The Heat (2013 Paul Feig)

The crude female humour of Bridesmaids is channelled into cop story - it belongs better there - this film isn't as repellent, perhaps because this time Katie Dippold wrote it, a writer / editor for Parks and Recreation. Having said that, it's a formula plot in which the uptight cop Sandra Bullock is humanised by Melissa McCarthy, but quite fun in the dumb way of so many American comedies.

Marlon Wayans, Michael Rappaport, Demian Bichir are in it, Robert Yeoman shot it in Panavision.

Made for Each Other (1939 John Cromwell)

What happened to the Selznick collection? So many of his productions seem only to exist in Ghost-of-VHS form, with underwater sound. Like this one. Which is a shame, because you never want to experience Stewart and Lombard in that way - you can barely see her cute scar. However, one thing it isn't, and that's a comedy (which is what we were thinking it was). Jo Swerling's screenplay (suggested by a Rose Franken story) certainly sounds female, charts progress of young couple's marriage with unusual seriousness. Mother is bitchy, maids are dreadful (until lovely Louis Beavers comes along, from Imitation of Life), boss is unsympathetic and deaf (Charles Coburn), work colleague Eddie Quillan an asshole.

The film has a weird ending too, straight out of Saint-Exupery, featuring brave pilot (who may be played by Harry Depp - not many of the cast were credited - including Harry Davenport as the doctor).

Gregg Toland shot it, William Cameron Menzies designed it.

Margot at the Wedding (2007 Noah Baumbach & scr)

There are some amusing moments, but this is a little more acerbic than Noah's other films. Or is it just me? Dysfunctional families feature again - Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh are pretty fucked up, but so are the neighbours (that kid!)

With Zane Pais (the kid), Jack Black, Ciaran Hinds, John Turturro.

Shot mournfully by Harris Savides.

Jackie (2016 Pablo Larrain)

Jackie comes laden with five star reviews - but are they all for Natalie Portman's performance? We found the film dull, and not a little annoying - the direct to camera interview scenes, for example, or the way some old footage is cut in here and there - it's just distracting.

Billy Crudup is said journalist - his part is a little edgy - again, I'm not sure this is credible. Peter Sarsgaard is Bobby, John Hurt has the best scenes as a wise priest. Plus Richard E Grant and Greta Gerwig.

It's a sombre occasion - but then if you take this as your story it would be. I did quite like the White House tour documentary cut against the rest.

And look what fun people like Stephane Fontaine are having with digital - you can shoot any aspect ratio you like - this one's in the old 1.66:1 (running on from previous posts, perhaps to achieve further intimacy).

Sleep, My Love (1947 Douglas Sirk)

Enigmatic beginning - Colbert wakes up on a train, remembering only she went to sleep in her bed the night before... and has her husband's gun. It turns our Don Ameche has been drugging and then sleep hypnotising her - you know, sleep hypnotising. He quite amusingly drugs himself at one point. It's all a plot to replace Mrs Ameche with Hazel Brooks, who slinks around in negligees, aided by a rather creepy photographer played with gusto by George Coulouris. Keye Luke adds colour as Robert Cummings 'brother' and Raymond Burr is the thick detective. A large gothic mansion and the photographer's studios also add an element of interest - designed by William Ferrari. Joseph Valentine is on camera.

Queenie Smith and Hazel Brooks

A Mary Pickford independent production.

Hotel Chevalier / The Darjeeling Limited (2007 Wes Anderson)

Last seen in 2014, Anderson's feature is a riot of colour - Mark Friedberg is the production designer -and I didn't realise the music is from the films of Satyajit Ray and Merchant-Ivory. It's got depth, artistry and soul wrapped up in a warm and slightly surreal humour.

Filmed in Panavision, featuring an abundance of lateral tracking shots (some of which turn into complicated pans) and with that flat-on look. Inspired casting of deadpan styles - Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson (who has bravely agreed to play the film in bandages) and Adrien Brody. With Anjelica Huston and Bill Murray, Irrfan Khan (the father), Amara Karan, Wallace Wollodarsky, Waris Ahluwalia. Made with customary style and wit with beautiful choreography of people popping in and out of shot. And just when you think there's none of the director's trademark 'toys' there is a fake man-eating tiger.

