Husbands and Wives (1992 Woody Allen & scr)

Woody changes stylistic direction for examination of couples breaking apart, using much hand held camera which at times gives the impression that we are eavesdropping on the relationships, and choppy cutting.

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow's relationship is ironically affected when friends Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis (both excellent) announce they are splitting up. Liam Neeson and Juliette Binoche are distractions. Recognisable one-liners e.g. "You use sex to express every emotion except love."

Film has some of Woody's most powerful moments e.g. scenes with Pollack:

Shot in a somewhat distracting way by Carlo di Palma, and unusually featuring no music.

Paris Je T'Aime (2006 various)

Twenty short films about Paris, each set in a different arrondissement, with the thread of love running through them all. Best episodes:

Darkly funny unpleasantness, 'Tuilleries', Coen Brothers, with Steve Buscemi and shot by Darius Khondji.

'Parc Monceau', Alfonso Cuaron, Michael Seresin shooting Nick Nolte in one long low light take.

'Quai des Seines', Gurinder Chada (boy helps Muslim girl).

The charming 'Tour d'Eiffel' by Silvain Chomet, featuring a mime (Paul Putner)!

Christopher Doyle's totally bonkers but stylish Asian / hair sequence 'Porte de Choisy' (shot not by him but Rain Li):

Tom Tykwer's amazing sequence 'Faubourg Saint-Denis', which moves so fast you abandon the subtitles (edited by Mathilde Bonnefoy), in tale of blind guy Melchior Beslen meeting actress Natalie Portman, presented in a sort of Marienbadish circularity.

Alexander Payne's warm story of terribly accented American tourist Margo Martindale (familiar from TV's The Americans) who falls in love with the city in '14e arrondissement':

But the highlight for me is the short bittersweet tragic tale 'Place des Fetes' by Oliver Schmitz, with Aissa Maiga and Seydou Boro, which is unexpectedly powerful:

Seydou Boro

Aissa Maiga

Also appearing: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elija Wood, Juliette Binoche, Bob Hoskins, Rufus Sewell, Emily Mortimer, Miranda Richardson, Marianne Faithfull, Willem Dafoe and - most welcome - Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands.

Anything Else (2003 Woody Allen & scr)

Woody writes himself a most interesting character, a rifle-carrying, antique Porsche driving school teacher who mentors young comedy writer Jason Biggs, and is himself a little crazy, as we first discover in amusing car smashing scene. Bigg's girlfriend Christina Ricci is also nuts, a sexpot and food junkie who moves her mom in with unpredictable results.

No wonder she's so 'fat'

Shot in widescreen by Darius Khondji.
Danny de Vito is awful manager, Stockard Channing the mom. Also with Adrian Grenier.
Finale is very funny, but positive, in which Biggs manages to change and move on with his life.
"The doctor had better sex examining her than I've had in six months."

Intriguing use of splitscreen

Erica Leerhsen, who's in Woody's new one

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946 William Wyler)

An absolute classic, Best Years of Our Lives takes its sweet time: begins in a most leisurely manner as three demobbed servicemen catch a flight to return to their hometown. Here they are, Harold Russell, Dana Andrews (never better) and Frederic March:

I hadn't realised in the many times I've seen this film how long the takes are, allowing extra concentration on the acting. Russell, whose only film this was, received a special Oscar but also won for Best Supporting Actor. Wyler holds the record for directing actors to Oscars (13*): March also won, as did Robert Sherwood's brilliant screenplay and Daniel Mandell's editing, though because of all the long takes, there probably wasn't as much work to do editing as on a normal film?

What is quite remarkable (and it's not the first such occasion) is that Gregg Toland's incredible deep focus photography was completely overlooked by the Academy (but not by the filmmaker, who in recognition gave him a full screen credit). Look at this shot: we're more interested in what's going on in the far, far background as Andrews breaks it off with March's daughter Teresa Wright then the foreground conversation:

And in the climactic wedding scene, the deep focus allows us to consider the thwarted relationship between Andrews and Wright:

This wonderful shot helps us to appreciate Wright's growing disgust of Andrews' money-grabbing wife Virginia Mayo:

#

For such a serious film it also has some great humour (modern film writers please take note). Myrna Loy: "They make a lovely couple!"

The Oscar-winning score by Hugo Friedhofer isn't one you'll rush out and buy but it most successfully underscores the emotion.

Also with Hoagey Carmichael, Cathy O'Donnell (sympathetic fiancée), Ray Collins (bank boss).

