Lady of Deceit (1947 Robert Wise)

Strangely premised film in which first Claire Trevor (good) then foster sister Audrey Long fall in love with Laurence Tierney, who's "so good-looking". Which he isn't (though some might argue it's difficult to tell in lousy BBC2 print, which looks like it's been in the wash too many times) - he's an ugly, angry, psychotic bastard without a nice bone in his body. As far as Trevor goes that's OK as she is as bad as he is (for no particularly well-explained reason). Esther Howard is a beer loving friend of one of the murderer's victims who enlists the help of poetic and venal detective Walter Slezac, also watchable, whilst Elisha Cook Jr, in a hat that's far too large for him, is so doggedly loyal to Tierney that there's almost a gay sub-text (they have lived together for five years).

Scene where sympathetic Howard escapes from murder via use of hat pin is the highlight of OK drama.

Shot by Robert de Grasse for RKO.

The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974 Jorge Grau)

Hapless couple Christine Galbo and Ray Lovelock are wrongly pursued by bewildered-acting cop Arthur Kennedy as experimental parasites treatment causes the dead to reawaken. Opens intriguingly enough in a city where no one notices a woman streaking; then unusually sets most of its action in the Lake District. Suitably gory to have caused the film to be cut on its release and for that reason I'd wanted to watch it ever since. Really not too bad, Italian-Spanish co-production steals its end from Night of the Living Dead. Has a good role for a mini. Night scenes are hideously overlit. A suitable end to our Halloween horror weekend.

Dead of Night (1945)

The best horror film ever made.

Mervyn Johns is the puzzled architect trapped in a circular dream in the house of perfect host Roland Culver and assorted guests:

Hearse Driver. Director Basil Dearden. Story E.F. Benson.
Hugh Grainger, Miles Malleson.
Note clock which stops ticking.

Christmas Party Director Cavalcanti. Story Angus MacPhail.
Sally Ann Howes.

The Haunted Mirror Director Robert Hamer. Story John V. Baines. Maybe the best episode.
Superb performances by Ralph Michael (who reappears as the older Tony in The Camomile Lawn) and Googie Withers.

Golf Director Charles Crichton, who also adapted an H.G. Wells story.

Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne ("do I make passes, or do I make passes?").

Ventriloquist. Director Cavalcanti.
Michael Redgrave (another unforgettable performance), Hartley Power.
Something about this sequence reminds me of Cruickshank or someone (insane asylum image).

Barbara Leake as Sally Ann Howes' mother has perhaps the best line when she remarks "Well he'll just have to assault someone else".

Film badly needs restoring - Georges Auric's magnificently brooding score sounds like it's underwater. And it's music like no one else's.
Shot by Douglas Slocombe and Stan Pavey.

Angus McPhail and John Baines also wrote the linking story and there's additional dialogue from T.E.B. Clarke.

Watch out for beautiful, final moment of slow motion.

All About Steve (2009 Phil Traill)

Awful film in which odd-looking OTT crossword creator Sandra Bullock pursues reluctant cameraman Bradley Cooper, aided and abetted by Thomas Haden Church, Ken Jeong, Katy Mixon and DJ Qualls. Ending, in which an entire fire department can't get a woman and girl out of a hole, is patently absurd.

Young Frankenstein (1974 Mel Brooks)

Neatly subverts the old Universal classic series e.g. little girl being shot safely into her bed instead of drowned. Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and Peter Boyle all giving memorable performances, also with Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn and Cloris Leachman.

Halloween (1978 John Carpenter)

I think it was Alex Cox who pointed out - on his cult film series Moviedrome - that Halloween has excellent use of long takes and widescreen, of darkness and empty spaces in which something may or may not be lurking:

Ever since then every single TV channel has presented the film in a cropped 16x9 shape making purchase of the DVD essential. Film holds up well as Jaime Lee Curtis has an eventful night's babysitting and Donald Pleasance looks bewildered.

Light and darkness well shot by Dean Cundey and Carpenter's own underscore (performed by the 'Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra') is memorable.

