Breaking Bad Seasons 3 & 4 (2010-11 Vince Gilligan)

Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, Betsy Brandt, RJ Mitte, Giancarlo Esposito (Gus), Bob Odenkirk (Saul the solicitor), Jonathan Banks (Mike).

Music Dave Porter. Photography Michael Slovis. Editing Skip MacDonald.

Contains one of the most memorable openings ever to a TV show (Mexicans sliding through the dirt like worms).

A cloud passes under the sun, casting a moving shadow,  in this fine scene.

I love the way Walt is always thinking, trying to get a move ahead (frequently it's a chess game), though at one point he admits Gus is always 10 steps ahead of him.

Also the clever way in which the characters are pulled in all sorts of ethical and motivational directions, which constantly makes you change your feelings about them.

According to a most interesting interview with Michael Slovis "the most technically complicated shot was all that stuff in that room flying off of shelves, in the magnet episode [which he directed]. There were wires pulling everything, and they all had to be painted out by hand". You wonder whether it might have been easier to build the set on its side. Anyway, it is an amazing scene.

Intolerable Cruelty (2003 Coen Brothers)

Clooney is divorce lawyer obsessed by the whiteness of his teeth (not sure whether this is written into the script or if he is sending up film stars including himself) who tangles with gold-digger Catherine Zeta-Jones. Paul Adelstein is the soft-hearted colleague. With Geoffrey Rush, Edward Herrmann (as 'Rex Rexroth'!), Cedric the Entertainer, Richard Jenkins and Billy Bob Thornton.

Usual crew: Carter Burwell, Roger Deakins, Roderick Jaynes (!).

Film is a lot of fun.

Ship of Fools (1965 Stanley Kramer & prod)

1933. German liner sails home from Mexico, captained by Charles Korvin, with Oskar Werner as ship's doctor. Passengers include Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley, Lee Marvin, José Ferrer, Heinz Rühmann (who - echoing another character's story - really did marry then divorce a Jewish woman, and was a favourite actor of Hitler) and dwarf Michael Dunn (No Way to Treat a Lady), who is the most likeable character.

Heinz Rühmann and Martin Dunn

Long film is lumpy like an old bed: all the plot is developed through talk, and the bigger scenes such as those involving Spanish refugees seem turgid.

Its fairly ordinary photography won Ernest Laszlo an Oscar. Werner, Signoret and Dunn deserved their nominations.

L'Amour en Fuite / Love on the Run (1978, released 1979 François Truffaut)

And so we reach the conclusion of this wonderful cinematic experiment (Satyajit Ray's Apu  trilogy did not feature the same central actor) from which you can chart the career of Suzanne Schiffman, who starts out as a script girl on the second film but who by now co-writes and is first assistant director. Admittedly this chapter does feature too many and too long clips from the previous films (particularly evident if you have watched them back to back) but is not without its charms, as Doinel chances upon his ex Colette (Marie-France Pisier again, also a co-writer) whilst divorcing Claude Jade, and trying to have a relationship with Dorothée, who he has been introduced to through a torn up photograph.

Léaud is incapable of a false moment as our quixotic adventurer.

Shot by Néstor Almendros. Music by George Delerue. 

Antoine's step-step father is played by Julien Bertheau, the Monsignor from Buñuel's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. And his attempt to partly reconcile son and mother takes place at Montmartre cemetery, where the director himself ended up.

Love at 20 - Antoine Doinel episode (1962 François Truffaut)

A section from the multi-director L'Amour à Vingt Ans  this constitutes Antoine Doinel Episode 2 (and thus should not be omitted). Jean-Pierre Léaud is now a young, independent man with job at Philips record production, and his own apartment and record player (he's getting into the classics and attends lectures on experimental music), who falls for Colette (Marie-France Pisier) at a concert. Setting the pattern for the later films, he becomes friendly with her parents, but she doesn't seem romantically interested in him.

The scene at the concert where he and the girl begin to notice each other is wonderfully cut (by Claudine Boucher); film is shot by Raoul Coutard in widescreen and ends with a series of photos by Henri-Cartier Bresson.

I know.. It's because it's a screen shot from L'Amour en Fuite which has cropped the original....

My House in Umbria (2003 Richard Loncraine)

British ex-pat  Maggie Smith takes in fellow victims of train bombing Ronnie Barker (good as ever), Benno Furmann, and mute child Emmy Clarke. They are visited by inspector Giancarlo Giannini and the girl's estranged uncle Chris Cooper.

