Reality Bites (1994 Ben Stiller)

There's lots of home video footage in this which later makes it into Winona Ryder's video - though not in the way she wants. She also has to make up her mind between Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawke, whilst friends Steve Zahn and Janeane Garofolo support; John Mahoney an irritating chat show host. Helen Childress's screenplay is only OK and film isn't even particularly distinguished by having Emmanuel Lubezki on camera.

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

Last seen 12 October 2013 - after some persuasion my wife finally relented to watch it - then was immediately reminded how damn good it is. Halfway through I realised I was wearing Turnbull and Asser boxer shorts - an undergarment of a suitably high quality to match the film. Brilliantly written by Pressburger ("speaking fluent double German") subject matter on politics of war just as timely as ever, though in their case it was an extremely brave thing to pull off in the midst of one.

Scorsese is a big fan - "Every time I revisit the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp it becomes richer, bigger, more moving and more profound". I would add "funnier" as well.

Had to stop myself from repeatedly saying 'This is a brilliant scene' because it applied to every scene.

Evocative music (by Allan Gray) from big band army stuff to love theme (Deborah Kerr's theme). When you consider Gray aka Josef Zmigrod and Pressburger hailed from Austria-Hungary, Alfred Junge from Germany, Walbrook from Austria, and Périnal France, it's an international production indeed.

Douglas Slocombe is dead

Was on the point of being in touch with the 103 year old genius through his former assistant Robin Vidgeon - the trail went cold and now Dougie is also (22 February). Why the fuck don't these guys rate a mention, on the news, for example, or even in The Week?

Obit = http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/23/douglas-slocombe-obituary.

I think my favourites were The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, Dead of Night, The Man in the White Suit, The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Servant.

Something's Gotta Give (2003 Nancy Meyers & scr)

"Ooo, what a lovely kitchen. How pastely everything is. Doesn't Diane look vanilla?" etc.

Perfectly good, enjoyable film, led to long and interesting discussion about what it must be like to work with an icon like Jack Nicholson, for Keanu Reeves for example, who's not the world's greatest. Actually I think Diane steals the film, Nicholson has gone slightly hammy by this point.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011 Tomas Alfredson)

Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan adapted John Le Carré's novel (he's an exec producer), but the result is rather slow in contrast to The Night Manager, though there's lots to admire. Gary Oldman is in very restrained mode, the lights always reflecting in his glasses. Great cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham, Simon McBurney, Roger Lloyd Pack, Philip Martin Brown.

Well done - music Alberto Iglesias, camera Hoyte van Hoytema, editor Dino Jonsäter. Lots of lateral tracking shots. moody lighting.

I'm normally a fan of jumbled up time, it often provides a richer experience. In this film though I wonder if a chronological approach might have worked better (film is slow and muddy).

I can't really buy Cumberbatch assaulting Hardy though!

The Two Faces of January (2014 Hossein Amini & scr)

It's a well written screenplay, from Patricia Highsmith novel. Like Ripley it suffers from the too early departure of the most likeable character, this time the underrated and fabulous Kirsten Dunst. Also I'm not sure it has the best ending.

Still, handsomely mounted production, set in Greece in 1962, is good and cinematic (quite Hitchcocky). Oscar Isaac and Viggo Mortensen are fine. Music is by Alberto Iglesias, Marcel Zyskind on camera. Nicolas Chaudeurge and Jon Harris editing. Has its own Zippo foley artist.
It was Iranian-born Amini's first feature - he also wrote Drive, Shanghai and The Wings of the Dove.

Features the old buses that Q so dearly loves.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008 Woody Allen & scr)

Fabulous cast comprises Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Patricia Clarkson. The director's use of dissolves - particularly when Rebecca and Javier get together - is inspired - where have we seen it before? I was going to say Godard, but actually I think it's in The Knack. Film is intimate for Woody (Scarlett and Javier, Scarlett and Penelope).

Made almost entirely with a Spanish Crew, led by Javier Aguirresarobe.

Whilst the conclusion tells us that neither of the girls are any different I'm not so sure that's true....

The people of Oviedo certainly loved the film as they commissioned a statue for Woody the year after.

