La La Land (2016 Damian Chazelle & scr)

I was about to upload a screen shot I've already taken - well, it is our seventh viewing.

I hadn't noticed before that 1. in Emma and Ryan's sunrise routine, she uses some of her moves to change shoes 2. that they both sing the first word of City of Stars before Ryan takes over the first verse.

Have to watch Parapluies next. And For a Few Dollars More...

Teen Wolf (1985 Rod Daniel)

Oh dear. This is awful. Not even in an enjoyable way. Michael J Fox looks ridiculous in werewolf makeup. Score is awful, as is acting. The best thing about it was that it ended.

Rory's Way / The Etruscan Smile (2018 Oded Binnun, Mihal Brezis)

Um... Oded is I think Israeli and made Oscar-nominated short Aya... and ditto to Mihal (who went to the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School - how awful is that - do you think sleeping with your young stars is one of the courses they teach?)

The screenplay is by Michael McGowan, Michal Lali Kagan and Sarah Bellwood, with additional material by Shuki Ben-Naim and Amital Stern; from the 1985 novel 'La Sonrisa Etrusca' by Spanish novelist Jose Luis Sampedro, originally set in Italy.

Blimey.

Anyway, there are one or two slight lapses into a sort of Hollywood sentimentality, but otherwise this is an engaging and entertaining film with Brian Cox as a fish out of water in San Francisco, staying with his son JJ Feild and daughter-in-law Thora Birch and falling both for their infant son and Rosanna Arquette before dying.

With Peter Coyote (language professor), Treat Williams (father-in-law), Tim Matheson (doctor).

Photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe with a particularly beautiful shot of Cox in water as San Francisco lights bounce off it.

Rosanna Arquette turned 60 this year. It seems unthinkable.

Support the Girls (2018 Andrew Bujalski & scr)

A slightly odd indie, with no music score (OK, as Jack would say a diagetic soundtrack); with an ending that makes little sense (why did they get fired, exactly?) Still, offbeat, unusual, real-feeling. Loved the screaming ending.

Regina Hall is the brilliant manager of 'Double Whammies', Hayley Lu Richardson and Shayna McHale ('Junglepussy') her deputies. With Dylan Gelula, AJ Michalka, Brooklyn Decker, Lea DeLaria and James le Gros.

Is this review diagetic?

Before Sunrise (1995) / Before Sunset (2004) / Before Midnight (2013 Richard Linklater & co-scr)

Epic trilogy begins on a train, when Ethan Hawke starts chatting to Julie Delpy. They spend the day (and night) in Vienna, talking, walking, getting to know each other, often in long and continuous tracking shots... and ultimately fall in love. You really feel for them when they say goodbye at the station. (And I love that ending, which shows all the places they've been, empty.)

Jump forward nine years. Hawke is in Paris promoting his novel, which essentially tells the first story, and who is there at the bookshop? So they spend the rest of the day wandering around Paris, talking, finding out what's been happening to each other, why they didn't meet as promised in Vienna six months later, falling in love again. Julie sings (her own) beautiful song 'A Waltz for a Night', and he says 'Play one more...'

And then, in chapter three, we find Hawke saying goodbye to his son at the airport then joining Julie and their twin daughters in Greece, and then follows maybe the longest of all the continuous takes in the car (thirteen minutes). Where are they in their lives? They join a group of friends and there follows a conversation about love, ending when an older lady talks of missing her husband. "So he appears, and he disappears, like sunrise and sunset, so ephemeral. Just like our life. We appear, and we disappear, and we are so important to some, but we are just... passing through."

Then a big argument in a hotel, long but realistic, into a resolution, of sorts. But you wonder what episode four will bring.

The first was written by Linklater and Kim Krizan and (uncredited) Hawke and Delpy - they do get co-writer credit on the second two.

There's nothing else like it.

Extraordinary photography from Lee Daniel (the first two) and Christos Voudoris, all three edited by Sandra Adair. The distinguished author in Midnight is none other than veteran British cinematographer Walter Lassally. Thus when Delpy says 'I'm sure I remember seeing a place like this in a movie' she may well have been referring to Zorba the Greek, for which he won his Oscar!