* They were:

Greer Garson and Theresa Wright in Mrs Miniver

Harold Russell and Frederic March The Best Years of our Lives

Bette Davies and Fay Bainter in Jezebel

Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday

Burl Ives in The Big Country

Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl

Walter Brennan in Come and Get It

Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress

Charlton Heston and Hugh Griffith in Ben Hur

Paper Moon (1973 Peter Bogdanovich)

As it happened, a double bill of what Mark Cousins would refer to as "deep space".

Ryan O'Neal's 1935 con man transports Tatum O'Neal (who may be his daughter) across Depression era Kansas to Missouri: she comes to be invaluable, especially when protecting him from Madeline Khan.

Brilliantly shot in deep focus by Laszlo Kovacs,with the help of Orson Welles who told him to use red filters to make the skies blacker. Like Bogdanovich, he was not even nominated, though Tatum won and at the time was the youngest recipient.

The Region 1 DVD contains fascinating extras, such as these outtakes. In this scene, Ryan had had to eat dozens of waffles as Tatum kept fluffing the line:

In one of many long takes, it took 30 attempts before Tatum got it right, and each take lasted a mile and a half before they could turn the car around.

Written by Alvin Sargent (with major contribution by PB uncredited) from Joe David Brown's novel "Addie Pray". Bogdanovich asked Welles what he thought of the new title and he replied "It's so good you shouldn't make the film, just release the title!"

A Coney Island, by the way, appears to be a hot dog, and a Nehi is a nasty-looking soda.

Midnight in Paris (2011 Woody Allen & scr)

Owen Wilson - visiting Paris with fiancée Rachel McAdams - becomes unstuck in time and in the Twenties meets Hemingway (Corey Stoll, unforgettable), the Fitzgeralds (Tom Hiddlestone and Alison Pill), Dali (Adrien Brody), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) et al and falls in love with Marianne Cottillard, who herself is an escapist who dreams of the Belle Epoque: and thus the film's theme. Not as deep as some of his films but extremely winning, I was surprised the script won the Oscar (but not, you'll note, the BAFTA).

Begins unusually with a pre-credits homage to Paris (in a similar vein to Manhattan), in the rich tones you'd expect of Darius Khondji, then has the credits over Wilson's dialogue.

Would you get into the car? So would I!

Corey Stoll as Hemingway

Uses a repeated guitar track (Bistro Fada by Stephane Wrembel) as a theme.

Features Michael Sheen (as one of those pompous bores Woody writes so well) and Carla Bruni.

Wonderful production design and art direction by Anne Seibel and Jean-Yves Rabier. The French must have loved him, and I'll bet tourism went up as a direct result.

Whatever Works (2009 Woody Allen & scr)

Experimental as ever, with Larry David often addressing us directly (to the bemusement of the fellow participants) and ironically commenting on the audience, who are paying for a Hollywood producer's new swimming pool, and who may still be left at the end of the film:

David is extremely amusing (and good - note long single take to camera near the beginning) as a pessimistic cynic, full of wonderfully funny invective and hostility, whose life is sort of changed when he meets a young Mississippi girl Evan Rachel Wood (who's just fab, like many of Woody's leading ladies).

"That's the most disgusting story I ever heard!"

The wonderful plot thickens when she is visited by her mother Patricia Clarkson (equally good) and -separately - father Ed Begley Jr, and meets hunk Henry Cavill.

Many funny lines of course "It wasn't an affair, it was a brief interlude of infidelity" and "he's got two noses and four arms".

Lazily - I mean casually - staged, the impact is all the greater when we do have an occasional reaction shot, or - as in this case - Evan steps meaningfully into shot:

Beautifully presented as always - by the sadly missed Harris Savides - and with a typically eclectic score that jumps from Beethoven to jazz.

Also can't resist things like reference to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - that how scientists observe an experiment affects the outcome. In an incredible coincidence I later read Cameron Crowe's 1979 interview with Richard Dreyfuss for Rolling Stone and the actor referred to the same thing!

Run Fatboy Run (2007 David Schwimmer)

Q recommended our next Simon Pegg feature, from the same year, though this is a couple of notches below Hot Fuzz perhaps because it is more Hollywood formulaic. Cigarette smoking Pegg must run London Marathon to show ex Thandie Newton (who he has thoughtlessly ditched on wedding day) that he's made of something. Hank Azaria is I feel slightly miscast as her new love interest (I think though he'd make a great villain), Dylan Moran is as fun as always (what's happened to him?) and Harish Patel and India de Beaufort are engaging as the Goshdashtidars!

(With Ruth Sheen in background.)

