Charade (1963 Stanley Donen & prod)

Very much in the Hitchcock style, with a little of Huston's thieves falling out, super stylish and complexly plotted film has widow Audrey Hepburn pursued by crooks and Cary Grant, whose identity changes every five minutes. You can see Grant is uncomfortable with the romantic leading man role at his age and uses the story to push away Hepburn. With Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Ned Glass, Dominique Minot, Jacques Marin. Written by Peter Stone (and Marc Behm).

Jim Clark: "Stone.. was on set all the time to alter dialogue if Cary required it." He also reveals that owing to French union regulations he had to have a French assistant editor who turned into his future wife, Laurence Méry. "We also line cut a good deal to reduce the scenes and make them sharper. I would never let a character shut a door.. actions, once begun, were rarely completed... When dialogue scenes are cut up into mini cuts, the rhythms go to hell and the acting stops, as does my interest."

Donen was formerly a director of well-loved musicals such as On The Town, Singin' in the Rain and Funny Face (also with Hepburn), but the movie referenced by the Seine, An American in Paris, is not one of his.

'Hank' Mancini's score is cool, Charles Lang shot it. There's good sound mixing - sixties films seem to have very emphatic Foley, which I find funny.

In the scene where Grant's having a shower in his suit, there's a moment on his face where he looks like he's really laughing.

For Q, though I'm not sure Archie would have approved

Grant and Hepburn got on famously. He retired two years later without having worked with her again.

The White Lotus (2021 Mike White & scr)

Posh resort in Honolulu. Alexandra Daddario thinks she may have made a mistake marrying pathetic Jake Lacy (Fosse/Verdun, Girls). Lonely Jennifer Coolidge finds peace with therapist Natasha Rothwell. Murray Bartlett is the oily hotel manager (who's very funny). Then we have controlling CEO mum Connie Britton, dad Steve Zahn (with swollen balls), precocious daughter Sydney Sweeney (and her friend Brittany O'Grady) and brother Fred Hechinger. 

It's the latter who's story is the most satisfying, as he's initially addicted to Internet porn but loses his phone and other devices on the beach; ends up communing with nature and befriends a group of Hawaiian rowers, finally stays behind (against his parents' wishes).

With its distinctive music by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, a fun experience. White wrote The Good Girl, Orange County, School of Rock, series like Enlightened and the School of Rock follow-up.

Season Two has already been confirmed and will take place in a different White Lotus resort. HBO.

The Father (2020 Florian Zeller & co-scr)

Based on his play, written for the screen by he and Christopher Hampton (Atonement). Devastating study of man with Alzheimer's, how it plays with his memories and emotions. A tour de force from Anthony Hopkins, who rightly won the Oscar and BAFTA, as did the screenplay. Olivia Colmans was nominated as was Yorgos Lamprinos' editing (which again, I didn't notice at all).

With Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots.

French Zeller was an award-winning novelist, but thinks he didn't really find himself until he started writing plays like The Mother, The Truth, The Lie and The Son. (That, by the way, was four plays, not one with a long title.) In the play version of this, all the set was gradually stripped away until there's only a bed left. Here, production designer Peter Francis and set decorator Cathy Featherstone keeping mucking around with things so what was once a bedroom is now a cupboard, the kitchen changes design, the hospital chairs appear in the flat. It's wonderfully disorientating.

Photographed by Ben Smithard, who prowls up and down the corridors, music by Ludovico Einaudi, with a beautifully melancholy aria from 'Les Pecheurs de Perles' by Bizet, 'Je Crois Entendre Encore', which Woody also used in Match Point (though  it's credited in that in the Italian - 'Mi Par D'Udir Ancora').

One of the films of the year, of course.

The Actors (2003 Conor McPherson & scr)

From a story by Neil Jordan; but something has gone very wrong at script stage or in production, as the result is a farcical mess; but the reasons for watching it are Dylan Moran (in a variety of disguises) and Michael Caine as an old-school 'actorrr' - they are both good and funny.

