Napoleon Dynamite (2004 Jared Hess & co-scr)

Written with his brother Jerusha, this is a real oddball oddity, from credits written on various plates of unappealing food, which recur throughout the film.

With his downward glances, sudden eating and drinking moves and generally odd ways of doing things (even, in sweet post-credits scene - riding a horse), Jon Heder is definitely a unique screen creation. His mate Pedro hardly expresses himself, either (Efren Ramirez). Also very odd are Napoleon's brother Aaron Ruell (who ends up with tall black Shondrella Avery, also in the Secret Life of Bees) and uncle Jon Gries. Tina Majorino is the photographer.

One of those films in which it wouldn't hurt to know where and when you are from the off - it's clearly the early eighties. It was filmed in Idaho. The score is very bizarre too - sounds like it's all played on one of those home organs.

One of Edgar Wright's comedy recommendations. The Hesses also made jack Black film Nacho Libre, Gentlemen Broncos, Don Verdean (with Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan and Will Forte, but poorly reviewed) and lately Masterminds (not written, mixed reviews again).

They Came Together (2014 David Wain & co-scr)

Generally funny pastiche of rom coms occasionally pushes the silly button too often but mostly works.

Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper. Written by Michael Showlater and Wain.

One of Edgar Wright's comedy suggestions has very mixed feedback.

Showlater is not I think any relation of Max. He created the Wet Hot American Summer franchise and directed The Big Sick.

Arrivano Django e Sartana... è la fine / Django and Sartana Show Down in the West (1970 'Dick Spitfire' aka Demofilo Fidani)

You have to love the pseudonym 'Dick Spitfire'... It suits this pile of crap, which features some of the worst dubbing and dialogue ever. It's a film of staggering ineptitude and banality, featuring grown men hurling themselves around the place, and not a drop of blood.

'Hunt Powers' (Jack Betts), 'Chet Davis' (Franco Borelli), Gordon Mitchell and 'Simone Blondell' (Simonetta Vitelli) appear.

It has to be seen to be believed.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004 Wes Anderson & co-scr)

Written with Noah Baumbach. What's the story about? A man bonds with his supposed son, who then dies. (It turns out he isn't.) But all the crew support him and he's vindicated in search for quasi-mythical jaguar shark. Incredibly divisive movie - looking at IMDB you seem to get as many 10/10 as 1/10. Packed with amusing detail, held together by committed performance from Bill Murray. Unmistakably from the bizarre imagination of Wes Anderson, filmed in his usual lateral style with groovy colours to match.

Filmed in Italy and at Cinecitta.

With Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Kate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, Bud Cort, Seu Jorge, Robyn Cohen, Waris Ahluwalia.

The moment they descend to the sea floor to that tinny Amstrad-type music just shouldn't work, yet somehow it does.

Moneyball (2011 Bennett Miller)

Or, how an underdog football team made good, territory that we've been in before, despite writing by Steven Zaillian and re-writing by Aaron Sorkin (based on Stan Chervin's story, itself based on Michael Lewis's book).

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill work; with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt, lots of other people. It's a cast of thousands. Scenes of conflict with team of older managers and contract negotiations work best.

Screenplay, Pitt and Hill were Oscar nominated.

Wally Pfister's images are good, as is Mychael Danna's music.

Kerris Dorsey plays Brad's daughter and the song she sings is 'The Show' by Lenka.

Get Low (2009 Aaron Schneider)

Q loved this film - for me, it didn't quite spark. Robert Duvall arranges his own funeral party as a way of getting a past misdeed off his chest. Bill Murray is in unusually subdued form. With Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black (Promised Land, Jarhead), Bill Cobbs.

Story by Chris Provenzano and Scott Seeke, written by Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell.

Beautifully shot by Don Boyd, who was the series DP of Without A Trace.

She's Funny That Way (2014 Peter Bogdanovich & co-scr)

Brilliant screenplay written with Louise Stratten.

As well as Imogen and Jen being great, take-away this time was how good Kathryn Hahn is.