Woody's typeface is "EF WINDSOR Elongated (later edit: or a heavier weight of EF WINDSOR Light Condensed, as some of the readers suggested) by Elsner+Flake foundry" from 1905.
(source: http://kitblog.com/2007/12/woody_allens_typography.html.)

Midnight in Paris (2011 Woody Allen & scr)

Still needing cheerfulness, Woody's love letter to Paris, despite our frequent visits, never tires and is all the more welcome with every passing act of terrorism.

Darius Khondji has his own very distinctive pallette - you could almost recognise his work from it - in this respect he reminds me of Otto Heller.

Rachel McAdams is the American girlfriend, Marion Cotillard the 1920s one, Léa Seydoux the antique dealer.

It's gorgeous.

The Pont Alexandre III

Features lovely track 'Si tu vois ma mère' by Woody's clarinet jazz hero Sidney Bechet; sensational guitar track 'Bistro Fada' by Stephane Wrembel; Cole Porter 'You Do Something' etc.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (2005 Dan Ireland)

Adapted by him and Martin Donovan, Ireland has delivered a quite cinematic treatment of Elizabeth Taylor's novel - it's not all verbal. Look at the ending for example, when Ludo emerges from hospital to girlfriend Zoe Tapper - he doesn't even have to say anything, and nor does she.

I wanted to see a happier Rupert Friend (who Q describes in this as a 'beautiful horse') opposite a wonderful Joan Plowright in a film that is warm like a welcome hug. Honestly - these people with their own special types of marmalade - I don't know...

The song Rupert beautifully sings to Joan is 'For All We Know', originally performed by Rosemary Clooney (music J Fred Coots, lyrics Sam Lewis).

Homeland Season 5 (2015)

Happened to finish this drama, culminating in  attempted gas attack on Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the day after the bomb attacks on the Brussels airport and train stations - it's "the new normal", as one of the characters refers to it. Loved the way our expectations are challenged as it opens - we're sure the bearded easterner (Atheel Adel) is going to blow up something, but he turns out to be an anti-Islamist hacker, one of the 'good guys'.

Series makes an excellent job of situating the events directly in reality, commenting on many aspects such as the Israeli involvement, faith, freedom of information and so on.

Scenes where Rupert Friend acts as terrorist assassin are great - we love seeing one blown up by his own pipe bomb, for example.

Claire Danes is astounding, Miranda Otto though is also terrific as double-crossing station head. Q was worrying about Rupert Friend every episode. Mandy Patinkin, F Murray Abraham, Sebastian Koch, Sarah Sokolovic, Nina Hoss, Alireza Bayram.

To Catch a Thief (1954 Alfred Hitchcock)

There are many reports from on set that Hitch was barely paying attention during the shooting of several scenes - it was all in his head already. Though if you look at the note he's written to the second unit, published by Truffaut, you can see he's very much focusing on details.

To dismiss it as lightly entertaining fluff would ignore the great skill that has gone into it - there's for example all those great changes of shot set up in even the simplest scenes. Great cast too with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, John Williams and Jesse Royce Landis; great Robert Burks photography.

Two For the Road (1967 Stanley Donen)

Most brilliantly presented study of marriage in jumbled up time is all the work of screenwriter Frederic Raphael. Chris Challis had adventures with the car in making the photography as real as possible. Henry Mancini underscores the bittersweet series of events perfectly.

Some of the fashions are hilarious.

Partly based on the real travels of Raphael and his wife Sylvia along Route Nationale 6, or as far as Rome, where this was written. He took all the plot elements and wrote them on the back of cards, shuffled them, then wrote the film in the random order of the cards. Donen approached him on the back of Nothing But the Best."I like surprises, and I like to surprise directors."

He doesn't believe in cause and effect but, in an echo of Pressburger "There are coincidences, oddities, contradictions. Everything contributes to the truth of one's life."

Not sure where the hotel is, will find out.

Since this viewing I keep hearing Audrey reciting that nursery rhyme which I think includes '..and didn't get home till early tea' - it's her voice...

Steve Jobs (2015 Danny Boyle)

What you get with an Aaron Sorkin film is lots of articulate conversation and some pithy lines. Enjoyable script is like watching a three act play with the same characters debating the same things at three crucial points in Jobs' career, and particularly how he gets on with his daughter. It's not especially cinematic.

Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet (great; BAFTA winning), Seth Rogan, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg.

Ph. Alwin Küchler, ed Eliot Graham.

The Optimists of Nine Elms (1973 Anthony Simmons)

Simmons also wrote the novel and adapted it with Tudor Gates, better known for Hammer films. He began making documentaries, then the odd feature such as Judi Dench Four in the Morning (1965), ended up directing TV episodes.

Two children, Donna Mullane and John Chaffey, in a grimy riverside Nine Elms, gradually befriend a street entertainer, Peter Sellars. There's something about the depressed setting and the girl's and Sellars' performances that make this so melancholic (she rarely smiles). A melancholy which I loved, I don't know why (like a grey day).

Shot by Ian Pizer with lots of footage put together well by John Jympson. The busker with the budgerigars (Don Crown) is amazing.

The music, fittingly enough, was by George Martin, who died on March 8.

The Lady Vanishes (1938 Alfred Hitchcock)

Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Dame May Whitty, Paul Lukas, Cecil Parker, Linden Travers, Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford, Googie Withers.

Nice to see on Blu-Ray but film hasn't actually been restored, as such.

It's very funny ("After all, people don't go around tying up nuns"). To begin with it could be a romantic comedy. Ethel Lina White wrote 'The Wheel Spins' and it's been adapted by Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder, Alma and Hitch. One of his most entertaining films doesn't actually have much 'Hitchcocky' stuff going on (no bravura camera moves, for example) but is briskly paced and thrilling.

Up (2009 Pete Docter, Bob Peterson)

The first eleven, silent minutes of this film - a life story - is absolutely wonderful, so cinematic, and so moving. In fact the whole film is very cinematic and behaves more like a live action film than an animation - much to its credit. It even looks properly lit.

Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai and Bob Peterson are the main voices.

It also seems to have a lot going on in the deceptively simple story, such as letting go and starting afresh.

The music by Michael Giacchino won Oscar and it was of course also the winner for best animated film. The screenplay and sound editing also were nominated. (The best sound effect is when the boy is dragged along the airship's window.)

On that opening:

Bob Peterson originally wrote a series of very short scenes, two or three on a page with dialogue, and the characters were completing each other's sentences and other snippets that showed how well matched they were. And as we went into storyboard, Ronnie Del Carmen, who was our head of story, took on that sequence at the beginning and said, "This would be really great if it was silent." We sort of resisted for a while, but it was a classic case of, as I believe Mark Twain said, "I didn't have time for a short letter, so I wrote you a long one." Over time, we were able to know what we absolutely needed to see in the scene, and what we could cut out.

Thanks to LA Times for the complete discussion

Run Fatboy Run (2007 David Schwimmer)

Michael Ian Black, Simon Pegg.

I think Hank Azaria is miscast and should have a good career playing bad guys. As it stands we don't really get why Thandie Newton would be interested in him. The character needs to be played by Jude Law or someone.

For me, Harish Patel steals the film as Mr Goshdashtidar. It's also nice to see Dylan Moran again. Peter Serafinowicz is the elusive newsreader.

We hear Bowie on the soundtrack and see him on Pegg's t-shirt. He's everywhere.

Adventureland (2009 Greg Mottola & scr)

Actually this all arose because I saw Richard Ayoade being very funny about Robert Redford, but the really funny thing was how much Jesse Eisenberg was cracking up:

Anyway, he's a great actor and his talents are well displayed here in unusual story about the most honest of young men and his tribulations with girlfriend Kristen Stewart, her lover Ryan Reynolds (it's reminiscent of The Apartment in plotting), 'other woman' Margarita Levieva, arsehole 'friend' Matt Bush etc. Familiar faces in Kristen Wiig (who's actually doing exactly the same bit of acting from Knocked Up), Bill Hader, Martin Starr.

Terry Stacey (50/50, Dear John, P.S. I Love You, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) on camera, Anne McCabe editing.

As Young As You Feel (1951 Harmon Jones)

Billed now as a Marilyn Monroe film (she's low billed - it was her seventh film, and after All About Eve - though she still makes an impression), Paddy Chayefsky's story (adapted by Lamar Trotti) tells of independent printer (Monty Wooley) and his battle to save from redundancy by impersonating the head of the corporation. Complications ensue, especially with boss's wife Constance Bennett.