We loved this guy (Kumar Pallana) sitting at their table who is never acknowledged

And featuring the equally tasty Natalie Portman and the Hotel Raphael in the opening short film.

Written by Francis's son Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman (they are cousins) and Wes. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Last Orders (2001 Fred Schepisi & scr)

Adapted from Graham Swift's 1996 novel, with a minor cast of Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay and Helen Mirren. And as flashbacks, Kelly Reilly and JJ Feilds.

Like the last time, we still didn't get why the Hemmings character had so much animosity for Winstone's. Still this is a good ensemble piece, nicely filled in with flashbacks. Good hair and makeup supervised by Nora Webb.

I imagine the car scenes were shot in a studio (by Brian Tufano)

The Riddle of the Sands (1978 Tony Maylan & co-scr)

Michael Powell had recommended Erskine Childers' 1903 spy adventure novel to Chris Challis, and tried to get financing for it a couple of times - ultimately it was made by son Drummond Challis' production company.

I liked the rather brusque attitude of Michael York towards Simon MacCorkindale, and the locales for the Frisian islands. And Howard Blake's music. Noted York quickly trading three piece suit for much trendier black sweater and wellies. Jenny Agutter's behaviour is throughout rather suspicious and Rod was offended she didn't take her clothes off. Alan Badel is the English German.

I rather enjoyed it, though it's funny we are currently working our way through Ripping Yarns, a series which subverts exactly this kind of daring-do old school adventure in which 'it's not marmalade, but it's not bad' sort of thing happens.

You can see why it was shot widescreen (all our films today were), though I've come to the conclusion that the narrower the frame, the more intimate the shot.

Half of Jaws (1975 Steven Spielberg)

The front half, naturally.

ITV were showing it cropped, so we had to start our own copy.

It's also the best half.

That Uncertain Feeling (1941 Ernst Lubitsch)

Keeks!

It's all about the doors.

American Honey (2016 Andrea Arnold & scr)

Andrea Arnold takes on America (and makes a pertinent study of it). She strikes gold again with an unknown lead who is 100% of this long but transfixing film. The director spent a lot of time hanging out with the real kids who sold magazines and partied - the most interesting music collection reflects their own tastes. This is Sasha Lane, last minute casting, who's in every scene:

Andrea and Robbie Ryan film with an intense, hand held camera in 4x3 for intimate concentration:

Intimate is a great descriptor for Andrea - she and Robbie (who's like the British Chivo) are always showing a foot, a tattoo, a bird or insect.

Shia Labeouf and Riley Keough are the non-unprofessionals, the latter (Elvis's grandaughter!) makes an impression as their tough boss.

Often you think it's going to go somewhere it doesn't. Won Jury Prize at Cannes.

Lion (2016 Garth Davis)

Unusual to find a film where I knew not one name behind the camera. I was wondering about photographer Greig Fraser when I noticed little Sunny Pawar cross a station platform with no head, but then was struck by a rather well composed and lit shot in which a bus disappears under a bridge and on the extreme other side of the frame, Sunny emerges from the darkness, caught rather badly by this screen shot:

Things pick up for the lad when he's adopted by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham. Twenty years later the adult Dev Patel (with girlfriend Rooney Mara) reopens his own case .. felt the film rather lost focus in the second half, needed to have a word with itself... Writer Luke Davies won BAFTA! (as did Dev.) Good ad for Google... Suffers perhaps also from some uncomfortable framing:

Davis, formerly a commercials director, made episodes of Jane Campion's TV series Top of the Lake, Fraser shot Zero Dark Thirty and Foxcatcher, Alexandre de Franceschi is the editor (Campion's Bright Star, The Painted Veil).