Was the squirrel moving a little nod to Wes?

It took $6 million globally - didn't even warrant a UK cinema release, barely received one in the US...

Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928 Charles Reisner)

Starts off fairly low key - Keaton comes home to work on steamboat with dad Ernest Torrence, has fallen for his rival's daughter Marion Byron (father Tom McGuire).

When the high winds kick off, then we're in the dizzying heights of outrageous comedy. As Keaton starts travelling around by bed, things falling down around him, I had that shock of realisation that maybe Eternal Sunshine came from here...

Awesome stuff, that you know had to be done for real e.g. Keaton being picked up in the wind, attached to a tree... Dangerous filming, amazing, ends on a great joke, Keaton entirely deadpan throughout, of course.

Photographed by Bert Haines and Devereaux Jennings entirely in deep focus and written by Carl Harbaugh.

A United Artists picture.

According to Peter Bogdanovich, in 'Movie of the Week', Keaton "cowrote, coproduced, codirected, and starred in it, but (unlike Charlie Chaplin, and as a kind of rebuke to him), took credit only as actor."

The Wackness (2008 Jonathan Levine & scr)

1994. Drug dealer befriends his analyst, then falls in love with his daughter. Didn't think Josh Peck was up to the leading role; the others are Ben Kingsley and Olivia Thirlby. Famke Janssen is the doctor's wife, Peck's parents are Talia Balsam and David Wohil. With Mary-Kate Olsen, Jane Adams (Hung), Method Man, Aaron Yoo.

Shot in a sombre brown palette by Petra Korner in Panavision.

He's earned $26,000 - but that's not nearly enough to bail his dad out...

Liked the street beggar's sign 'Money needed for alcohol research', and the ad slogan below:

Duffy (1968 Robert Parrish)

Despite great cast - Jameses Coburn, Fox and Mason, and Suzannah York - an unendurable and endless feat of rubbish, killed by its maddeningly tiresome score, unredeemed even by great Otto Heller photography of Tangiers. First half hour seemed fine, then it went stone cold. Started to go into double speed around the time of the robbery... that wasn't fast enough... in triple speed, I still understood that apparently it's possible to sink a helicopter by shooting it a few times with a hand gun. The ending looks to be one of those double crosses...

Of main interest as an early screenplay by Donald Cammell - surprised he got another gig after this.

The best thing to happen was while (not) watching it I came across The Big Gundown, which Maltin describes as the best non-Leone spaghetti western (Donati, Morricone). I added it to my wishlist - and found it was already there...

Turner and Hooch (1989 Roger Spottiswoode)

We guessed 1988 from the music - not bad.

Whole film is interaction between two great stars - Tom Hanks and Beasley the Dog. Hanks always worked hard, put his everything into all his films. The first meeting of the dog to 2001 music reminded me this is one of Hanks' favourite films.

Beasley vs. Gogglebox's Tom Malone!

Hanks' head shake copy of the dog is funny - shown from the side in the film, but from the front in the outtakes - -odd.

This is great fun, though has a large number of writers (five) and editors (four). Noticed the editing in good finale showdown, though Nick's Golden Rule #1 applies - never kill the dog.

With Mare Winningham, Craig T Nelson, Reginald VelJohnson.

But. There's something weird about this film, like the whole thing is cropped. It isn't, therefore Spottiswoode (and cameraman Adam Greenberg) shoot the entire film in close-ups... It's dreadful.

Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (2020)

Based on the biography 'On Her Own Ground' by A'Lelia Bundles (her great great grand-daughter), Written by Nicole Jefferson Asher, Elle Johnson, Janine Sherman Barrois and Tyger Williams.

Octavia Spencer is - as always - fabulious. Fabulious. Yes - why not? She's supported by Tiffany Haddish (daughter), Carmen Ojogo (English; True Detective 3, Selma), Kevin Carroll (solicitor), Blair Underwood (husband), Garrett Morris (father-in-law, This Is Us), J. Alphonse Nicholson (no good son-in-law).

Why Carmen has it in for her in such a big way isn't really explained and is annoying.

