National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985 Amy Heckerling)

Because Dana Hill was in this also. We were quite shocked to see the Pig in a Poke host snog her, thinking she was only a kid, but in fact she's old enough to have a boyfriend (William Zabka, bully from Karate Kid) and was in fact in real life twenty one!

This is fairly coarsely scripted (by John Hughes and Robert Klane) and made, with a fun gallery of guest stars (Eric Idle, Maureen Lipman, Robby Coltrane, Mel Smith, Paul Bartel). Everything is fairly predictable, with an enjoyable bike/car chase through various recognisable bits of Rome.

Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Jason Lively.

Best bit is highly sarcastic French waiter. To him 'Coke' is 'American Champagne'.

Shoot the Moon (1982 Alan Parker)

Seriously good, powerful, well-observed study of a couple (Finney & Keaton) splitting up and the effect on four children, always seems completely honest. Scene where enraged Finney bursts in and starts beating the eldest daughter Dana Hill I found really upsetting. And the effect on the younger three (Viveca Davis, Tracey Gold, Tina Yothers) is also beautifully studied.

Brilliant screenplay by Bo Goldman (Oscar winner for Melvin and Howard and Cuckoo's Nest).

Beautifully shot by Michael Seresin. Edited by Gerry Hambling.

With Nancy Allen, Peter Weller. The leads are as good as you'd expect.

Too close to reality for comfort to make it one we'll not be able to watch often.

Parker died last year, 76. The Life of David Gale was his last, in 2003. At one point, the kids are all singing a song from Fame, and there's a poster for Pink Floyd's The Wall on Dana's bedroom wall - he directed both films.

Sweet November (2001 Pat O'Connor)

Director of Cal, A Month in the Country, Stars and Bars, The January Man, Circle of Friends, The Ballroom of Romance.

Written by Herman Raucher, originally, for 1968 version with Sandy Dennis and Anthony Newley - which explains the fact that it still has a sort of sixties vibe to it in the wacky and unpredictable behaviour of the Charlize Theron character and San Francisco locations. (Specifically I was thinking The Owl and the Pussycat.) This version by Paul Yurick and Kurt Voelker.

It's a little difficult to buy into at first, until you know (or suspect) what's going on. Then it's rather sweet.

With Keanu Reeves, Jason Isaacs, Greg Germann, Frank Langella.

Photographed by Ed Lachmann, with a rather odd use of blue filters for the beginning and ending of days. Edited by Anne Coates, who I've suggested before was something of a romantic - more later.

The Karate Kid Part II (1986) and III (1989, John Avildsen)

Did Ralph Macchio have a stunt double? Did Sony buy Columbia? Why didn't the Japanese girls make it into III?

There isn't a pop song in earshot in II, instead an annoying overuse of Japanese flute, as we head to Okinawa, Myagi's old flame (and Miss Tokyo) Nobu McCarthy (Pacific Heights and much on TV) and a former friend who wants to kill him (Danny Kamekona), plus cute love interest for Kid Tamlyn Tomita (also lots of TV).

Then in III Macchio's filled out a bit, and we pick up with disgraced Cobra Kai leader Martin Kove and his nutty psycho millionaire buddy Thomas Ian Griffith, who becomes Kid's trainer, for a while. (There's some weird stuff with millionaire's personal secretary and chauffeur, who mysteriously disappear from the plot.) Kid has a completely platonic relationship (he seems to have less and less sex as the series continues) with Robyn Lively, and the pair go climbing into the Devil's Blender (or whatever it's called) to dig up Mr Miyagi's old bonzai - well we all know he's not going to be happy. Despite playing dirty, Kid naturally rises to the occasion and wins in the ring etc etc.

Sony bought Columbia in 1989. Avildsen takes co-editor credit on all three films. He made the Jack Lemmon film Save the Tiger before getting the Rocky gig, and IMDB claims he's lined up to film the new Karate Kid II, which is interesting, as he hasn't directed a film this millennium. (Harald Zwart did the first one in 2010.) In fact, as I now learn that Avildsen's been dead for four years, that doesn't seem very probable at all. To answer my own question, there was a female Karate Kid, Hilary Swank no less, in the 1994 The Next Karate Kid, also with Pat Morita, which doesn't have great ratings. There's also a three series sequel to the original films, Cobra Kai, reuniting Macchio and School Bully William Zabka.

