Inspector Morse - Season 1 (1987)

The Dead of Jericho d. Alastair Reid (Baby Love) scr. Anthony Minghella. Colin Dexter's fifth Morse novel (1981).
Gemma Jones, Patrick Troughton.

With Thaw and Whately are Peter Woodthorpe as Max (i.e. DeBryn) and Morse's boss James Grout (Chief Superintendent Strange...)

The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn d. Brian Parker, scr. Julian Mitchell Another Country, Arabesque. Dexter's third Morse novel (1977).

School's trade in exam papers. Lewis developing to be irrepressibly cheerful, and quite cheeky to Morse, who's very particular about his beer. He even takes a scotch at the home of a dead man, which rather raises Lewis's eyebrows.

We think we've spotted Colin Dexter twice now, who himself suffered from deafness. He's at the party at the beginning of this, and walking somewhat oddly through the cloisters in the first.

Service of All the Dead d. Peter Hammond, scr. Julian Mitchell. The fourth, 1979, Colin Dexter novel.
"I don't like this kind of church." Nor would anyone, as murders abound, though DP Clive Tickner seems to enjoy lighting it. Morse falls for wrong woman (Angela Morant) again and lies for her in court. Michael Hordern's in this one.

"Never disturb me when I'm reserving my opera tickets, Lewis. I might get Madame Butterfly instead of Berlioz." Odd comment as young Endeavour's a big fan of Puccini, and so is later Morse (there's even a Verona Madame Butterfly episode).

One Day (2011 Lone Scherfig)

David Nicholls adapted his own novel to moving effect. Jim Sturgess does have rather odd delivery; Anne Hathaway has rather an odd accent. Rafe Spall is just odd. With Patricia Clarkson, Ken Stott, Georgia King, Jodie Whittaker.

We had attempted to watch Melissa McCarthy in The Boss and it was unbelievably bad - made it through first five minutes.

Endeavour - Series 4 (2017 Russell Lewis)

Game (Ashley Pearce, Remember Me). A slipper bath is a type of bath with a higher end, roll topped. This has a whiff of Deep End.

The one with the computer vs. Russian chess player. Trewlove impresses by being an expert in chess, and knowing French, Morse by knowing Russian...

DeBryn has great line. "Love and fishing. It all comes down to the same thing at the end of the day - the one that got away." But we're not sure if he's talking about Morse, or himself.

And: "I'll be able to give you furthers and betters when I've opened him up."

The line "In 1959 nobody died, in 1960, nobody died..." is in fact a reference to Steve Coogan in The Day Today!

Billets-doux = love letter.

Canticle (Michael Lennox). The one with the Mary Whitehouse / Oz trial references. Also the drug-administering doctor to Wildwood is a reference to the Beatles' drug dealer named (in the song) 'Dr. Robert'. Also the character's name, Dr. Bakshi, may well be a reference to underground animated film-maker Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat).

Lazaretto (Börker Sigpórsson, Trapped, Baptiste). The grisly events in hospital Bed 10. Mantovani's 'Charmaine' opens the episode and is indeed also 'medication time' from Cuckoo's Nest.

Harvest (Jim Loach). Those Tarot snippets that we've seen at the end of each of these episodes come to light, dealt by Sheila Hancock. It's The Wicker Man episode.

Greed (1924 Erich von Stroheim & co-scr)

Terrific, epic, powerful, anguishing meditation on title subject. Four hour version of original nine hour lost masterpiece, using the (plenty of) stills and titles from missing sections. Would think the edited two hour version must be quite hard to follow.

Good restored version (1999) has lots of tinting and a good score by Robert Israel. Slight carp - wouldn't have used Ken Burns on photos as it's inconsistent with the surviving film.

Gibson Gowland rather good as the brutish McTeague, who loves birds, but is going to end up like his father - a drunken bum. Or would he, given different circumstances? Impossible not to feel sorry for him, in fact. Zasu Pitts good too as wife who wins the lottery and becomes incredibly miserly - won't even give her husband bus fare to find work in the rain. Will starve rather than spend her stash.

Jean Hersholt (Marcus), Dale Fuller (Maria), Cesare Gravina (junk man), Frank Hayes (nice old man), Chester Conklin (father-in-law).

Frank Norris wrote the 1899 novel, adapted by von Stroheim and June Mathis. Produced by MGM. Good, interesting filming (particularly liked shot on stairs, from beneath, with Mac in foreground and her at the top in background - very modern; also extreme close-ups). Shot by Ben Reynolds and William H Daniels. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the public hated it.

