Rachel, Rachel (1968 Paul Newman)

A bold and unusual choice for Newman's debut, based on the novel 'A Jest of God' by Margaret Laurence. It comes over as very European, Bergmanesque, ahead of its time. Joanne Woodward is of course fantastic as a confused, becalmed woman who just needs to get away and find something new in her life (away from her mother, preferably).

He is wonderfully supported of course by Dede Allen (they would have met on The Hustler) who magically helps unite her lives past and present (and imagined). Well, I say 'magically', but in fact it's an adroit mixture of sound and vision - editing, in fact. It's Robert Altman's Images, four years earlier. 

Nell Potts as the younger version is indeed Joanne and Paul's daughter (one of them). With Estelle Parsons, James Olson, Kate Harrington (the mother), Donald Moffat. Music: Jerome Moross, photography: Gayne Rescher. Stewart Stern, who co-authored Rebel Without a Cause, wrote it, and was Oscar nominated, as were Woodward (Streisand and Hepburn K. tied), Parsons and Newman for Best Picture (he did win the Golden Globe for Best Director, and she for Dramatic Actress).

Future Oscar-winning editor Alan Heim is the sound editor, and the ever-present Dick Vorisek the re-recordist.

John Q (2002 Nick Cassavetes)

Father holds ER at gunpoint to save his son. Man vs. US Healthcare injustice. Tense and tender. 

Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, James Woods, Anne Heche, Kimberly Elise, Ray Liotta (who died suddenly last weekend), David Thornton, Laura Harring, Kevin Connolly, Shawn Hatosy, Ethan Suplee, Heather Wahlquist (the 'blonde'), Troy Winbush, Eddie Griffin (the cool one).

Good ensemble stuff once siege starts. Good twisty ending.

Edited by Dede Allen (one of her last films) with Tom as one of the sound mixers. Photographed by Rogier Stoffers, written by James Kearns.

Hud (1963 Martin Ritt)

I decided we needed a Paul Newman retrospective, and this was well overdue. He is an uncaring, rebellious bastard in this, who almost bonds with his nephew Brandon de Wilde (Shane) and has a clearly terrible relationship with his father Melvyn Douglas. Patricia Neal the housekeeper tolerates him until he tries to rape her.

From Larry McMurtry source novel, it feels similarly melancholic as The Last Picture Show, and they're both about the passing of the old ways; in this case, foot and mouth destroys Douglas's cattle farm and whole way of life - what good are oil wells, he asks, when you can't feed them and look after them and breed them?

Newman and Neal are both great - she won the Oscar, he lost to Poitier in Lilies of the Field. James Wong Howe's splendid widescreen photography also won, as did Douglas. The screenplay is by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., who wrote the earlier Ritt film The Long, Hot Summer. The music's by Elmer Bernstein, with some lovely acoustic guitar passages. Paramount.

The Long, Hot Summer (1958 Martin Ritt)

The first of five collaborations between Martin Ritt and Paul Newman (the others being Paris Blues, Hud, The Outrage, and Hombre... hmm.. must watch these again), a melodramatic adaptation of various works by William Faulkner. Ritt had been an assistant to Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio where most of the cast came from; Newman received Best Actor at Cannes. This is where he and Joanne Woodward were reunited (they had met on a Broadway production of Picnic). (Ritt next did another Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, again with Woodward, opposite Yul Brynner.)

I enjoyed it, from a distance. Alex North's score is fine, Joe LaShelle's Deluxe Cinemascope photography fine. Rest of cast: Orson Welles, Lee Remick, Anthony Franciosa (Career), Angela Lansbury, Richard Anderson (The Six Million Dollar Man and lots of TV). It has kind of a weird ending in which Welles' patriarch suddenly develops some soul and everything ends up OK - not what I was expecting at all (thought at least one person would be killed).

I've just gone down a Paul Newman rabbit hole. 

I liked it when he suggests to Woodward that as a kid she probably had a doll with no head. I rather like that line and wondered if it was Faulkner's.

PB: What was Martin Ritt like directing The Long, Hot Summer?

OW: Well. he's the one who said to me, "I want you to relate to the windows," and I said, "Marty, you mean you want me to look at them?" But I enjoyed very much working with Joanne Woodward - we had nice scenes together - and Angela Lansbury. I love her. But I wasn't very happy, although the picture was an enormous success. That's the one where the critic of the New York Times [Bosley Crowther] wrote "Orson Welles, believe it or not, was quite good" (laughs).

'This Is Orson Welles' (1992).

Liberty Heights (1999 Barry Levinson & scr)

Jewish brothers in Baltimore, 1954, era of fine automobiles, including a 'Green mist' coloured cadillac.

Ben Foster falls for black girl in class Rebekah Johnson (who's also in As Good As It Gets), Adrian Brody for a spoiled rich girl, Carolyn Murphy. Neither of these are dealt with in a clichéd manner - the young black girl, for example, proves to be extremely loyal and brave. Their dad Joe Mantegna gets in trouble over his numbers racket (honestly, no one invests in 13, and also to put odds on the square root of minus one is just crazy), putting him in a situation with criminal Orlando Jones. There's a lot of nice observation of the culture of the times and the way alliances are formed between different cultural groups. And it's quite auto-biographical - "A lot of things happened to my cousin Eddie, like dressing up as Adolph Hitler on Halloween" he's quoted as saying. And there's those trademark Levinson Diner conversations.

There's a weird connection to the Baltimore-set The Wire, in that David Simon sent his 'Homicide' work to Levinson, who chose to produce it as a series, which led on to Simon's TV career.

With David Krumholtz, Bebe Neuwirth. Beautifully photographed by Chris Doyle, music by Andrea Morricone (Ennio's son), edited by Stu Linder.

Ed. From Wikipedia: 'The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a bettor attempts to pick three digits to match those that will be randomly drawn the following day. '

This Is Us - Season 2 (2018 Creator Dan Fogelman)

Here's one of William's 'Poems for my Son', recounted in Episode 1: 

Things not said,
Advice
Not given.
Envelopes
Not stamped.
Regrets
Enveloping me.
Is it easier there?
I wonder.
I ponder
I guess.
Guess.
Do you think of me
As I do of you?
My son.
My son.
My son.
The things you'll do
I'll never know,
The pain
The secrets
Oh, to be given a chance
A start
The restart
The fresh start.
Will love come for you
As it did for me?
Find you
Wreck you
Save you
Change you?
And if life breaks for you
The way it would not
Break for me
If love hunts you
Finds you
Captures you,
Would you hold it tight
Nurture it
Protect it?
I hope you will.
I hope you can.
This father's advice
Is not required
It has no call
So instead
I'll share some
From another.
It's better to have loved
And lost
Than to never have loved
At all.
Now an addendum
To my earlier advice.
If I'm so lucky
To still have your ear.
I loved you.
I lost you.
And I advise you
'Twas better
Than to have never
Loved at all.
But now with more years
More time
More perspective
I see things in a slightly new way.
So here,
My good son,
Is a father's advice.
Updated and recalled.
It's better to have loved and lost
Surely.
But try
Not to lose it.

Also loved Randall's line to Kevin: "No black man would ever feel jealous about being auctioned." 

Two sets of Big 3s:

Logan Shroyer, Parker Bates, Mackenzie Hancsicak, Hannah Ziele, Niles Fitch, Lonnie Chavis. 

Q thinks that in order to maintain their correct ages, all the scenes involving the Big 3 at any age all had to be filmed at the same time - thus all the story had to have been worked out right at the beginning - which is quite a head spinner.

This is the season that introduces us to the troubled Deja (Lyric Ross), and also features a trio of consecutive stories about the Big 3, one each, centring around the day Kevin shattered his football dreams (and his knee). And we finally get to see the untimely death of Jack.

The sequences (over more than one episode) showing the young boy who is to be adopted is a marvellous piece of misdirection, as we find out we're in the future.

We noticed Master of None's Lena Waithe and Pam Grier in small parts.

Grace: Dead Tomorrow (2022 Kate Saxon)

As usual, Mr Multi-Strand Lewis elegantly weaves a number of plotlines around a gang who pick up illegal immigrants promising them a bright future, only to then remove their organs for sale! Very nasty, but luckily Grace works it out, and incriminates a senior surgeon or two.

Seham Aar, Faith Alabi, Richie Campbell, John Simm, Zoe Tapper, Stephen Boxer (surgeon).

This Is Us - Season One (2016 Creator Dan Fogelman)

Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling Brown, Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Sullivan, Ron Cephas Jones (who was in the Ryan Gosling Half Nelson, as well as Sweet and Lowdown, but not The Wire, as my charming co-watcher contests).

It has great audacious moments of time jump, for example when we meet older mom Rebecca... but she's no longer with Jack... what's happened?

Great moment between Kevin's dodgy actor girlfriend Olivia, played by Janet Montgomery, and William:

Olivia: "How does it feel to be dying?"

There's a great slow beat from Ron Cephas Jones, before he says:

"It feels... like all these beautiful pieces of life are flying around me and I'm trying to catch them. When my grand-daughter falls asleep in my lap, I try to catch the feeling of her breathing against me. And when I make my son laugh, I try to catch the sound of him laughing, how it rolls up from his chest. But the pieces are moving faster now and I can't catch them all. I can feel them slipping through my fingertips. And soon where there used to be my grand-daughter breathing and my son laughing there will be... nothing."

"Oh."

"I know it feels like you have all the time in the world, but you don't. So stop playing it so cool, catch the moments of your life, catch them while you're young, and quick, because sooner than you know it, you'll be old and slow, and they'll be no more of them to catch. And when a nice boy who adores you offers you pie, say thank you."

Great moment where the family find the obstetrician who delivered the twins in hospital having suffered from a car accident, and Randall gives him a snow globe.

William's return to Memphis, featuring Brian Tyree Henry, and death, memorable, as is Randall's dream that Jack and William met, William's last postcard to Beth - 'the daughter I never had'. Strong Elizabethtown vibes here. Kevin's play "Where once stood a Manny now stands a man!" That long single take argument at the end.

Alexandra Breckenridge (Virgin River) plays Kevin's ex. Mandy Moore was initially a singer / songwriter so we can be reasonably certain that she performs her own numbers.

Originally made for NBC in the US, broadcast here first on Channel 4, now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Dudley Randall, highly regarded black poet.

That's the first 18 episodes done, anyway.

Harry and Tonto (1974 Paul Mazursky & co-scr)

A homeless man wanders around a wintry America (with his cat) in search of relatives and a place to live, meets various characters en route, finally puts down roots in the sun. Good, whimsical, enjoyable entertainment, doesn't really end up anywhere story-wise.

Art Carney (won the Oscar), Ellen Burstyn, Herbert Berghof, Philip Bruns, Cliff de Young, Josh Mostel, Melanie Mayron, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Barbara Rhoades, Chief Dan George as medicine man: "I can cure anything! What's bursitis?"

Co-written with Josh Greenfeld, photographed by Michael Butler. The music is a bit of a let down. The editor is Richard Halsey. who's still working but sadly not on anything interesting since Edward Scissorhands, Joe versus the Volcano, Beaches, Down and Out in Beverley Hills, Moscow on the Hudson, American Gigolo, Rocky, Next Stop Greenwich Village, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Julia (2022 Creator Daniel Goldfarb)

Eight part recreation of Julia Childs' success on WGBH public broadcasting as the first TV chef, enacted by Sarah Lancashire. With David Hyde Pierce as a very supportive husband, but who's kept from his wife that he was fired from his job as a diplomat, and Bebe Neuwirth as a combative friend, with Fran Kranz and Brittany Bradford as producers. And Fiona Glascott (young publisher), Robert Joy (Austin Pendleton-y station head), James Cromwell, Isabella Rossellini ( I didn't recognise her).

Colourful enjoyable slice of cake in the MMM style. HBO Max.

I was pleased to see that Patrizia Von Brandenstein is still working.

Compulsion

Leanne Best (Four Lives, Close To Me, Cold Feet) is a gambling addict paramedic who hasn't got over a terrible train crash (before that she was an adrenaline junky). Anna Chancellor lures her into a wicked scheme. It's highly unbelievable. A Channel 5 four-parter. Nice to see Hayley Mills though as a tough money-lender.

Raising Arizona (1987 Joel & Ethan Coen & scr)

Some of the Coens' earlier work - The Hudsucker Proxy is another example - is marred by some over-the-top semi-mythical figure - here a sort of vengeful people-finding biker / one man militia (strangely enough this figure predates Ghost Rider, which Nic Cage starred in - perhaps it is a reference to the Marvel character). But overall this is a delightful comedy, a mini marriage study, if you will. Recidivist hold-up man Cage marries former prison guard Holly Hunter; unable to conceive children they steal one of a furniture dealer's quints. As you do.

John Goodman (Roseanne went on until 1997) and William Forsythe are escaped convicts, Trey Wilson is the baby's father, Sam McMurray and Frances McDormand relatives, Randall 'Tex' Cobb the biker, and M Emmet Walsh.

Shot by Barry Sonnenfeld, directing a very agile Steadicam team, edited by Michael Miller (also Miller's Crossing), music by Carter Burwell, production design Jane Musky.

"Shall I get Dwayne?"
"Hell, no - why wake the security guard."

Very clever pre-CGI stuff with babies - filming must have taken forever. This was their second film, following Blood Simple. And it's most enjoyable.

Did they shoot this in reverse, I wonder?

Now and Forever (1934 Henry Hathaway)

Well acted - by Gary Cooper, Carole Lombard, Shirley Temple, Sir Guy Standing and Charlotte Granville - though rather clunkily put together by Hathaway. A rare Lombard film that was actually made at her home studio Paramount, thus it's a surprise it's not Ted Tetzlaff behind the camera but someone called Harry Fischbeck. 

There's a moment where Temple looks adoringly up at Daddy, then over to Lombard and her face registers - there's something wrong. It's brilliant - she really knew what she was doing.

The ending is a bit of a cop out, written by Vincent Lawrence and Sylvia Thalberg from story 'Honor Bright' by Jack Kirkland and Melville Baker.

Best Lombard films: To Be Or Not To Be, In Name Only, True Confession, Nothing Sacred, My Man Godfrey, The Princess Comes Across, Twentieth Century.

Ozark - Season 4 - the last episodes (2022 Bill Dubuque / Mark Williams)

There's so many credited writers that I guess it's the product of a writer's room. Quite a few directors too, including Laura Linney.

Richard Thomas makes a nuisance of himself trying to find out what happened to his son. Amusing scenes where Ruth (Julia Garner) has to try not to swear in front of judge who's trying to get her record clear. Wendy (Linney) at one point says she's "difficult to love" - slight  understatement!

I found the ending disappointing, and the very ending annoying (a good ending but a terrible series finale).

With Jordana Spiro (Ruth's ally), Veronica Falcon (Cartel boss), Katrina Lenk (Pharmaceutical CEO), Bruno Bichir (priest), Jane McNeill (Ralph Thomas's wife), Damian Young (behind-the-scenes string-puller).

Starting Over (1979 Alan J Pakula)

Written by James L Brooks (based on a novel by Dan Wakefield). A man whose wife has cheated on him is divorced by her. He meets a nice lady, they romance. The day she moves in to his place, his ex turns up, and he becomes confused. He leaves the new lady to go back to her, but it doesn't turn out. He goes back to the nice lady (who has said she never wants to hear from him again) with a marriage proposal and she says 'yes'. People are nuts, in other words.

We heartily dislike woman A, Candice Bergen, and we quite dislike Man A, Burt Reynolds, because he's a worthless shit. We like woman B, Jill Clayburgh, as well as Man's brother and wife, Charles Durning and Frances Sternhagen, as well as nutty divorce group member Austin Pendleton (Wallace Shawn is another member of the group).

The funniest aspect to all this is that Bergen is a terrible - yet somehow published - singer-writer. The moment when she invites him back to her motel room and sings to him is hilariously bad.

It's very darkly lit by Sven Nykvist, or we just have a very dark print (probably the latter). Marvin Hamlisch's music is not good. Didn't really rate Reynolds' performance.

The Art of Getting By (2011 Gavin Wiesen & scr)

I enjoyed this, despite it not being exactly the most original story ever, descending almost from Les Quatres Cent Coups. Freddie Highmore is the aimless NYC student who befriends Emma Roberts. That's it really. 

With Sasha Spielberg (yes, daughter of), Marcus Carl Franklin, Ann Dowd, Blair Underwood (Principal), Rita Wilson, Sam Robards (son of Jason and Lauren Bacall).

Good soundtrack from people I'd never heard of like The Shins, Earlimart, Matter, Mates of State, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, Starlight Mints, Boxer Rebellion, Delphic, Infernal Devices, KU, Pavement, and the playout track The Trial of the Century by French Kicks.

Wiesen's career didn't take off, for some reason.

Ask Any Girl (1959 Charles Walters)

Funny how in just a decade this film would have already seemed unacceptable. Shirley MacLaine won't indulge in sex before marriage, thus disappoints many New York creeps. Sets her sights on one of her bosses, Gig Young, and enlists the help of his brother David Niven to woo him by copying attributes from various girlfriends - guess what happens?? So, sort of a Sabrina variant, in a way.

Worst of all is MacLaine's flatmate who doesn't tidy up or pay the rent, has loads of parties with pretentious actor types, then locks her out and keeps all her possessions!

With a young Rod Taylor. An MGM picture but didn't recognise writer George Wells (based on Winifred Wolfe's out of print novel), DP Robert Bronner, composer Jeff Alexander nor editor John McSweeney. A rare film now - the remaining commercially available Italian DVD is expensive, is not anamorphic and of dubious quality. My 'MGM Story' reports it was a box office hit, and comments on the teaming of Niven and MacLaine as being like a Powell and Loy partnership...?

Didn't think I knew Gig Young really; in fact he's been in many diverse films from Old Acquaintance in 1943 through to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia in 1974, and comedies like Desk Set, Teacher's Pet, and That Touch of Mink.

The World According to Garp (1982 George Roy Hill)

Familiar names too in the sound department: Dick Vorisek is the supervisor and Tom Fleischman the mixer.

Of the cast should mention Jenny Wright as Cushy and Brenda Currin as the vile Pooh, Peter Michael Goetz as the family publisher, Mark Soper as Michael Milton, George Ede the Dean, Brandon Maggart as the wrestling coach.

We spent an illuminating hour with the film's editor Steve Rotter, who thinks he only got the job because Dede Allen was busy (I don't know with what - Reds was finished and she didn't have another credit until 1984). He'd worked with Hill on Slaughterhouse-Five, a director he held in very high esteem.

Steve modestly claims his only real achievement in the film was arguing that the plane crash into the house should just be one shot; otherwise the film was a product of Hill's set ups and his handling of the cast (himself a former actor). It was Glenn Close's first feature, and with Williams he held him back, didn't want him going into funny routines - it was his first serious performance. He would only let the stunt people do the rooftop scene twice as it was so dangerous, even though they were wired (which had to be manually removed from the shot). The dog playing Bonkie was not very vicious at all and so the attack is a mixture of fake dog head and quick cutting. And that there was a second animation by John Canemaker (how Jenny was impregnated) that somehow went missing from the film, but fortunately you can see a silent treatment of this scene here at 11:40.

It was an important film for Steve because it got him into the A league, and he subsequently worked with Phil Kaufman on The Right Stuff and won the Oscar, then for Nancy Myers, Elaine May, Herbert Ross.

We didn't see Garp until 1990, after Fatal Attraction - thus Glenn Close going from bunny boiler to this was a major surprise.

But above all, I think he expresses surprise at how ahead of its time the film was in its feminist and transgender themes, and how well it worked - a wonderful combination of talents.

"There's another kid I'm sure you're gonna like too."
"What's he like?"
"Can't tell yet."
"Quiet type?"
"Yeah - real. Very young. A real baby. I invited him over to meet you."
"When?"
"Should be here in about seven and a half months."

D.I. Ray (2022 Writer Maya Sondhi)

She was in LOD and suggested the idea to Mercurio, thus it's produced by HTM. A good screenplay, dealing with racism in police force and with public, makes its points a little heavy-handedly sometimes, though plot about murders in the community is reasonably engrossing (though a little easy to guess the culprit). Ending downbeat. Parminder Nagra (Bend It Like Beckham) is good, so is Peter Bankole (Peaky Blinders, The Durrells) as 'Sarge'. With Jamie Bamber, Gemma Whelan, Ian Puleston-Davies, Helen George, Sobu Kapoor, Duaa Karim, Steve Oram, Shaheen Khan.

In the gradual thawing of the team I was reminded of Prime Suspect. A four-parter on ITV.

Directors: Audrey Cook, Alex Pillai (two each).

Be careful, because this -

can lead to this -

First Monday in October (1981 Ronald Neame)

Another filmed play, this one from Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee, successfully opened up. A sort of Adam's Rib update, the battle of the sexes between two highly opinionated high court judges played by Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh. The title's a reference to when the Supreme Court reassembles after the summer recess - nice long holiday they get, then.

With Barnard Hughes, who we'd recognise from Doc Hollywood, Jan Sterling (Ace in the Hole), James Stephens. Photographed by Fred Koenekamp.

It's a quite interesting, reasonably funny and provoking film that somehow doesn't quite come together.  

Or maybe it does. 

I think the problem is it doesn't really know what it wants to be.

Detective Story (1951 William Wyler & prod)

Another tough early fifties film, this one about the NYPD and one particularly 'principled' detective (Kirk Douglas) who seems no better than the criminals. Based on a play by Sidney Kingsley and written by Philip Yordan and Robert Wyler (William's older brother), it takes place over a single night in the station, barely moving outside. Lee Garmes catches everything in deep focus.

Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O'Donnell (Robert Wyler's wife), George Macready (suspected abortionist), Horace McMahon (lieutenant), Lee Grant (simple shoplifter), Gladys George, Joseph Wiseman (a shade too crazy for me), Gerald Mohr, Frank Faylen, Craig Hill, Michael Strong (thick burglar).

Interesting to hear the admission that some cops were on the take back then.

Risky for Douglas to be playing back-to-back such monsters in this and Ace in the Hole; the next year's Hawks picture The Big Trail puts him back in the hero mode. (Hawks? Hero? OK - flawed good guy. Not that I've actually seen the film. Why haven't I seen the film?)

Russell Evans, Michael Strong, Joseph Wiseman

No music. Paramount. Rather liked Tom Milne's comment for Time Out that 'several characters come on as though auditioning for a Method class'.

Grace: Not Dead Enough (2022 Henrik Georgsson)

Written by Russell Lewis, who weaves together various stories of infidelity, murder and carnapping in picturesque Brighton. Grace (John Simm) is sweet about his returning friend Richie Campbell and finds romantic interest with pathologist Zoe Tapper. With Tom Christian, Arthur Darville, Alexander Conn, Craig Parkinson, Jessye Romeo

Carrie (1952 William Wyler & prod)

Based upon Theodore Dreisler's 1900 novel 'Sister Carrie', which sounds as bleak as the film, which was written by Ruth and Augustus Goetz. Jennifer Jones (on loan from Selznick to Paramount) goes to Chicago, ends up living unmarried with Eddie Albert (who was in Wyler's later Roman Holiday). Then she meets (married) restaurant manager Laurence Olivier.

It's a real tragedy all right, and for its year, it features a tremendously downbeat ending in which it's clear that Olivier is going to kill himself.. The temptation to save him, have her take him in, reunite him with his children, must have been powerful, but maybe post-war audiences could take it - A Place in the Sun, released the previous year, was also I seem to remember quite downbeat.

The acting's good of course - Miriam Hopkins is unusually restrained and nasty - and there's fewer long takes and signs of deep focus than in Mr. Wyler's earlier films. Photographed by Victor Milner, scored by David Raksin. Good recreations of 1900s Chicago and New York by Roland Anderson and Hal Pereira, Oscar nominated, as were Edith Head's costumes.

It was the scene in the flophouse that was removed at the time and has since been restored.

Anatomy of a Scandal (2022 S.J. Clarkson)

Did politician Rupert Friend rape his ex lover in the House of Commons lift, and what's the scandal that he's involved with from student Oxford days? The wife Sienna Miller stands by him for as long as the script allows, which was written by David Kelley and Melissa James Gibson from Sarah Vaughan's novel. It's given the sledgehammer treatment by Clarkson, all 360 degree cameras and horror movie soundtrack and show-offy edits.

Did like the relationship between the opponent barristers Michelle Dockery and Josette Simon. But the revenge ending doesn't make sense as both PM and hubby will deny the story - to which there is no evidence.

You could argue that the Miller character had no sense getting involved in gang of elitist, loutish toffs, and whatever happened next was her own fault.

With Naomie Scott (the lover), Joshua McGuire (horrible director of comms, Cheaters), Anna Madeley, Ben Radcliffe, Hannah Dodd (young Sienna), Geoffrey Streatfeild (PM), Phoebe Nicholls, Nancy Farino (previous version of Dockery).

Any relationship to our real life, fine politicians is of course entirely coincidental.

A 'pupil-master' is an experienced barrister who shadows the development of a less experienced pupil.

Made for Netflix, whose shares have just crashed to their lowest point since 2017. (I'm not saying these are connected.)

Stella Dallas (1937 King Vidor)

An independent Sam Goldwyn production with Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil, Alan Hale, Marjorie Main, Tim Holt. Screenplay by Sarah Mason and Victor Heerman, from novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, dramatized by Harry Wagstaff Gribble and Gertrude Purcell. Goodness! Professionally underscored by Alfred Newman and brightly photographed by Rudolph Maté.

Factory worker daughter Stanwyck thinks above her station, marries decent but boring Boles. Their daughter is the only thing they have in common, as he moves to New York to work. The mother's good at making clothes, which could have become something of a plot development, but she shames her daughter's new rich set with her garish clothes and behaviour. A bit of a one-to-one here would have been helpful - "Mum, you're a bit over-dressed for this country club. Why don't you tone it down a bit?" And then the mother fakes moving to South America with the drunken bum Hale just so the kid will go and live with the new posh rellies. It's a bit silly really.

Etta McDaniel, as one of the various maids, was Hattie's sister, also in The Thin Man Goes Home.

Better Midler was in the 1990 remake.

Tin Men (1987 Barry Levinson & scr)

"So he broke into your house, you hit him over the head with a gun and threw eggs and tomatoes at him?"
"Yeah. I would have thrown soup if I had any soup."

Funnily enough, set in the year our last film was made, 1963, in the writer's native Baltimore, telling of the war between aluminum siding salesmen Danny de Vito and Richard Dreyfuss, and the woman between them Barbara Hershey (who steals the film). Their sales methods are enjoyably despicable. Film holds up really well, is timeless, with a nice line in banal conversations. With John Mahoney, Seymour Cassel, JT Walsh, Jackie Gayle, Bruno Kirby. A good mix of old music and Fine Young Cannibals, photographed by Peter Sova. We particularly liked a montage of people in a bar, edited by Stu Linder.

Levinson wrote Avalon, Toys, Jimmy Hollywood, Man of the Year (Robin Williams), Diner, Liberty Heights (which sounds good); directed Rain Man and Good Morning Vietnam.

Love the touch that Dreyfuss has his eye on the next thing - not Cadillacs, but VW Beetles (though it's a slight shame that we see the same black one three times over).

The Thrill of It All (1963 Norman Jewison)

Written by Carl Reiner and Larry Gelbart. Housewife Doris Day starts causing problems for marriage to doctor James Garner by having her own career as a TV commercial persona in dated sixties storyline (she sadly gives it all up at the end). Nevertheless film is more fun than it appears, with mad gags involving a pool full of detergent (and a convertible), funny stuff as the kids predict how the rubbishy TV shows are going to turn out. Reginald Owen is the old soap manufacturer. With Edward Andrews (Avanti), Arlene Francis, Zasu Pitts.

A Ross Hunter-Universal picture photographed by Russell Metty and scored by Frank de Vol, who has a lovely motif - played I think on recorders - for the kids.

Gramercy Park is an upmarket area between the 14th and 23rd Streets to the East of the Flatiron Building.

Little Miss Marker (1934 Alexander Hall)

First version of Damon Runyon's short story, and the first starring role for Shirley Temple. Adolphe Menjou is Sorrowful Jones, with Dorothy Dell (Bangles Carson), Charles Bickford, Lynne Overman ('Regret'), Frank McGlynn Sr., John Sheehan, Garry Owen, Willie Best. Adapted by William Lipman, Sam Hellman, Gladys Lehman, photographed by Alfred Gilks. The brat does get to sing one song, unfortunately. 

Film is fun, moves quickly, has lots of Runyony nonsense and characterisation, remains at least in part hard-boiled. Adapted by William Lipman, Sam Hellman and Gladys Lehman (not that that's particularly helpful - you might as well say 'screenplay by fifty staff writers at Paramount'.)

The Ipcress File (2022 James Watkins)

Promising beginning with old 'Independent television' announcement, and proper credits over opening (which incidentally showed the editor after the DP - most interesting). Joe Cole proving winning in Harry Palmer role, old style score appropriate. Our only concern is the director has decided to use a Dutch tilt of various degrees in 50% of the scenes, passing for 'style', which is sort of endearing, up to a point. Presumably it's in reference to The Third Man. Q was unable to accept this past the first two episodes, and quit.

Loved when asked if Dolby is his real name, the way Hollander answers "Yes. (beat) Insofar as anyone has a real name in my business."

One of the Berlin checkpoints looked so familiar we almost expected Cole to pass Spy City's Dominic Cooper coming in the opposite direction.

With Tom Hollander, Lucy Boynton, Tamla Kari, Bashy, David Dencik, Joshua James (also Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, Life), Therese Bradley, Paul Higgins.

Did I hear that Harry's parents were 'Harold and Maude'? Written by John Hodge (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach, The Sweeney). Music by Tom Hodge (The Mauritanian) - no relation to writer I think - in a sixties John Barry shade. Gorgeous production design James Price, DP Tim Maurice-Jones, editor Stuart Gazzard (Wild Bill, Burton and Taylor, McMafia - which Watkins directed). London was played by Liverpool and Bolton, Berlin and Beirut by Zagreb and elsewhere in Croatia. More about locations here.

Did notice the name of Hilary and Steven Saltzman as producers - their Dad Harry produced the original (and many of the Bond films).

Found it a bit heavy-going towards the ending, though finale is exciting enough, albeit borrowed rather from The Manchurian Candidate.