Il Mia Nome e Nussuno / My Name is Nobody (1973 Tonino Valerii)

A Sergio Leone film in all but name. Terence Hill, or Mario Girotti as he is still known, had just appeared in the biggest Italian box office hit Trinity Is Still My Name and Leone wanted him in something with more depth, came up with this idea, almost as a farewell to the western - he didn't make another, nor another film until Once Upon a Time in America. Thus, the precise timing (1899) and the theme of the great gunfighter (Henry Fonda) wishing to retire before he's killed.

But having said all of that, it's much more jokey and funnier than other Leone pictures, with accompanying Morricone score to suit. Hill is great - for example in long takes in barroom drinking competition. Written by Fulvio Morsella and Ernesto Gastaldi. We think there's a boiling kettle used a couple of times as a sound effect.

Absolutely beautifully photographed by Giuseppe Ruzzolini in Almeria and Armando Nannuzzi at the Indian reservation in New Mexico, and final showdown scenes in New Orleans.

That old guy from the pool room scene sure looks familiar - from another Leone?

Note references - 'Peckinpah', 'Valance'.

Hill's still going strong. He has been playing Don Matteo, a crime-solving priest, in Italy from 2000 - 2020.

There's something quite original about this - you don't see other westerns with urinals, or carnivals featuring men on stilts and halls of mirrors, or indeed a gunfight being photographed, It's rather wonderful, all in all.

The Karate Kid (1984 John G Avildsen)

Scored like a pop video and with its eye keenly on the teen market. Ralph Macchio is likeable as the New York punk who is straightened out by karate (and bonsai) guru Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita - in fact with his bicycle fixing abilities, beautiful house, collection of vintage cars, is there anything this guy can't do?

That reference to the Manzanar camp where his fictitious wife died was in fact where Morita and his family were interned during the war. He was Oscar nominated for this, had previously been a stand up comic, and appeared lots on TV in Happy Days and things.

Elisabeth Shue is the spunky girlfriend, Randee Heller mom, William Zabka the School Bully, Martin Kove the evil karate master.

Didn't know James Crabe on camera. Has the look that it's shot at one end of the day or other. Avildsen is co-editor. Columbia.

The Stranger (1946 Orson Welles)

Welles was kept very much in check on this by Sam Spiegel - he needed to prove he could make a film in a straightforward manner and not get carried away into the 'excesses' of Kane and Ambersons. The result is one of his least distinctive films. The bit he was most pleased with is a South America episode featuring the Welles Nazi character, which was deemed too strange, and twenty minutes was cut. There's a little bit of the flavour of this in the opening, as Konstantin Shayne enters the US in Russell Metty's chiaroscuro lighting - this definitely has the feeling of nightmare. It's dazzling. And whilst things do become a little more conventional in a white picket fence town, it's by no means uninteresting. Welles' camera is constantly tracking from on high, there's a lovely long take in the woods, ending in murder, the dog becomes suspicious... Plus great scenes at the hardware store, where everyone helps themselves to coffee, with Billy House.

It was also the first drama film to show concentration camp footage.

Anthony Veiller is credited with the script, which was also written uncredited by John Huston and Welles, from Victor Trivas story. With Edward G Robinson, Loretta Young, Philip Merivale, Richard Young (Tomorrow is Forever, The Dark Mirror). Music Bronislaw Kaper.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974 Joseph Sargent)

Peter Stone adapted John Godey novel, with suitable cynicism and wit. This is a cracking good thriller, with Matthau at his most serious, in which four disguised men hijack a New York subway for a million dollar ransom. I thought Robert Shaw should have looked more gruesome when he fried. Packed with multi-ethnic local New York flavour. Loved the touch of Matthau and police returning to scene of escape, passing the earlier police car which is being turned back on its wheels. The only thing I missed is how they got around the 'Dead man's switch' or whatever it's called that stops the train running if no one's operating it.

Hijackers: Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman. With lots of faces that looked familiar: James Broderick, Dick O'Neill, Lee Wallace, Jerry Stiller, Kenneth McMillan, Tony Roberts.

Owen Roizman is your NY cameraman (in Panavision). Well edited by Gerry Greenberg (and Robert Lovett), music by David Shire.

Didn't understand the black guy's comment to Shaw near the beginning: " Ain't you ever seen a sunset before?"