A funeral parade outside a wedding ceremony.  When he kisses her when she's unconscious. Two birds in a cage. A cat. The incredible irony of that famous ending in Death Valley. And those hand tinted gold scenes:

Lots of stuff would have gone missing - bloody fight between Mac and Marcus, constant interplay between Maria and the junk man - and his death with a bag of rusty plates. And the sweet old couple who can hear every sound in each other's rooms - two rooms that were once one (and the old man has rescued their wedding photo .... ) It's gruellingly powerful, really gets under the skin, somehow.

Endeavour - Series 3 (2016 Russell Lewis)

Rise (Sandra Goldbacher, Me Without You). reclusive Morse gets sucked into the world of the rich and playful. Bixby (name perhaps based on Bill Bixby and The Magician), David Oakes, Meghan Treadway.

Arcadia (Bryn Higgins). Introducing Trewlove Dakota Blue Richards (another Skins alumni) - Q thinks she should have her own spin-off show at Scotland Yard. Instead she's in some India set thing called Beecham House.

Prey (Lawrence Gough). " A tiger - in Africa?" The Jaws episode, with at least three clear references - Bright's India tiger story is like the SS Indianapolis. The one with Stefanie Martini.

Endeavour is such a believable character and Shaun plays him so well - he's the most human detective on TV. Here's such an example - he's protecting a woman and her baby from the tiger (gorgeous thing) and when it's over he shakes and collapses... It's like when Thursday's shot - he's scared and outraged... you feel it coming off the screen.

Of course it's also the double act(s) that make it.

Somewhere around here Dr DeBryn says "Last of the red hot livers".

Coda (Oliver Blackburn - why so many different directors?) The bank episode. Thursday (having just ejected his bullet and had his gun returned) is nice to Trewlove after she experiences her first fatal shooting. He challenges Morse suggesting it might get too 'salty' for him - Strange thinks he may not have the 'sand'. Then  there's a literal enactment of 'She's Leaving Home'.

The obviously gay don says something like "He eats oysters, unfortunately".

They're all really well lit - this one (the only one) from Baz Irwin, who worked with Seamus McGarvey...

Win's back - "The longest six days of my life".
Morse - "And on the seventh, he rested."

DeBryn: "He'd eaten saveloy and chips."
Morse: "Are you sure?"
DeBryn: "Alimentary, my dear Watson."

So This Is Paris (1926 Ernst Lubitsch)

Bouncy, funny, distinctly Lubitsch (jokes on threes, mad misunderstandings), made for Warner Brothers. Hasn't lost any of its charm and the performances are particularly good in the dry, slow-burning double take kind of style.

Film opens with a very funny André Beranger performing the Dance of Despair. Then he fails to manage to lift up his wife Lilyan Tashman, so she lifts him up. (Their maid is Myrna Loy! - but of course that was rather difficult to make out in this copy.) Meanwhile in the apartment opposite Patsy Ruth Miller spots the dancer and thinks he's an Arabian prince. Her husband Monte Blue arrives, kisses her, and takes her temperature. Then he sees what appears to be a naked man opposite (he's just taken his turban off) so he goes over to have a word - only to find the apartment also contains old flame Tashman. They go all gooey, then he spots the dancer and realises what's going on - but instead of reporting all this to his wife, he tells her he's sorted him. 'Where's your cane?' she says. 'Oh, I smashed it up on him.' Next, the dancer comes over to return the cane, attempting to pick up the wife while her husband's in the next room...

And so in this way the sex comedy plays out - Blue has to spend three days in jail but goes dancing with Tashman instead - where follows an incredibly edited montage of mad twenties dancing (Charleston, apparently).  Also great trick scene where the cane is floating over sleeping Blue, prodding him.

Loved the ending, where Miller takes drunken Blue home, then he starts saying to her 'How dare you come in so late!' Then she (literally) reduces him to pint size. Very entertaining.

Based on French play by Mailhac and Hale'vy, written by Hans Kraely, shot by John Mescall, sadly available in very poor print only. This photo is courtesy the BFI:

Lubitsch had made dozens of films before this, from 1914 on.

Assunta Spina (1914 Gustavo Serena & Francesca Bertini

These hot-headed Neopolitans, going around stabbing each other. Melodrama isn't interesting cinematically, with long passages of people talking, but with no titles, an unmoving camera and lack of close-ups. Of most interest is seeing 1914 Napoli, a cold and grubby looking place, photographed by Alberto G Carta. I should be entitled to some sort of endurance award, surely.

From a play by Salvatore di Giacomo. With the reasonably natural Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena, Carlo Benetti and Luciano Albertini.

The Long Song (2018 Mahalia Belo)

Yes, director of the incredible Ellen. And with the same DP Chloe Thomson, who pulls off some great (low) lighting - they are a great pair. Arty production isn't sombre, has witty script, chapters, ironic notes.

From 'Small Island' author Andrea Levy's novel, adapted by Sarah Williams.