A Netflix original four-parter. Some of the editing in part one is way over the top, but seems to settle down. Some imaginative dance numbers, too. Liked the use of new music, though felt they should have stuck with black (no need for The White Stripes, for example).

The Big Heat (1953 Fritz Lang)

Good revenge thriller. Lone cop Glenn Ford with integrity faces corruption all around - goes to war with mob when his wife Jocelyn Brando is blown up.

Gloria Grahame famously has boiling coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin - she gets her own back..

With Alexander Scourby, Jeanette Nolan, Willis Bouchey, Robert Burton, Adam Williams (other hood; North By Northwest), Carolyn Jones. Photographed by Charles Lang, made for Columbia this time.

Cloak and Dagger (1946 Fritz Lang)

More eye-opening violence from Lang... There's a tough fight between Gary Cooper and a Nazi as they go to rescue elderly professor Helen Thimig - then one of the Nazis shoots her, executes her.. It's actually shocking. Later there's another great tough fight with a man in an alley, featuring karate moves, which Lang learned working with OSS advisers to the film. Then a little boy's ball bounces to the feet of the dead man... next minute Cooper's got the corpse propped up, pretending to read a newspaper. It's got good tense scenes, slightly bogs down with romance with conflicted Italian spy Lili Palmer (film claims it's her debut, but she was in Hitch's Secret Agent ten years before; she was German, ironically). Robert Alda is very charismatic as US soldier fighting with them.

Lang shot a completely different ending in which rescued but ailing professor Vladimir Sokoloff dies, then they discover the remains of a nuclear factory, and Cooper says something like "This is Year One of the Atomic Age, and God help us if we can keep this secret from the world..."

Lang was at Warner Brothers for this one (didn't seem contracted to one studio), thus we have a good Max Steiner score and dark Sol Polito images, and a tree I swear I recognised from another Warners picture...

Good pace, generally, good touches, great that the German and Italian is in there properly. A cat, two nuns who aren't nuns. There's something about watching a Fritz Lang picture that's like experiencing a nightmare.

Also I think I can now categorise an archetypal Lang bad guy, from the twenties on - a man in a hat and fully buttoned up coat who has a cigarette stuck in his mouth.

I observed the first time we watched it (December 2011) that it could be a Bond blueprint, down to the score...

Ozark - Season 1 (2017 Creators Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams)

A money launderer and his family relocate to the popular lake area of the Ozarks, Missouri, forced into working for a violent cartel boss. There they fall foul of the local hard man drug dealer and his psychotic wife. These people are played by Jason Bateman (who directed some of the episodes), Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner, Esai Morales, Peter Mullan and Lisa Emery.

With Julia Garner, Jordana Spiro (hotel owner), Jason Butler Harner (detective, Changeling), Harris Yulin, Charlie Tahan, Marc Menchaca (gay brother with the whiskers).

A Netflix original 10 hour series. It's very green. Quite watchable. I guess it's sort of in the Breaking Bad model (family dragged into crime). The moment the kid points a semi-automatic rifle at the gangster, and then no one mentions it at all afterwards, is funny.

Also, Linney actually looks older in the ten years ago flashback.

Man Hunt (1941 Fritz Lang)

In 1933, Lang was approached by Goebbels to run the Third Reich's film programme. He agreed to everything, then immediately fled to Paris, leaving all he owned behind. Which I doubt made him very popular with the Nazis. I wonder then, in his later career in the US, whether he was constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering who might be a Nazi spy, who might be coming to assassinate him...

This comes to mind watching Man Hunt, which admittedly Lang did not originate - it was a finished script by Dudley Nichols (an adaptation of Geoffrey Household's novel 'Rogue Male', also a 1976 TV movie with Robert Powell, adapted by Frederic Raphael) - about a man (played by Gary Cooper) who is relentlessly pursued by Nazi spies throughout almost the whole picture.

