Wild (2014 Jean-Marc Vallée)

I don't know what I was thinking last time when I said it made me think of 'The Little Prince'. I was getting more Nic Roeg this time. Nick Hornby's screenplay is brilliantly structured. We also feel in danger almost all the time. Reese is great and most un-Reese-like.

Vallée first worked here with Reese Witherspoon (she produced also) and Laura Dern (they were also both in Big Little Lies).

Now can't stop hearing that Simon & Garfunkel track....

Mr Belvedere Goes to College (1949 Elliott Nugent)

In a slightly unlikely premise, the Genius has won a book prize which he can't claim as he's never graduated from college - and he needs the money as he's been sued by various Hummingbird Hill characters. Meanwhile student Shirley Temple is trying to hide the fact she has a little boy from boyfriend Tom Drake. He sets about sorting out the unruly Tri Gam Co-eds, and has his nicest relationship so far with a Norweigan cook (Lotte Stein, uncredited - from Sirk's All I Desire). With Alan Young and Alvin Greenman (trivia note: appeared in both versions of Miracle on 34th Street) as roommates and Jessie Royce Landis.

In this thinly disguised joke, Belvedere seems to be suggesting the young lady is falsifying her appearance ... but with fake eyelashes.

Scripted this time by Richard Sale and Mary Loos. It's good fun, and features pyjama clad Belvedere escaping from police and being arrested!

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969 George Roy Hill)

Interesting how much it has in common with The Wild Bunch made the same year - same time period, same feeling the wild west is all over, same ending - though we both loved the freeze frame finale (Q says perfectly that it leaves the two characters with their dignity). (The Time Out suggestion it copies Peckinpah's film is ridiculous as it came out only three months after.) It's also very much of its time, a revisionist western, using such cinematic tricks as sepia sequences, a montage created entirely using photos and the Bolivia scenes cut to one of those Bacharach sixties vocal pieces (not lyrics, just singing - there's one in the President's Analyst, I swear). And, with the wise-cracking relationship between Newman and Redford, it's surely the blueprint for Lethal Weapon and every other buddy action flick.

The photography is sensational and we laughed at how Conrad was trying to damp down those blue skies he never got on with (he operated his own camera - 'I get to see the movie first'). There's a moment in the 'Raindrops' sequence with the camera tracking though some slats, catching the couple and the sun, and it's just incredible. There's also some very canny use of the widescreen.  It's a very well edited film, too, and seeing as neither of the guys responsible (John Howard and Richard Meyer) were noted for much else of note we wondered if some of that was down to Hill, (they did win a BAFTA, as did film and screenplay - William Goldman - who has based his screenplay on true material).

That long chase sequence makes it unusual, too - I agree with Newman, who argued passionately with Hill that the scene with the marshal discussing enlisting was in the wrong place - he was right, it should have been after the chase.

With Katharine Ross, Strother Martin, George Furth (the unfortunate Woodcock), Kenneth Mars and - low billed - Sam Elliott as a card-player.

Goldman's book reveals how following a preview, Hill took out some of the jokes. It was too funny, and he figured the ending would be imbalanced. It would be kinda interesting to see this version, though...

Sitting Pretty (1948 Walter Lang)

A year before, Gwen Davenport wrote a novel called 'Belvedere' about a snooty British butler who takes a job with a dysfunctional family to get material for a book. Someone at Fox had the bright idea of getting Clifton Webb to act that role in F. Hugh Herbert's adaptation, making him at the same time a 'genius'.

Webb was born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck and this character is supposedly very like his real persona. Gay, a close friend of Noel Coward, he never recovered after the death of his beloved mother.

With Maureen O'Hara, Robert Young, Richard Haydn, Louise Allbritton, Randy Stuart, Ed Begley. Shot by Norbert Brodine and composed by Alfred Newman.

Has a particularly satisfying ending.

The TV version Mr Belvedere ran from 1985 - 1990 and starred Christopher Hewett as the English butler.

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

Sudden cuts. Luminous photography. Interruptions. Local flavour. Animals. Weather.

Like me, I suspect, she doesn't want to join the Céilidh. 'Don't worry - they're your pipers.'

The Hundred Foot Journey (2014 Lasse Hallström)

The hard-working, food-appreciating Steven Knight (Burnt, Peaky Blinders, Locke, Dirty Pretty Things) adapted Richard Morais' 2010 novel which Spielberg and Winfrey produced for Dreamworks. Manish Dayal (a 'cook'; Viceroy's House) comes to France with family, falls for Charlotte Le Bon (no relation). Meanwhile relationship between his father Om Puri and Michelin-starred rival Helen Mirren warms up.