Tamara Lawrance great in title role. With Hayley Atwell, Doña Croll (old July), Ethan Hazzard, Jack Lowden, Madeleine Mantock, Jo Martin, Joy Richardson, Lenny Henry.

Filmed in the Dominican Republic. Loved the ending - the faces of the labourers, all looking into camera...

Endeavour - Series 2 (2014 Devised and written by Russell Lewis)

Trove (d. Kristoffer Nyholm -The Killing 2, The Enfield Haunting).
Somewhat shell-shocked, Morse returns to work, endures a nasty beating and meets next door nurse Shvorne Marks (voicing the great line "I don't think you're yellow - just blue"). He also mis-solves the case, making him have to later apologise to his colleagues, including Jakes (Jack Laskey) who says something like "What's the caper, getting us up at the crack of sparrow's?"

Morse has a great way of not answering questions (particularly those raised by colleagues). Thursday is becoming his surrogate father. This involves a Miss Britain pageant and usefully comments on sixties' sexism.

Nocturne (d. Giuseppe Capotondi). For one thing, starts a hundred years in the past - an awful murder - and not your usual five intersecting stories over the credits. Although it's not really dwelled upon, Morse solves this murder too. It's all intertwined with mysterious goings-on in girls' school. And the 'Bermondsey Horror' referred to is a real case.

Features a hilarious exchange between Morse, Thursday and a Professor from the Royal College of Arms.

Bunty Glossop sounds like a P.G. Wodehouse name. She's played by Nell Tiger Tree, who was in Broken. When she kisses Morse at the end he looks affectingly bashful. Susy Kane, their teacher, is in Stan & Ollie. Pupils: Imogen Gurney (Safe), Anya Taylor-Joy (The Miniaturist, Thoroughbreds), Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody, Murder on the Orient Express, The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth, Sing Street, Lewis).

This is the episode in which Morse amusingly is completely uninterested in England's World Cup progress. Thursday: "Talking football with you's like showing a dog the three card trick." And to Joan "On aerial duty again tonight?" Watch too many of these and you start actually speaking like Thursday! (Interesting also to hear the military slang 'He bought the farm'.)

Sway (d. Andy Wilson). It's Dean Martin's rendition of the title song we hear repeatedly, written by Luis Demetrio and produced in 1953. Episode involves serial killer, stockings and Burridge's department store - a CGI'd version of Randalls in Uxbridge, I reckon, though the interior is Jacksons in Reading!

And - well we know Thursday speaks Italian (and. impressively, German - in Rocket), fought in Monte Cassino after the desert, and here we have his past wartime romance in Italy. In the original script, Morse withholds her suicide note from Thursday, but Shaun didn't feel it was right - and I agree with him.

Michael Caine Alfie mixed with (in Russell's words) 'Carry On Strangling'. Mournful episode.

Neverland (d. Geoffrey Sax). Lots of threads - why does inmate escape so shortly before release? Where is runaway boy?  Who are the flowers in the woods for? How are police mixed up in (another) property development? And - the most beautiful prop as plot point - Morse's new scarf. (Joan's on to it first, then her father...)

Talk about a cliffhanger ending! An outrageous series finale. The police corruption story has been building slowly but the moment two senior officers try to shoot Morse is amazing.

Dr DeBryn: "It's our old friend Mr. Blunt Trauma."

Morse: "He hadn't even had his ticket punched."
Thursday: "He has now."

Morse's poem is A.E. Housman, 'How Clear, How Lovely Bright'. Just before he's shot Fred says 'I'll probably die a copper...'

Endeavour - Series 1 (2013 Creator / writer Russell Lewis)

Girl (director Edward Bazalgette) introduces us to C.S. Bright, who is not going to accept any 'Spanish practices'* and does not take well to Morse at all. Sophie Stuckey (the 'girl'), Jonathan Hyde, Fiona Ryan, Olivia Grant. Morse helps epileptic girl get child back - looking out for the underdog.

Fugue (director Tom Vaughan). Introduced finally to the Thursdays - Joan (Sara Vickers), Win (Caroline O'Neill) and Sam (Jack Bannon). Someone seems to be targeting Morse in particular. The one where the former code-breaker vicar leaves a clue in the hymn list!

Rocket (director Craig Viveiros). Craig Parkinson is involved in murder at missile factory (former Janssen-Cilag building in Saunderton). Jenny Seagrove is commanding as matriarch, Martin Jarvis not so convincing, Rosalind Halstead, James Northcote, William Houston. The Homewood is that interesting 1930s modernist house.

Home (d. Colm McCarthy). We meet Morse's sister and father (for the only time?) Gangsters from Thursday's past (Clive Wood and Nick Court) threaten his family. There's a wonderful focus on guns: starts out with Morse on firing range, then Win catches Thursday with one, then there's a Mexican stand-off, but the guns don't get into play until the very ending, when Morse is shot...

