Films of the Year 2014

Wild Bill. Dexter Fletcher's impressive debut, gritty but uplifting, a sort of urban Western

Babel. Mix of Iñarritu, Arriaga, Prieto, Mirrione and Santaolalla is a heady brew.

Wuthering Heights. Confirming Andrea Arnold's promise as one of Britain's leading film makers. Robbie Ryan's ultra-realistic photography a major plus.

Wild Target. Hugely overlooked remake of French drama comedy with star combination of Nighy, Blunt and Grint.

Bullets Over Broadway. One of Woody's rare collaborations results in beautiful subversion of 'putting on a show' theme, artfully shot and mounted and acted, even featuring a few Sopranos.

The Little Foxes. Took several viewings to realise just how great Wyler is with actors and with not moving Gregg Toland's peerless deep focus camera around. Essentially a stage play, nevertheless hugely cinematic.

Tracks. The film that makes you love camels.

The Wolf of Wall Street / Hugo / Bringing Out the Dead. The maestro's last two films are his best in a while, Wall Street hilarious, Hugo a charming film that pays homage to silents in general and Melies in particular; then the paramedic film, though less know, is perhaps even more wildly cinematic than the first two.

Calvary. You think John Michael McDonagh's going to give you another black comedy like The Guard - but this turns into something much more serious as well.

Leatherheads. Clooney screwball.

To Have and Have Not. How could you not love Bogie and Betty's first teaming, Hawks at the helm? I Wake Up Screaming. How could you resist Laird Cregar in early noir?

Good Will Hunting. Robin Williams' best film.

Her. Labor Day. The Way Way Back. Interesting American talent. Scarlett, Kate and Sam.

The April Fools. A New Leaf. Undiscovered Lemmon and Matthau.

Day for Night / Shoot the Pianist Domicile Conjugale / Baiser Volés / Les Quatre Cents Coups. All just happen to be Truffaut.

The Grand Budapest Hotel / Fantastic Mr Fox / Moonrise Kingdom. All just happen to be Wes Anderson.

August: Osage County. American Hustle. Twelve Years a Slave. Mature America.

Philomena. The Selfish Giant. The Kid.  Serious Brits at work.

Saving Mr Banks. Saving Mr Hanks.

Atonement. Joe Wright's best film is still seriously wonderful.

Petulia. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. The Knack. All just happen to be Tony Gibbs films. Just saying.

Wings of Desire. 'Angels Over Berlin'. Indeed.

The Perks of being a Wallflower. 

Rear Window

That flash you see in a dark apartment right at the beginning is like a hint as to the later action.

I love that the couple who sleep on the fire escape have the alarm clock tied to the rail, and when it starts raining the husband drops it and off course it starts ringing.

The moment where Grace Kelly is caught in Raymond Burr's apartment which is so tense is acted out to totally contradictory background music.

The fact that Hitch is the clock winder is marvellously apposite. (And come to think of it he's often seen as a musician.)

Much of it is silent: I bet you could watch the film without sound and still know what's going on.

You wonder if Grace Kelly's comment on the dead dog - "maybe he knew too much" is a little in-joke reference to The Man Who Knew Too Much.

When we were schoolboys I bet my friend Nic Jury that if I asked three random strangers if they'd heard of Rear Window that at least two of them would. We tried it, and I was right.

Peter's Friends (1992 Kenneth Branagh)

Written by Rita Rudner and her husband Martin Bergman, and starring her alongside Fry & Laurie, Imelda Staunton, Branagh, Emma Thompson, Alphonsia Emmanuel and Tony Slattery. We can see Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson on their way to acting greatness, though the film is quietly stolen by Emma's mum, Phyllida Law, as the stern housekeeper.

Branagh sensibly keeps things in long takes, though perhaps has a tendency to over-move the camera, and there are rather too many pop songs in it for me.