This is beautifully illustrated by Linus Sandgren using his magic hour touches which would help win him an Oscar for La La Land. Scene where Manish reacts to colleague's home-cooked meal shows he can act.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

The Shining (1980 Stanley Kubrick)

I find it impossible now not to watch this and find it deeply amusing - it's the combination  of the music and the very deadpan style (of screenplay and acting and editing). And talking of that music - that's why it's so different to any other horror film, the existing and quite mad / peculiar scores from Bartok, Penderecki, Ligeti et al.

It reminded me of the first time I saw it (I think the cinema at Cemetery Junction), where some silly woman kept screaming all the way though it. But I was disappointed then - and still am - that the nice Scatman Crothers character comes all the way from Florida to help them, and is promptly despatched with an axe.

Barry Nelson is the hotel manager (the interview scene is really strange in that there's one cutaway to the other guy there but otherwise you wouldn't know he was there) and Joe Turkel the barman and Philip Stone the waiter.

You feel for Nicholson and Duvall, who both said it was the hardest film they'd ever worked on. 'Shelley seems much more tolerant of the ordeal [filming in 'rain' for Time Bandits] than any actress has a right to be. but, as she says in the car on the way home, it's better than having to cry every day for seven months with Kubrick! Nicholson had to take a six-month break after the movie was finished to get himself straight again.' Michael Palin 'Halfway to Hollywood' (2009).

Elstree Studios, Borehamwood

Production design: Roy Walker. Art direction: Les Tomkins

Joe Turkel

The somehow haunting outro music is Al Bowlly 'Midnight, the Stars and You'.

Yes, there is something distinctive about the lenses being used - primarily 18mm - which Shelley Duvall said made her and Jack look distorted - 'It's great for shooting furniture!'

P.S. July 2022. Amused on death of Jean-Louis Trintignant to learn that Kubrick had talked him out of retirement to voice the Jack Nicholson part for French audiences. His "Here's Johnny!" - "Coucou, cheri!" - is as famous in France as the original version is to us.

The Judge (2014 David Dobkin)

Good. Written by Nick Schenk (who wrote Gran Torino - no clue as to whether he's a descendant of MGM producer Nick Schenk) and Bill Dubuque, from a story by Schenk and Dobkin.

Why is Robert Duvall (great) so horrible to his middle son Robert Downey Jr (fantastic)? (Actually the only false note is when Duvall says goodbye to his other sons in the courtroom and says nothing to Downey. Which just seemed wrong.)

Everyone's good, including Vera Farmiga and Leighton Meester (her daughter), Vincent D'Onofrio and Jeremy Strong (brothers), Billy Bob Thornton, Emma Tremblay (Downey's daughter), David Krumholtz and Denis O'Hare.

Jamusz Kaminski's photography is splendid and contrasty; Thomas Newman's score recognisable; Mark Livolsi's editing superior.

Leap Year (2010 Anand Tucker)

Leap Year proves that there is an endless demand for romcoms which end exactly as the audience predicts. Frankly, we could have written a better screenplay than Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont's lame effort, which could easily have been ripped off from IKWIG (castle and folklore included).

Amy Adams is terrific, Matthew Goode OK. This particular representation of the Irish is frankly rubbish.

Shot by Newton Thomas Sigel (Drive, Leatherheads, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) and edited by Nick Moore (Burnt, She's Funny That Way, Love Actually, About a Boy, Notting Hill).

A Child in Time (2017 Julian Farino)

Stephen Butchard (Good Cop, Five Daughters) adapted Ian McEwan's 1987 novel. Benedict Cumberbatch and Kelly Macdonald are good as the couple who have lost their child, as is Stephen Campbell Moore as his old friend (the series of events leading to his suicide are a bit weak to me) and Saskia Reeves as his wife. It's consistently intriguing, and well put together.

The music is by Adrian Johnston and it was shot by David Odd.

Features a great speech delivered by Benedict in favour of child literacy.

The Spectacular Now (2013 James Ponsoldt)

This beautiful oner lasts three and a half minutes:

The 'Gleaming Planet' manga comic was invented for the film by Dream Sequence. I mention this because Neustadter and Weber's Fault in our Stars also features comic book references and their upcoming project is an X-Men movie (just in case we needed another).

This is a deep and tangy confection with good acting by Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller (Whiplash) as the leads, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brie Larson, Bob Odenkirk, Andre Royo.