* Yes, had to look this up. Irregular practices which are in workers' interests, emanating from Elizabethan age (Roman Catholic, deceitful, treacherous).

Varieté (1925 E.A. Du Pont & scr)

Now look, kids - I've told you before. Romantic triangles and high wire acrobatics do not a good mix make.

It was Silent Film Day. Whilst the acting of Emil Jannings and Lya de Putti seem overwrought by today's standards, they are both good. Not quite sure I buy Jannings as a trapeze artist either. The deserted wife and fellow acrobat are Maly Delschaft and Warwick Ward.

Good, despite crappy extant prints. Features some stunning camerawork by Karl Freund, especially the acrobat scenes, where Du Pont gives us a great fantasy death scene - there's other trickeries throughout. The plot is pretty guessable but the style is welcome, the aerial stuff really tense. Alfred Junge is one of the art directors.

Film buzzes along, takes us from Hamburg to the Berlin WinterGarten - everything looks suitably seedy and decadent. Learned German word - 'Krankenhaus' (hospital).

It's The Old Army Game (1926 Edward Sutherland)

Silent W.C. Fields is the forerunner of It's A Gift, featuring equally annoying relatives and passers-by. Louise Brooks is his assistant at the drugstore - she's as lively as usual (she and Fields got on well; the director fell in love with her). Brooks: "Nobody in Ocala (Florida, where it was largely filmed) seemed to have heard of the Prohibition. And if ever there was a company that needed no help in the consumption of liquor, it was ours."

A Paramount picture, Fields' first starring role. Film incorporates fire, property scams, a destructive picnic and a car being pulverised.

Endeavour (2011 Creator / writer Russell Lewis)

The pilot, directed by Colm McCarthy. Beautifully imagined story introducing us to the young, fiercely principled, dogged, brilliant, anti-authoritarian, whilst mixing in his great love of opera. Flora Montgomery is the opera-singer, Richard Lintern her husband. With Patrick Malahide, Danny Webb as the corrupt officer. Jamie Blackley.

Loved moment when Abigail Thaw says to Shaun 'Haven't we met somewhere before?' And when Shaun looks into the rear view mirror and sees John...

"I don't drink..."

Cold Feet (2019 Writer: Mike Bullen)

Karen. "I was just thinking about you."
Adam. "What was I wearing?"
Karen. "That expression."

Ends a bit disappointingly with no one being happy that these two end of together, though does feature an inspired Jeremy Kyle pastiche.

Café Society (2016 Woody Allen & scr)

You know... when it was 'OK' to like Woody. For fuck's sake, the world's fucking mad. I love some of Mia Farrow's acting but I also hate her. And Amazon.

This is a lovely jewel. "Live every day as though it's your last - one day you'll be right." Film seems to manage to include plots of The Apartment AND Casablanca.

First Man (2018 Damian Chazelle)

Well, it's as unrelenting as Whiplash (and has the same editor, Tom Cross) right from the off.

A few notes. Not entirely convinced by Justin Hurwitz's score (though some of it is lovely - also smiled fondly at theremin or whatever it is). Ryan Gosling could have acted a bit more. Not sure why it's all hand held and in-out focus. Could almost have ended at the lovely shot of Apollo 11 disappearing into a star (about an hour and three quarters in).

But - it's a terrific achievement in which the spacecraft seems very old-fashioned and low tech, like they can't possibly be up for the challenge (Nathan Crowley and Kathy Lucas production designers). It has great low light and stunning images (Linus Sandgren). (BAFTA was much more generous than the Oscars with the film, nominating he, Cross, Josh Singer's screenplay and Claire Foy, who's great). Much impressionistic juddering around, tenseness. Also loved the frequent moon images - and the final one of the earth, moon-like. And nice to see Patrick Fugit as always (and Corey Stoll).

I didn't notice until it came to the screen shot that the moon scenes are in 16:9:

Based on James Hansen's authorized biography.

Three Days of the Condor (1975 Sydney Pollack)

Yes - the "spy-fucker" edition. (According to Will, this was cut from all cinema releases...)

A riveting thriller, which doesn't let up for a moment, powered along not just by Dave Grusin's very much of its time music (but by that sound of the printer, for example), and Don Guidice's editing (also A New Leaf, The Yakuza). Screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel starts by making us like all the characters who are instantly killed (can't watch this without thinking of Charlie Hebdo). Provides wonderful twist in the sub-story of assassin Joubert (Max Von Sydow, who makes the film), bitter-sweet ending...

Also Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, John Houseman, Tina Chen.

Owen Roizman on camera.

I was reliably informed (by an online Swede) it's 'Max Fon See-doff', but the actor himself seems to prefer 'Von See-doh'.