Crisis in Six Scenes (2017 Woody Allen & scr)

Ever trying something new, the 81 year old makes his first 6 part TV series, for Amazon. Also a first I think is the sixties setting - where of course both he and co-star Elaine May came to attention.

With Miley Cyrus, shot by Eigil Bryld  (In Bruges, Becoming Jane).

A bit talky and draggy in places - could it have been better as a standard Woody length feature? For example, the TV comedy pitch and ensuing diner scene don't add a lot. Though lots of incidental pleasure in things like the adventures of the Book Club, and the ending in which Woody's character is mistaken for JD Salinger.

This Happy Breed (1944 David Lean)

Not a lot more to say. The editing is superb - it's credited to Jack Harris... We kept thinking Celia Johnson was in ways like Q's mum.

Goodbye.

The War Between Men and Women (1972 Melville Shavelson & co-scr)

Based in part on James Thurber's 'The Last Flower' -

- a story which Jack Lemmon tells to stammerer Lisa Gerritsen:

It's a great movie. Jack Lemmon and Barbara Harris are both excellent.

With Herb Edelman, Jason Robards, Moosie Drier (the boy), Lisa Eilbacher (teenage daughter), Severn Darden (doctor).

Here's Lemmon and Robards being attacked by cartoons:

We were in fact trying to make up our minds between Kiss Me Stupid and The Fortune Cookie.

Haywire (2011 Steven Soderbergh)

Haywire? Hanna meets Out of Sight. Like the latter it's bounced along by a cool seventies sounding soundtrack (David Holmes), with a kickass heroine in the shape of Gina Carano (in fact in real life a Mixed Martial Arts fighter) who we relish taking out the silly men who think they can get the better of her - specifically, and in order, Channing Tatum in New York state, Michael Fassbender in Dublin and Ewan McGregor - er - somewhere on a beach. With Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas. And we should mention Michael Angarano as the wrong place -wrong time passenger (who was the young William in Almost Famous! - and more recently in The Knick).

Classily shot and edited by Soderbergh's alter egos Peter Andrews (he's even operating his own camera!) and Mary Ann Bernard, written by Lem Dobbs (The Limey) and with special help from various arms trainers and fight choreographers. I liked the Barcelona un-kidnapping scene, with the sound barely audible under the score.

Cactus Flower (1969 Gene Saks)

Why on earth had we not watched this since 2004? Its origin is a play by Abe Burrows, itself based on another play 'Fleur de Cactus' by Barillet and Gredy (1964), adapted by Izzy Diamond - and full it is of the sort of witty lines you would associate with that great man - like 'Alright, tell me what you didn't say, word for word'.

Don't we love Walter Matthau - the set of his mouth when argumentative, his quickness, his concentration. And Ingrid Bergman is as great as ever. And 'introducing' Goldie Hawn, who won the Oscar. With Jack Weston, Rick Lenz (helpful neighbour), Vito Scotti.

No problem with Charles Lang's photography but it was never as good as the black and white stuff. Quincy Jones wrote the music.

Yes, yes. Very funny 1969 dancing, too. And an incredibly dull-looking record store.

Dial M for Murder (1954 Alfred Hitchcock)

Dial H for Hitchcock - or has someone already done that one? Sadly even restoration to Blu-Ray doesn't help with horrendous process shots and badly overlit sets - nor of course with the director's seeming obsession with large lamps - all of which are I guess by-products of shooting in the horrible 3D process.

Milland is superbly slimy ('bastard!' Q kept emitting); with Robert Cummings and Anthony Dawson, Kelly not so happy in this role, I felt. But film shifts up a gear with John Williams - who enhances any film he's in.

Quite talky (Frederick Knott helped adapt his own play) but lots of interesting stuff. I like the irony of Dawson slowly being forced into committing the murder then, as Milland chats to Kelly on the phone, he paces around, checking the plan. (Lots of low camera angles appear in this scene too.) And there's some great stuff with Williams, Kelly and Milland. And the murder - I like the way the camera tracks around her before we see the murderer...