With David Wayne and Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter and Allyn Joslyn (who kept sounding like Richard Dreyfuss), and featuring a young Russ Tamblyn. Shot by Joe MacDonald and scored by Cyril Mockridge, for Fox.

Well-meaning film messages 'value the old' - what were employment laws like for 65s then?

Film is OK and quite pleasing, like a cheese and tomato sandwich in white bread.

Serious Moonlight (2009 Cheryl Hinds)

Adrienne Shelly is even more down on her characters here than in Waitress - maybe she's punishing the stupid, unattractive romantic triangle of Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton and Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) deliberately - a sort of anti-infidelity film? Though if so she leaves the film's most repellant character, a violent burglar who's inches from adding rape and murder to his repertoire, completely scott free - maybe this is the character who killed her in real life, shaped post-script?

I don't know, but while watching it I remember seeing Michael Haneke's disturbing and controversial Funny Games (1997) one Sunday morning and found it a walk in the park in contrast - maybe because you know Haneke is telling us something (even though he's a notoriously opaque lesson-giver). So if my assumption about the underlying message is right, maybe all this needs is a Haneke, not Hines, whose only film this was and who was also in Shelly's Waitress.

Tough going though; the only 'humour' comes from a man being scotch-taped to a toilet (where he's repeatedly assaulted); at least it's mercifully short.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956 Fritz Lang)

Not top-drawer Lang is actually quite talky, though you have to admit that Doug Morrow's story is ingenious, the twist ending even helping to explain why a man would go through the process of appearing to look guilty for murder despite being innocent.

Sidney Blackmer is his colluding journalist and Joan Fontaine the daughter, Arthur Franz investigates, Philip Bourneuf is the DA and Barbara Nichols the dancer.

Herschel Burke Gilbert's music echoes Rózsa's score for Double Indemnity. A late RKO film.

The Night Manager (2016 Susanne Bier)

Loved first two parts already from cinema director of interesting films, shot in an interesting way (a little like Pawlikowski in the interesting framing, though it's evident also from Things We Lost in the Fire).

Features two of the Tom Hs - Hollander and Hiddlestone (the third being Hardy) and they're both terrific, as is Olivia Colman (of course).

Actually you could argue Tom Hanks is the first Tom H., should you be so inclined.

The Apartment (1960 Billy Wilder)

This is quite quickly cut too, though there are distinctive long takes like Jack's attempts to rearrange his calendar, cooking.

I laughed when I realised he gives his name right at the beginning as 'Bud' - thus the ensuing 'Buddy-boy' is even funnier.

Am always a happier man after this film, which isn't sentimental at all.

Man Up (2015 Ben Palmer)

Simon Pegg and Lake Bell are on good form as couple who end up on the wrong date, and ensuing complications are fun, but film doesn't have a single shot in it longer than about five seconds, which then makes you start wondering whether the performances were created in the editing room - I'm sure they weren't but it makes you wonder. Also you yearn for the space -- think of Preston Sturges.

It's an Andrew Dunn film (and it looks like one), edited by that Paul Machliss fellow again. Ben's a TV director and I think it shows (this is where Machliss comes from as well).

Harriet Walter is in it.

The World's End (2013 Edgar Wright)

Pegg (in part written by he and Wright) is against type as fun-loving nineties veteran (has original car, cassette tapes etc.); by contrast Nick Frost is successful, highly-strung businessman. Promising story reunites rest of gang (Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan - also against type) for epic twelve pint pub crawl when silly Invasion of the Bodysnatchers idea takes over, cueing some indescribable fights. Groups of five are noticeable, film is as brilliantly put together as always, by Paul Machliss with Bill Pope's footage.

With Pierce Brosnan, Michael Smiley, David Bradley, Rosamund Pike, Steve Oram, Darren Boyd, Rafe Spall.

I enjoyed it more than last time, though would have finished it ten minutes before the end when Rosamund rescues them from title pub.

Tom Jones (1963 Tony Richardson)

Exuberant film written by John Osborne from Henry Fielding's novel isn't a million miles away from Barry Lyndon. Richardson's crack team of Addison, Lassally and Gibbs reunited (from Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner) produces splendid moments such as a breathtaking hunt, a wonderfully cinematic sequence where Albert Finney and Susannah York (both great) fall in love, and all manner of trick optical effects, freeze frame, speeded up footage, helicopter filming, characters addressing the audience and some of Tony's lovely multiple exposures.

I read in Alexander Walker's book 'Hollywood England that Lassally used lighter, modern cameras and adjusted the look by applying very fine lace over the lens! It was a massive global hit (£40 million from £360,000 budget) and urged United Artists and all the other studios to invest in the UK.

With: Hugh Griffith, David Warner, George Devine and Rachel Kempson (Tom's adopters), Angela Baddeley, Joyce Redman (Mrs. 'Jones' - whose knowing look to camera is one of the film's laugh-out-loud jokes), Jack MacGowran, Diane Cilento (Molly), Peter Bull, Edith Evans, Joan Greenwood, Rosalind Knight and David Tomlinson.

The Shining (1979 Stanley Kubrick)

You can hear where Johnny Greenwood's strings in There Will Be Blood came from... Score is fantastically arranged and gathered selection of Bartok, Penderecki and Ligeti.

Jack Nicholson is fantastic - amazing long take with him and the boy in bedroom. Very formally made, scenes have a strange way of playing out in long sequences then suddenly changing the camera position - very Kubrick.

Great use of Steadicam, not just in celebrated track behind the kid (with Garrett Brown following on a rubber-wheeled wheelchair) but e.g. in maze also.

Knocked Up (2007 Judd Apatow)

I'm beginning to see where Tony Zhou's criticism of modern American comedy comes from - this is the definition of his 'lightly edited improv' - nothing feels written, and film has a dawdling quality as a result. It's still funny....

Swing Shift (1984 Jonathan Demme)

Interesting directorial treatment of story that is no great shakes but is at least different and enjoyable in tale of women munitions factory workers in WWII America, shot around LA. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell began their relationship here. Christine Lahti also good. With Fred Ward and Ed Harris.

Tak Fujimito lights colourfully, Craig MacKay is the editor.

A Taste of Honey (1961 Tony Richardson)

Shelagh Delaney's play was opened up by her and Richardson and it's one of Tony Gibbs' first films, 'the first movie that I ever sort of fell in love with'. You can see the nervy new wave style right at the beginning, then in his very long dissolves in the canal scene he's going for 'realism' and 'poetry' (to quote historian John Hill). Rita Tushingham is absolutely delightful in her debut, Dora Bryan fantastic as the mother (I've a feeling Fellini would have loved her), Murray Melvin great in early role, Robert Stephens foreshadowing reality in role as drunk.

You can also see it's a great bit of work from Walter Lassally who's using new faster film stocks to shoot natural and low light scenes, plus it sports a particularly strange score from John Addison which is absolutely of its specific time, giving the whole thing a strange air, like a Paul Thomas Anderson film.

I'd like to think that if such a film were released now it would be hailed as something fresh and original.

National Lampoon's Animal House (1978 John Landis)

Where the hell is our old copy? It's one for Marple. Anyway this film was also long overdue and comes over now as quite polished (partly due to grown-up score of Elmer Bernstein), with lots of moments in silent movie vein, flagshipped by almost wordless pantomime performance from John Belushi (it's all in the eyebrows).

With Karen Allen, Tom Hulce, Stephen Furst ('Flounder'), Mark Metcalfe (Neidermeyer), Mary Louise Weller (the great-named Mandy Pepperidge), James Daughton (the equally great named Greg Marmalard), Kevin Bacon, Tim Matheson (the smooth talker!) and Peter Riegert. With John Vernon, Donald Sutherland, Verna Bloom and Cesare Danova.

Written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller, shot by Charles Correll, edited by George Folsey Jr.

I'd forgotten it was set in 1962 also. Contrary to my confident assertion, Jessie Royce Landis was no relation to John.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1991 Jon Avnet)

Hadn't been out long then when we watched (a bit of) it on our wedding night. Cherishably written by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, backed by still potent score from Thomas Newman.

Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy steal the acting honours, though you have to credit Mary-Louise Parker and Mary Stuart Masterson; plus Stan Shaw (Big George), Cicely Tyson (Sipsy), Timothy Scott (Smokey Lonesome), Chris O'Donnell (Buddy), Gailard Sartain (overweight husband), Gary Basaraba (cop).

We deduce the character played by Jessica is Idgie Threadgood - she's credited as 'Ninny' - who the hell's Ninny otherwise??

I hadn't noticed before that when Kathy 'hears' the train right at the beginning it looks like you can see its passing reflection in the cafe windows, shot by Geoffrey Simpson.

Perfectly measured, just the right length, just the right pacing, balance, construction.

The scene with the bees must be real. They may be a Hollywood species of non-stinging bees, I suppose.

It's like your favourite old t-shirt. If it's just a 'chick flick' then I'm a Chinese-Peruvian monk.

About A Boy (2002 Chris & Paul Weitz & scr)

Nick Hornby's novel was adapted well by US directors of American Pie fame (or infame, if you like). Hugh Grant is good essentially enacting a character a bit like himself. With Nicholas Hoult, the chameleon-like Toni Collette, Sharon Small and Natalia Tena (who's good value as the boy's punky friend - I'd like to have seen a wee bit more of that character).

Music by Badly Drawn Boy unites the thing, Remi Adafarasin's lighting is handsome, Nick Moore cut it (so with Burnt and Leap Year we're seeing quite a lot of him lately). He also cut She's Funny That Way, Morning Glory, Love Actually, Notting Hill and The Full Monty having started working as an assistant on Never Say Never Again, Empire of the Sun and  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the latter two for Michael Kahn).

Legend (2015 Brian Helgeland & scr)

From 'The Profession of Violence', a biography by John Pearson, who wrote 'Goldeneye' about Fleming too.* Helgeland has done a good job of making a story which is succinct and well told (viz striking Steadicam scenes, DP Dick Pope) -- and not too eye-wateringly violent either. (He wrote Mystic River and LA Confidential.)

Tom Hardy is outstanding as both Reggie and Ronnie Kray, Emily Browning good as the unfortunate (thick, you could say) Mrs Kray and Taron Egerton making another good impression after Kingsman. We wanted to know if Tom Hardy got paid twice.

With Tara Fitzgerald, Chris Ecclestone, David Thewlis, Paul Bettany (unrecognisable again as Charlie Richardson), Sam Spruell ('the hat').

Owes a certain something to Performance. I wanted God Save the Queen to play over the end credits, for some mad reason of my own.

The music - by the Coens' Carter Burwell - has an interesting trumpet-led theme, always in itself evocative (you think of Chinatown, for example).

Dominic Gibbs is the supervising sound editor. In researching the possible family connection, I just found out that Tony Gibbs has died - naturally that didn't make it to the news - on 26 February. He was 90. By an incredible coincidence (Nic Roeg would argue that it wasn't) we watched him at work on The Knack the very next day.

* I don't know where I got that from. Helgeland is not involved in any such project. The 1989 Goldeneye with Charles Dance as Fleming is written by Reg Gadney, from John Pearson's novel.

Leap Year (2010 Anand Tucker)

Essentially a poor man's IKWIG, determined American Amy Adams (terrific as usual) travels to Ireland to propose to unsuitable boyfriend Adam Scott, finds Matthew Goode sporting unlikely Irish accent, meets several Irish types (though not those from 'Round Ireland with a Fridge', unfortunately).

Pleasant fun written by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont.

Vertigo (1958 AH)

Mysterious, silky, corrosive, tragic, double-sided mirror of a film.

Hot Fuzz (2007 Edgar Wright)

Edited at breakneck speed, fizzy, flamboyant film travels at a thousand miles per hour, and sports a shimmering cast.

Burnt (2015 John Wells)

Under the guidance of Marcus Wareing, film is stronger on kitchen atmosphere and reality than story. Bradley Cooper displays great French accent, Siena Miller and Daniel Brühl are good, Omar Sy has a small and thankless part. Lily James and Alicia Vikander are both in it for ten minutes.

They did indeed take over Roux at the Landau for three days - see here.

The Lady in the Van (2015 Nicholas Hytner)

Written by Alan Bennett, thus somewhat verbal, as it would be. Maggie Smith is terrific as van lady, Alex Jennings (who we last saw as Prince Charles in The Queen) also in double (you forget to think how well this is done). With Roger Allam, Jim Broadbent, Frances de la Tour, Claire Foy (social worker).

Shot by Andrew Dunn and edited by Tariq Anwar.

Yeah?

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004 Beeban Kidron)

Last review is fine; amazingly Q still didn't remember the trick sub-plot which makes the film so delightful...

As to the pop songs, I think it's lazy...

You kind of want to kick Grant up the arse into something fabulous...

Lots of dots...

And lots of writers - Helen Fielding, Andrew Davies, Adam Brooks and (less noticeably than before) Richard Curtis. Another funny (well written) fight scene. Shirley Henderson is, I've decided, a difficult person to cast right.

Shot by Adrian Biddle and edited by Greg Hayden.

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013 Joel & Ethan Coen)

It's 1961, Greenwich Village, and this monocular study of Llewyn Davis (played by Oscar Isaac) shows a singer who's having a hard time (without a winter coat) trying to make it as a folk singer, just as Bob Dylan (and that's presumably him at the end) is about to make it big. There's a great cat, possibly two -- my conjecture is that the second one is Holly Golightly's.... The first is called 'Odysseus', which is funny...

With six weeks to prep five rescue cats — two were fired prior to shooting for “temperament” issues — [Dawn] Barkan played to the strengths of the remaining trio. Tigger, a female, was the “holding” cat, the one Llewyn Davis carries around everywhere. Jerry was the “action” cat because he proved adept at “patterning” — a series of behaviors rewarded with a treat, like chicken. And Daryl was “the laid-back dude who could be put in hairier situations,” says Barkan. So that’s Jerry in the more sedate subway scenes, and Daryl whenever the subway stations and cars are overcrowded or too thunderous. At one point, Barkan says, even the usually chill Daryl got spooked by the noise and jostling, and clipped Isaac in the face. “For weeks, I said it wasn’t a good idea to shoot in a live subway station,” she says. “An actor getting scratched, I don’t ever want that to happen.”

http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/ulysses-cat-inside-llewyn-davis-trainer.html

Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, F Murray Abraham, Ethan Phillips (cat owner), Max Casella (bar owner), Adam Driver (from Girls) and Garett Hedlund (taciturn driver) are in support. Typically wry material (he realises he has a two year old child; signs away royalties on amusing hit song about Kennedy) shot in a very Melvilleish palette by Bruno Delbonnel (Deakins was doing Skyfall).

Some reviewer has just done my head in by saying the scene where the guy beats him up in the alley isn't the same scene twice, but a different one.............

Bridget Jones' Diary (2001 Sharon Maguire)

Has it been that long? Yes it has.

It's fun trying to spot the Richard Curtis lines (like 'There isn't enough blue food').

You can't criticise Firth, Grant (possibly as good as each other, though Firth is by far the harder working, shows the most range - though not without his own share of turkeys) or Zellweger, who oft looks like just any girl - thus to the film's credit.

In a recent survey, nine out of ten people couldn't remember the ending.

Sugarland Express (1974 Steven Spielberg)

The young Steven read the story in the newspaper: he, Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins wrote it for the screen. Aided by maestro cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond, Steven uses the camera wonderfully, staging scenes beautifully and moving the camera with precision to help tell the story cinematically; marvellous use of the widescreen frame as well. Evident also is a clear control for big scenes which no doubt helped him to get Jaws; as well as handling lots of great moving footage in and around the cars, which in the final pursuit all seem like wild animals after their last-legs quarry.

Goldie Hawn, William Atherton, Michael Sacks and Ben Johnson are the quartet who gradually bond despite roles on opposite sides of the law - Atherton I think knows he is doomed early on.

Vilmos pulls off some amazing stuff such as a 180° pan from the back seat of a car, some great twilight, beautiful compositions like this one:

Ultimately though young Steven was right - the audience didn't like the tragic ending and would have preferred the couple to survive. I think his earlier films were better.

An early collaboration with John Williams, and 'mother cutter' Verna Fields is credited with Edward Abroms.

Plenty of subtlety, cinema and humour, viz. sniper using bullets as earplugs, run over teddy bear.

Waitress (2007 Adrienne Shelly & scr)

Not your average chick flick or romcom at all. I was beginning to think that all the men - the crass horn-honking, controlling husband Jeremy Sisto is just one - are horrible, then realised the girls aren't exactly painted in the best light either: our protagonist Keri Russell (rather good) is having an affair with a (seemingly) happily married man, colleagues Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelly herself are respectively also having affair and settling for second best through lack of self-worth. So it's quite a muddy puddle, and the ending - whilst feel-good in a way - also clearly says 'You don't need a man to have a happy outcome'.

So all in all it's quite a subtle piece underneath all the exotic pies with unusual names, with the tragic added resonance that Shelly was murdered after the film was completed (and thus it's dedicated to her).

Andy Griffith (A Face in the Crowd; not quite his last film) and Nathan Fillion are in support. Shot colourfully by Matthew Irving.

Shelly's final script was made into the not brilliantly reviewed Meg Ryan film Serious Moonlight two years later by Cheryl Hines.

One Child (2014 John Alexander)

Had to mention this, one of the bleakest things I've seen on TV in a while (OK it's a repeat). Full marks for presenting salutary lesson for those planning to jolly it around in China, especially in face of our Government's kowtowing to that country. Very well acted especially by the family involved, Katie Leung, Mardy Ma and Sebastian So, written by Guy Hibbert. (That Ma was a theme park industry exec living in LA, without any professional experience, is I think quite funny.)

My knowledgeable Q tells me it was filmed in Hong Kong but still I bet they didn't show the authorities the (real) script when getting permission.

Suffragette (2015 Sarah Gavron)

A familiar story perhaps, but brought to a new audience with thriller-like efficiency by Abi Morgan and editor Barney Pilling (Oscar nominee Grand Budapest Hotel, plus A Long Way Down, Quartet, One Day, Never Let Me Go, An Education and lots of well-loved TV).

Gavron's only feature before this was Brick Lane (2007). She directs a gradually hardening Carey Mulligan, Ben Whishaw, Ann-Marie Duff, Helena Bonham Carter, Romola Garai, Brendan Gleeson, Samuel West, Natalie Press and Meryl Streep.

It's quite eye-opening how much of it is now illegal - unequal pay, force feeding, police assault on women, unfair working conditions - and thus how far we've gone in a relatively short space of time; and that the full vote for women was not until 1928, 1971 in Switzerland (bizarrely) and not at all in Saudi Arabia.

Music by the reliable Alexandre Desplat and shot by A Single Man Eduard Grau in a sombre, diffused style (told you it was back in fashion).

Dead Reckoning (1946, rel 1947 John Cromwell)

We had to go through a story by Gerald Adams and Sidney Biddell (who's also the producer), have it adapted by Allen Rikkin and then screenwritten by Oliver H.P. Garrett and Steve Fisher to get to tale of ex-para (Bogart) who's trying to clear the name of his dead mate amidst the usual trappings of femme fatale Lizabeth Scott (who kept making me think of young Drew Barrymore), articulate baddie Morris Carnovsky, cop Charles Kane and tough Marvin Miller (to me an unfamiliar cast - we are at Columbia). Not sure about Cromwell's feel for material, film isn't as noiry as some, but features satisfying jasmine-scented double-crosses.

Music by Marlin Skiles, shot by Leo Tover.

The Intern (2015 Nancy Meyers & scr)

Straightforward film extols virtues of being an older worker and wisdom; and of being a working mother. I particularly liked the scene in which the young entrepreneur Anne Hathaway berates society for reverting to calling men 'boys' whilst girls have become 'ladies'; stuff about the chivalry of handkerchieves. Ideas that are totally valid.

de Niro isn't exactly pushed as septuagenarian intern. Good support from Rene Russo, Anders Holm (cheating husband), JoJo Kushner (daughter), Andrew Rannells (her co-director, who I guess we know from Girls), Adam DeVine, Zack Pearlman (the young intern whose wardrobe gradually changes), Christina Scherer (the PA), Jason Orley (tech guy).

It's a bit soft. There are the usual array of nice NY homes and kitchens! Shot by Stephen Goldblatt.