They All Laughed (1981 Peter Bogdanovich & co-scr)

One of the best films ever made. Can you believe this joyous, quintessentially pro-female delight was edited by a director through tears? It's quite remarkable that it was completed and released.

The leading ladies (in order of appearance) are Patti Hansen, Audrey Hepburn, Colleen Camp and Dorothy Stratten.

Once you get over this joy-pain dichotomy, the other take-away is just how bloody brilliantly well made it is - camera, shot size, editing, sound, all work fantastically well. A most overlooked film, it could easily be the object of serious study in film school.

Peter's 'The Killing of the Unicorn' is wrenching but essential reading for any fan, as is the documentary One Day Since Yesterday.

Pygmalion (1938 Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard)

Screen play and dialogue Bernard Shaw, scenario W.P. Lipscomb and Cecil Lewis. IMDB also credits Ian Dalrymple, Anatole de Grunwald and Kay Walsh...

Music Arthur Honegger.

Our Second Sight release looks like it's taken from different prints - needs restoring. Looks like Criterion have done that (but it's now out of print and on eBay for $87!). Harry Stradling shot it with Jack Hildyard operating, and a certain David Lean edits.

Wendy Hiller's fantastic, brings a tear to the eye on cue, Leslie Howard also (plane shot down by Germans, 1943). Marie Lohr is his mum, Scott Sutherland Pickering. Jean Cadell was indeed in IKWIG, Ivor Barnard (Beat the Devil), Wilfred Lawson.

The stuff about 'how much for my daughter' is still quite risqué.

"Walk? Not bloody likely."

A bouncy, cinematic film, really quite joyous.

Crazy, Stupid Love. (2011 Glenn Ficarra, John Requa)

Dan Fogelman's new film Life Itself has not met with good reviews. This is something of a go-to film in this house.

Cross-cutting abounds in multi-track story.

Jonah Bobo seems to have stopped acting after 2012 Disconnect.

A(nother) Star Is Born (2018 Bradley Cooper)

I don't know why. Bradley (and Eric Roth and Will Fetters) have remade it for the third time, though they might have changed things around a bit - how about the lead doesn't kill himself, for example? He and Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta) are very good and so are the new songs. (As a complete tangent, her debut on-screen I read was in The Sopranos - which is to have a prequel made with Michael Gandolfini....) Is it her real nose?

Sam Elliott's teary eyes provide the film's only moment of emotion. And quite how Dave Chapelle's character fits into anything is anybody's guess. With Anthony Ramos, Andrew Dice Clay.

Shot by Matthew Libatique in Panavision, Oscar nominated, along with the three leads, film, screenplay etc.

Friends with Money (2006 Nicole Holofcener & scr)

Hm. There's good reason for not randomly watching Netflix films - they may not be that good. Best to approach it the way we would buying something - we'd identify something that looks promising, usually because of stars or writer / director or even other behind-the-scenes credits, and read reviews. Lesson to selves over.

Q's invaluable guide to script-writing:
1. Who are your characters?
2. Do we like them?
3. What's going on?

This is how it applies to this film. Jason Isaacs and Catherine Keener aren't getting on very well, not sure why. Frances MacDormand, a successful clothes designer, is having some kind of crisis - we don't really know why. We don't know if Simon McBurney is really gay or not. We don't know why Jennifer Aniston is so lacking in self-confidence. (Her relationship with the particularly vile Scott Caan is unbelievable - I don't mean not believable, just that she would put up with it.)

So (2) we don't like them and (3) we don't know what's going on.

If it's trying to say that people with money and good lifestyles are human too, well it's not at all successful.

No problem with the acting - Jen is fine as always. With Joan Cusack, Greg Germann, Bob Stephenson and Modern Family's Ty Burrell. Shot by Terry Stacey.

A Simple Favour (2018 Paul Feig)

Let's start with Anna Kendrick. She seems to me to be someone slightly difficult to cast. 50 / 50 and Up In the Air have been her best films, in both of which she's trying to learn her job better and develop empathy at the same time. I don't really buy her cutesy dancing or brandishing a revolver  (though the Mums' Vlog is right).

This film - like Gone Girl, also based on a novel (this one by Darcey Bell) - is all about the plot. Here's some things it doesn't have: humour, atmosphere, suspense, style, beauty, empathy (the kids are barely present). Blake Lively plays her character right - caustic, brittle, unlovely - when she later says how much she loves her son, you don't buy it at all. Her feckless husband Henry Golding starts screwing other women the minute she is dead. So we don't feel particularly sympathetic towards anyone.

So it all sort of rests on the mechanics of the plot and the surprise ending. And once you've experienced those, I'm not sure there's a lot left. John Schwartzman is a good cameraman (see Seabiscuit as evidence), though I didn't remark on anything exciting going on here, and some of the editing seemed a bit suspicious.