I found the way Smith's character kept on at the grumpy Cooper a bit annoying, though the film is deeper than it might have been.

Domicile Conjugal / Bed and Board (1970 François Truffaut)

Two years later, Doinel is married to Christine, and busily engaged in changing the colours of flowers! I can't at the moment identify the little apartment block (the address she gives for the taxi, 17 Rue Descazes, seems made up?)*, which has an interesting private courtyard set off a busy street. Certainly the various occupants remind me a little of Rear Window. Absolutely as good as the preceding three episodes.

Packed with great details and incidents, viz:

The apartment block's 'strangler'.
Antoine's totally pointless job piloting model ships.
A 'friend' who keeps borrowing money.
Antoine's boredom in meal at which he keeps making telephone calls.
The opera singer who is always on time but whose wife isn't.

And why shouldn't Truffaut speed up the shot of flower petals opening to reveal their secrets?

With Madamoiselle Hiroko. Written by Truffat, Claude Givray and Bernard Revon. Distinctive music as before by Antoine Duhamel, and edited by Agnès Guillemot. This is the second of several collaborations with cinematographer Néstor Almendros.

* I later learn in de Baeque / Toubiana's excellent biography Truffaut that it's in Sèvres-Babylone in the sixth. Which in turn takes me here where our French cinéastes identify the address as 133 Rue de Sèvres. Thanks!

Baisers Volés / Stolen Kisses (1968 François Truffaut)

Antoine Doinel has grown up, been kicked out of the army (where he's still reading Balzac) and becomes a hotel night porter then a private detective, whilst intermittently wooing Claude Jade and shoe shop boss Michael Lonsdale's wife, Delphine Seyrig. (There's also a comedy show version of Marienbad in the film's sequel.) Making much use of Sacré-Coeur and Montmartre.

Written by Truffaut and Claude de Givray. Photographed by Denys Clerval, edited by Agnès Guillemot (many Godards and Truffauts, her career ended with the controversial Romance by Catherine Breillat); with distinctive music by Antoine Duhamel.

A bouncy, effervescent film with many quiddities, such as the mysterious stalker, the underground Paris postal system, Léaud's monologue into the mirror, and the private detective firm's clearly gay client.

Cast also features Harry-Max (detective), André Falcon (his boss), Daniel Seccaldi (Claude's dad) and Marie France Pisier, as Colette, the good-looking ex Doinel bumps into from the previous instalment Antoine et Colette (1962 short).

Dedicated to Henri Langois, president of the Cinémathèque Français who had been sacked from his position but reinstated after protests instigated by Truffaut and supported by students and the international film community. The importance of this institution to the young nouvelle vague is well captured in Bertolucci's otherwise distasteful The Dreamers.

Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder 1959)

Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, George Raft, Joan Shawlee, Joe E Brown, Mike Mazurki, Harry Wilson (the other hood).

Written by Wilder and IAL Diamond, scored by Adolph Deutsch and brilliantly, lovingly, luminously lit by Charles Lang (winning one of his 18 Oscar nominations!) Stories of the filming are now almost as well-known as the film itself.

Sill courtesey Julien's Auctions

 That dress, the source of much debate in this house, was designed by Orry-Kelly.

This was the closest Wilder came to working with Cary Grant.

Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959 François Truffaut)

Ground-breaking nouvelle vague film is essentially an autobiography of Truffaut himself, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, with Claire Maurier and Albert Rémy.

Its many unforgettable moments include those painful 'blows'*, a long tracking shot of the escaping boy, a crocodile of children which evaporates, children's faces watching a Punch & Judy show, a night alone in Paris, a psychiatric interview (in which we learn all about the boy's unhappy upbringing - apparently, Léaud's screen test) and that incredible, haunting final freeze frame, surely one of the most famous endings in film history.

Dedicated to Truffaut's mentor and saviour André Bazin ("my real father"), who had died the night of the first day's filming, aged 40, and who thus missed his protégée's feature debut (and his best director award at Cannes).

Haunting music by Jean Constantin, natural photography by the essential Henri Decae (in Dyaliscope).

I'm awfully glad the director continued the boy's story as to have left him there would have been heart-breaking. It manages that great Gallic trick of seeming to be light and unsentimental whilst delivering a crushing emotional weight.

I first watched it on 9 September 1978 at the age of 15 - just the right age - and loved it immediately.

* Though the title's also a pun - faire les quatre cents coups means to create mischief.