There's definitely a toughness, a violence, that is inherent in Lang's WWII pics - an anger. Which is good. But this film also includes a couple of real sweethearts in the shape of helpful cabin boy Roddy Macdowell, and prostitute Joan Bennett. She's a prostitute? Yeah, apparently. I don't think it matters much one way or the other now, but of course they weren't allowed to depict her as such. In fact, in the last scene she's in, where she deliberately comes over like one on the bridge, so the policeman will be distracted by her - Zanuck didn't want that scene filmed at all. So Lang and cameraman Arthur Miller had to essentially fake that set - a bit of cobbles, a lamp-post and a string of ingeniously placed lights.

Lang himself, talking to PB: "Everybody knows I like women very, very much and I resent any man who treats women as though they were lower than he...And this part Joan Bennett played, of the little streetwalker who falls in love with Pidgeon - a love that is doomed from the beginning - I must admit, had all my heart." OK, her accent is diabolical, from the Dick Van Dyke school, but the performance itself is indeed touching. (They made several other films together, including Scarlet Street.)

Talking of Miller, triple Oscar winner in the 1940s, he was proud of two shots. The first is that boom shot at the beginning with the camera moving down through the trees until it sees the foot-print - that was actually filmed in reverse. The other was the shot where Pidgeon is trapped in the cave and he sees Sanders' face through the hole. The hole was shot and lit perfectly first, then a second exposure was made of Sander's face, so that both look pin-sharp.

Also in the film are John Carradine, Ludwig Stossel, Heather Thatcher and Frederick Worlock. The music's by Alfred Newman and it was made by 20th Century Fox.

Ministry of Fear (1943, released '44 Fritz Lang)

Paramount offered Lang this Graham Greene adaptation, and he was keen... But then hated Seton Miller's screenplay interpretation of it. I don't know why - I think it's terrific fun, has an outstanding beginning... A clock. Ray Milland emerges from an asylum and attends a village fete, where the clairvoyant gives him the weight of the cake. Despite objections, he takes it away with him and shares it with a blind man on a train (Eustace Wyatt, for the record), who isn't blind, and who then assaults him during an air raid, stealing the cake...

Marjorie Reynolds is the appealing Austrian he bumps into, Carl Esmond her brother. Then we have lazy PI Erskine Sandford, seance thrower Hillary Brooke, Inspector Percy Waram, Dan Duryea (sporting an enormous and threatening pair of tailor scissors!) and Alan Napier.

Music by Victor Young, photographed by Henry Sharp.

We've seen Reynolds in the Mitchum film His Kind of Woman (1951)... otherwise, it's tons of B movies.

It's got a wacky, dream-like feel to it - those big scissors and weird door bell exemplify it.

Saving Mr Banks (2013 John Lee Hancock)

Yes... we seem to be in the midst of a Tom Hanks retrospective... still haven't seen Saving Private Ryan...

Emma Thompson owns the film, of course... But when Hanks kicks in, it's solid fried gold.

"We can't make the film without the colour red." Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, with lots of back story running through, featuring Colin Farrell and Ruth Wilson (and Annie Rose Buckley).

And Giamatti.. A brilliant actor, under-used.

A most satisfactory entertainment, shot by John Schwartzman, edited by Mark Livolsi and scored by Thomas Newman.

Question, though - you would have thought the writers might have made some mention of how terrible Mrs. Banks would have definitely found Dick Van Dyke's accent.

Philadelphia (1993 Jonathan Demme)

Written with edge by Ron Nyswaner, and directed with a very intimate intensity by Demme, who keeps putting the actors so they're almost looking straight into the lens at you.

Hanks took the plunge - he went basically from comedies like Sleepless in Seattle straight into this... and won the Oscar. He's great. With Denzel Washington, Antonio Banderas, Jason Robards, Joanne Woodward, Mary Steenburgen, Bradley Whitford and Demme mentor Roger Corman.

Shot by Tak Fujimoto and edited by Craig McKay.

Loved the bit where Denzel tweaks the baby's nose.

The aria is 'La Mamma Morta' from 'Andrea Chenier' by Umbero Giordano, sung by Maria Callas.

