would explain why he seems to be only half-interested in his own film. Not sure Hil's right about the colour-coding either.

Regular A team: Burks / Herrmann / Tomasini. I'd be hard pressed to distinguish the score from Vertigo in places.

Beware the UK DVD, which is a 4x3 crop of 1.85:1.

*Which Hitch explained as resulting from a 'technical mixup'.

Stephen King's Bag of Crap, I mean Bones (2011 Mick Garris)

Pierce Brosnan, Melissa George, Annabeth Gish

Three hour miniseries suffers terribly from overproduced soundtrack and stupid editing which if diluted would make it more sinister. The real horror story is in the fate of the blues singer but the rest of the film is nonsense e.g. exchange between Brosnan and townsman in speeding cars, dream within a dream within a dream within a dream sequence.

(Filmmakers take note: only Bunuel can do a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream.)

Terms of Endearment (1983 James L Brooks)

Brooks won Oscar for Best Director, I'm not quite sure why, and Writer, from the novel by the prolific Larry McMurtry, who also wrote the novels of Hud and The Last Picture Show and screenwrote Brokeback Mountain.

Shirley Maclaine (AA), Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson (AA supporting), Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow.

Editor Richard Marks (GF2 and most other Brooks). Ph. Andrzej Bartkowiak
Michael Gore's music has finally worn out its welcome.
Tellingly, Juliet Taylor is one of the casting directors.

Flip the bastard's attempt at a compliment "You're my sweet-assed girl."

My Own Private Idaho (1991 Gus van Sant & Scr)

Based on Henry IV parts one and two and Henry V.

River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves (perhaps his best part), William Richert (Falstaff; he also directed Winter Kills and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon), Udo Keir.

An unusual film, to say the least.

The Princess Bride (1987 Rob Reiner)

Screenplay William Goldman from his novel.

Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, (prince) & Christopher Guest (count) (both good as the baddies), André the Giant, Peter Falk, Fred Savage, Mel Smith, Peter Cook

Ph. Peter Biddle. Music Mark Knopfler

Great fun again. "I have something to tell you. I am not left-handed either."

Shadows and Fog (1991 Woody Allen)

The first in a Saturday triple bill of  Woody Allens.

With its Kafkaesque opening and tone this has me thinking of The Trial, though the sets and shadows (though not the pallette of greys) are distinctly expressionistic.

Features the classic line: "I can't even make the leap of faith to believe in my own existence".

Plot developments with baby, scene with magician and ending unexpected and brilliant.

Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, amazing whorehouse populated by John Cusack, Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster (great) and Lily Tomlin. Also Donald Pleasance, John Malkovich, Michael Kirby (the killer), Wallace Shawn, Kenneth Mars.

 

Production design Santo Loquasto, photography Carlo di Palma, music in the main by Kurt Weil.

A bold and successful experiment.

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993 Woody Allen)

Written by Allen and Marshall Brickman.

It was originally part of Annie Hall. Has a lot of long takes which don't need editing!

Prompts comparisons with Rear Window in tale of disappearing neighbour's wife.

Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston and Jerry Adler.

With brilliant ending on top of Lady from Shanghai.

Diane's outfits are truly horrible.

Manhattan (1979 Woody Allen)

  

The contrasty, beautiful, steady, and artfully composed images of "the Prince of Darkness" Gordon Willis did not even garner an Oscar nomination. It is one of his finest achievements. The opening on its own would make an award-winning short. Then there's the marvellous darkness of the planetarium, the bridge at dawn etc. etc.

Keaton is brilliant - notice her face in the party scene with a pretentious guest.

Great use of classic shot / reverse shot with Allen and wonderful Mariel Hemingway to powerful effect. Close up of her crying always makes me cry too.

 

And the ending, when he contradicts everything he's said to her before, and she tells him "You've got to have a little faith".

Maybe his most perfect and focused film and probably Woody's best performance as well.

It was the first film Susan Morse edited, and she worked on Woody's next 21 films, but really I feel as more of a sort of assistant, as he is very much involved in the film and music editing..

Written by WA and Marshall Brickman (nominated). Michael Murphy plays the friend.

Nine to Five (1980 Colin Higgins)

Higgins also wrote Harold and Maude and Silver Streak.

Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin & Dolly Parton, often together in the same shot; not sure there's much chemistry between them. Fonda is a long way from Fuck the Army.

Dabney Coleman is the horrid boss, whose fate is worse than the fantasies; Sterling Hayden is in it briefly.

That there are absolutely no sympathetic male characters in this comedy perhaps makes it unique.

Some of the bit parts are terribly acted, e.g. doctor in hospital, who we had to watch twice!

The Big Steal (1949 Don Seigel)

Scr. Daniel Mainwaring (as 'Geoffrey Holmes') and Gerald Drayson Adams, story Richard Wormser

Robert Mitchum (the year of his prison spell for pot (full story here) - Siegel relates how he had to film locations without him while they waited for the term to be over), Jane Greer, William Bendix (Lifeboat, the Blue Dahlia), Patric Knowles, Ramon Navarro, John Qualen (briefly).

Ph. Harry Wild. Mus Leigh Harline

Energetic, snappily dialogued, with long car chase, Mexican set tale of missing army money isn't really a Noir.

Grumpy Old Men (1993 Donald Petrie)

Mark Steven Johnson has forgotten to write any humour into this comedy, unless the idea of driving a geriatric in fishing cabin onto thin ice is funny. It's also depressing seeing Lemmon and Matthau hating each other: that's never how their relationships worked.

Ann-Margaret is the unlikely third party. Also good to see Burgess Meredith 50 years after That Uncertain Feeling. Buck Henry too.

Maybe, as we're detoxing, I'm the Grumpy Old Man!