The Steel Trap (1952 Andrew L Stone & scr)

Can Joseph Cotten get away to Brazil with $1 million in his suitcase and what will his wife Teresa Wright say about it? Stone manages to keep up the suspense all the way through though annoys Q because they wasted the weekend and a lot of money. There's a little bit of New Orleans locations en route and Dimitri Tiomkin stirs it all up with exciting music. Shot by Ernest Laszlo.

Middle of the Night (1959 Delbert Mann)

Kim Novak is great in nervy, neurotic role (we don't really know why she is that way) against Fredric March as a lovesick older man. All acting good: Glenda Farrell (Kim's mother), Albert Dekker (aging woman-chaser), Martin Balsam, Lee Grant, Edith Meiser (Fred's daughter).

But. Film is very talky, Paddy Chayefsky's material clearly has its source as a play (TV, then Broadway), it's not cinematic, and all the characters are in some way irritating (Q says it's like eating glass). And it's too long. And why do we care about these people? Contrary to our predictions, it does at least have a happy ending - but for how long? That couple are not going to last.

Trivia footnote: there is a scene in a bathroom where we can clearly see a toilet - so much for the claim that Psycho was the first mainstream film to do so.

The Fault in our Stars (2014 Josh Boone)

The trickily spelled Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber wrote this from John Green's 2012 book (the title is from 'Julius Caesar') and it kicks off by warning the viewer it isn't one of those Hollywood films which ends on an apology and a Peter Gabriel song - 'This is the truth'. I wonder if that's really true though because it sort of does go to a very well written but ultimately weepy and uplifting ending. They broke into writing with (500) Days of Summer and followed that with another adaptation - The Spectacular Now - which also features the talented Shailene Woodley. The scene in the restaurant in Amsterdam is straight out of a classic comedy. Anyway, I'm not complaining - I like their writing. A lot.

Ansel Elgort (oh - he's the lead in Baby Driver, which we were only talking about today!) is a confident lead opposite Shailene, with Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe, Lotte Verbeek and Nat Wolff.

Boone's first film was the Greg Kinnear / Lily Collins film Stuck in Love. The writers have completed Our Souls at Night (2017), an X-Men film and Where'd You Go Bernadette.

I like this, from Go Into the Story:

Scott N: "The false assumption I was under — that I think a lot of aspiring writers are under — is that most scripts in Hollywood are extremely good. Nothing like a few years reading unsolicited material to debunk that idea. But beyond that, even some of the scripts I was receiving from agents and managers, they weren’t exactly tremendous either. And they were getting bought and some of them were even getting made (12 years later, I still don’t entirely understand the getting made part of the equation but that’s a whole other story). Anyway, when the bar was set at Sorkin level, I was certainly not going to even attempt to write a screenplay. It was only when I realized there’s only one Sorkin, there’s only one Tarantino, there’s only one Cameron Crowe — it freed me up psychologically to give it a shot."

Léon / Léon The Professional (1994 Luc Besson & scr)

Besson imagines what would happen if Alain Delon from Le Samourai had to look after a teenage girl, and spawns a great couple of characters, charismatically played by Jean Reno and Natalie Portman (eleven when cast, her debut. Of working with Reno, all she says in interview is 'He was so kind').

The story emerged from a section of La Femme Nikita two years before in which Reno has a similar role. Leon was written in a month. (I was going to ask what happened to Reno since, but he's been steadily working away..)

Gary Oldman is perhaps a shade OTT as the villain but Danny Aiello is superbly oily as 'the banker' (one wonders if she will ever get her money).

Did Besson ever approach grown-up Portman to do a sequel (where she has herself become a 'cleaner')? In a later interview she claims she would do 'anything' he asked her to be in.

Feels a bit Leone. Music of course by Eric Serra, photography by Thierry Arbogast, edited by Sylvie Landra. Natalie Portman is incredible. It's emotional, and good. Though it's kind of funny the police are never summoned with all this shooting going on.

Little Voice (1998 Mark Herman & scr)

'The Rise and Fall of Little Voice' by Jim Cartwright was first performed in the West End in 1992, directed by Sam Mendes, with Jane Horrocks and Alison Steadman. Horrocks had had several years then to perfect her performance, in which she reproduces Monroe, Dietrich, Bassey and Garland perfectly. Brenda Blethyn good too as essentially unlikeable mother, Michael Caine brilliant as usual as more sympathetic (but essentially unlikeable) promoter. Thankfully there's a sensitive bird fancier (Ewan McGregor), otherwise the film would be a hard watch, and that's perhaps why we hadn't revisited it for so many years, despite good production.