'As I Walked Out One Evening' quoted, by WH Auden.

Il Grande Silenzio / The Great Silence (1968 Sergio Corbucci)

...after I wasted half an hour of my life watching the 1967 Casino Royale, which opened promisingly with a Savignac poster and then went downhill. (Deborah Kerr funny in over the top way.)

This is a bleak, wintry Western which anticipates McCabe and Mrs Miller and claims to be based on real bounty hunter killings getting out of hand in the Great Blizzard of 1898. Silence's Mauser is interesting in that quirky spaghetti way of finding obscure objects.

The one where literally all the good guys die and the evil Klaus Kinski gets away with it (along with massacring all the hostage / bandits).

Music by Ennio Morricone but - Corbucci is a bastard. It's an interesting film, though, I guess partly because its bleak setting matches the bleak tone.

Filmed in the Tyrol in Italy by Silvano Ippoliti. The dubbing is fairly woeful. With Jean-Louis Trintignant (Il Conformista), Frank Wolff (sheriff), Luigi Pistilli (bounty banker), Mario Brega (from TGTBTU), Marisa Merlini, Vonetta McGee.

Quentin showed this to Robert Richardson as prep for The Hateful Eight.

Harry Brown (2009 Daniel Barber)

Nicely executed thriller of pensioner fighting back against local estate criminals, well acted.

Michael Caine is fabulous. With David Bradley, Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed-Miles, Sean Harris (a striking performance), Plan B (Ben Drew), Jack O'Connell, Jamie Downey, Joseph Gilgun, Liam Cunningham.

Music kept making me think of Taxi Driver - then it all started to seem really like Taxi Driver.

Written by Gary Young, music by Martin Phipps and Ruth Barrett, widescreen photography by Martin Ruhe, edited by Joe Walker.

Greedy (1994 Jonathan Lynn)

Lowell Ganz / Babaloo Mandell script doesn't really work for me. Vile family hang around unpleasant rich uncle Kirk Douglas for inheritance, nephew Michael J Fox enters the scene.

Funniest moment is Fox doing Durante. No, funniest moment is very ending. Was that the Bradbury? Yes it was.

Nancy Travis, Olivia D'Abo, Phil Hartman, Ed Begley Jr., Jere Burns, Colleen Camp, Bob Balaban, Jonathan Lynn (sarcastic butler), Austin Pendleton, little Kirsten Dunst (not her debut).

There she is!

The Ice Harvest (2005 Harold Ramis)

Christmas Eve: John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton have just stolen $2 million from their employer - how this was done is amusingly not revealed - and violent events follow. It's funny. Written by Robert Russo and Robert Benton (and Scott Phillips). With Connie Nielsen, Oliver Platt.

The Ghost Goes West (1935 René Clair)

A Korda / London production, though not sure who Jean Parker is. Robert Donat is both the titular ghost and its modern day descendant involved in shipping Scottish castle to Florida, where it's updated with some amusement. Eric Keown wrote the source story 'Sir Tristram Goes West' and the screenplay is by Clair, Geoffrey Kerr and Robert Sherwood (The Best Years of Our Lives). With Eugene Pallette, Elsa Lanchester, Ralph Bunker.

Photographed by Hal Rosson; William Hornbeck supervised the editing. Imaginative touches, droll humour, Clair Flair evident!

We'll never get to find out why a kiss in the dark is like a thistle in the heather.

Love Actually

This is why we were up till 2 AM and the Armagnac level was much reduced.

Booksmart (2019 Olivia Wilde)

An unexpected treat, very hip and funny, frequently off beat and unexpected, such as when they turn into Barbie dolls, or when they try and hold up a driver who tells them off for putting themselves in danger.. or when the other kids say 'Well I'm going to Harvard as well...' kind of thing. Has a sort of After Hours vibe to some of it. And all centred by lovely performances from Kaitlyn Dever (who impressed us earlier this year in Unbelievable) and Beanie Feldstein. Rest of cast good too, particularly an eccentric performance from Billie Lourd.