Also rather too much Alan Silvestri music.

Mrs Brown (1997 John Madden)

Scr Jeremy Brock

Judi Dench (Oscar nominated), Billy Connolly, Geoffrey Palmer, Anthony Sher.

Opening is a delight. The mood darkens, and the political backstory isn't concise or interesting enough. (Might have been enough to cut to the politicians dining once in a while?) Also, I wouldn't have shown all the opening scene again at the end.

Still, Judi's fabulous, and Billy's not at all bad either.

Unlikely Angel (1996 Michael Switzer)

Dolly Parton, Roddy McDowell, Brian Kerwin.

Not bad TV photography by Robert Draper.

Really not very good TV movie but watchable for Dolly. Quite clichéd script.

For some weird reason, though, it made me think of Simon of the Desert, and the funniest ending of any Bunuel, so that was good!

Broadway Danny Rose (1984 Woody Allen & scr)

Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte

Conceived like a 50s Italian comedy, thus in lovely dark Willis black and white. Rousing Italian music soundtrack. Great scene in warehouse with giant faces and helium.

Any Woody Allen film is interesting. Interesting faces too, and casting (one thinks of Fellini). Jack Rollins is one of the commentators.

The Palm Beach Story (1942 Preston Sturges & scr)

Probably the best screwball comedy ever made and Sturges' best film (though frankly it's difficult to choose from any of his Golden era comedies 1941-44).

Joel McCrea, Claudette Colbert, Rudy Vallee, Mary Astor, Sig Arno, Robert Dudley (the Weinie king), Franklin Pangborn, William Demarest, Fred 'Snowflake' Toones (barman), Charles R. Moore ('the yachet').

Endlessly quotable dialogue. I love the speech Claudette gives about "the look".

Never noticed the detail of the shopkeeper nudging Claudette over a bracelet.

When she breaks Rudy's second pair of glasses by stepping on his face, he says "there". It's the way he says it.

Mary Astor - a torrent of words.

"It is a sad fact that the people most deserving of a beating are always enormous."

Sunday in New York (1963 Peter Tewkesbury)

Rod Taylor, Jane Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Jo Morrow, Jim Backus.

Play and screenplay Norman Krasna.

Filmed plays have to be very funny, and this isn't.* Still, quite fun.

Ph. Leo Tover

* I think I know what I mean by this, comedic plays.

The Heart of Me (2002 Thaddeus O'Sullivan)

Helena Bonham-Carter, Paul Bettany, Olivia Williams, Eleanor Bron.

Ph. Gyula Pados (former assistant to Vilmos Zsigmond)

Well acted but lacking in event.

The Light in the Piazza (1961 released 62 Guy Green)

Scr. Julius J Epstein, story Elizabeth Spencer.

Lots of lovely Firenze locations (and Rome). Story (about mentally underdeveloped young girl meeting handsome Italian to the consternation of over-protective mother) is sweet and has a slight satisfying twist to the outcome.

Olivia de Havilland, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux (20, delightful), Rossano Brazzi.

Photographed by Otto Heller in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope. (Though I wonder if MGM restricted his normally rich and strange pallette?)
Music Mario Nacimbene.

The Grand Hotel is I believe now known as the Grand Hotel Baglioni.

Travels with My Aunt (1972 George Cukor)

Novel Graham Greene, screenplay Jay Presson Allen (she has good credits) & Hugh Wheeler. Dull young man gets caught up in international affairs of melodramatic and newly-discovered aunt, to invigorating effect (e.g. pot-smoking!)

Maggie Smith, Alec McGowen (good), Lou Gosset, Robert Stephens (unrecognisable), Cindy Williams.

Editor: John Bloom.
Gorgeously shot by Douglas Slocombe, shining the Metrocolor reds, with that distinct softness I always loved, and in Panavision.

Maggie Smith (made up by Jose Antonio Sanchez) and Alec McGowan

Venice through the lens of Douglas Slocombe

Great locations e.g. Covent Garden (did they bump into Hitchcock's crew shooting Frenzy?), Le Train Bleu, George V, Orient Express etc.

DVD release was well overdue. Enormously enjoyable in old-fashioned style; lush production.

Map of the Human Heart (1992 Vincent Ward)

Screenplay Louis Nowra, story Ward, involving eskimos, a love story which begins in a TB clinic, and World War II!

Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud (Nikita) (and as their younger selves Robert Joamie and Annie Galipeau), Patrice Bergin, Jeanne Moreau, John Cusack.

Strikingly original, beautiful and extraordinary. Dedicated to Ward's dad, who died during filming.

Photographed in the pastley pallette of Eduardo Serra (though the Dresden scenes are striking). We were spoiled with great cinematographers today).
Music by Gabriel Yared ( many films since the 80s including all of Minghellas).

Mr & Mrs Smith (1941 Alfred Hitchcock)

Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Gene Raymond, Jack Carson

Ph. Harry Stradling

Silly story (couple realise they're not legally married). One or two good touches e.g. feet under table, skis.

"The picture was done as a friendly gesture to Carole Lombard [oh, yeah?]..she asked whether I'd do a picture with her. In a weak moment I accepted, and I more or less followed Norman Krasna's screenplay. Since I really didn't understand the type of people who were portrayed in the film, all I did was to photograph the scenes as written." Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut.

One Touch of Venus (1948 William A Seiter)

Robert Walker, Ava Gardner, Dick Haymes, Eve Arden, Olga San Juan (an annoying character), Tom Conway, Sara Allgood (landlady)

Ph. Franz Planer (he ended up shooting Audrey Hepburn and had thus perhaps earned a reputation for photographing beautiul women beautifully)
Music: Kurt Weill (with two songs too many).