Hot Fuzz (2007 Edgar Wright)

We needed cheering up, and this was the chap to do it. Looking back on it now we wouldn't have realised what a great cast it is (everyone's in it): Simon Pegg (reminding me frequently of Geoff, our favourite mechanic), Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent (always great in whatever type of film he is in), an unexpectedly funny Timothy Dalton, Billie Whitelaw, David Threlfall, Bill Bailey, Paddy Considine, Rafe Spall, Olivia Colman (who sparkles every scene she's in), Edward Woodward, David Bradley, Anne Reid, the indefatigable Kevin Eldon, Karl Johnson and Lucy Punch. Not to mention Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan and Martin Freeman. Talking of whom, Steven Merchant is in it as well.

Spall, Considine, Eldon, Colman, Pegg, Frost

The rapid fire editing - which is the main curse of a terrible show like Whitechapel - is brilliantly done and often pushes the story forward. I loved the jump cut between someone getting their head bashed in to Pegg collapsing on an armchair. Credit to Chris Dickens who brought that same aplomb to Wright's Spaced, and won an Oscar and BAFTA for Slumdog Millionaire, but who for some reason has not edited Wright's later features.

Jess Hall shot it.

I remember my parents saying they'd just seen one of the worst films ever! Super-efficient London cop is posted to small rural community and encounters derision and murder. It becomes a very funny knowing pastiche of buddy buddy cop action films.

This is the film that for years I could remember a scene where someone impersonates a thick character (Rory McCann) by saying "Yarghh" on the phone and I just could not remember where it was from. Many many very funny moments for example involving a swan, a model village (an inspired finale) and a living statue.

Prudence and the Pill (1967 Fielder Cook)

I often wondered what this film was like.

David Niven (debonair; having an affair) and Deborah Kerr (playing mostly through gritted teeth) are 'happily married'. Niven's brother Robert Coote and wife Joyce Redman are shocked to find daughter Judy Geeson in bed with David Dundas, a young man who couldn't be more polite when being thrown out of his future in-laws and thus deserves to be welcomed immediately. Luckily he has one of those great film aunts, played by Edith Evans before she was Damed, who's the kind of impulsive old bird to perform this sort of act when visiting her nephew:

The blur in foreground is a speeding racing car. In the film's only good sight gag, Edith Evans' stunt double blithely negotiates a race track.

Here she is with nephew David Dundas, who's ordered a celebratory bottle of Krug '59.

Mix-ups occur when people keep substituting the pill for aspirin, with inevitable consequences. Why the DVD is still classified a 15 is beyond me - I would have rated it U.

Judy (who doesn't have much to do) about to meet Mrs X (Irina Demick).

Keith Michell is Deborah's lover; Peter Butterworth (more recognisable to us as a seedy farmer in Carry On films) is a seedy chemist.

Even then, I think they were playing it safe. It's about as swinging as a cemetery on a Sunday night. (Hmm. Possible film idea ensues.)

Ted Moore shot it: my favourite image is when Demick pulls a golden packet of Benson & Hedges out of her handbag (Moore famously shot Goldfinger and the colour hasn't left him!) Lots of shadows in evidence.

As Good As It Gets (1997 James L Brooks)

Written by Brooks and Mark Andrus (it's funny how many 'Simpsons' moments there are in it).

Everyone is acting great: Nicholson (AA) ("Sell crazy some place else. We're all stocked up here"), Helen Hunt (AA), Greg Kinnear (nom.), Cuba Gooding Jr. Reclusive OCD sufferer becomes more human when he becomes involved with waitress, and gay neighbour.

I like the scenes told using the dog (played mainly by Jill).  The attack is very well edited (Richard Marks). Music Hans Zimmer. Ph. John Bailey.

The visit from the doctor is one of my favourite scenes in any film, and it's funny that he's played by Groundhog Day director Harold Ramis! (The psychiatrist is played by The Big Chill's Lawrence Kasdan, the cafe manager is Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black and apparently Todd Solondz (Happiness) is a man on a bus.)

WALL-E (2008 Andrew Stanton)

Because it was in The Times' 20 Best Films, though frankly it isn't as charming and funny as Up or as exciting and funny as The Incredibles. It is, however, fantastic to look at, with at times more going on than the brain can comfortably cope with. There's a sort of old technology vs new Apple technology theme going on (as well as all the obvious consumerism stuff):

The animation of all the robots is fantastic. Like the references to 2001 as well.

That musical genius Thomas Newman has been at it again, earning his EIGHTH Oscar nomination. I don't think he'll ever catch up with his dad Alfred though, who won nine and was nominated 40 times!!