With.. Jessica Williams (teacher), Jason Sudeikis (Principal), Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Victoria Ruesga, Mason Gooding, Skyler Gisondo, Diana Silvers, Molly Gordon, Billie Lourd.

Written by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, Katie Silberman.

The Secret of My Success (1987 Herbert Ross)

...and that was Pat Benatar with 'Sometimes the Good Guys Finish First'.. solid gold classic, haven't heard that in a while. You're listening to Eighties FM. Up next, 'Oh Yeah' by Yello.. after this quick message...

Yes - a soundtrack with some film attached. Nevertheless good fun as are all Michael J Fox comedies (wrote this before watching Greedy and Teen Wolf). We had to applaud a scene with Helen Slater at one point, just to give her some encouragement, poor lass. Though as I think I may have noted before, Richard Jordan is as bad. With Margaret Whitton, John Pankow, Fred Gwynne, Mercedes Ruehl.

Written by Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr and AJ Carothers (story). Shot by Carlo di Palma and rather well edited (aforesaid Yello sequence, for example, and bedroom antics in country house) by Paul Hirsch.

One Foot in the Algarve (1993 Susan Belbin, scr. David Renwick)

Renwick writes with such great left turns, experiencing one of his screenplays is a delight. I thought I remembered it too well, but there's tons I'd forgotten.

You really feel for Mrs Meldrew as well.

Annette Crosbie, Richard Wilson, Doreen Mantle, Peter Cook, Edward de Souza, Joan Sims, Louis Mahoney, Eamonn Walker (boxer), Louise Dupret, Craig Ferguson.

Top Hat (1935 Mark Sandrich)

Tapetty-tapetty tip-tap. Tap dancing is like machine-gunning. Having said that, the dance routine following 'Isn't It a Lovely Day?' (no, not the Gorky's Zygotic Monkey version - Irving Berlin) is pretty cool, filmed in long, smooth takes.

I liked this:
"What is this strange power you have over horses?"
"Horse power."

But that's not as funny as Van Nest Polglase's charming Venice set, in which we see a gondola, a motor boat and a couple swimming, one on an inflatable zebra, all in the same shot.

Eric Blore - Edward Everett Horton partnership is fun.. design is deco, plot antique.

Loved Ginger's comment - "I could do everything he did, only backwards, and in high heels."

Black Christmas (1974 Bob Clark)

I read somewhere this was an inspiration for Halloween - can quite accept that.

Little known film is actually really well put together, a great little horror film with plenty of humour and some splendid scenes - such as murder cross-cut to Christmas carol singers. Credits therefore to Reg Morris (camera) and Stan Cole (editor), and to Clark himself. Cast is Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea (the piano smasher), Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Marian Waldman as the dypso 'house mother' (acted in very few films, including the same year's Deranged), Andrea Martin, James Edmond, Doug McGrath (thick sergeant).

The perfect antidote to the more traditional seasonal fare on affair, especially those pukey cute dinosaur things they seem to put on these days.

(Editor's note - This jaded reviewer has clearly forgotten that Christmas is primarily intended for children.)

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016 Richard Linklater & scr)

Funnily enough I just bought Q his Before.. trilogy and he also made the similar Dazed and Confused. This is the early 1980s high school baseball team, and although you get what you are kind of expecting, the film's deeper and more interesting - the characters are well drawn and not all dumb jocks by any means. And it's consistently enjoyable. And when they actually start playing baseball, after an hour and a half of partying, you can see they're all in fact rather good.

A refreshingly not well known cast comprises Blake Jenner, Juston Street, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Wyatt Russell, Zoey Deutch etc.

Familiar eighties music abounds, along with Pink Floyd's 'Fearless'. Shot by Shane Kelly and edited by Sandra Adair.

While You Were Sleeping (1995 John Turtletaub)

We just saw 'Bullock' on the Hugh Grant doc in which they seemed to have a great time (on Two Weeks Notice). She and Bill Pullman have some chemistry, though film is nothing to write home about - it's actually quite funny to see how clumsily bits of plot are introduced. Randy Edelman's music doesn't help.

It's quite fun though. With Jack Warden as the neighbour who manages not to help at all, Peter Gallagher, Peter Boyle, Glynis Johns (yes, that one).