Scarborough looks much nicer than it sounds.

Herman wrote and directed the Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008) - another broad comedy - and stuff like Brassed Off and the messy Hope Springs (Firth, Graham, Driver, 2003).

With Jim Broadbent, Philip Jackson, Annette Badland, Alex Norton (good as talent scout).

Didn't recognise names of Andy Collins (camera), Michael Ellis (Cross of Iron a notable early editing job), John Altman (music).

My Favorite Wife (1940 Garson Kanin)

Leo McCarey is involved as producer and co-author of the original story with Bella and Sam Spewak, who scripted it. Film has its comic moments but is dogged too often by the 'just tell them' contrivance - Grant won't tell Gail Patrick he's already married to Irene Dunne, she doesn't want to disclose she's been on an island with Randolph Scott for seven years, Dunne doesn't want to tell the kids she's their mother - then they don't want to tell her they know...

Grant and Dunne are good. With Ann Shoemaker, Donald MacBride (hotel receptionist) and Granville Bates (judge).  Rudolph Maté is on camera. Roy Webb provides the music and Robert Wise edits. Therefore, it's from RKO.

Strike (2017 JK Rowling)

Felt I should cover this good series based on JK's Strike novels, published under the name of Robert Galbraith, adapted by Ben Richards ('The Cuckoo's Calling') and Tom Edge ('The Silkworm'). Great chemistry between Tom Burke (War and Peace, The Hour) and Holliday Grainger, good use of London locations.

Rear Window (1954 AH)

And why not?

I like the final sting of the newly-weds - "Why didn't you tell me you lost your job two months ago?" The honeymoon's over...

L'Homme De Rio / That Man From Rio (1964 Philippe de Broca & co-scr)

It was such a pleasure to see this restored and on Blu-Ray instead of that terribly washed out print that's been doing the rounds.

It's incredibly lively from the moment Françoise Dorléac is kidnapped and Jean-Paul Belmondo springs into action (he's rarely doing anything else). They both have great vivacity and his Harold Lloyd-like stunts are jaw dropping (high rise clambering with no visible signs of safety). In fact the film often invokes the silent era, with sixties fixings. My last review was that it was like North By Northwest through nouvelle vague eyes, with definite Tintin and early Bond moments, with even a Popeye reference - this time I'm inclined to suggest it's 80% Tintin. Françoise Javet's editing though is very much of its time and in what I dubbed a 'Hergé edit' JP goes from swimming to suddenly accompanying a girl on water-skies.

The 'Hergé edit' in action: Cigars of the Pharoah

Great badinage between the couple ("I suppose you want a pink car with green stars" - a 1929 Chrysler 75, I am reliably informed), film perhaps drags a bit towards the end, involving Adolfo Celi and Jean Servais (though even here there is some astonishing scenes shot in a new bit of Rio or Brasilia or wherever they are), but the best bits involve whisky-drinking charming kid Ubiracy de Oliveira (only in one other film) - there's a lovely clip of him meeting JP in 2015 here.

Music Georges Delerue, photography Edmond Séchan.

The story / screenplay by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Arian Mnouchkine, Daniel Boulanger and de Broca was Oscar-nominated

Casanova Brown (1944 Sam Wood)

Quite an odd film, especially when Gary Cooper enters maternity hospital, then steals a baby. Yes. It was written by Nunnally Johnson from Floyd Dell's play. Teresa Wright isn't in it enough. With Frank Morgan (as the most enjoyable character, a sort of family-hating fraudster), Patricia Collinge, Anita Louise, Mary Treen, Emory Parnell, Halliwell Hobbes.

Shot by John Seitz. An Independent picture. Frankly, without the leads it would be a dud.

To Catch A Thief (1955 Alfred Hitchcock)

Begins as a model of silent story-telling, and concludes with the greenest nights on film. In fact those roof sets and the green on Blu-Ray makes it quite trippy.

Grant is at his most lithe and Bond-y, but you have to relish all the performances, especially that of Jessie Royce Landis. With Grace Kelly, John Williams (who I'd watch in anything), Charles Vanel. Brigitte Auber.

Halloween (1978 John Carpenter & co-scr)

Just picking up on my last review, if the budget was only $300k, and half went on the Panaglide cameras, that means the production budget for this very professional looking film was only $150k - I think credit must go principally to cameraman Dean Cundey, who makes it look great, and canny producer (and co-writer) Debra Hill, who died before her time in 2005 (obit). This puts it in sync with Psycho, which was also made on a very low budget, independently, and went on to become a massive grosser.