Shaun of the Dead (2004 Edgar Wright)

Superbly catches seventies horrors disintegration of society (often through sound effects or in the background) - classy tracking shots of Pegg visiting neighbourhood shop and the same pumped up editing which Wright and Chris Dickens brought us in Spaced.

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy, Jessica Stevenson, Peter Serafinowicz, Rafe Spall.

"Dogs can look up!"

Ph. David Dunlap. Written by Wright and Pegg.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011 George Nolfi & scr)

Oh Ems, will you accept every job offered? And what's with the sci-fi fascination? This film is silly, and almost certainly fails to catch the humour I suspect would have been present in Philip K. Dick's original short story. Then you are in time-jumping Looper, and coming soon is one of those space battle bollocks films Edge of Tomorrow.

She as usual delivers her lines with a mocking aplomb, though unfortunately hasn't decided whether to be English or American. I have to make it clear, Emily Blunt is one of my absolute favourites. She has an effortless natural quality and a mischievous expression that will take her much further, and a willingness to try all sorts of roles.

"Anyone wearing a hat is not to be trusted." I kid you not.

Politician Matt Damon is being guided by non-human guardians presided over by an all-powerful 'Chairman' (cue corny lines like 'you have many names for him') - film doesn't go down the road of suggesting that we are all in the hands of a powerful and manipulative controlling government, but rather adopts a more whimsical stance about Love being the strongest thing in the Universe, which fans of A Matter of Life and Death like me get at once. That leaves the distraction of running through CGI doors and away from Mad Men's John Slattery while being helped by bureau worker/angel Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker) and colleague Michael Kelly (Changeling).

I blame first time director Nolfi, who up to this had only script collaborated on another couple of Damon projects including a Bourne and an Ocean's, but I have problems understanding how this was financed at all, and thus ultimately is all the fault of Universal Pictures.

Music by the endlessly productive Thomas Newman and shot in a chilly manner by John Toll.

Rear Window

Never noticed before - on first pan around the apartments there appears to be a flash going off in one on the top floor. Also the two girls who are topless sunbathing.

Worth noting the incredible sound track and deft camera and focus pulling.

See also here.

Sex and the Single Girl (1964 Richard Quine)

Great fun, a worthy companion piece to the same director's next film How to Murder your Wife and linked by Neal Hefti's music. In jokes abound with Curtis in drag again, and being likened to Jack Lemmon!

Natalie Wood is hilarious in nervy, screwball performance, note manic glasses cleaning:

Love the giant legs!

Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall support as permanently bickering couple: "Holy mackerel! I could kill myself and be better off than I am now!" Also with Mel Ferrer, Fran Jeffries, Leslie Parrish and Edward Everett Horton.

Charles Lang is on camera.

Written by Joseph Heller - of all people - and David Schwartz, and based on Helen Gurley Brown (a jokey pseudonym?) novel adapted by Joseph Hoffman.

Influence of French New Wave in evidence in wacky car chase finale.

Paris (2008 Cédric Klapisch & scr)

Absolutely wonderful, warmly written film catches several (slightly*) intersecting Parisien lives with ensemble cast. Sensitive Romain Duris (who we last saw in The Big Picture but who is clearly a Klapisch favourite, appearing also in L'Auberge Espanol, Russian Dolls and the new one releasing this year, Chinese Puzzle, with Audrey Tatou) learns he is very ill and shares this with his unhappy sister Juliette Binoche (who's so good, you don't really notice her performance); she in turn connects with unhappy grocer Albert Dupontel. Julie Ferrier is the latter's free-spirited ex. Fabrice Luchini is sensational as mid-life crisised lecturer who wrongly believes his brother Francois Cluzet has it all, and fancies pupil Mélanie Laurent (scenes here are very Woody Allen). Karin Viard also noticeable as a highly unpleasant shop-owner, Sabrina Ouazani as her new assistant, and Gilles Lelouch as a market worker.

Romain Duris and Juliette Binoche

Sabrina Ouazani

Gilles Lelouch and Julie Ferrier

Romain Duris

Julie Ferrier

Fabrice Luchini

Mélanie Laurent

Notice from stills the simple, direct framing and focus.

Good music by Robert 'Chicken' Burke, Loic Dury and Christophe Mintz. Shot in Panavision by Christophe Beaucarne.