Made in Italy (2020 James D'Arcy & scr)

You know - Hitchcock - played Anthony Perkins. Marple. The Trench..

Micheál Richardson and his artist Dad Liam Neeson return to childhood home in Tuscany to do it up and sell it. Turns out his mother's ghost inhabits the place. Well, not literally. There's also a useful local restaurateur Valeria Bilello, and an estate agent, Lindsay Duncan. And a Vespa. And a modern art wall.

I told Q I thought it somehow failed to connect. She told me, somewhat unhelpfully, that she'd rather be in Tuscany than here. And, more helpfully, that Richardson is Neeson's son, and thus story of prematurely deceased mother is of singular relevance. 

(We then saw a Zoom interview with father and son on Graham Norton. Son made a point of saying his name was pronounced 'Mee-haul', then later his father called him 'Michael'??!)

Photographed by Mike Eley, edited by Mark Day and Anthony Boys.

The film they watch in the piazza is not I Vitelloni but another about young men in a small town, I Bisilischi, the debut of Lina Wertmuller (1963), with a Morricone score.

The Switch (2010 Josh Gordon, Will Speck)

Writers Jeffrey Eugenides, Allan Loeb. Did not know one name behind the camera.

In a barely plausible plot development, Jason Bateman substitutes his sperm for that of Patrick Wilson, resulting in he being the unwitting father of Jennifer Aniston's weird kid. Cut to six years later.

It passes the time in a not unpleasant way.

The Yearling (1946 Clarence Brown)

That boy Claude Jarman Jr needs toughenin' up real good, if he's to survive in tharnt country, and no soppy deer ain't gonna do 'im no good neither.

Well, that's what his mother Jane Wyman (The Lost Weekend, Stage Fright, Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows) would have said; pappy Gregory Peck would have been more sympathetic (they were both Oscar nominated). He's almost the same character as Atticus Finch.

Paul Osborn adapted Marjorie Kinnnan Rawlings novel. Charles Rosher is the lead cameraman, with Leonard Smith and Arthur Arling - the tones are painterly. They won Oscars. Editor Harold Kress (nominated) reports finding the Mendelssohn scherzo from Midsummer Night's Dream, putting it over the forest scene with cavorting deer, and it worked perfectly - he didn't have to change a thing. Result: made producer Sidney Franklin and Margaret Booth cry at the screening.

Keeping Up With the Joneses (2016 Greg Mottola)

Enjoyable and daft nonsense in which couple Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher find their new neighbours John Hamm and Gal Gadot (who are amusingly both taller then the other two) impossibly nice but suspicious at the same time. With Patton Oswalt (Young Adult), Ming Zhao, Matt Walsh, Maribeth Monroe. Written by Michael LeSieur. Good product placement scenes for Mercedes (especially when driven at speed in reverse).

Andrew Dunn on camera, David Rennie edited.

Bates Motel - Season 1 (2013)

Developed for television and written by Anthony Cipriano, Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin. Oh, very clever - sets out with the impression that it's a 1940s prequel, then suddenly it's present day, somehow making nonsense of everything. When you know it's five seasons, it makes the heart sink... I suppose though it does suggest the possibility that he may not turn into that Norman Bates.

In an Ozarkish tangent, Norman's brother (Max Thieriot) turns up, gets work on a cannabis farm. He turns out to be rather useful. There's also a sub-plot about oriental sex slaves.

With Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore, Olivia Cooke. The police detective (Nestor Carbonell) may have been cast because he looks weirdly like a more sinister version of Anthony Perkins.

With Nicola Peltz, Jere Burns (psycho), Keegan Connor Tracy (teacher).

Music: Chris Bacon. Photography: Thomas Yatsko, John Bartley. Editing: Christopher Nelson, Kevin Krasny, Sarah Boyd. For Universal TV.

I've got a feeling somehow that we're not going to watch the rest of The Great.

To Paris With Love (1954, released 1955 Robert Hamer)

Released before Fleming's 'Russia' version. Despite presence of Hamer, Guinness and Anne Coates, an uninteresting and forgettable experience. Guinness tries to set up his son Vernon Gray with Odile Versois and he his father with Elina Labourdette, but they swap. Audiences would have liked the Technicolor on-location Paris (and on-location Pinewood). Oo la la, isn't it a scandal, etc. Smoking in the bathroom? I say!