Becoming Jane (2007 Julian Jarrold)

I had just pulled our copy of Becoming Jane from the shelf and turned to Q when she said, "Becoming Jane's on TV later - we should watch it", clearly a coincidence too strong to ignore.

A somewhat speculative story based on Austen's letter extracts which refer to a brief association with an Irishman. Anne Hathaway is the budding novelist and James McEvoy the boxing, boozing lawyer. With Julie Walters and James Cromwell, Anna Maxwell Martin, Maggie Smith, Laurence Fox, Lucy Cohu (the French widow), Ian Richardson and Joe Anderson.

Shot by Eigil Bryld (In Bruges, House of Cards, Kinky Boots).

We didn't even realise Anne Coates had a daughter (with Douglas Hickox) who was an editor and today we met her - Emma Hickox. She also worked on Kinky Boots, St Trinians 2, The Boat that Rocked etc. Great cutting in fight scenes, sure she's following her mum in some of the sequences made up of dissolves. Anyway, she added something cool to the film.

Vivacious Lady (1938 George Stevens)

In somewhat irritating story, Prof James Stewart brings back dancer / wife Ginger Rogers and can't tell dad and mom (Charles Coburn and Beulah Bondi). Best bit is Ginger's scrap with Stewart's ex Frances Mercer. Hattie McDaniel is in it for about 60 seconds and Franklin Pangborn for not much longer, and there's an early appearance by Jack Conway.

Ph Robert de Grasse.

Spellbound (1945 Alfred Hitchcock)

Slightly bonkers story on theme of psychoanalysis, written by Ben Hecht from Frances Beeding's novel 'The House of Dr Edwardes' (a pseudonym for Hilary Saunders and John Palmer, published in 1927). Still has several classic moments e.g. house detective who helps Ingrid Bergman find fugitive Gregory Peck; and the two running into investigators when they reach the house of friendly psychiatrist Michael Chekhov (Oscar nominated); really interesting and weird dream sequence designed by Dali; and a very funny finale in which the two are skiing - though it seems Hitch has made no attempt whatsoever to disguise the artificiality of the back projection. What's more, ends on a wooden hand and flash to red!

Chekhov has the best line: "Good night and have sweet dreams... which we'll analyse in the morning."

Leo G Carrol also features.

Shot by George Barnes, music Miklós Rózsa.

Love, Actually

Seems to be becoming another Christmas tradition, though this year we haven't watched It's a Wonderful Life or The Man Who Came to Dinner.

I think Emma Thompson is fantastic.

12 Feb 2015: I keep hearing Rowan Atkinson in my head saying "...in the jiffiest of jiffies".

And in one of the great scenes between Firth and Lucia Moniz, where he says "My favourite time of day is when I take you home" and she says....

The Jane Austen Book Club (2007 Robin Swicord & scr)

Admittedly, those with an in depth knowledge of the six books under discussion would no doubt enjoy it the most; but even those of us who at least recognise Pride and Prejudice will get the way her plots are woven into the characters' stories. Good ensemble cast with Kathy Baker (Last Chance Harvey, Take Shelter, Cold Mountain, The Cider House Rules) the unofficial leader of the group, Maria Bello as a lady who doesn't want to get involved (she was in Towelhead, Thank You For Smoking and ER) and Emily Blunt as an uptight French teacher. Rest of group: Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace and Hugh Dancy.

Everyone including me is impressed in the way Dancy's character has read one of the books - the Gothic 'Mysteries of Udolpho' - which features in Northanger Abbey.

Karen Joy Fowler wrote the book. John Toon shot it and Maryann Brandon edited.

In Name Only (1939 John Cromwell)

Cary Grant falls for widow Carole Lombard and her cute daughter (Peggy Ann Garner); only problem is he's in loveless marriage to Kay Francis, who does all she can to break it up.