Unlike most Hollywood equivalents it doesn't wrap itself up at all neatly, and is all the better for that.

*Afterthought - I'm sure the film begins with Duris phoning Luchini, who can't talk as he's on his way to his father's funeral - we don't know how these two know each other and the connection doesn't come up again... (Ed. No, that's the guy producing the history documentary who phones at the beginning.)

C'était Un Rendezvous (1976 Claude Lelouch)

The best nine minute film ever made and the fastest tour of Paris, as Claude Lelouch charges across the city at dawn in one single take filmed from a fixed camera mounted on the car's bonnet. We had to watch it twice.

Champs Elysées: Fouquet's distinctive red awning on the right.

According to Lelouch himself the car was not a Ferrari 275GTB but rather a Mercedes with the sports car's engine dubbed over it to make the journey appear faster (it is estimated the average speed is only around 50 mph). Nevertheless we lost count of how many red lights he dangerously speeds through (I think 13). The route is helpfully mapped here.

The Guilt Trip (2012 Anne Fletcher)

Seth Rogan sounds like a cartoon bear.

With Barbra Streisand, Brett Cullen (both below) and Colin Hanks.

Written by Dan Fogelman (Crazy Stupid Love) and photographed by Oliver Stapleton.

The Witches of Eastwick (1987 George Miller)

I didn't enjoy this as much as last time though it is amusing to watch the hair of Cher, Susan Sarandon (a wig surely?) and Michelle Pfeiffer flourishing:

Beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, and scored by John Williams (there's a hint of the Harry Potter theme in the end credits). With Jack Nicholson, Veronica Cartwright and Richard Jenkins. John Updike's pro-women novel is adapted by Michael Cristofer.

Giant (1956 George Stevens)

I didn't remember what an epic this is: 3 hours and twenty minutes' worth, to be precise.

"Yee-hah!" we gloated as nasty Mercedes McCambridge dies after cruelly treating a fine horse.

Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and mumbling James Dean lead, with young Dennis Hopper and Sal Mineo in attendance (and an early appearance by Rod Taylor).

William C. Mellor at work

Texas looks like a nasty place. Film contains rather too many screaming children, but finally shows its Liberal heart in wetback-defending finale.

Halloween

Tried to watch, but somewhat obfuscated by my own bibulosity.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

An exceptional film that is like no other (unless you count some of the other films by The Archers) - this was their first film under this guise and to start with, we had no real arrows flying in. Nevertheless they accorded it a dead centre - a success.

Thankfully Olivier didn't get the part that Roger Livesey makes his own, and it is also Anton Walbrook's finest hour. Innovative film features Deborah Kerr as three different women, and trumps Brief Encounter with its trick of beginning at the end. Pressburger's favourite, and you can see why - the scene in which (in one slowly closing take) Theo explains his reasons for wanting to return to England is about as autobiographical as you can get. A key scene in an extraordinary work.

Their longest film (2 hours 40) is also perhaps the most serious, examining the nature of friendship and war and why it is no longer conducted by gentlemen. Georges Perinal's photography still looks superb and future stars Jack Cardiff and Geoffrey Unsworth are assisting.

But also very, very funny, viz. reunion of soldiers 'Sugar' Candy and 'Hoppy'.

Hoppy: I was awfully sorry to hear about your leg. Jumping Jehosaphat! They're both there!
'Sugar' Candy: What the hell did you think I was standing on?
Hoppy: They told me in Bloemfontein that they cut off your left leg.
Candy: Can't have, old boy. I'd have known about it.

Ronald Culver has arguably the best line ("Three. What's it got to do with the War Office? Four. I'll tell you.") but there is plenty of dialogue as witty, such as this throwaway and quintessentially British line, written by a Hungarian: "Warm for January". "Damn cold I call it." Or "You're a good pupil Edith. That's £32,000 I owe you."

In a film full of amazing moments the scene in which we build up slowly to a duel, then pull away from it, is perhaps the most remarkable. Did Billy Wilder see and love this? Of course he did, as Pressburger and he knew each other from Berlin at UFA at the time of Emil and the Detectives.