Written by Dan Sullivan and Fred Lebow. The funniest moment is the kid delivering papers from his bike who throws and falls off it. Chicago photographed by Phedon Papamichael.

I pointed out Wally Pfister as the camera operator 'mainly known for Batman type things' and received the rather Two For the Road reply 'Oh well I don't like Batman type things, so that's all right'.

(Wally Pfister has worked closely with Chris Nolan, won Oscar for Inception, also shot The Prestige and Memento. Jack Warden is well known for 12 Angry Men, Heaven Can Wait, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Being There, All the President's Men and Shampoo. - Ed.)

Office Christmas Party (2016 Josh Gordon, Will Speck)

Who's that? I was thinking the whole way through. Doubtless I recognised Olivia Munn from I Don't Know How She Does It, or New Girl.

Film isn't as bad or crude as I was expecting. Having said that, it is a load of crap. Jason Bateman and T.J. Miller throw illegal party to win business or CEO Jen An will make 40% of workforce redundant.

With Courtney Vance, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Rob Corddry, Randall Park.

The Time of Their Lives (2017 Roger Goldby & scr)

Awful film. Early on, there's a scene where a waiter who has just brought drinks hovers over the table until he's paid, which just wouldn't happen, and when you see stuff like that, you know you're in trouble. Was Joan Collins ever good? I think so. Pauline Collins certainly deserves better material than this - honestly. Franco Nero invites her back to his room, and she just gets up and walks out of the restaurant... before they've eaten anything mind you. Then she knocks on his door... Cut to - Later. he's on the floor, dead. What in the name of Wilder??

The Shop Around the Corner (1940 Ernst Lubitsch)

I've decided I'm not especially a fan of Margaret Sullavan, and the whole mystery relationship is a bit trying, really; Sam Raphaelson's adaptation of Miklos Laszlo's play 'Parfumerie' puts the couple in the spotlight, but the play originally was more interested in the store's boss and his relationships with the others.

Still, you can't object to Felix Bressart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Shildkraut and especially William Tracy as Pepi.

Hatari! (1962 Howard Hawks)

Wonderful though long safari action-comedy, in which all the animal captures were filmed with the actors - the rhino escaping and being re-captured was for real. There's some scary camera moments of the rhino smashing into the trucks, and one shot of the camera fixed at ground level to the side of the jeep with the rhino alongside - I hope that camera wasn't manned.

And then clearly those baby elephants loved 'Dallas' (Elsa Matinella) - this nicknaming of the (strong) female characters is a very Hawksian thing - we also have a 'Brandy' Michele Girardon. It makes a great ending.

That rocket which fires the net over the tree was also done for real, in one take, by a very nervous technician!

Joining this multi-cultural cast are Hardy Kruger, Red Buttons, Gerard Blain, Bruce Cabot, Valentin de Vargas. And John Wayne - who really is sitting up front on the jeep, and roping Rhino. It was photographed by Russell Harlan in Tanganyika.

Top Boy - Season 3 (2019 Ronan Bennett, Daniel West)

The greenest show on Netflix. UK's The Wire. And I kept thinking of Shakespeare - families, friendships, betrayals, romance, tragedy, gang warfare. It's a good and powerful show.

The language used is of course entirely contemporary. The constant search for 'food' to make 'peas', the various uses of 'fam / cuz / bro', 'ends' (neighbourhood), 'yard' (home), 'spice' (fake weed), 'man dem' (group of friends; gang) etc.

Eno provides the ambient music. It's not often you have to complain that the Eno is too loud.

Ashley Walters is charismatic, Kane Robinson (rapper Kano) is not Noel Clarke (you can tell by the end he's sick of the whole thing).

Rest of distinguished cast: above: Hope Ikpoku Jr., Micheal Ward, Araloyin Ushunremi; Keiyon Cook his mate who becomes a dealer, Little Simz (carer, also in Ill Manors), Shone Romulus (Dris), Jasmine Jobson (Jaq) and Saffron Hocking (her sister), Lisa Dwan  (Lizzie the supplier), Kadeem Ramsay.