And the court scene... This is a filmed play, but it manages to transcend that through stuff like this.

Dmitri Tiomkin score, Burks on camera.

Shadowlands (1993 Richard Attenborough)

William Nicholson (with involvement from the director, I would guess) has done a good job of opening out his play so it doesn't feel theatrical. Battles of words and thoughts good, but don't overwhelm story. Anthony Hopkins is of course superb, Debra Winger fine (though getting typecast as terminal patient!), Edward Hardwicke also really good as the brother. Joseph Mazzello is the boy and James Frain the independent student.

Crusty colleagues include John Wood, Peter Howell, Julian Fellowes, Tim McMullan.

Production designer Stuart Craig and photographer Roger Pratt went on to work together on Harry Potter films. Loved the former's attic set and the latter's filming of clouds creating shadows over fields. Lesley Walker collaborates with Terry Gilliam, and also edited Mona Lisa, Cry Freedom and Shirley Valentine.

I was wondering if it was going on a bit...but no, it needs to build to that resounding emotional climax.

Won BAFTA for Best British film with Nicholson, Dickie and the two leads also nominated.

Manchester by the Sea (2016 Kenneth Lonergan)

Lonnergan wrote Analyze This and the sequel, You Can Count On Me  (Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo), contributed to Gangs of New York and a new version of Howard's End. This screenplay won an Oscar along with Best leading man.

Very well acted by all - not just Casey Affleck but also Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, C.J. Wilson and especially Lucas Hedges as the nephew.

A rather good film about the way lives can be messed up and relationships fractured - and sometimes tentatively repaired. Great moments include long flashbacks which occur as Affleck is sat in the lawyers's office, his admission to nephew - 'I just can't beat it'.

Good choice of music too, especially the classical stuff - the Albinoni - 'Adagio per Archi e Organo in Sol Minore' - makes for a great scene.

Murder, He Says (1944 George Marshall)

Silly film involving Fred MacMurray, a house full of violent hillbillies and a search for $70,000, secret passages and people who glow in the dark. Does have one of two laugh out loud moments.

He is joined by Helen Walker, Marjorie Main, Jean Heather, Porter Hall, Peter Whitney (Playing both brothers) and Barbara Pepper.

Very little music, shot by Theodor Sparkhul, for Paramount. Incredible that Fred was in Double Indemnity the same year...

Endless corridors, passages, upstairs / downstairs - haunted house by Escher?

La La Land (2016 Damien Chazelle)

Pretty amazing (frequently jaw-droppingly so) and highly cinematic.

Using a hydroscope telescopic crane is largely how Linus Sandgren keeps with the actors in their amazing single take singing and dancing scenes (the opening number actually three cleverly edited takes). With an eye for authenticity and old Hollywood style, modern cameras shoot in CinemaScope 2.55:1 ratio on celluloid, using natural as well as cunning, at times theatrical artificial light. (Chazelle was impressed by his work on American Hustle.) He quite rightly won the Oscar and the BAFTA.

Chazelle for directing, Justin Hurwitz for music, David Wasco for production design all deservedly both won Oscars; Mary Zophres for costumes, Tom Cross for editing, Chazelle for screenplay (that bitter-sweet ending) nominated.

Emma Stone won the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Oscar, and there's no argument from me. Ryan Gosling's piano playing is impressive and his double-takes funny. Did Chazelle see Everybody Says I Love You? It sort of works in the same way The Artist did - making something enormously enjoyable in a creative and old-fashioned way. It's certainly crammed full of film references.

Sabrina (1954 Billy Wilder)

Audrey Hepburn is splendid in only her second leading performance. Terrific screenplay by Wilder, Ermest Lehman and Samuel Taylor (based on his play).

As though to emphasize Bogie at his most ridiculous, Wilder reflects him three times

Unalloyed pleasure. (We both laugh at 'and all the usual what-have-yous'.)

You cannot argue with Walter Hampden's monstrous cigars, nor Bogie's plexi-glass bouncing. You cannot disregard Audrey's big, naked feet as she walks like a ballerina out of a conference room, or Hollander's score which bounces between La Vie en Rose and Bananas in one melody. If  John William's fatherliness fails to move you, or Charlie Lang's twinkling photography holds no allure, then you are tired of life, or the cinema, which is the same thing.
Signed - Jean-Luc Godard II.

August: Osage County (2013 John Wells)

Tracy Letts adapted her own play about a dysfunctional family (extremely so, it turns out) - it remains a play, however, with show-stopping turns from Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, best when hammer and tongs at each other.

With Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, Margo Martindale, Sam Shepherd, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Abigail Breslin and Misty Upham.

Splendid dark cinematography from Adriano Goldman (The Crown, Burnt), music by Gustavo Santaolalla, edited by Stephen Mirrione.

The Walk (2015 Robert Zemeckis & co-scr)

Despite the somewhat obvious presence of CGI, the Walk itself is still toe-clenchingly vertiginous, though leaves the film with nowhere to go - what happened to Philippe Petit? Joseph Gordon-Levitt sports not a bad French accent and attitude playing him. With Charlotte le Bon (no relation), Ben Kingsley, James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, Steve Valentine, Clément Sibony. And without saying anything, it's a moving tribute to the twin towers themselves.

Alan Silvestri's score starts out pleasingly jazzy; Darius Wolski shot it (in Panavision).

Taza, Son of Cochise (1954 Douglas Sirk)

OK, it is about intra-family hostility, but otherwise rubbishy Native American Indian film doesn't seem to belong in the Sirk oeuvre, featuring corny 'me not kill white eyes' type of dialogue and poor supporting actors (especially the cavalry officers).

It is shot by Metty (so at least locations look interesting, though half the film is day for night), music by Frank Skinner. Sirk: "I was delighted to get out into the the desert and among the Indians: this was my main reason for doing the picture. It was shot entirely in Utah.."

Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush. It's the only Sirk picture we didn't like.

I'd hoped to find an on-location shot of Rock reading a newspaper or doing something normal, but did come across this:

Rear Window (1954 Alfred Hitchcock)

Cornell Woolrich's short story 'It Had To Be Murder' was published in 'Dime Detective Magazine' in August 1942 under the name William Irish*.

Georgine Darcy is Miss Torso.

Brilliantly put together soundtrack - when Kelly announces her name there's a discreet car horn punctuating each word. Sound recordist Loren Ryder was Oscar nominated (Howard Beals was apparently the sound editor), as were Burks, Hayes and Hitch. Kazan won for On The Waterfront. Stewart was not nominated.

*Yes, that's what Wikipedia says. But clearly on the magazine above is stated the name Cornell Woolrich.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 Alfred Hitchcock)

Doris Day holds her own, as evidenced by long takes between her and James Stewart. John Michael Hayes wrote it, with Angus MacPhail, and it's Bernard Herrmann's only appearance on film (though ironically, he isn't conducting his own music).

We were having a fifties day.

With Brenda de Banzie, Bernard Miles, Alan Mowbray, Daniel Gélin, Reggie Nalder (assassin).

Scene in taxidermist's is hilarious.

"I think, actually, the difference would be in the first The Man Who Knew Too Much I wasn't audience-conscious, whereas in the second one, I was."

It somehow seems extremely incongruous to see Stewart and Miles in the same scene...

Written on the Wind (1956 Douglas Sirk)

A terrific opening is the end of the film - a drunken car journey to a large house and someone is shot - amidst the leaves and wind. How we arrive there is the film's story. Once again, it's the kids who are the disappointment -'split characters', as Sirk calls them, 'on their own un-merry-go-rounds'. Albert Zugsmith produced George Zuckerman's screenplay of Robert Wilder's book. It features that distinctive Russell Metty blue, and more sets by Alexander Golitzen and Robert Clatworthy.

Uniformly good cast - Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone (winning Oscar), Robert Keith.

Very smooth - he sure does love catching reflections in mirrors.