We liked Andrew Rannells as one of the bitchy 'mums' (we had met him before in Girls and The Intern) and Bashir Salahuddin as the slightly sarcastic detective. Whilst always welcome, Rupert Friend has a non-role that could have been usefully excised. Jessica Sharzer wrote it (American Horror Story producer / writer).

Don't fuck about with a Martini.

A Date with the Falcon (1941, rel. 1942 Irving Reis)

Michael Arlen, writer and dandy and author of 'The Green Hat' created the 'Gay Falcon' in a 1940 short story of that name. That was also the name of the first film in the RKO series - this is the second, with George Sanders and Allen Jenkins as his loyal No. 2. Wendy Barrie is also a recurring character as the Falcon's uptight girlfriend, the title being an ironic reference to their mis-timed meetings.

James Gleason is very familiar to us as the detective. Mona Maris is the femme fatale. One of the thugs is familiar to us from Hail the Conquering Hero and Frank Moran is from Sullivan's Travels.

Robert de Grasse shot it.

It's a way to spend an hour.

Cinderella Liberty (1973 Mark Rydell)

Seriously well photographed film, in Panavision and De Luxe, by Vilmos Zsigmond. James Caan is nicely restrained, Marsha Mason as good as ever (Oscar nominated), Kirk Calloway good too as the kid (wasn't in much else - a couple of Kojak episodes). John Williams score (also nominated). Film really kicks in towards the end, has a lovely twist. Written by Darryl Ponicsan, based on his own novel (also wrote The Last Detail - a navy man, by all suggestion). Really good.

With Eli Wallach, Burt Young (still now going strong), Bruno Kirby, Dabney Coleman.

Rendez-vous à Bray (1971 André Delvaux)

Bray, you notice, not Braye-la-Foret, the actual location Mathieu Carrière travels to to meet his friend Roger Van Hool (rather good), to find only Anna Karina in residence. Flashbacks abound, including those involving delightful Bulle Ogier (particularly when attempting to eat chicken with a fork - in fact, the highlight of the film).

It's 1917 - because he's from Luxembourg he isn't in the army. There's a kind of suggestion of guilt throughout, though he doesn't seem to feel it. And his friend (?more than that) never turns up, despite bad weather having called off the offensive. It's an extremely enigmatic film, or is it less than that?

Based on a novel by Julien Gracq ('Le Roi Cophétua'). And featuring an extract from Fantomas (which Ogier seems to love.)

Superbly photographed by Ghislain Cloquet in a way (like Melville) that seems to strip the colour out of everything; piano music from Brahms, Franck and Devreese.

Seems to link to a child's nursery rhyme, somehow...

I've wanted to see it since I was a teenager. Now I have...

Mrs Doubtfire (1993 Chris Columbus)

Written by Randi Mayem Singer, Anne Fine and Leslie (Overboard) Dixon, film doesn't make much sense (surely the Sally Field character would have welcomed the husband to look after the kids), the outfit swapping is exhausting and the kids fairly odious (particularly the little one). Robin Williams is his usual bundle of nervous energy, improvising and soulful looks, Field good.

With Harvey Fierstein (make-up brother), Pierce Brosnan (pre-Bond), Robert Prosky (TV channel owner - though I felt Williams' attempt to spruce up kids' educational show worked better with him as him not Mrs. F.), Lisa Jakub.

"It was a run-by fruiting."

Support Your Local Sheriff! (1968 Burt Kennedy)

Amiable comedy Western with an amiable James Garner taming a lawless town, running in with local bad family (Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern etc.) With Harry Morgan, Jack Elam (Once Upon a Time in the West), Joan Hackett (described as 'strong-minded'... yes, I can see that), Henry Jones (The Girl Can't Help It, Vertigo, lots of TV).

Jail without bars, Madame Orr's House, cannon... Quite fun.

Written by William Bowers, photographed by Harry Stradling Jr.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960 Karel Reisz)

Albert Finney died on Thursday, aged 82. An appropriate tribute is this gritty Northern slice of life, written by Alan Sillitoe (from his own novel - a move of economics, as producer Harry Saltzman had no money to employ a screenwriter). He gives a striking, sizzling performance as a cocky lad - though possibly a nasty beating and a failed abortion make him change his ways. (Will he end up quietly watching TV like his Dad?)

Beautifully shot by Freddie Francis (with Ronnie Taylor operating), music Johnny Dankworth, editing Seth Holt. Fairground scene is particularly striking.

With Shirley Anne Field, Rachel Roberts, Norman Rossington, Bryan Pringle, Colin Blakley.