Directed and green photography by Reinaldo Marcus Green and Joe Anderson (first three), Nia DaCosta and Chloe Thomson (The Long Song and Ellen)(next two), Brady Hood and Adam Scarth (next two), Aneil Karia and Tina Yang (last three). 'Bonfire Night' is a great title for a searing episode.

It deals with tons of issues but always with plot and characters first; in that respect it works more successfully for me than The Morning Show.

Looper (2012 Rian Johnson & scr)

Fairly bonkers (loopy?) story in grubby, dystopian future where Looper Joseph Gordon-Leavitt behaves rudely when his future self, Bruce Willis, appears, on a mission to change the future by killing a kid who will grow up to be the evil Rainmaker. Said kid and his mum played by Pierce Hagnon and Emily Blunt, who doesn't appear for fifty minutes. Meanwhile loads of other loopers - significantly Noah Sega, who I thought I recognised from somewhere, but didn't - captained by Jeff Daniels, pursue them. Paul Dano's in it too, along with Piper Perabo, and Qing Xu.

Quite nicely done. Camera: Steve Yedlin.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993 Nora Ephron & co-scr)

We only watched this a year ago, and i kicked off the jottings with 'Love the long scene in the car with Meg Ryan listening (and reacting) to the radio interview with Tom Hanks and his son Ross Malinger (the interviewer is Caroline Aaron). It's a good screenplay by Ephron, David Ward (Steelyard Blues and The Sting) and Jeff Arch from the latter's story.'

This is the highlight of the film, Aaron being a great vocal presence. She's Shirley in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and lots and lots of TV, as well as Deconstructing Harry.

Disappointed in Denver. 'Every time I'm about to reach orgasm he makes himself a sandwich.'
'Why don't you make him a sandwich beforehand?'

Note faces of Ryan and Hanks when they do finally meet atop the Empire State Building, even as they're walking in to the lift, curious, exploratory faces...

This is better than the much-referenced An Affair to Remember.

Soundtrack of old classics helps.

I thought it showed Hanks as a generous actor, letting the kid have his scenes.. That may be true, but I later found out Hanks was in a right sulk throughout, thinking the kid had all the best lines!

The Morning Show (2019 Created by Kerry Ehrin and Jay Carson)

Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Karen Pittman, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle), Bel Powley, Jack Davenport, Martin Short, Fred Melamed.

A topical show in which there's plenty of stuff about women in power and the #MeToo debate (Short plays a sort of Polanski type figure) but woven through the story, which has threatened morning TV anchor Jen impulsively hiring outspoken jaded journalist Reese to be her co-host (both exec produced at a hands-on level). It touches on everything - couple who are just going out together have to justify whether one of them was coercing the other - 'we didn't' - fuck off!

It takes until episode eight to go back in time to Carell's birthday celebrations, a sexist environment, and his sort-of-rape of a girl in Vegas - an odd scene - we both thought she should have told him to fuck off - ends with Weinstein case breaking... This is Gugu Mbatha-Raw doing a great American accent (she was brought up in Oxfordshire); she's come a long way since Belle, but was in plenty before that, debuting in Holby City in 2005...

Apple TV's first original release, oddly not given out as a box set but in weekly chunks. How old school!

Reese runs a book group and when she finds interesting material, options it! Led to an interesting discussion about how powerful Bette Davis was...

The showrunner is Kerry Ehrin who produced the five series Psycho prequel Bates Motel. Finally, it perhaps is slightly overbalanced by issues-to-plot.

Se Incontri Sartana Pregi per la Tua Morte / If You Meet Sartana... Pray for Your Death (1968 'Frank Kramer' aka Gianfranco Parolini)

What a catchy title. Perhaps though should have been called 'If You Meet This Film, Run Away'.

The zoom lens abounds in rubbishy spaghetti, badly directed, with one or two interesting touches (the four barrelled derringer, the twisty card thing which turns out to be a cylinder for said pistol). Luckily the bad guys are very bad shots. Lots of extras, lots of horses, lots of scenes of bad guys right behind Sartana but still failing to either kill or catch him.

Really very badly acted by Gianni Garko, William Berger, Sydney Chaplin (Charlie's brother), Klaus Kinski.