Drama isn't though sentimental or sudsy; Richard Sherman adapted Bessie Breuer's novel 'Memory of Love' (1935), of which one reviewer wrote:

Whoa. What a stinker this novel is and it's hard to believe one of my favorite Cary Grant movies – In Name Only – is based on this smutty and deservedly forgotten novel. [...]

In the novel, Alex is just a bored rich guy who likes seducing women, Maida is agreeable and pursues her own interests amicably, and Julie is too stupid to draw breath from one minute to the next. 

Has that great combination of J Roy Hunt and Roy Webb. Charles Coburn's in it too.

Carole's scar was the result of a car accident in 1925, when glass from the windshield badly cut her face. She endured surgery without an anaesthetic and her scar can still be seen in some of her films and photographs (dearmrgable.com). Gehring suggests in his autobiography 'Carole Lombard: The Hoosier Tornado' that it might have caused her dismissal from Fox. She was killed in a plane crash in 1942 aged 33.

Wuthering Heights (2011 Andrea Arnold)

Solomon Glave and especially the fantastic Shannon Beer impress as the younger couple, who grow into James Howson and Kaya Scodelario (one of the few cast members who'd had any previous experience!) in Andrea's ultra realistic, naturalistic version which makes you thoroughly appreciate electric light and central heating. She's quite rightly focused a lot of attention on the younger couple - she's adapted it with Olivia Hetreed, who also wrote Girl with the Pearl Earring and before that was a film editor.

With: Nichola Burley, Steve Evets (recognisable from Rev), Lee Shar, Amy Wren and Simone Jackson.

Robbie Ryan shoots in what looks like natural light sources, giving a properly dark experience - as it should be, the best night scenes I think I've ever seen. (His astonishing work on this film was naturally ignored by both academies.) Combine this with intimate shots of the couple (hands, hair) and nature, and a fantastically natural soundtrack (no music) and it all adds up to something extraordinary, a sort of British The New World in the wild Yorkshire Dales.

I love Andrea Arnold. It seems she's shooting American Honey in the US...

She manages to get that eroticism into it familiar from her other work...

Groundhog Day (1993 Harold Ramis)

It's fun to count how many iterations of the same day we see in the film. We think it was 30, but it's easy to lose count. Film always has more in it than you remember.

In tribute to Harold Ramis, who appears as a neurologist.

Beautifully written by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis, providing cool lines for a very cool Bill Murray.

Begin Again (2013 John Carney & scr)

Keira Knightley (own singing), Mark Ruffalo (Date Night, Shutter Island, The Kids are All Right), Hailee Steinfeld and James Cordon lead us in essentially old-fashioned 'putting on a show' thirties plot, with twist that the numbers performed are all on location on NYC exteriors. Music and performances good, some scenes have an improvisational ring to them. e.g. between Cordon and Knightley.

Ah! Carney made Once, so live urban music and improv both familiar.

Film of the Day.

Locke (Steven Knight & scr)

"That would be a good idea for a film" some exec somewhere along the line said, and of course it is quite a tricky one to pull off, focusing a day's drama in a car, via phone conversations. After a while you do start to tire of the (admittedly beautiful) way the lights are shot (by Haris Zambarloukos) and the different angles.

Tom Hardy's good but I wouldn't write home about it; the eagle-eared Q spotted Olivia Colman; Ruth Wilson is the wife and Andrew Scott plays Donal.

No comparison to either of Hitch's claustrophobic self-confinement exercises in Lifeboat and Rear Window.

The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer / Bachelor Knight (1947 Irving Reis)

I hadn't before realised quite how good Cary Grant is - "he's just being Cary Grant" is the usual way of putting it, but the artistry is in becoming Cary Grant quite so wonderfully. Here he's teamed up with frosty judge Myrna Loy and besotted (much) younger sister Shirley Temple, while Ray Collins and Harry Davenport try to help. Rudy Vallee and Johnny Sands are love rivals and Lillian Randolph is (of course) the maid.