Last word to Time Out's Chris Peachment "It is marked by an enormous generosity of spirit: in the history of the British cinema there is nothing to touch it."

Arise My Love (1940 Mitchell Leisen)

Early Brackett / Wilder has great beginning in which condemned Spanish Civil War flyer Ray Milland is saved by plucky journalist Claudette Colbert pretending to be his wife: an opening as good as most films' finales. Flag-waving final act firmly says 'wake up America and join the war'. One of Charles Lang's 18 Oscar nominations.

Good gag with sticking plaster. Walter Abel funny as newspaper boss. Plus Dennis O'Keefe, George Zucco.

Edited by Doane Harrison, for Paramount.

Somewhere (2009 Sophia Coppola & scr)

... though - as Q points out - there isn't much dialogue to speak of! as hedonistic film star Stephen Dorff attempts to relate to estranged daughter Elle Fanning. Long takes of athletic pole dancers giving Dorff private show contrast with athletic daughter ice skater giving Dorff private show in slightly queasy analogy. Few cuts and little happening make me think of seventies German cinema.

When Fanning cries, fearing both parents will abandon her, Dorff cannot reassure her .. in fact it seems to have the opposite effect... I certainly wouldn't want to be in that lifestyle - even the constant bopping looked numbingly dull.

Shot by Harris Savides.

Sixteen Candles (1984 John Hughes & scr)

Molly Ringwald's birthday's been overlooked. She fancies Michael Schoeffling not Anthony Michael Hall who ends up with (I guess) Haviland Morris. (Gedde Watanabe is the rogue student and young John Cusack has an early role. Note also Paul Dooley as nice father.)

Not as uncomfortable as other Hughes.

Sunset Blvd. (1950 Billy Wilder)

Unlike Hitch, with Wilder it's all in the script (though he's cinematic also), co-authored by Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr., whoever he or she is (won Oscar). Narrated by a dead man with impressive opening trick shot (filmed by shooting a mirror on the bottom of the pool):

Gloria Swanson is nuts. Inspired casting of Eric Von Stroheim as the faded film director and ex-husband (and with beautiful irony features a clip from the 1929 Queen Kelly, which Swanson produced and von Stroheim directed .. until he was fired by her), Nancy Olson as the good girl; with cameos by Hedda Hopper, Cecil B. de Mille and Buster Keaton.

Shot by John Seitz (nominated) and scored by Franz Waxman (won), it abounds with cynical wit ("Here we are, back at the pool again, the one I always wanted.")

You know, the usual monkey burial scene.

I love the sound of Wilder's original opening in which dead Holden discusses his murder with other bodies in the morgue! (Preview audiences found it too funny.)

Notorious (1946 Alfred Hitchcock)

A well overdue treat, Hitch shoots half of Notorious in intimate close-up (and a quarter in extreme long shot). It's brilliantly cinematic, e.g. moment where Grant leaves a bottle of Champagne on the table - his boss Louis Calhern knows what it's for and that it's no longer needed without a word - indeed long stretches of the film could be silent.

Bergman is as great as always but Grant also really is good - it's all in the eyes (thinking). Plus great support from slimy Claude Rains, sinister mother 'Madame' (Leopoldine) Konstantine and Reinhold Schunzel.

Shot by Ted Tetzlaff with some agile focus pulling; score by Roy Webb.

For further proof that Hitch inspired the Connery Bonds, the drunken high speed night drive resurfaces in Thunderball.

Come Live With Me (1941 Clarence Brown)

A great way to start the day, if you can get over the shock of the modern open marriage set-up. The gorgeous Hedy Lamarr is fleeing from her (real life) home town Vienna from unnamed Nazis and needs to marry impoverished writer James Stewart:

  George Folsey (many films since 1919) having fun with mirror scene:

Even the rain at MGM is a classy affair. Verree Teasdale sports an unsightly hat:

Of all Hollywood's long line of wise old ladies / grandmothers Adeline de Walt Reynolds here is not the greatest, but film is fun. Note also Donald Meek as the world's most successful bum. Ian Hunter is the other man and Barton MacLane the nice guy from Immigration.

Clarence Brown was in films from 1920: he made early Garbos and The Yearling.