Hanks in court kept reminding us of Niles in Frasier.

Angels Over Broadway (1940 Ben Hecht & scr, prod)

And that's the problem - Hecht is not writing for Hitch, Selznick or Wellman, but for himself, and what emerges is a filmed play, essentially taking place in two locales - a garishly designed nightclub, and a hotel in which a card game takes place (OK - there's a theatre scene too, appropriately enough).

It does have a satisfying conclusion, and is well acted, particularly by Thomas Mitchell as the booze-soaked playwright, with Douglas Fairbanks, Rita Hayworth and John Qualen, and of course it's beautifully shot by Lee Garmes, who's billed as co-director.

A Columbia release. Music by George Antheil.

Scarface (1932 Howard Hawks)

A terrific film, written by Ben Hecht, made in New York. Hawks: "I found Paul Muni in the Jewish Theatre.. Osgood Perkins I saw in a play.. George Raft I saw at a prizefight, Ann Dvorak was a chorus girl down at MGM, Karen Morley went around with some fellow I know, Boris Karloff said "I don't care how small it is - I'm going to have a part" '. Uh huh. That's how you cast a film, apparently. Well, it is if you're the Silver Fox. It's his favourite film, precisely because they had to do it all without help, find the cast, build a studio...

Also really liked Vince Barnett (pictured below) as the thick assistant, who eventually manages to take down the identity of a caller, before dying.

Of a key scene between incestuous Muni and sister Dvorak, Hawks was unhappy that you could see the two actors - Lee Garmes went away and returned with "a pair of curtains that had a pronounced pattern that the light barely came through. He turned out all the front light and just shot it with back light." Garmes used "half the light of an ordinary cameraman.. We had more light in the houselights than we did on set." It is beautifully shot.

It was based on the Borgias! Muni kills his best pal - Raft - not realising he's married his sister the day before. It's very zippy, and influential (there's various bits which could easily have influenced The Godfather).

The 'X' motif throughout - 'X marks the spot'.

Apollo 13 (1995 Ron Howard)

Written by William Broyles and Al Reinert, from Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger's book 'Lost Moon' (Lovell appears briefly as a naval commander), it's a tense experience, well overdue, distinguished by good acting (Hanks, Gary Sinise, Kathleeen Quinlan and Ed Harris are all particularly watchable).

With Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon. Well edited by Dan Hanley and Mike Hill, photographed by Dean Cundey in Panavision.

A KC-135 airplane was used to film the zero gravity scenes. It's special effects are very convincing for the time. It's a bit of an epic.

I was beginning to think that Hanks was failure-proof, but there are one or two less successful films such as The Circle, Captain Phillips, Da Vinci films, The Ladykillers.. Should watch Cloud Atlas I guess...

Larry Crowne (2011 Tom Hanks & co-scr)

A good job by Hanks the director - I liked the way his house and property all receded into the distance in a wing mirror - he wrote it with Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

It's somewhat meat-free, but enjoyable, as Hanks goes back to school to become more employable - the irony is that the college-educated colleague who's fired him himself becomes a pizza delivery guy.

Enlivened by great performances from Gugu Mbatha-Raw (in the new 1970 Miss World film Misbehaviour) and Julia Roberts, who's good doing pissed. Plus other good performances from Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji Henson, Bryan Cranston, George Takei (very funny), Wilmer Valderrama (good as somewhat possessive boyfriend), Rami Malek, Grace Gummer, Rita Wilson and Pam Grier.

Photographed by Philippe Rousselot.

It's a yes this time, enjoyed it much more than before.

The Good Liar (2019 Bill Condon)

Slightly guessable con game story written by Jeffrey Hatcher, from Nicholas Searle novel. Condon's third collaboration with Ian McKellan is enjoyable. He makes a relishable villain.

With Russell Tovey, Jim Carter, Mark Lewis Jones, Lucien Msamati (Kiri, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency). Music: Carter Burwell. Photography: Tobias Schleissler (Mr Holmes, Dreamgirls).