The Way, Way Back (2013 Nat Faxon & Jim Rash)

Liam James is the unhappy son of feckless mother Toni Collette, forced to endure a seaside summer with her new boyfriend Steve Carrell (rather good in unsympathetic role) and daughter Zoe Levin. Luckily next door neighbours are Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb and River Alexander (who greets his mother after being out all night with "We'll talk when I wake up") and things considerably improve when he is befriended by immature fun park worker Sam Rockwell (Lawn Dogs, The Assassination of Jesse James...) - who delivers an inspired line in nonsense - and girlfriend Maya Rudolph. Amanda Peet and Rob Corddy are distracting friends of Carrell (scenes between these four and the exclusion of the boy are realistically done).

I'm now officially a big fan of Faxon and Rash, who showed in The Descendants a canny insight into family behaviour and the subtlety of relationships (note the somewhat equivocal behaviour of Janney to her children), and do it again here, only with more humour. TV actors, they both appear (as respectively Water Wizz's Roddy and Lewis) and their only writing credit prior to the Clooney film is the 2005 TV movie Adopted with Christine Baranski, sadly not available.

The two have picked an experienced cameraman in John Bailey (American Gigolo, As Good as it Gets, Groundhog Day). Looking forward greatly to their next film.

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954 Richard Brooks)

F Scott Fitzgerald story 'Babylon Revisited' (1930) (adapted by the Epsteins and Brooks) about an American serviceman (Van Johnson) who meets Donna Reed and sister Elizabeth Taylor in Paris and falls in love with the latter. Walter Pidgeon is the playboy father and Sandy Descher rather good as the child. Roger Moore, displaying an early lack of acting skill, and Eva Gabor are rivals for the couple's affections.

Thankfully from the Warners Collection (it's actually an MGM film) we finally have a decent print of Joseph Ruttenberg's pastel hues (quite unlike your typical shiny red Metrocolor pictures) - The 'Classic Movies Collection' version of the film is so awful we could only watch about 3 minutes.

Van Johnson kept reminding me of the dummy in Dead of Night.

It isn't quite great, somehow the performances and the story and the Paris setting aren't convincing, and thus it is perhaps due for a remake? The story of the story is well told in this article in The Telegraph.

The Trouble with Harry

Last reviewed here.

A Hitchcock with a difference (he was always challenging himself) - no murder, no stars - in which we missed the director's appearance again.

Really wonderfully written (John Michael Hayes) and scored (Herrmann's first collaboration) and breathtakingly photographed New England scenery (Robert Burks).

Up in the Air (2009 Jason Reitman)

Very well written (BAFTA-winning) film, by Reitman and Sheldon Turner (and adopted from Walter Kirn's novel) about people who are hired to fire other people. George Clooney is the airmiles obsessed sacker who meets fellow traveller Vera Farmiga  and newbie Anna Kendrick (all three nominated by both Academies, as were film and editing). Danny McBride is the boss, with cameos from JK Simmons and Sam Elliott.

Nicely edited (Dana Glauberman), shot (Eric Steelburg) and scored (Rolfe Kent).

Good touches: two suitcases being pulled for a change, the photo that won't fit in the case, the jump cut of Kendrick on the travelator.

Jason is the son of Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, No Strings Attached) and has since made Young Adult and Labor Day (out in March).

Five Graves to Cairo (1943 Billy Wilder)

If Billy had remained a scriptwriter he could well have contributed to our previous film - in fact it's down to Mitchell Leisen's lack of respect for his scripts that he began directing at all.

Ingenious, crafty film opens with a driverless tank and closes on a parasol. Franchot Tone is the British soldier who finds himself undercover at the Empress of Britain Hotel, Egypt, run by the wonderful Akim Tamiroff and French maid Anne Baxter, which becomes overrun with Nazis including Eric von Stroheim and Peter van Eyck.

Prime collaborators are Miklós Rózsa and John Seitz, with Charles Brackett co-writing and producing and Doane Harrison editing.

Tamiroff's face at the end is a heartbreaker.

No Time for Love (1943 Mitchell Leisen)

Poorly titled, most interesting comedy stars Claudette Colbert as wilful photographer and Fred MacMurray a 'big ape' labourer on tunnel digging project (a 'sandhog'). Richard Haydn is a composer friend who gets involved, I think it's Murray Alper who's MacMurray's labourer pal and indeed it is Lillian Randolph as the maid.