With Michael Gambon, Lena Headey (Imagine Me and You), Miranda Richardson, Michael McElhatton.

Photographed in Dublin by Seamus McGarvey.

The Fallen Idol (1948 Carol Reed)

Note tilted cameras in hide and seek sequence a year before The Third Man. House and staircase beautifully filmed by Georges Perinal (operator Denys Coop) William Alwyn's music an asset.

Ralph Richardson, Bobby Henrey, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, Denis O'Dea (Inspector), Jack Hawkins, Walter Fitzgerald (doctor), Dandy Nichols (cleaner, O Lucky Man), Karol Stepanke (First Secretary), Gerard Heinz (Ambassador), Torin Thatcher (policeman), James Hayter, Bernard Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Dora Bryan (prostitute, The Blue Lamp, Carry on Sergeant, A Taste of Honey), Hay Petrie (clock winder, The Red Shoes, Great Expectations, A Canterbury Tale, On Approval, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing).

Brilliant ending. Written by Graham Greene, from his 1936 short story 'The Basement Room'.

'Cheston Square' is in fact Grosvenor Crescent, Belgravia, the heart of Embassy locations.

Edited by Oswald Hafenrichter, AD Guy Hamilton, sets Vincent Korda.

The Star Tavern is still there:

Broken (2012 Rufus Norris)

Mark O'Rowe - who also wrote Intermission, Perrier's Bounty (both with Cillian) and Boy A and created Temple - adapted Daniel Clay's novel. Eloise Laurence was the daughter of someone Rufus worked with, who 'thought it might be fun'.

Is that Baby Skunk, right at the beginning, or is it Skunk's baby? We'll never know - well, that's not true. We could ask both the director and the editor, but it actually doesn't really matter. This is a wonderful jewel of a film which really moves, like a panther. So, it's a jewelled panther.

In the interminable extras ('What's Skunk's relationship with bananas?') there isn't of course one mention of the editor (nor, to be fair, anyone much behind the camera). Vic B. managed to bring something breathtaking to the film, which I'm not even sure the cast would have been expecting. It's her own favourite of her films.

Tim Roth is wonderful as her dad, Rory Kinnear both truly frightening and tender. With Robert Emms, Faye Daveney, Cillian Murphy, Bill Milner, Clare Burt and Denis Lawson, Martha Bryant (the little Sunrise bitch), Rosie Kosky-Hensman, Zana Marjanovic. Norris - an actor's director - was reportedly great with the cast, but had a truly cinematic approach too.

DP Rob Hardy, music Damon Albarn's Electric Wave Bureau.

Breeders - Season 2 (2021 Chris Addison / Simon Blackwell)

The kids (Alex Eastwood and Eve Prenelle) are grown up somewhat but somehow, miraculously, are polite and not foul mouthed like their parents. Flashbacks abound, and editor Mark Henson is pulling off that great Tony Gibbs trick of flashing you a moment from the upcoming scene.

As is often the way with series these days, a number of other writers and directors came in on the project.

Luke finds a friend, a young polymath who knows all about the Beat Poets and coffee, and they plan to try dope but the parents find out.. the father loses it, the boy runs off, then punches him in the face, then refuses to come back home, blaming his father's 'demented rage'. Ultimately he says he's only happy when his Dad's not around, so Freeman moves into his parents' (who themselves have just been moved into a smaller council flat).

'I feel I've been having to protect him from you' says wife Daisy Haggard, summarising things.

The house is in St Alphonsus Place, Clapham, where there always seems to be somewhere to park, though these are in fact all flats. The house interior with its somewhat weird layout is a set.

Our Man in Havana (1959 Carol Reed)

Filmed in Cuba right after the revolution, Reed and Graham Greene in many respects seem to be aiming for another Third Man, with their wry view of a city in interesting times, innocent characters caught up in sinister activities, tilted angles and distinctive music.