Shot by Nick Musuraca and Robert de Grasse (which tells you at once which studio produced it). At one point I reckoned this amateur could differentiate between the two!

Good fun tale written by Sidney Sheldon. Collins has the best lines, e.g. "I couldn't help overhearing - I had my ear to the door" and when Grant asks how he got into his apartment, Collins replies "Well the door was closed, so I opened it and came in".

The Railway Man (2013 Jonathan Teplitzky)

Decent film of real-life story. Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgård (who I guess we recognise from Good Will Hunting) are all good, Jeremy Irvine gets the young Firth well, with Hiroyuki Sanada and Tanroh Ishida as the older and younger versions of the captor / translator.

Pretty heavy of course. I wonder if perhaps it suffers slightly from the one-ending-too-many syndrome.

I like the very under-exposed wide shot in the veterans' club, but wondered why DP Garry Phillips doesn't match the light in the close shots.

Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942 Leo McCarey)

Strange but engaging film, starts as charming comedy-romance between reporter Cary Grant (who's very smiley) and engaged Ginger Rogers, develops into political thriller about Nazi spread through Europe helmed by her husband Walter Slezak. Albert Bassermann is in it just long enough to be (bloodily) bumped off; Albert Dekker is an undercover agent.

Features some distinctly mad stuff from McCarey and co-writer Sheridan Gibney, lit by George Barnes, for RKO. Quite long, too.

Pal Joey

Happened to catch twenty minutes of this, Novak looks stunning (1957 vintage), songs don't seem too intrusive or artificial, so might actually watch the whole thing one day. With Sinatra and Rita Hayworth.

The Apartment

Characters who say 'three" whilst holding up four fingers (this happens twice).

Baxter does have a name!

Watching Jack Lemmon in this is like watching poetry.

Bad Neighbours / Neighbors (2014 Nicholas Stoller)

Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne (The Place Beyond the Pines, Bridesmaids), plus baby, have the nightmare of a frat house moving in next door, chaired by Zach Efron. It's not as bad as it could have been and slips down easily enough, like a glass of Pinot Grigiot. Stoller wrote Gulliver's Travels, The Five Year Engagement and the new Sex Tape.

Walk Don't Run (1966 Charles Walters)

Set in the Tokyo 1964 Olympics, Cary Grant's final film is an old-fashioned affair in which he effectively matchmakes Jim Hutton with the fresh-faced Samantha Eggar, who's been mainly on TV and who's main credit is perhaps William Wyler's The Collector.

It's a sort of USA-Japan PR exercise.

Harry Stradling lights the sets high key.

Inoffensive but bland, like a ham sandwich with no mustard.

Strawberry Blonde (1941 Raoul Walsh)

Enjoyed turn-of-the-century shenanigans (actually quite well caught in detail) of dentist Jimmy Cagney, 'friend' Jack Carson and the objects of their affections, Rita Hayworth and Olivia de Havilland. Alan Hale puts in quite a turn as the lothario father, George Tobias is the 'Greek' friend and Una O'Connor one of the neighbours.

Popular music medium is brass band and barbershop quartet, unfortunately.

Shot with customary simplicity by James Wong Howe, for Warner Bros

Contains the great line "Oh boy! She's just the fudge!", written by Julius and Philip Epstein. Unusually, concludes by asking the audience to sing along to "And the band played on".

The Family Man (2000 Brett Ratner)

We (re)watched this on the strength of Maltin's ***½ review and his description of it being an overlooked Christmas movie. Well I'm sorry Mr Maltin, you who are so often right, but we thought it should remain overlooked and had more in common with Overboard  than It's a Wonderful Life, which it clearly wanted to emulate.

Nicolas Cage has a supernatural 'glimpse' of being married to Tea Leoni with two kids and a job as a tyre salesman.