Wacky dream sequence

Charles Lang shot it; for Paramount.

The Descendants

Perfectly well reviewed here.

Only to add that Clooney is brilliant - scene where he learns wife has no chance is exemplary acting...

The Night of the Hunter (1955 Charles Laughton)

The only film Laughton made was critically panned - why? It's fantastic.*

Robert Mitchum has never been more sinister (that he's directed by a great actor is no coincidence). So are the kids good (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) and Lillian Gish is just wonderful.

Shot in splendid contrasty style by Stanley Cortez. Haunting and somewhat like a Grimm's Fairy Tale. Shelley Winters underwater an unforgettable image.

Mitchum looked after the kids as Laughton 'didn't like them'.

* No.  2 in The Cahiers du Cinéma Top 100.

Dangerous Moonlight (1941 Brian Desmond Hurst)

Anton Walbrook (born in Austria-Hungary, Vienna) is a WW2 Polish composer-pilot who falls for American journalist Sally Gray (not the best actress, poor screen kisses). With Derrick de Marney (Young and Innocent), Cecil Parker, Frederick Valk.

The all-important music is by Richard Addinsell.

Shot by Georges Périnal.

How does my Mum know the Polish national anthem? Because they used to play it when the radio shut down every night.

Shotgun Stories (2007 Jeff Nichols & scr)

Michael Shannon, Barlow Jacobs (the headstrong brother), Douglas Ligon (the one who sleeps in the van).

Shakespearean tragedy well placed in Arkansas setting, made with concision. You wonder whether the shotgun wounds (we assume from "protecting his family") were caused by the father. If so, that might have been made more explicit as it would have reinforced the film's basic premise of family feud; but maybe not.

I liked the detail of the stereo which comes on haphazardly.

Ph. Adam Stone in Panavision.

Sherlock: His Last Vow (2014 Nick Hurran)

Written by Steven Moffat; typically entertaining and exciting episode, concerning the true identity of Mrs Watson.

Splendidly staged and shot (by Neville Kidd this time, normally associated with documentaries).

Local Hero (1983 Bill Forsyth & scr)

Next in our Scotland double-bill is Forsyth's best film, in which American Peter Reigert travels to Scottish village (with Peter Capaldi) to buy it for an oil refinery. Wily villagers led by hotelier / lawyer (everyone has more than one job) Denis Lawson embrace the plan. It's a bit like an Ealing film, with a humour that is gentle but cynical and characters who are human. It is also fantastically filmed by Chris Menges (a year ahead of his first Oscar) with dazzling magic hour scenes on the beach. Like the visitors, the viewer finds themselves falling in love with the place and the people.

I couldn't find out if the aurora borealis was real or a special effect.

Burt Lancaster, Fulton Mackay, Jenny Seagrove (the marine biologist), Jennifer Black.

Thankfully Mark Knopfler's score has not dated at all.

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945 Powell & Pressburger)

Known between the two (and on the opening, imaginative credits) as IKWIG this is one of their dead centre arrows, and therefore a success.

Headstrong Wendy Hiller travels to Western Islands to marry, but nature and Roger Livesey intervene... Great cast includes the striking Pamela Brown, Finlay Currie, C.W.R. Knight (the Colonel) and John Laurie.

You can tell Powell has a love for this part of the country, strikingly shot by Ernest Hillier especially in low light scenes. As usual with prime P&P, full of great, amusing dialogue ("I haven't heard any intelligent female nonsense for months"), fantastic direction and editing (Kayleigh scene; whirlpool; moment where there is a lightning fast cut to close up of Pamela years ahead of its time (John Seabourne)), music (Allan Gray), magic, romance and wonderful creativity (Scottish hills made of tartan!).

 Thought to be the exterior of Denham Studio

Split-second cut to Pamela Brown

You'd never know that Roger Livesey was nowhere near the Western Isles, and it's most amusing (mixture of good back projection and a stand-in).

Finally, loved the curse that isn't a curse! One of my absolute favourites.

I Married a Witch (1942 René Clair)

Frederic March is the descendant of a Puritan who has been cursed by witch Veronica Lake (rapidly becoming a new favourite) to always marry the wrong girl. She and her sorcerer father Cecil Kellaway (rather good) rematerialise and start to cause him trouble. Also involved are friend Robert Benchley and fiancée Susan Hayward.

Light, witty, sophisticated comedy, shot by Ted Tetzlaff and winningly scored by Roy Webb, with imaginative and funny special effects. A real treat which we'd somehow missed.