Debra Hill with Donald Pleasance

The Asphalt Jungle (1950 John Huston)

John also wrote this cracking tale with Ben Maddow, from W.R. Burnett's novel, and it's directed in characteristic style (low camera, interesting compositions), lovingly caught by Hal Rosson again. I don't know why I never think as this as a film noir but it clearly is (the heist section is actually over quite quickly). Of the cast this time I have to focus on Jean Hagen, who gives a memorably touching performance (everyone else is great).

Louis Calhern and Brad Dexter

The Professor is finally undone by his penchant for young girls

Penthouse (1933 W.S. Van Dyke)

Zippy concoction is sprinkled with good bits of everything, like sea salt, nuts and chocolate, competently written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett of The Thin Man fame, from a story by Arthur Somers Roche. Warner Baxter is defender of such low types as (basically nice) gangster Nat Pendleton, after half an hour gets involved with witness Myrna Loy in refreshingly direct pre-code style (she is surprised he doesn't sleep with her). Good comedy moments from Charles Butterworth. With Mae Clarke, Phillips Holmes.

Shot by Harold Rosson and Lucien Andriot for MGM.

Horrible dresses you got at MGM in 1933

This one isn't much better

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940 Alexander Hall)

Loretta Young is extremely irritating in the beginning of this comedy, so it's a good job she mellows out, otherwise we both would have punched the TV. Ray Milland good as usual. He was Welsh, did you know? Came to Hollywood (permanently in 1934) with Paramount - thus must have been loaned out for this (Columbia) picture. He was married to Muriel (Mal) Frances Weber from 1932 until his death in 1986 and won his Oscar (and simultaneously Cannes Best Actor) for The Lost Weekend.

With Edmund Gwenn, Gail Patrick, Reginald Denny, Charles Halton.

Written by George Seaton and Ken Englund from a story by Aleen Leslie. "Spinsters Aren't Spinach".

Nocturnal Animals (2016 Tom Ford & scr)

Is this a revenge story (we notice Amy Adams looks carefully at an 'art' exhibit which is simply that word)? She has dumped Jake Gyllenhaal (doing exactly what her mother, an unrecognisable Laura Linney, says she will do), for another man, and aborted his child, so he writes a disturbing story about a man who loses his wife and child and then dies, and dedicates it to her, then when they arrange to meet, doesn't turn up. Source is Austin Mitchell's 1993 novel 'Tony and Susan'.

Ford: 'I loved the book, I couldn't put it down. When you can't get something out of your mind, option it!' He says he understands Amy's world of privilege but grew up in Mexico and Texas and thus also understood the expectations of being a strong macho man and the thought that you might not make anything of yourself. The writing (which considerably goes beyond the inner monologue of the book) is to an extent autobiographical. It's about art communicating, and people who are fractured on the inside, and about waste.

The acting is great: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Shannon, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber (The Falling), Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Michael Sheen, Andrea Riseborough (totally unrecognisable!) and Robert Aramayo.

Very stylishly made - Seamus McGarvey on camera, Joan Sobel editing, Abel Korzeniowski scoring - and love the smooth way in which the stories bump into each other. Ford says he agrees with critics that he takes time over how things look, but only in the same way as Kubrick or Sirk or de Palma or Hitchcock.

Lord Love a Duck (1965 George Axelrod & co-scr)

Lord Love a Duck is a wildly praised satire of sixties US culture, but it's an exhausting and difficult first hour in which everyone seems to be nearly hysterical - certainly scenes with Tuesday Weld and her father Max Showalter, and principal Harvey Korman. Axelrod wrote it with Larry Johnson, from Al Hine's 1961 novel. Even Neal Hefti's music is atypically poppy.

Axelrod also directed his own screenplay The Secret Life of an American Wife (1968) and wrote:

How To Murder Your Wife (1965)
Paris When It Sizzles (1964)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
The play of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1957)
Bus Stop (1956)
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Phffft (1954)

Good title scene (Murray Naidich) promises a Richard Lester type treatment which it doesn't deliver. Photographed by Daniel L Fapp.

Rest of cast: Roddy McDowall (way too old), Ruth Gordon, Martin West, Lola Albright (mother).

A mollymawk is an albatross.... Is the film? One or two funny moments overwhelmed by .. something.