The Angel's Share (2012 Ken Loach)

Powerful Loach / writer Paul Laverty set-up with violent offender Robbie (an impressive Paul Brannigan) narrowly avoiding prison for community service, where he meets a decent chap (John Henshaw) who takes a liking to him. (Note when the youngster asks the older if he gets on with his daughters - 'gone down to London' - he doesn't answer.) More powerful scene where Robbie faces a young man he has beaten so badly his life is ruined (it is suggested Robbie has had his own shitty upbringing, of course. This is a Ken Loach film, for ever socially aware, balanced.) With loyal girlfriend Siobhan Reilly and new baby, he is determined to go straight, but will his violent past catch up with him? Well it does the minute they find a nice flat, and that continued to worry me right up until the end.

And then we get into the distillery, the whisky and the mates he makes on community service: William Ruane, Gary Maitland, Jasmine Riggins. Oh, and Roger Allam turns up, too.

It's about giving people a chance in life. Brannigan was very like his character, scarred, ex-con. He met Laverty when he was researching characters - the writer suggested he be given a go.

Robbie Ryan shot it very naturalistically and in your face in those gritty scenes.

Frankie and Johnny (1991 Garry Marshall)

Perfectly well reviewed here - yes the Clair de Lune does receive both piano and orchestrated versions, and Hector Elizondo's cute niece at the beginning does seem to drop out of the story (she's replaced later by his aunt or grandmother).

This is a good one for Christian Marclay

Very nicely opened out play, with good New Yorkisms.

Crime of Passion (1957 Gerd Oswald)

I must have made a mistake - this can't have been a key film noir recommended by Peter Bogdanovich - can it? (It's too late for a noir for one thing.)

It's more of a bonkers melodrama really. Hard-nosed newspaperwoman Barbara Stanwyck rashly marries cop Sterling Hayden but begins to resent his life and friends (well caught in a scene in which Stepford Wives - to borrow my wife's description - discuss olive and cream cheese) and starts to plot his career improvements. (One way in which the film is nuts is she could easily have got another job working for an LA newspaper.) This involves alienating buddy Royal Dano, sleeping with boss Raymond Burr and ultimately killing him in a way in which she will obviously be caught.

Also with Fay Wray, of all people.

Performances are fine, film moves along. Written by Jo Eisinger, photographed by Joe LaShelle.

Les Misérables (2018 Tom Shankland)

Cannot comment on Andrew Davies' adaptation of Victor Hugo classic, other than that it moves along wonderfully. At end of Episode 3 of 6 it does seem that any time there's a glint of happiness for poor Jean Valjean (a wonderfully vivid Dominic West) or Cozette, something awful happens - usually in the shape of unrelenting nemesis Javet (David Oleyowo at his most steely - do we learn why he's so obsessed?), but let's not forget vile Adeel Akhtar and Olivia Colmans neither.

Good old Lily James for electing to play a smaller part, sans hair and teeth!

Oh - the end. Well, we were underimpressed by Andrew Davies' adaptation, finally. We don't understand why Javet has this fixation, and therefore that aspect is annoying. When he proposes his prison reforms, it's lost - surely that's something we want to hear? And we don't feel that Shankland has wrought the best performances - Oyelowo is too slow, Akhtar comes over like the pantomime baddy, Ellie Bamber is too drippy, even Josh O'Connor (so good in The Durrells) seems flammy.

To be honest, I'm not sure that Hugo's story is that good to start with.

Quite liked Erin Kellyman, and Reece Yates as Gavroche.

Gangster Squad (2013 Ruben Fleischer)

Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn and Emma Stone in The Magnificent Seven again (The Monuments Men), relocated to seedy 1940s Los Angeles. Will Beall (himself a 90s LA cop) wrote it from Paul Leiberman's novel.

Another nice slice of rich photography from Dion Beebe with production design by Maher Ahmad and Melissa House.

Such is the adherence to formula that Stone is of course sleeping with the bad guy, and it ends with Lethal Weapon. Plus, you start to think 'I wonder which of the Seven will make it through to the end?' The others are Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Pena and Robert Patrick (the literal cowboy sharp-shooter), and Mireille Enos, Brolin's wife, who hand picks the team.

Title is crap but the Gangster Squad (formed in 1946) was real. Some nice forties dialogue in violently entertaining movie, well edited by Alan Baumgarten and James Herbert.

Blood and Wine (1996 Bob Rafelson)

From a story by Nick Villiers and the director, screenwritten by Villiers and Alison Cross. Stephen Dorff's stepfather Jack Nicholson has planned a jewel robbery with vile and emphysemic British ex-con Michael Caine. He's also having an affair with Jennifer Lopez, who happens to be the nanny of the place where the jewels are. But owing to a bust up with his alcoholic wife Judy Davis, the jewels end up in the wrong place...

Nicholson is nasty (he's probably only using Jay-Lo for inside information) but at least does display ounces of compassion, unlike Caine, who's an out and out bastard. Great performances from both, and Dorff, Lopez and Davis. It's got a sort of doomed John Huston feel to it.

Newton Thomas Sigel (Bohemian Rhapsody, Drive, Towelhead, Leatherheads, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Usual Suspects) shoots Florida locations in nice rich tones suggestive of dawn and dusk.

L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (1961 Alain Resnais)

Emotion - everyone is sad. She is scared.

He is 'a phantom, waiting for her to come'. He doesn't exist. He prowls the corridors for ever...

He has died - falling from the broken balustrade.

She has been killed by her husband.

The drawer of identical photos - then rearranged in game layout.

Marienbad doesn't exist. And I don't mean that as some kind of clever pronouncement on the film. No, it really doesn't exist, which is why I could never find my car that I parked there again.*

P.S. 5 April 2022. I learned today with interest that Resnais was Agnes Varda's editor, and that they were both influenced by William Faulkner's 'Wild Palms' (two stories, cross-cut). (Mark Cousins 'The Story of Film'.)

* I think it does - Nabokov wrote one of his short stories there. It was a very popular German spa town, but after World War 2 the German population were expelled. The Czech name is Mariánské Lázně. All this does of course add to the confusion. I guess the Germans carried on calling it Marienbad, and the French perhaps did likewise.

Easy Living (1937 Mitchell Leisen)

Yes.

The Big Lebowski (1998 Joel Coen)

You have to feel sorry for Steve Buscemi's character who is constantly told (by John Goodman) to 'shut the fuck up' and ultimately dies of a heart attack.

The film when stripped of its stoner components is like an old forties Big Sleep or something.

Loved the ending where stranger Sam Elliott says to camera something like 'Don't you just feel better when there's someone like The Dude out there?'

Good Will Hunting (1997 Gus Van Sant)

I agree with Q that this is an incredible (Oscar-winning) script from two youngsters Matt Damon 27 and Ben Affleck 25, which Matt had begun writing as part of a class at Harvard. Interestingly neither has much of a screenwriting career since, which is kinda amazing considering how good it is. The two long monologues spoken by Damon and Williams are incredibly good and filmed in perfect long takes - Damon every bit as good as Oscar-winning Robin Williams, though it's one of the latter's best performances (and Minnie Driver's).

Contrary to urban legend, William Goldman did not write or re-write the script.

Oh, OK, Casey Affleck is one of the gang.

The painting is by Van Sant

This Means War (2012 McG)

Buddy secret agents Chris Pine and Tom Hardy fight over Reece Witherspoon. That's it. It isn't very good, really, but amiable enough.

Controversially, Reece's character cites Notorious, Rebecca, Vertigo and anything 'from 1960 to 1972' as prime Hitchcock.

DVD includes three different endings which were filmed... which I think is quite telling.

There's a clip of Titanic in the background which means Russell Carpenter is shooting his own film.

Dead of Night / Deathdream (1974 Bob Clark)

Apparently, Alan Ormsby's screenplay is supposed to be a Vietnam commentary as dead soldier (John Marley) comes home, sits sullenly in a rocking chair and begins to murder random people including a truck driver, a doctor and his ex - not very friendly. And his parents' marriage starts looking rather rocky to boot (they are Lynn Carlin and Richard Backus). In fact it sounds like his dad shoots himself towards the end...?

I say apparently because that isn't very clear to me. Has some interesting touches and sound effects but no laughs - unless you count the zombie-like character getting into his own grave at the end.

Milk Money (1994 Richard Benjamin)

We wanted something fluffy and neutral and John Mattson's fairy story of hooker living in the tree house delivers that in Kennedy-Marshall production.

Melanie Griffith, Ed Harris, Michael Patrick Carter, Malcolm McDowell, Anne Heche. Shot by David Watkin.

Spotlight (2015 Tom McCarthy)

Oscar and BAFTA-winning screenplay from McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor, story of Up) and Josh Singer (The West Wing, The Post, First Man) tells the story of how The Boston Globe uncovered a massive child abuse scandal (involving seventy priests preying on disadvantaged children) in the Catholic Church in a calm and methodical way, gradually revealing the characters of some of the participants.

With Mark Ruffalo (Oscar and BAFTA nominated), Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams (nicely methodical), Leiv Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian d'Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup (rather good as dodgy solicitor), Neal Huff (action group), Richard Jenkins (uncredited voice of Catholic paedophile investigator).

Nice details - Ruffalo's character says he's married but doesn't appear to be so, McAdams' stops going to church, Keaton's school friend has never told a soul... And the old priest who McAdams doorsteps and he basically just admits his abuse - shocking moment caught matter-of-factly.

Music Howard Shore, photography Masanobu Takayanagi, editor Tom McArdle.