Wrtten by Robert Pirosh (Rings on her Fingers) and Marc Connelly, from a story by Thorne Smith and Norman Matson.

Wings of Desire / Der Himmel über Berlin (1987 Wim Wenders)

I knew at once from the roving, black and white heaven-sent camera and angels Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander eavesdropping on Berliners' thoughts that this was going to be something special. Perhaps referencing AMOLAD, the earth-bound moments are in startling colour (that the film was so beautifully shot by 78 year old Henri Alekan is a little miracle of its own), as we get involved in the lives of circus performer Solveig Dommartin, elderly professor Curt Bois (Casablanca's pickpocket!) and actor Peter Falk.

Ganz's sympathetic expression - especially to the kids who can see angels - is beguiling, as is his desire to experience life. Ruminative, philosophical, powerful, tender, funny film written by Wenders and Peter Handke and powered by a strong score from Jürgen Knieper.

Shot on Eastman Kodak with an Arriflex BL4. Berlin somehow looks even worse when it's in colour! I love that the Circus is the 'Circus Alekan'!

Screen shot The Funambulist

The title's literally 'Heaven over Berlin'.

The Music Box (1932 James Parrott)

Famous Laurel and Hardy film won Oscar for best short, produced by Hal Roach. Beautifully simple and funny.

There was a time when Laurel and Hardy were frequently on daytime TV but there seems to be no place for them any more, and we are worse off for it.

Taxi Driver

See here.

It's a film noir.

A remarkably assured performance from the 13-year old.

People keep pointing gun fingers at Travis - he ends up doing it himself.

Anchorman (2004 Adam McKay)

Will Ferrell co-wrote it with McKay. With Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughan, David Koechner.

The sensational jazz flute is apparently played by Katisse Buckhingham.

Out of the Past / Build My Gallows High (1947 Jacques Tourneur)

As tense a film noir as you'd expect from the director of Cat People (e.g. great scene in Acapulco when Douglas suddenly turns up), in which honest private eye turned garage owner Robert Mitchum is invited to go back to the past by muscle Paul Valentine. Flashback told to girlfriend Virginia Huston relates how former employer and crook Kirk Douglas hired him to locate girlfriend Jane Greer, who skipped with forty K after trying to kill him. Mitchum follows her to Acapulco and falls for her on Nick Musuraca's day-for-night beach, where she claims not to have taken the money...

Great terse, sardonic dialogue (one of the film's major assets) and twisty, inexorable (a word that is just right for noir) story by Geoffrey Homes from his own novel (also the film's alternative title, above), underscored by the prolific Roy Webb, in which the deaf and dumb kid Dickie Moore proves undeniably useful and delivers the film's last great lie.

Also with Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Steve Brodie.

My May 2012 review says that Musuraca shoots San Francisco exteriors like Hopper - I wish I'd read that before this screening as I completely missed it! Good tonal range in exteriors.

I don't really know Greer though she was reteamed with Mitchum in The Big Steal, and in later life appeared in the film's 80s remake Against All Odds, and Twin Peaks. She lies at every turn and is without any redeeming features - our archetypal film noir anti-heroine, in fact.

The Dresser (1983 Peter Yates)

At first sight, an unusual choice for Yates, better known for Bullitt, though one of his early jobs was a theatre manager. He was nominated for this and I'm not quite sure why - though I liked the choice of long shots of the performances from the audience POV. It is a film of Ronald Harwood's adaptation of his own play, with Albert Finney playing a monstrous borderline-nutcase old time theatre actor (based on Sir Donald Wolfit) and Tom Courtenay as his loyal dresser and servant (Harwood's alter ego) in wartime Bradford. 'Sir' is so loud, so volatile, so difficult, so tormented that it's difficult to watch, though Courtenay is a balance of wit, support and common sense (helped by the odd nip of brandy).

Was Finney considered for Dumbledore!

It seems that Sir only stabilises when he's actually started his performance, a frightening commentary on the psychological oddities of the profession.

Eileen Atkins is the stage manager who has loved Sir for many a year, Edward Fox a disrespectful actor.

Nominated for top four awards by both Academys but won none.

Jane Eyre (2011 Cary Yoji Fukunaga)

No, I don't know him either.

Reasonably dull update has downbeat Mia Wasikowska as Jane and Michael Fassbender as Rochester, with Judi Dench, Jamie Bell and - briefly - Sally Hawkins and Holliday Grainger. Mucking about with the structure of the story didn't, I feel, help matters.