Films / TV of the Year 2019

Roma. Outstanding. The biggest intimate film. And then going out on Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood...

The Before trilogy.

BlackkKlansman.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes - with the extras piecing the film into one glorious whole.

King of Thieves. Great cast.

Words and Pictures.

Greed. Four hour restored version. One of the great silents. And So This Is Paris. Almost lost silent Lubitsch gem.

First Man.

The Mule.

The Sisters Brothers / Hell Or High Water.

Marriage Story.

Patrick Melrose. Heart-rending Cumberbatch. The Virtues. Give Stephen Graham awards. (And one to Meadows for being so searingly honest.)

Fleabag II / Home. Fleabag was a safe bet but Home came out of nowhere. And Killing Eve... Jodie Comer...

Atlanta: Robbin' Season.

Modern Love.

Giri / Haji.

A year for watching box sets: Morse, Lewis, Endeavour, (still the best thing on TV), The West Wing (having never seen it before), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Peaky Blinders.

Worst: Under the Yum Yum Tree. Luv. The Boss. How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Wine Country. TV's Gold Digger and Sticks and Stones.

Special mention to Anna Meredith for her weird score for Living With Myself.

Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar (2019 Sam Yates)

In 1928 Agatha goes to Iraq to 'research romance'. I know, it doesn't sound like a very likely premise, and Q agreed the sex and bad language was somehow not appropriate. That couple that keep having sex noisily - I don't know how that's supposed to work, really. The writer is Tom Dalton.

Lyndsey Marshal, who we may recognise from Garrow's Law and TV's Titanic and Rome is the sleuthing writer who has affair with that Mr Jonah Hauer-King again. Jack Deam we recognised, and it turns out it was from Shameless. Some other people are in it, too, including Stanley Meadows, who's after oil all along - should have guessed that, really. Lyndsey aside, the acting's none too convincing throughout.

It was filmed in Malta. The film was not made with the approval or endorsement of the Agatha Christie estate. The bit of truth to it is she did meet the younger Max Mallowan in Iraq (actually in 1930) and they were happily married until her death.

Paddington 2 (2017 Paul King)

'I want a Christmas film' Q said. I told her again we weren't watching Home Alone. The Griswolds was countered, and rebutted with The Shop Around the Corner - this was felt 'too old'.

Luckily Framestore connected me to this, which although not a CF is joyously funny and imaginative, and becomes a Wes Anderson film halfway through (always a good thing - imagine if HP and the DHs had become one for example - much better).

Hugh Grant is very funny. We'd just seem him on Graham Norton telling great stories completely deadpan.

Wonderful, funny script (King and Simon Farnaby) and inventiveness.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Yawns Part One (2010 David Yates)

Has a good beginning (several Harry Potters attacked in the air) and ending (at Bellatrix Lestrange's), but the rest is dull (apart from Ben Hibon's still stunning animation). It's another over-inflated film (seem to be a lot of these at the moment), and some of the more interesting material - Harry finding the sword - seems badly handled; Harry and Hermione dancing - sweet, but cut it.

Talking of that animation - which should on its own have won some kind of award - my favourite bit is the brother who's hanged himself, and then Death pulls him up out of the ?set like he's a marionette - which does link to Q's earlier, splendid thought that the inspiration may have been Sicilian puppet theatre.

Good things are: Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, new Stuart Craig sets, Dobbie, Helena Bonham Carter's superb villainy, beautiful Eduardo Serra photography and Alexandre Desplat music... and the way all of Hermione's jump places are her family's English holiday sites.

Ratcatcher (1999 Lynne Ramsay & scr)

Lynne's gritty yet impressive, intimate debut, grimy goings on in Glasgow alternate with flashes of lyricism (and a fantasy sequence involving a mouse's balloon journey to the moon). Did he kill himself, or end up moving to the new house by the field? I rather think the former.

William Eadie, Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews.

The moment where Tommy gets knifed (off camera) is horribly well done - just the comb (blade) coming out of the back pocket - reminds me of something in early Polanski.