Coates says she liked Hamer, would set her unpredictable challenges. "One brilliant director I worked with many years ago, Robert Hamer of Kind Herts and Coronets, used to shoot me stuff that seemed as if it wouldn't cut together on purpose to see what I'd do with it... He liked to take actors out left and bring them in right. I had to find something I could cut away to, put between the two. Of even just jolt. It was great training. I wouldn't be beaten, I'd always find something. It's your job as editor to make it work." 'First Cut', Gabriella Oldham.

Was it the George V?

Crazy Rich Asians (2018 John Chu)

Cheerful romcom, with a very familiar plot, dressed up in Asian milieu and characters.

Constance Wu plays New York Chinese with single parent who travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend's family at a wedding, he being British educated Henry Golding. Turns out not only are they super-wealthy but he's expected to take over the family business there. With Michelle Yeoh (mother, Crouching Tiger), Gemma Chan, Lucy Liu (Grandmother), Awkwafina (the blonde haired friend), Ken Jeong, Kevin Kwan, Nico Santos (the gay one), Sonoyo Mizuno, Ronny Chieng.

Some slightly rough and ready plot development (the mother seems to come around too easily, grandma's goodwill disappears too abruptly, father doesn't appear for daughter's wedding). Good use of popular songs with oriental vocals. Seems to lose momentum a bit from wedding on (film is over two hours). Colorful credits.

Written by Peter Chiarelli, Adele Lim and Kevin Kwan (whose upcoming projects include Rich People Problems and China Rich Girlfriend!)

Mother (1996 Albert Brooks & co-scr)

Monica Johnson died in 2010 aged only 64. Starting on TV, with things like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, she co-wrote five of Brooks films - they won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for this screenplay. 

Debbie Reynolds is extraordinary in this - only the Golden Globes acknowledged it with a nomination. She acted many more roles after this, including a stint on Will & Grace. Brooks the director sensibly keeps things in long takes, cuts in close at key moments. That the brother (Rob Morrow) is actually the more insecure one is funny.

'In My Room' by The Beach Boys dates to 1963, so a little earlier than the vintage of the posters Brooks mounts to recreate his high school bedroom.

Bill Butler shot the San Francisco scenes, Lajos Koltai the rest.

Election (1999 Alexander Payne & co-scr)

 ..with Jim Taylor. A very inventive film. In its multiple points of view voiceovers it reminded me of a Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives or something), it has some very interesting editing by Kevin Tent (dissolves, going in to rapid cutting), a very quirky and distinctive score, which has a spaghetti western edge, and wacky ideas ("In fact, don't vote at all!")

Payne's good. The planting of that bin-missed rubbish is brilliant.

With Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein (his prayer on behalf of his sister is so sweet), Jessica Campbell, Mark Harelik, Phil Reeves, Molly Hagan, Delaney Driscoll, Colleen Camp.

Photographed in Panavision by James Glennon.

The Wings of Eagles (1956. released 1957 John Ford)

Ford continues to blow me away with this biopic of Frank 'Spig' Wead. From the off, a most entertaining (and brilliantly executed) scene in which Wayne takes his debut flight, showing the rivalry between navy and army, ending up in a swimming pool. Then suddenly, his and Maureen O'Hara's baby (the 'Commodore') is dead. And so follows a combination of guts, comedy, bravery, perseverance, filmed in a typically lean style, episodic as ever, and featuring some blistering real war footage, cannily cut. Also the way characters interact with authority figures, and vice versa, is very distinctive,

Absolutely great throughout. The repeated bust-ups with the army over dinner (Sig Ruman presiding), the girls not recognising him, the drinks helpful people in hospital keep bringing, Hollywood (the director here is presumably modelled on Ford himself*), the return to active service. The whole convalescence thing is done so well - no shots of Wayne's face, just his inert body, as people come in and go, then the rhythms of 'Move that toe!'.

With Dan Dailey, Ward Bond, Ken Curtis, Edmund Lowe, Kenneth Tobey, James Todd, Barry Kelley, Henry O'Neill, Willis Bouchey, Dorothy Jordan and (uncredited) Tige Andrews (the one with his shoe off).

I was never much of a fan of Wayne or O'Hara - am now a big fan of both.

Photographed by Paul Vogel. Loved that shot where the aircraft fly over in formation and there's perfectly a bird in foreground flying along with them.