I did like Adriano Goldman's photography, especially the candlelit scenes (you know me).

The Tractate Middoth (2013 Mark Gatiss & scr)

Intriguing title based on MR James story, Gatiss' debut as director is most stylish in 35 minute film.

Beautifully shot once again by Steve Lawes, who must be bonking someone senior at the BBC to be getting all the best jobs!

Louise Jameson, John Castle, Eleanor Bron, Sacha Dawan.

Bad Teacher (2011 Jake Kasdan)

Cameron Diaz, Lucy Punch (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger), Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel.

Sherlock: The Sign of Three (2014 Colm McCarthy)

Enormously enjoyable episode written with real warmth for its characters by Steve Thompson, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat in which Holmes attends Watson's wedding and recounts various stories in his speech, including a hilarious stag night, and a series of Conan Doyle-ish adventures such as the Poisoning Giant and - the biggest joke of the series - The Elephant in the Room.

Man Friday (1975 Jack Gold)

Robinson Crusoe (Peter O'Toole) 'civilises' Friday (Richard Roundtree) in Adrian Mitchell's overt critique of Colonialism (originally a play).

Legendary editor Anne Coates has fun cutting in reactions of a parrot, and in putting together a most amusing scene where the couple try to fly.

Filmed in Mexico. Most enjoyable.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962 Tony Richardson)

Young Tom Courtenay embodies the Angry Young Man movement in Alan Sillitoe's story of anti-establishment Nottingham youth. Still impressive, resonant film flashes back from borstal and encounter with warden Michael Redgrave to former life at home with mother Avis Bunnage and family, friend James Bolam and girlfriend Topsy Jane.

Shot realistically by Walter Lassally and put together by the innovative British editor Antony Gibbs, who is clearly influenced by the French New Wave in early scenes of running in the woods, but makes certain sequences ('Jerusalem' song, Skegness slow fade beach scenes, interview with psychiatrist) entirely his own, with a stunningly edited finale which jumps through all of the events of the film and the culminating long distance race that he is supposed to win.

There's also a very early instance of the sound track of the next scene preceding the cut, which is now totally commonplace. Dede Allen, known for this trick, was directly influenced by Gibbs ('Film and Video Editing', Roger Crittenden 1981/1995.)

Young John Thaw is one of the inmates; James Fox is the public school competitor. Scored by John Addison.

One slight problem is that the BFI Blu-Ray shows the film at 1.77:1 when it was clearly shot at 1.66:1, and that's a bit poor.

Marple: Murder Is Easy (2009 Hettie Macdonald)

I'm sorry to say, another poorly directed episode. Hettie Macdonald thinks it's a good idea to obscure as many shots as possible with distracting foreground objects, and throws in several images of nature that seem to be there just for padding and to look pretty.

However we at least have Benedict Cumberbatch to make up for it, one of those actors who just radiates presence. Plus Shirley Henderson, Steve Pemberton, Jemma Redgrave, Sylvia Syms (who was not in A Canterbury Tale, that was Sheila Sim), Anna Chancellor, James Lance, Hugo Speer, David Haig, Russell Tovey.

Stuck in Love (2012 Josh Boone & scr)

Started off rather confusingly as we thought Nat Wolff (Admission) was Logan Lerman, who turns up later.

Story revolves around father Greg Kinnear who is a writer desperately missing his ex wife Jennifer Connelly. Greg's daughter Lily Collins has just been published and son Wolff has fallen in love with high school classmate Liana Liberato.

One of those DVDs on the cover of which are plastered 4 stars and quotes from Daily Mirror, Handbag, Bliss, Star Magazine and other spurious sources (I don't even know what these are) and so are really off-putting, but this is a real charmer.

Also, what's with the cooking of a turkey with a can of beer in it? I hadn't seen that one before.

Ginger & Rosa (2013 Sally Potter & scr)

Elle Fanning and Alice Englert (her feature debut) are excellent as free-thinking friends growing up in 60s nuclear crisis era Britain. The latter falls for the former's independent minded father (a bit of a shit) Alessandro Novola, who has abandoned the mother Christina Hendricks. Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt and Annette Bening play supportive gay friends.

Good jazz score and realistic photography by Robbie Ryan in Panavision.

I wonder why they cast an American and a New Zealander to play two English girls when you would have thought there'd be plenty of homegrown ones available.

Elle is fantastic but overall, I didn't love it.