Photographed by Alwin Kuchler.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019 Quentin Tarantino & scr)

I must admit I faced this film with some trepidation, not wishing to face a Manson-Tate killing reenactment. I'm glad QT didn't go that way - in fact at the end, when Brad Pitt is smashing in the face of one of the cult, I strongly was getting the feeling that's what Quentin would have liked to have done to those people.

It's a marvel of a 1969 recreation, from the constant TV to those effortless street scenes. And Quentin is such a good writer. He will start you off on some merry tale, then switch horses in mid-stream without a moment's notice. Here people are constantly watching themselves on TV (memorably Sharon Tate - Margot Robbie - with her dirty feet in the cinema) but he goes further than that by then having Rick Dalton (Leo) appearing in the film-within-a-film, a joyous spaghetti western (seamlessly interrupted by retakes).

The scene on the ranch is memorably scary - we both had a Birds moment. And talking of references - the ending - the screaming woman in the pool - Barbara Steele??
The camera in the back of the car - very Truffaut...
'A cowboy film in Rome...' The spaghetti westerns...
The way the camera moves between the houses..

With - Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley (Fosse/Verdun), Timothy Olyphant, Julia Butters (the child actor - what a great scene!). Austin Butler (Tex), Bruce Dern, Dakota Fanning, Mike Moh (Bruce Lee - what a great scene!), Luke Perry, Damian Lewis, Al Pacino, Nicholas Hammond (Sam Wanamaker), Rafal Zawlerucha (Polanski), Lena Dunham, Mikey Madison (who we recognise from Better Things).

Photographed by Robert Richardson, edited by Fred Raskin, production design Barbara Ling (less CGI than I thought - real streets - even Starbucks agreed to have their shop front changed, which never happens), costumes Arianne Phillips. These names and Quentin's will all be coming up in the awards nominations.

Want to watch two hour 40 minute film again already - see, Marty? See?

And the dog.. Can't stop adding to review, can't stop using ellipses... The scene with Brad on acid and Tex with the gun is so funny.

In a funny way it's un-Tarantinoish - there's no rediscovery of a really catchy song, no juicily quotable dialogue exchanges...

Of the various films referenced, hadn't seen George Peppard Pendulum nor Tate's own Wrecking Crew.

...

The Killers (1946 Robert Siodmak)

A tense beginning in which two killers turn up at a small town diner, announcing they're going to kill 'The Swede' - within 12 minutes a shadowy Burt Lancaster has been murdered. That is the entirety of Hemingway's short story, published in 1927. Insurance man Edmond O'Brien then takes up the story and - Citizen Kane like - begins to piece it together with other people's flashbacks. A twisty tale follows, imagined by Anthony Veiller and John Huston (the latter claims he didn't take a screen credit for fear of upsetting Warner Bros.) and (also uncredited) Richard Brooks.

Without knowing who did what, the concept of the disparate group of criminals brought together to pull off a robbery and then falling apart is very recognisably a Huston scenario.

Albert Dekker is the criminal organiser, Ava Garner his girl, Sam Levene the cop, Vince Barnett the older member of the gang, Virginia Christine (Sam's wife), Jack Lambert ('Dum-Dum'), Charles McGraw and William Conrad (the killers), Jeff Corey ('Blinky'), Queenie Smith (hotel), Phil Brown (garage assistant).

Good composition as story-telling: The Swede has fallen for Kitty Collins (who doesn't seem at all interested), his girlfriend Lilly is aware what's going on while ignoring the attempts of 'Blinky' to chat her up

Loved the hotel lady's flashback that goes straight into present rather than back to the story-teller. Siodmak's direction is assured.

Mikloz Rosza's four note motif has sadly become so much copied as a slightly comic danger announcer that it seems corny in suspense moments, as does death bed flashback, but these are small carps, or minnows, if you prefer.

Produced by tough ex-journalist Mark Hellinger for Universal. Photographed by Elwood Bredell.

Last seen almost exactly ten years ago - Christmas Eve 2009 - when I thought that it predated Memento by some way! Seems an odd choice for Christmas Eve, but in a way, it doesn't at all. In fact in the old days you'd expect Christmas late night telly to be full of old classics including films noir, but now you have to devise your own schedule. I like Film Noir Thursdays.