Opens on one of the trippiest MGM logos I've seen:

This is 'George', 1956 - 1958

I was wrong - that clip wasn't from China Seas but Hell Divers (1932 George Hill), also with Beery and Gable. Wead wrote Air Mail for Ford in the same year. They were great friends and most of the unlikely events in the film actually happened. Ford: "He died in my arms."

* Yes. Ward Bond is Ford. Unknown to him they borrowed his hat, pipe and his six Oscars! (which were for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man as director, The Battle of Midway and December 7th (Best Documentary).

In Bruges (2008 John Michael McDonagh & scr)

Now a fan of Eigil Bryld. And Thekla Reuten (she was in Restless). But Brendan Gleeson is just fabulous. So are Colin Farrel and Ralph Fiennes (especially when Gleeson calls his children 'cunts').

Dark, sweet and hilarious. The McDonaghs have a way with searing lines, e.g. Fiennes: "An Ouzi? I'm not from South Central fucking Los Angeles. I didn't come here to shoot twenty black ten year olds in a fucking drive by."

It's an absolute joy of a screenplay. Jon Gregory's editing also great. Again, scored by Carter Burwell, with the poignancy of a seventies horror film score.

Intolerable Cruelty (2003 Joel and Ethan Coen)

Not an original - written by Robert Ramsey, Matthew Stone and John Romano, and the Coens. Not one of their best, though has some great touches e.g. 'Wheezy' (Irwin Keyes). Fun, though, scored by Carter Burwell, edited by Roderick Jaynes, brilliantly lit by Roger Deakins:

Frank Borzage Double Bill: The Shining Hour (1938) & Three Comrades (1938)

Two Joe Mankiewicz MGM productions, actually released in the reverse order, a sign of how incredibly fast the studios could make films in their heyday, both starring Margaret Sullavan and Robert Young.

In the first, dancer Joan Crawford marries above herself into rich farming family via Melvyn Douglas; Young is the brother who fancies her, Sullavan his good-natured wife. Fay Bainter is another poisonous relative, who goes so far as to actually burn down the new house of the couple. The ending is a rather abrupt and feel-good one. Screenplay by Jane Mirfin and Ogden Nash, from Keith Winter's play.

That arrangement of the Chopin prelude in the night club scene is one of the best things in it, plus Hattie McDaniel. Photographed by George Folsey. I'm not sure there's a great deal of Borzage's famous lyricism on offer here, though did like the moment that face-bandaged Sullavan acknowledges that all is well to Crawford with the slightest of nods.

Based on a novel by Eric Maria Remarque, with a screenplay by F Scott Fitzgerald and Edward Paramour, and set in Germany directly after the First World War, Three Comrades is a weightier affair. Robert Young is the idealist of the trio, Franchot Tone, the understanding one, Robert Taylor the more impulsive, who falls for down-on-her-luck Margaret Sullavan. So close are the buddies they all end up loving the girl.

Quite tough and grown up, for example in the attitudes of sugar daddy Lionel Atwill, the mob violence that's breaking out, the post-war poverty. There's an amazing moment where Taylor kills a murderer outside of a church while Christmas carols play behind it. And Sullavan's apartment - the former family home - in which you have to crawl under the piano to get in, is reminiscent of the touches in A Time to Love and a Time to Die.

Joseph Ruttenberg shot this one. There's a quick Vorkapich montage, not one of his best. With Guy Kibbee, Henry Hull, Charlie Grapewin, Monte Woolley, George Zucco (uncredited).

For the record, we first saw The Shining Hour on 26 July 1992. Hadn't seen Three Comrades since 11 February 1979, aged 15.

Young was in Secret Agent, The Mortal Storm, Crossfire, Sitting Pretty. These two then probably his most significant roles. We've been on quite a 1930s MGM blitz recently.

Dix Pour Cent - Saison 3 (2018 Créé par Fanny Herrero)

Et donc, les aventures plusieurs des agentes de ASK.

Episodes amusantes avec Jean Dujardin, qui est devenue un homme sauvage, et Monica Bellucci, qui veut simplement un petit ami. L'infatigable Ms. Isabelle Huppert, qui fait deux films et un pièce de théâtre ensemble! Béatrice Dalle a un problème avec une scène de nu (dans une morgue)...

Mais... la vitesse des sous-titles... Très plus vite...

L'épouse de Mathias est joué par Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu.

Arturo Brachetti est un artiste 'quick change' (l'épisode Huppert!)