Bad Santa (2003 Terry Zwigoff)

Seems to be becoming something of a seasonal fixture

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946 William Wyler)

Reviewed fully here, but to add that Wyler must have been a hell of a director to get these performances (e.g. Russell was a non-professional, Cathy O'Donnell a newcomer) in such long takes. Also there's a kind of poetry in it. The way the camera moves in the bathroom scene between Wright and Mayo is sublime, picking up its various combinations of mirrors and reflections. The staging in those deep, deep focus shots (not one is shallow) in which the actors' movements are carefully staged, like in a play. Note Myrna Loy's very subtle restraining motion towards March where Wright is threatening to become a homewrecker. And the line that is drawn between Andrews and Wright in final, beautifully staged wedding scene (in which we're not as interested in the couple getting married).

A brave film, one of the Hollywood Greats, and one of our favourites.

Holiday Affair (1949 Don Hartman)

Hollywood Christmas story that isn't at all slushy, Isobel Lennart wrote it (as well as the fabulously named 1952 Skirts Ahoy!) from John Weaver's story 'Christmas Gift'. Great cast of Mitchum, a young Janet Leigh, Corey Wendall and Gordon Gebert as the boy, with Harry Morgan as a judge. Lots of nicely played long takes perhaps need more editing, as it's a bit static.

Very nicely lit by Milton Krasner; music by the always reliable Roy Webb.

The Inbetweeners 2 (2014 Damon Beesley & Iain Morris & scr)

Awfully written, really quite bad sequel, featuring far too old leads for their characters.

No, no. I'm sorry: no.

Match Point (2005 Woody Allen & scr)

Beautifully atypical WA, a chilly murder drama in the spirit of Chabrol. Great cast comprises Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johanssen (beautifully lit by Remi Adefarasin), Matthew Goode, Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton, Jimmy Nesbitt, Paul Kaye, Alexander Armstrong and Mark Gatiss (playing ping pong with Scarlett!), John Fortune, Rupert Penry-Jones, Zoe Telford, Margaret Tyzack (the unfortunate neighbour) and Ewen Bremner (making impression as Inspector).

The snippets of ancient recordings of Caruso, particularly 'Una Furtiva Lagrima', are enormously successful, but (and I thought this last time) the long opera excerpt over the murder scene doesn't really work.

Long for a WA.

The runner is a young man called Maximillian Roeg, son of Nic and Theresa.

Hannah and her Sisters (1986 Woody Allen & scr)

First I dollied around the table to set the shot up and I remember I thought to myself, Well I can't keep going around and around. But it could be cut and go in closer and cut and go in closer the third time. Then as I looked at that to set it up, I thought, If they're talking naturally, there's no way I'm going to be on the right person all the time. And Barbara Hershey said, "So what? So you're not on the person talking, you're on the reaction shot." And I thought to myself, Well Barbara [laughs], you're not only pretty [laughs harder] but it's a very good idea...

But you know, I was completely dissatisfied with that shot at dailies. I thought it was pretentious. Finally the "that's great" prevailed. I guess I was wrong and not seeing something. 

Conversations with Woody Allen, Eric Lax.

Because (following Cold Feet Series 3) we wanted more great women acting, which we got, with the added bonus of Michael Caine in a most atypical, nervy, wonderful performance.

The Sitter (2011 David Gordon Green)

Pretty crappy comedy as babysitter Jonah Hill eventually wins over his three young charges whilst having to deal with cast-against-type baddie Sam Rockwell.

Babel (2006 Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Incredible team at work produces gripping, mesmerizing work of art.

Guillermo Arriaga's usual splintered storyline (sometimes tangentially) connects couple Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in Morocco with kids Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait el Caid; meanwhile the excellent Adriana Barraza is a Mexican nanny who (with nephew Gael Garcia Bernal) takes her charges Elle Fanning (of course!) and Nathan Gamble over the border; and Rinko Kikuchi (in the shortest skirt imaginable) is a desperately lonely deaf-mute Tokyo girl.... (Kôji Yakusho is the father.)

Incredible photography by Rodrigo Prieto is in different styles per story, e.g. Japan in anamorphic. Shot of Rinko on swing sensational as is closing track out (though disappointingly it turns out to be CGI). Also:

In terms of production design, Alejandro came up with using one color that would unify the story, and that color was red, with different shades of red for each section. For Morocco, we used a burnt red, with a little bit of umber, with different elements of the set and costumes. In Mexico, it was more of a primary red. And in Japan it’s more of a magenta-red. That was mostly achieved in the production design and wardrobe, but sometimes I applied it in the lighting, particularly in Japan. There’s a nightclub scene and I tried to paint gels on the lights, mostly using a combination of pink and green gels. - See more at: http://www.studiodaily.com/2006/06/d-p-rodrigo-prieto-on-shooting-babel/#sthash.jQzuF5p0.dpuf

Nightclub scene cutting from sound to silence is astonishing. Editors are Stephen Mirrione (Monuments Men, Hunger Games, Biutiful, The Ides of March. Leatherheads, Good Night and Good Luck, 21 Grams, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Ocean's 11-13 and Traffic) and Douglas Crise (who had been an assistant on many of these). Oscar and BAFTA-winning music by Gustavo Santaolalla.

Really terrific, though perhaps doesn't really add up to anything - dedicated to Iñárritu's children, who are perhaps the heart of the story.

To Sir With Love 2 (1996 Peter Bogdanovich)

Perfect sequel, thirty years on, made for TV in 4x3, a ratio our classic film lover PB has no difficulty with. Brisk, well written (Philip Rosenberg), beautifully staged film is strangely hypnotic, and moving. Poitier doesn't point and is supported by Christian Payton, Dana Eskelson, Fernando Lopez et al. with Judy Geeson and Lulu in brief cameos.


"When you act a scene with Sidney Poitier he listens intently to every word you say. You can feel your words hit him. He makes the scene utterly real." (Judy quoted in Aram Goudsozian's book, source unknown.)

Cold Feet (1997 - 2003)

I put cast in this order of quality:

Hermione Norris and Fay Ripley.
Jimmy Nesbitt.
John Tomson, Helen Baxendale and Robert Bathurst.

Early series display strong visual humour, e.g. Brief Encounter pastiche, Hermione talking to herself at dinner party, lots of sixties-style cross cutting between conversations. Mike Bullen wrote (most of) it.

It's terrific fun.

To Sir With Love (1967 James Clavell & scr)

Sidney Poitier, Judy Geeson (19), Christian Roberts, Suzy Kendall (other teacher), Patricia Routledge (as 'Clinty Clintridge'!), Adrienne Posta, Lulu.

Judy makes me smile, Poitier a thinking actor. The JDs are a bit too nice really.

The museum montage is unfortunately overdone, but the photos used are excellent.

Ph Paul Beeson (lots of British stuff) in 4x3.

Brief Encounter (1945 David Lean)

Celia Johnson is most awfully good.

Those dissolves in which a part of the setting remain in shot - awfully clever: Citizen Kane only more so.

Horrible Bosses (2011 Seth Gordon)

An unofficial remake of Nine to Five in which Jason Bateman, the squeaky voiced Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis exhibit no chemistry whatsoever - Jennifer Aniston in fact steals the show.

Film is most awfully written.

Ida (2013 Pawel Pawlikowski)

Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Joanna Kulig (the singer).

His best film, comprised of most interesting compositions in 4x3, briskly edited by Jaroslaw Kaminski and shot by Pawel regular Ryszard Lenczweski (and, when he fell ill, Lukasz Zal). Powerful, simple.

Scene at the grave is unforgettable.

I liked that band.

Death Comes To Pemberley (2013 Daniel Percival)

Original review, December 2013.

In memoriam of P.D. James.

Well adapted by Juliette Towhidi (Calendar Girls).

Absolutely as good as the first time.