But, this is the world we live in now: Mirren was nominated in the Alliance of Women Film Journalists in the category 'Actress defying age and ageism' and McKellan was nominated in 'The Queerties' awards...

Son of Paleface (1952 Frank Tashlin & co-scr)

So - Tashlin got to direct - the result is that some of the jokes are more cartoony - e.g. Hope drinking a huge drink, then his body spinning like a top, neck sinking into body, steam emitting from ears etc. Or the ice rink oasis scene through which he drives - when he comes out the other side, the two vultures have become penguins. Plus you have a couple of comic guest appearances (by Bing Crosby and Cecil B. de Mille).

On the minus side, there are far too many unnecessary songs, which drag it down, and the one-liners are pretty routine. So overall I'm not sure it holds up to the the reputation of being funnier than the original.

That kind of 'cute' growl he has seems to have made its way into Austin Powers.

Shot in Technicolor by Harry Wild.

The Paleface (1948 Norman Z Mcleod)

Written by Edmund L Hartmann and Frank Tashlin. Bob Hope and Jane Russell (essentially playing the male western role) are the whole deal. Never realised quite how much the early Woody Allen persona is based on Hope's.

Tashlin (talking to Bogdanovich): "I wrote a picture called The Paleface. After seeing a preview of it I could've shot Norman McLeod. I'd written it as a satire on the Virginian [1929, Victor Fleming], and it was completely botched. I could've killed that guy. And I realised then that I must direct my own stuff."

Um. It's kinda fun, in a juvenile way.

A Paramount film shot in Technicolor by Ray Rennahan.

IMDB lists Sharon Lucas as Russell's stunt double (also on Son of Paleface), confirmed in 'Hollywood Stunt Performers 1910s - 1970s, A Biographical Dictionary' by Gene Scott Freese.

Unforgiven (1948, released 1949 George King)

Blackpool. Chemist Douglass Montgomery (The Way to the Stars) is unhappily married to Patricia Burke, falls for spunky fairground worker Hazel Court (who we admire for joining in a scrap early on with some vivacity). The wife won't give him a divorce, is running around with Garry Marsh (who we just saw in I See a Dark Stranger); a young Kenneth Griffith has his own score to settle (it was by no means his debut).

Also familiar: Ronald Shiner (cheeky chappie assistant; the 1938 They Drive By Night), Eliot Makeham (Court's father; Doctor in the House, The Yellow Balloon, Trio, the organist in A Canterbury Tale, Storm in a Teacup, Rome Express), Frederick Leister (doctor of chemistry; Quartet, On the Night of the Fire), Andrew Cuickshank (inspector; the 1959 39 Steps), Michael Medwin (cabbie; The Duchess, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, O Lucky Man!, The Sandwich Man, The Longest Day, Doctor at Large, Trio), Peggy Ann Clifford (fair worker; Brothers in Law, Kinds Hearts and Coronets) and Peter Jones. Phew!

Don't really know King, writers Katherine Strueby and Val Valentine, photographer Hone Glendinning nor composer George Melachrino.

It's not bad, has a slightly lacklustre ending atop the Tower; we were surprised by the (reasonably) happy ending. It's quite bold in a way American films weren't then allowed to be, i.e. it's quite clear he's sleeping with her. And the scene with Montgomery in close up and the fairground wheels going on in dissolve is quite an effective turmoil image - though unlikely to be anything new.

Ride Lonesome (1959 Budd Boetticher & prod)

Extremely taut (and very short) western, written by Burt Kennedy.

Bounty hunter Randolph Scott needs to take killer James Best (Shock Corridor) to Santa Cruz for hanging; en route, he is joined by Pernell Roberts and James Coburn, who also want the killer so they can claim amnesty for past crimes; plus widow Karen Steele, who knows how to take care of herself with a rifle. Attempting to join this merry party are a group of Indians, who want the woman, and the killer's brother, gang led by Lee Van Cleef. It seems he and Scott have unfinished business, leading us to an ominous looking hanging tree...

Why is it in films of this sort that when the Indians are shot, their horse invariably falls over as well? I suppose it looks more dramatic.