This is perhaps funnier. Alec Guinness is a vacuum salesman who is recruited by Noel Coward into the secret service, and in inventing spies and information gets himself into mortal danger. Loved the touch of Coward pushing shut the bamboo door with no glass as though it will offer them some privacy, miniature whisky bottles and the couple who meet right at the beginning and then reappear sporadically throughout.

Burl Ives is his German friend, Maureen O'Hara is sent to work for him, Jo Morrow his teenage daughter and Ernie Kovacs the corrupt police detective. With Ralph Richardson, Grégoire Aslan, Paul Rogers, Raymond Huntley, Ferdy Mayne, Maurice Denham, John LeMesurier.

The brief opening shot of the rooftop swimming pool has to be the Hotel Capri, which features also in Soy Cuba; one of the Mafia hotels.

Well photographed by Ossie Morris in CinemaScope; the editor credited is Bert Bates, but Charles Thomas Samuels' book 'Encountering Directors' makes it clear that Reed liked to view the dailies over lunch, then worked with the editor on Saturdays, so the fine cut's ready soon after filming concludes. I've never heard of Bert Bates. He started in the thirties, worked on a couple of Powell's quota quickies, cut Under Capricorn and Reed's Outcast of the Islands and A Kid for Two Farthings, and ended up cutting big British films like 633 Squadron, The Battle of Britain and Diamonds are Forever.

Music by Franz and Laurence Deniz is suitably exotic. John Box is the production designer. Columbia.

I noticed a moment where the sound of the following scene comes in before the end of the preceding one - so Dede can't claim to have invented that trick.

What Men Want (2019 Adam Shankman)

Taraji Henson, Josh Brener, Aldis Hodge, Tracy Morgan, Max Greenfield, Richard Roundtree.

Enjoyed it more than I was expecting to, as is often the way with the later Emma Hickox films. Shankman must have shot a ton of coverage in order for her to cut it the way she does.

Professor T (2021 Dries Vos)

Based on an idea by Paul Piedfort (who wrote the original Belgian version, then adapted it for Germany before bringing it here - and why not?), written by he, Matt Baker and Malin-Sarah Gozin. About a University professor (played by Ben Miller) with autistic tendencies and a love of obscure European music who is engaged by Cambridge detectives on murder cases. A sort of Doc Martin character who's rude to everyone. Has some great eccentric humour, e.g. teapots wheezing along to music.

Emma Naomi, Barney White, Sarah Woodward, Frances de la Tour, Andy Gathergood. 6 x 45 minutes for ITV.

A Shock to the System (1990 Jan Egleson)

Written by Andrew Klavan from Simon Brett novel. Michael Caine is wonderful as a failing husband and business executive who acquires a taste for murder in black comedy reminiscent of Kind Hearts and Coronets. With Swoozie Kurtz, Elizabeth McGovern, Peter Riegert, Will Patton (cop), John McMartin, Jenny Wright, plus way down the cast list, Samuel L Jackson as a street card dealer.

Did think the voiceover was entirely redundant, though wondered if it had been added afterwards.

When Caine does his American accent it really sounds like he's doing Dustin Hoffman.

Our Delta release though is not anamorphic and incredibly dark.

Gary Chang's slightly atonal music adds an interesting element.

Photographed by Paul Goldsmith, edited by Peter Frank and Bill Anderson.

Monster-in-Law (2005 Robert Luketic)

Jane Fonda is so desperate not to lose son Michael Vartan to Jennifer Lopez she tries to do everything she can to break it up, aided somewhat grudgingly by her PA Wanda Sykes, who has the best lines. Adam Scott is a friend, Elaine Stritch cameos. It's as silly as it sounds.

Of course Fonda's character needs a love interest. It would have been fun if at the end, one of her former co-stars - Donald Sutherland, for example - had made an appearance.

Written by Anya Kochoff and photographed by Russell Carpenter in Panavision.

Marple: At Bertram's Hotel (2007 Dan Zeff)

Or Polesden Lacey, to be more precise, the exterior being the Oriental Club in Stratford Place, London.

Tom MacRae's screenplay extends Agatha's 1965 novel in two distinct ways. He ingeniously introduces a plot about Nazi loot being sold through the hotel, and adds a perceptive chambermaid (Martine McCutcheon) who helps Marple (Geraldine McEwan) and falls for investigating detective Stephen Mangan. It makes it one of the best in the series.

With Vincent Regan, Mark Heap, Emily Beecham, Charles Kay, Ed Stoppard, Nicholas Burns, Mica Paris, Francesca Annis, Polly Walker, Danny Webb.

Photographed by Cinders Forshaw, who shot five Marples, and was BAFTA nominated for Poliakoff's Perfect Strangers; she was a graduate of the Polytechnic of Central London and the NFTS. Music by Dominik Scherrer.

Breeders (2020 Chris Addison, Simon Blackwell)

Idea: Martin Freeman, who stars with Daisy Haggard.

Couple struggling with young children, with much use of flashback. Her penniless father (Michael McKean) comes to stay, the social services are called, the wife's work colleague (Patrick Baladi) is constantly trying to hit on her, she ends up having to work in Germany, the husband's parents are down-to-earth (Alun Armstrong and Joanna Bacon).

It's amazing (and totally unlikely) that the kids don't swear.

This is rather good, funny, but also quite serious.

Deliverance (1972 John Boorman)

Good to see again after a period of some time. Boorman often keeps things nicely in one shot / take, whilst the rapids scenes are cut dynamically but so we can follow what's going on. Loved the moments of black humour too - the hand that doesn't want to be buried, and the corpse in the water that seems to be dancing. And the irony - we're not quite sure if the man Voight kills is the right man. Them folks round those parts ain't too friendly, that's for sure (the Chattooga River, Georgia, though it could as well be South America. I have no doubt the people of Georgia were delighted in the way they were depicted). Loved that the end of the journey and the return to 'civilization' is symbolised by derelict car wrecks; calls to mind something about the return to civilisation in Walkabout.

There's a couple of real moments near the end, where Voight joins the diners, breaks out sobbing - Beatty, the salesman, covers it with a comment. Then the latter's parting words - 'I won't be seeing you for a while'.

Locals were used in the cast and the actors are definitely doing all the canoe and stunt work. Vilmos Zsigmond memorably filmed it (in 2.20:1); Bill Butler's on second unit. The guitar music makes up most of the soundtrack. The natural sound track is good too. Boorman was nominated for best film and director, Tom Priestley for editing.

Good cast, particularly Jon Voight. With Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox, Bill McKinney, Herbert 'Cowboy' Coward. Author James Dickey plays the sheriff at the end, Charlie Boorman is the kid.

1973 was the year Vilmos was famously BAFTA nominated for this, Images and McCabe and Mrs Miller, and still lost (to Geoffrey Unsworth for Cabaret)!

Priestley was the sound editor on Repulsion, cut Morgan, Marat/Sade, Isadora, Leo the Last, Voyage of the Damned, Exorcist II, 1984, Tess. It's probably Boorman's best film.

Priestley: " I don't believe in continuity. I don't think it's important. The first rapids scene... Ronny Cox, in one take he has a hat on, and in some he doesn't. I've run it as a single scene for audience after audience and I've said 'There's a deliberate mistake in this'. And it's about one person in five hundred who spots it.' (I'm one of the 499.) He also had quite a job cutting the dueling banjos scene. The village boy can't play it and there's a banjo player's arm sticking through his and doing the fingering, which Priestley had to disguise. Not only that but he extended the musical 'duel' by repeating a section of the music because 'the climax was too short.. Nobody worried about that.' (From 'British Film Editors' by Roger Crittenden, 2004.)

The Old Man & the Gun (2018 David Lowery & co-scr)

A curiously relaxed film, though enjoyable, has Redford as a true-life bank robber addict who's escaped from prison countless times. There's a sort of romance with Sissy Spacek and some underwritten crime partners in the shape of Danny Glover and Tom Waits, with Casey Affleck as a dogged detective on his heels.

A Touch of Class (1973 Marvin Frank & co-scr)

It doesn't work now - was it ever funny? Certainly not Segal in a pathetic sulk in Malagar. Then Glenda Jackson being the happy mistress in Soho? Tut, tut Ms Jackson, what were you thinking? Not helped by yucky songs or a grubby print.

Glenda won the Oscar, and the screenplay - believe it or not - was nominated.

Nadim Sawalha, the hotel clerk, was in tons of stuff (more recently Syriana) and is the father of Julia and Nadia.

Tully (2018 Jason Reitman)

Written by Diablo Cody, and saying 'This is what young mothers with babies and children have to put up with'. Charlize Theron is just great as the mother. With Mackenzie Davis, Ron Livingstone, Mark Duplass, Elaine Tan.

Photographed by Eric Steelburg, edited by Stefan Grube (great montage of the routine of baby care), music Rob Simonsen.

Diane Lane isn't in it, as such; she is seen on TV in 1982's Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains  (so I read).

The Front Runner (2018 Jason Reitman)

Perhaps deliberately evoking seventies political thrillers like The Parallax View with its dark tones (Eric Steelburg), simple music and complex, overlapping sound, the true story of Senator Hart's fall from grace in 1988 raises interesting and conflicting issues. Was it right he was hounded out of office, his wife, daughter and the alleged lover besieged by the press? A large cast is well handled.

Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga and Kaitlyn Dever are the family. Hart campaign: J.K. Simmons, Mark O'Brien (Bad Times at the El Royale, Marriage Story), Molly Ephraim, Chris Coy, Alex Karpovsky, Josh Brener, Tommy Dewey (kept reminding me of Robert Wagner). Washington Post: Alfred Molina, Mamoudou Athie (The Circle), Ari Graynor (The Disaster Artist), Miami Herald: Steve Zissis, Bill Burr, Kevin Pollak. Sara Paxton (other woman).

Good music, Rob Simonsen, editing, Stefan Grube.

It was rather good. Based on the book 'All the Truth Is Out' by Matt Bai, written by he, Jay Carson and Reitman.

 

Kindergarten Cop (1990 Ivan Reitman)

'Slush soup' was a note I made while watching it. Set brain power to zero. We are amazingly eclectic - that we can go from The Hustler to Slaughterhouse Five to Inspector Morse to this.. which is.. What? A thriller with cute kids? It's not a kids' film, exactly. Q thinks though it's a family film. Whatever it is, it doesn't make much sense, despite being re-written.

Jason Reitman is in it, as 'kissing teenager'. And I noticed a credit for Les Kovacs, as Chief Lighting Technician, but he's nothing to do with Laszlo.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penelope Ann Miller, Pamela Reed (fellow cop), Linda Hunt (principal), Richard Tyson, Carroll Baker (Baby Doll, Giant), Cathy Moriarty.

Where the mobster's mother runs over the cop is entertainingly badly staged. And I loved the bit where all the kids are pointing up the stairs and Arnie says "Which way did he go?" 

Handsomely photographed by Michael Chapman.

Promised Land (1991 John Madden)

Written by Julian Mitchell. They have more of a measured tempo these Morses than you'll find in Endeavour and it's not just the extra quarter hour running time.  Morse really is a bastard, but he cares as well, and Robbie knows that.

It's made like a knowing pastiche of a western, with Barrington's slide guitar all over the place.

Liked Madden's lateral track which shows Morse in western showdown walk, then reveals armed cop, then reveals the wife and Lewis - moving the camera to tell a story.

With Thaw and Whately are Con O'Neill, Rhondda Findleton, John Jarratt and Noah Taylor.

Slaughterhouse Five (1972 George Roy Hill)

An incredible experience which jumps around in time to stunning effect, writer Stephen Geller, from Kurt Vonnegut novel, expertly managed by Hill and Dede Allen. Won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Liked the touch that the commandant of Slaughterhouse-Five is a veteran and the troops are all teenagers. Loved the scene with the puppy, which tells Billy's married life story.

The transitions are so clever e.g. when Billy experiences electric shock treatment the sound we hear is the train whistle which takes us into the war flashback. This was Dede - the sound department would do their thing after.

Assistant editor Steve Rotter claimed that George Roy Hill, who 'could do anything', was a pianist when younger and deliberately wanted the Goldberg Variations in the film. The pianist they found would eat nothing but scrambled eggs and tomato ketchup. Life is definitely as weird as art.

Great performances. Prague stands in for Dresden.

I've always liked films about time travel / jumping, from the Time Machine to The Prisoner of Azkaban, 12:01 and Groundhog Day. This one's a little different... Like Marienbad. It's another reason to watch Twelve Monkeys...

The Hustler (1961 Robert Rossen)

Written by Sydney Carroll and Rossen, from the Walter Tevis novel. A grim affair, dark and moody, as obsessed and cocky hustler Newman grows up only when his girl's dead, and loses everything (OK, until the sequel).

Aged 12, future Oscar winning sound mixer Tom Fleischman was taken to the set by his mum Dede Allen and got to meet Newman, who became a firm family friend. This no doubt encouraged him into a world of film. It was thus kismet when Tom ended up mixing the sequel The Color of Money for Scorsese some years later.

Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, George C Scott, Myron McCormick, Murray Hamilton. Jake LaMotta is one of the barmen.

Tough, contrasty photography from Eugene 'Shuftan' (won Oscar) serves the material well, as does jazzy score from Kenyon Hopkins. Edited by Dede Allen, with Dick Stone and Evan Lottman on the montages. Rossen / Schüfftan's use of the widescreen is great. I sense the Oscar may have been for the compositions as much as the lighting. It won nominations for all four principal actors, film, writers and director (but not for editing, owing, it's been suggested, to an East Coast / West Coast union rivalry which went on for some years).

Gaslight (1944 George Cukor)

Charles Boyer seems a little off... He's trying to drive his new wife Ingrid Bergman mad. And slutty maid Angela Lansbury isn't helping. Patrick Hamilton's play had been filmed in the UK with Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard; here it's got the MGM polish with Joseph Ruttenberg on camera, Ralph Winters cutting and Selznick lending them Bergman and Joseph Cotten. This interpretation is by John Van Druten, Walter Reisch and Joseph Balderston. Dame Mae Whitty is an annoying neighbour, Barbara Everest the hard-of-hearing maid.

Bergman's great - won the Oscar. The story goes that MGM's feared Head of Editing Margaret Booth thought her performance in the dailies lacking and encouraged her to do more. The scene where Bergman confronts her exposed husband is terrific (I thought she was going to kill him).

Bell Book and Candle (1958 Richard Quine)

It's interesting that in back-to-back performances, Kim goes from other-worldly femme fatale to confused shopgirl in Vertigo, and from cool, aloof witch to vulnerable mortal in this. She had a crush on Dick Quine, and thought Stewart 'just the greatest person of all'. What a cast! (Rex Harrison and Lili Palmer played the leads on Broadway.)

A gorgeous film to look at, the epitome of late 1950s style. Edited by Charles Nelson (incredible credits.)

Of Kovacs, Lemmon is quoted as saying 'He was one of the most stimulating people I've ever known. To this day, we still sit and talk about him. He had antennae out in every direction. He wouldn't just talk about his own work.'

It encouraged me to buy a book on Greenwich Village.

Modern Love (2021)

'On a Serpentine Road, with the Top Down'. Minnie Driver doesn't want to sell her faithful old Triumph Stag. With Tom Burke, Don Wycherley, Zara Devlin. Written and directed by John Carney.

'The Night Girl Finds a Day Boy'. Gbenga Akinnahbe and Zoe Chao. Written by Sarah Heyward. Sweet.

'Strangers on a (Dublin) Train'. Kit Harington and Lucy Boynton meet on a train, agree to meet again in two weeks, but there's a lockdown.. With Jack Reynor and Miranda Richardson. Written and directed by John Carney.

'A Life Plan for Two, Followed by One.' Dominique Fishback (Milan Ray when younger) has a crush on Isaac Powell (Pierson Salvador), who's her best friend. Written by Sarra-Jane Piat-Kelly and Dime Davis and Marta Cunningham, who also directed.

'Am I? Maybe This Quiz Will Tell Me' written and directed by Logan George and Celine Held. Exhausting episode showing the chaos of living as a teenaged American.

'In the Waiting Room of Estranged Spouses'. Maybe the best episode in which war veteran finds happiness with the woman whose husband went off with his wife, particularly the way the flashbacks all take place in the scene e.g. throwing explosives / cans in the supermarket. Good playing, Garret Hedlund and Anna Paquin. Written by Susan Soon He Stanton and directed by John Crowley.

'How Do You Remember Me?' Written and directed by Andrew Rannells. A couple spend the entire episode walking slowly towards each other, remembering (rather differently) a fling they'd had.

'A Second Embrace, with Hearts and Eyes Open'. Sophie Okonedo and Tobias Menzies get back together. Directed by John Carney and written by his brother Kiernan.

Noticed a couple of things that appeared to link episodes but sure there are many.

It Happened to Jane (1959 Richard Quine)

Sandwiched between two absolute classics, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, Lemmon fulfilled his commitments to Columbia appearing (in slightly odd casting) as a scout master / small town lawyer opposite lobster farmer / widow Doris Day. (Though according to the Michael Freedland biog 'Some Like It Cool' the film was actually made before the first Wilder.) Quine was not involved in the screenplay, which was from the well-known team of Norman Katkov and Max Wilk. I'm being sarcastic, but I've never had a screenplay put into production, so fuck me. Some shenanigans with a train follow, which I don't think was used as effectively as possible - Q for example came up with the simply delightful idea that they should have converted the train into a lobster restaurant. Sadly she was neither alive nor working for Columbia in 1959 and thus that never happened. Still, a passable entertainment, photographed by Charles Lawton.

It took me almost the whole film to realise that the bad guy was Ernie Kovacs, the chameleon like character actor who also appeared in Quine's Bell Book and Candle and Strangers When We Meet. (And, having double-checked, Operation Mad Ball.) He was married to Edie Adams from The Apartment and died in a car crash aged only 42. 

Quine, Kovacs and Lemmon shared a house together on the shoot and got on famously. The director would stop every day at three so they could go fishing, though Lemmon preferred to play the piano. In fact he released an album of his singing and playing 'A Twist of Lemmon' around this time - claims he knew the four people who had bought it.

The Client (1994 Joel Schumacher)

Avika Goldsman & Robert Getchell adapted John Grisham's novel, not without issue. As Q pointed out, why go the bother of gassing yourself in a car if you have a gun? Why does the younger brother get to the exhaust and then just do nothing? How can the lawyer take the case for nothing? Why not just leave the body where it is? Why does the kid order all those pizzas? And, at various points - 'Just tell the police!!'

So enjoyable for the tripartite relationship of the kid Brad Renfro (who tragically killed himself aged 25), lawyer Susan Sarandon and charismatic DA Tommy Lee Jones. Though the ending is an 'I love you' too far.

We stupidly watched - well no, the BBC stupidly chose to show - a 16x9 crop of a Panavision film, thus Bradley Whitford is sometimes missing from the scene and it feels uncomfortably framed.

I don't know whether it was intentional but Anthony LaPaglia looks like a twat in all his outfits, thus somewhat diluting the menace of his character.

With Ossie Davis (I'm not Rappaport), Mary-Louise Parker, J.T. Walsh, Anthony Edwards, Will Paton (cop), William H Macy. Photographed by Tony Pierce-Roberts.

A Warner Bros. film; thus Dede Allen must have supervised its production...

Reds (1981 Warren Beatty)

Epic biog of John Reed and Louise Bryant, who covered the Russian Revolution, written by Beatty and Trevor Griffiths (and, uncredited, Elaine May, who we heard was so much involved she might as well have been co-director too), with interpolations from surviving witnesses. Once these real life characters start coming in as voiceovers, it puts a whole different spin on the proceedings.

The politics is not of great interest but the way of writing a personal love story across international events is very nicely done. The key scenes are perhaps Maureen Stapleton's warning to Beatty that the Revolution isn't working, and never will, and Beatty to the Bolsheviks:

"A man can be an individual and true to the collective, or speak for his own country and the international at the same time, or love his wife and still be faithful to the revolution - you don't have a self to give."

Diane Keaton gives a terrific performance (moments where she erupts, defending herself to the attorney general), maybe her career best - she was Oscar nominated, as were Beatty and Nicholson - she lost to Kate Hepburn in On Golden Pond. Maureen Stapleton won. With Edward Herrmann, Jerzy Kosinski, Paul Sorvino, Nicolas Coster, M Emmet Walsh, Gene Hackman, William Daniels and - believe it or not - Nuts In May's Roger Sloman as Lenin!

Dede Allen, who also co-produced - took on Craig McKay to help her cut the million feet of (printed) film, Beatty largely left them to it, in London. It sounded like he over-covered as they had so many takes of scenes. ("I like to do a lot of takes" he's quoted as saying on the extras, "because it's a new experience each time." Though this reportedly infuriated many of the actors.) Jerry Greenberg and Claire Simpson among the many editorial assistants.

Vittorio Storaro's photography is wonderful. It was the first film on which ENR was used to enrich the blacks.

But obviously great cinematography is not just about stunning landscapes - the whole film is beautifully lit, e.g.

Richard Cirincione is credited as supervising sound editor, and there's Dede's son Tom Fleischman as re-recording mixer. There are a staggering number of people in the sound department. Loved the sound sequence of the Jack and Louise's filing of news reports cut very close together over a typewriter, the chaos of the Far East meeting where everyone's shouting at once.

Helsinki stood in for Moscow, other locations included Lapland and Spain, and England (the cottage). Great music by Stephen Sondheim.

Baptiste (2021 Writers Harry Williams, Jack Williams)

Intelligent and absorbing series set in Hungary with some exciting moments and touches of humour, though the whole notion these well brought-up English kids could becomes murdering terrorists I find rather hard to believe. Told in a mosaic structure across two different time periods.

Tchéky Karo, Anastasia Hille, Fiona Shaw, Ace Bhatti, Dorka Gryllus, Miklos Beres, Conrad Khan.

Music by Dominik Scherrer.

Losin' It (1983 Curtis Hanson)

The 1960s. Four youths journey to Tijuana in search of fun. They are Tom Cruise, Jackie Earle Haley (an energetic performance), John Stockwell (Christine) and John P Navin Jr, who turns out out be the smartest one (National Lampoon's Vacation). They also pick up housewife Shelley Long, and attract the attentions of the local police Henry Darrow, mechanic Hector Elias and a marine Rick Rossovich. Nobody's debut - of the kids, Haley had had the longest career.

Written by Bill Norton and Bryan Gindoff, it's a touch above the normal teen jinks crap, rather fun, though the fight scenes are rather crudely managed.

Colourfully photographed by Gil(bert) Taylor.

The Rider (2017 Chloé Zhao & scr)

So... this is the film that should have been called Calm with Horses. It's all true, basically. Brady Jandreau was a rodeo rider with a head injury, that's his dad Tim and sister Lane, and his hospitalised friend Lane plays his friend Lane. The scene in which he tames the horse was real. That Chloé manages to make all this into an incredible film is .. incredible. She has a great eye, and a great cameraman in the shape of Joshua James Richards (who's also her romantic other), who seems to shoot with only natural light always.

It's arguably better than Nomadland. We loved it.

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019 Arnaldo Ianucci)

Nothing really to add to this, other than Hugh Laurie (probably) steals the film.

"Now, stove his head in with a cake."