It was shot in California (Santa Cruz is a little south of San Francisco), by Charles Lawton in Cinemascope and Eastmancolor. Music's by Heinz Roehm.

This sweet and funny interchange between Roberts and Coburn reminds us Kennedy went on to make comedy westerns like Support Your Local Sheriff:

"How long have we been riding together?"
"Two years."
"Five years. And I can tell you now you won't be working for me."
"I won't?"
"We'll be partners, straight down the line."
"Well how come?"
" 'Cos I like you."
"You do? I never knew that."

Wonder if the girl followed them?

It was Coburn's debut. Columbia.

The Odd Couple (1968 Gene Saks)

So Matthau was in the Broadway version, opposite Art Carney, and won the Tony Award in 1965, when it began. Billy Wilder was allegedly in the frame as writer-director.

Monica Evans and Carole Shelley

Where Matthau breaks down in frustration made me laugh and laugh.

Photographed by Robert Hauser.

Pelle Erobreren / Pelle the Conqueror (1987 Bille August)

Based on the novel by Martin Andersen Nexø, written for the screen by August, Per Olov Enquist and Bjarne Reuter.

Pelle Hvenegaard is perfect as the boy who Max Von Sydow brings to Denmark in the hope of finding work - unfortunately, he's a weak man, we learn fairly early on, and the boy has to forge ahead in the world in his own way, ultimately rejecting what's around him for a better life - in America, or so he dreams.

And this comes about through various incidents that confront the couple, including a shipwreck, class bullies, a fair and the castration of the farm owner. Well, he did have sex with his niece, who's only The Killing's Sofie Gråbøl!

Sympathetically lit by Jörgen Persson and scored by Stefan Nilsson.

It was the second film in one day featuring wild strawberries and milk. Max is wonderful too, as a bit of a shambling failure.

Won the Palme D'Or and the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

Det Sjunde Inseglet / The Seventh Seal (1957 Ingmar Bergman & scr)

These two startling images, photographed by Gunnar Fischer, open up Bergman's very accessible film; considering it deals with the Black Death and medieval fear and superstition, it's actually quite a lot of fun (and, with coronavirus doing the rounds, very topical). Max Von Sydow - continuing our little memorial retrospective - is charismatic playing chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot), but Gunnar Björnstrand as the squire is the pragmatic hero of the piece, adding earthy humour; and Nils Poppe is also winning as the vision-seeing actor. All the acting's good, actually; in addition we have Bibi Andersson (actor's wife), Inga Gill, Maud Hansson and Inga Landgré.

"It's too late to take a laxative for eternity troubles." Bergman used to be fun. And of course, you can't help watching the ending without thinking of The Meaning of Life.

It's a most impressive film. Need to watch Smiles of a Summer Night and Wild Strawberries next.

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

A beautifully made film - you could teach it in film school. QT is film school.

That scene between Brad Pitt and Mike Moh is set up in one, canny long take. Other single take moments abound. Spectacular camera-work, much use of crane shots.

It's a joy, the performances, camerawork (Robert Richardson's use of different lenses is fascinating on its own) and editing (Fred Raskin), music, production design, film references everywhere. An utter marvel. Oh yeah, the sound design is fabulous - Wylie Stateman. More about this here.

That fourth Italian film Rick's supposed to be in is Sergio Corbucci's Bersaglio Mobile / Death on the Run (1967) (he's earlier beautifully edited in to The Great Escape).

Use of 'Baby You're Out of Time' to Sharon Tate sequence is beautifully ironic. The whole film has a kind of scorching dramatic irony about it, even when you've seen it before.

Obviously I love Brad in this, but there is no way his performance is better than Hanks' in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. And whilst we're on the subject of awards, there's a good argument that Leo could have taken it over Joaquin...

We were still talking about it the next day. We think it might be Quentin's best film.

Haven't seen Three in the Attic, or They Came to Las Vegas.

Gun Crazy

In Cold Blood

Mississippi Mermaid

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood