Uncoupled (2022 Creators Jeffrey Richman, Darren Starr)

A Netflix 8 x 30 has Neil Patrick Harris suddenly alone after a 17 year relationship, and how he deals with being single and gay in NYC, where you need a million dollars just to think about living. (The average price of a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan is $2.2 million.) He couples up quite easily, as it happens, but there's problems everywhere: guys who don't use condoms or whose penises are too large or who are too clingy. He navigates all this with the help of close friends Brooks Ashmanskas and Emerson Brooks and work friend Tisha Campbell and client Marcia Gay Harden, who's also recently separated. André de Shields plays the most sympathetic character as a neighbour in the same Gramercy Park apartment (his being worth $2.2 million, as it happens). With Harris's ex Tuc Watkins showing up at the apartment at the end of the season, and Campbell confronting the father of her son, you can be sure there'll be a part two.

Directed by Andrew Fleming, Zoe Cassavetes and Peter Lauer.

Never Have I Ever - Season 3

Yeah, I'm beginning to find this a bit too teen-targeted now (it wasn't before?) with some of the acting rather broad (I don't think they've been directed very well) and actually the moments of McEnroe voiceover are a bit embarrassing because the actors have to stand there gawping while he talks - in some of the longer ones, a freeze frame might have worked better. It's also becoming very predictable, still with some good laughs.

Twenty Twelve - Season 2 (2012 John Morton & scr)

More lovely nonsense. New to cast: Morvern Christie (Head of Legacy) and Samuel Barnett (Murder in Provence, Four Lives), who's the new super-efficient PA, at least until Bonneville is shot in the foot by a starting pistol and Olivia Colmans returns to the fold to look after him - the sweetest moment.

So, that's all good.

Mickey One (1965 Arthur Penn)

It's claimed that Bonnie and Clyde was the first American film to embrace the style of the French nouvelle vague, but I would make the case that it's this film, which virtually could have been made by either Truffaut or Godard, or both.  It's even got a French cinematographer, Ghislain Cloquet, who by this time had worked on Resnais' Night and Fog, Louis Malle's Le Feu Follet and Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques. One big difference is that it isn't as funny as say Tirez sur le Pianiste or Bande a Part. It's very dynamic and symbolic, though the plot is somewhat murky, to put it kindly. In a Kafkaesque fashion, entertainer Warren Beatty is on the run from the underworld for a crime he thinks he may have committed but may not have - it's something to do with a girl he was with, but we're not sure. Huge paranoia follows, affecting the (new) girl he's moved in with in Chicago, Alexandra Stewart (Black Moon, La Nuit Américaine).

Features a quite weird performance from Hurd Hatfield. With Franchot Tone and Kamatari Fujiwara as the silent abstract artist. Eddie Sauter provides the music, with improvisations by Stan Getz

Interesting camera angles, close ups, tricks and more of that experimental editing by Aram Avakian, marked by particularly long dissolves. Q hated it. The New York Times agreed, calling it a 'difficult and disappointing' picture, Time Out 'infuriating, intriguing and self-conscious', Time 'finally goes to pieces amidst the crash of its own symbols'. Beatty found the jokes the stand-up told weren't funny (that is a problem) and didn't understand what Penn was going for. The writer, if such a term is applicable, was Alan Surgal, who wasn't encouraged to write anything else. It was (of course) a flop. So yes, let's summarise and call it an interesting misfire.

The significance of this shot, which is repeated later, is somewhat elusive. The girl he's been with has now gone.

Was Penn experimenting with drugs? His next film, The Chase, was a more traditional film, but it was his first time working in Hollywood and he apparently had big problems with producer Sam Spiegel and the film was compromised as a result.

Ridley (2022 Paul Matthew Thompson)

Another one to satisfy the Brits' seemingly never-ending appetite for police procedural dramas. This has detective on medical leave following death of wife and daughter, which it seems he may have inadvertently caused. He's called in to a murder which connects to a missing child case 14 years earlier. In a slight point of difference, he co-owns a bar, sings and plays piano.

Cast includes Bronagh Waugh, George Buhari, Georgie Glen (pathologist), Terence Maynard, Julie Graham, Bhavna Limbachia, Aidan McArdle and the inexhaustible Elizabeth Berrington.

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950 Otto Preminger)

One of a series of Films noir Preminger made for Fox. Here he's reunited with cameraman Joe LaShelle and stars Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews from Laura. Andrews (who's a natural fit for this kind of role - tortured but vulnerable) accidentally kills a suspect involved in a murder case, then tries to hide the evidence, whilst keen new Precinct Captain Karl Malden sniffs around the evidence like a hunting dog. Good screenplay from Ben Hecht, via a novel by William L Stuart.

Lots of good NY location shooting, score by Cyril Mockridge. With Gary Merrill as the crime boss, Bert Freed (Andrews' partner), Tom Tully, Ruth Donnelly.

Inspired by Will Eisner's The Spirit?

Desk Set (1957 Walter Lang)

Written by Phoebe Ephron and her husband Henry (parents of Nora and Delia), following a newspaper interview in which Hepburn begged for another good Hepburn-Tracy comedy. They adapted a minor Broadway hit which Fox had acquired, a play by William Marchant. (Charles Brackett had attempted the adaptation but found he was just making the material worse.) The stars worked with the writers to get the script into better shape. They also did all their own rehearsing and blocking - the director just had to set the camera. (The cameraman, four time Oscar winner Leon Shamroy, was apparently a bigger drinker than either Tracy or co-star Gig Young and liked cigars and betting on the horses.)

Hepburn's enactment of 'Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight' is absolutely hilarious. Great scene with Tracy and Hepburn in dressing gowns and Gig Young turns up. "I suppose I should have called first." "Yes - do that next time." Great scene where Tracy quizzes her.

With Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill, Sue Randall, Neva Patterson.

Never Have I Ever - Season 2 (2021)

Devi's mum Poorna Jagganathan was in Big Little Lies (season 2), Carrie Pilby and The Night Of, which is probably why she looks familiar.

Devi has to work hard to regain the trust of the two boys she was simultaneously seeing, and of her friends, who she frequently lets down. Her grandmother has come to stay, which proves a useful balance in the mother-daughter fighting. Cousin Kamala is attracted to one of Devi's teachers, her mother to a fellow clinician.

ドロステのはてで僕ら / Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020 Junta Yamaguchi & scr, ph, ed)

In what seems like a continuous take, a young man explains to himself that the monitor in his cafe is two minutes ahead of the one in his apartment. His friends conspire to extend the time distance using additional monitors, ultimately involving some gangsters and the Time Police. A short, mind-bending, amusing and clever film.

Fujiko F Fugio is or was a pair of manga artists very popular in Japan, though can't find a story called 'Me, Me and Me' so this may be an in-joke. The Droste effect is in art where the image is repeated smaller within itself increasingly reduced in size.

Kazunari Tosa, Riko Fujitani, Gota Ishida, Masashi Suwa, Yoshifuni Sakai, Haruki Nakagawa.

The Assistant (2019 Kitty Green & scr)

A quietly focussed film on film company assistant Julia Garner, who's treated like shit by everybody despite her eighteen hour days and tireless efficiency. She begins to believe her Weinstein-like boss (who we never see) has brought in a new young woman just to seduce her. When she reports this belief to HR manager Matthew Macfadyen, he dismisses it.

Totally focussed on Garner (it's another of those 'monocular' films), who's good, with little dialogue, uses sound well to heighten the tension (like Repulsion did). In fact the only wrong thing with this (which might have made a good short) is that in the diner at the end, Jesse Eisenberg should have walked in and bought her a coffee.

Music by Tamar-kali, shot by Michael Latham, edited by Green (with Blair McLendon), Alan Kudan sound mixer.

Tunes of Glory (1960 Ronald Neame)

Written by James Kennaway, from his novel. A larger-than-life Scottish general (Alec Guinness) in command of a regiment is out-ranked by a new British general (John Mills) who insists upon stricter discipline and behaviour, and the two fall out badly. In fact, they're both slightly crazy. What is this film about? The corruption of power? The acting's good, Guinness particularly, and Ronnie likes to keep things in long takes, giving Anne Coates less to cut.

There's certainly a political slant to all this - Dennis Price seems a friend of Guinness but then tries to manoeuvre him out, sticks the knife in to Mills too. There's also a transparent  Scottish-English divide.

Nice rich cinematography by Arthur Ibbetson, with many a bagpipe on the soundtrack.

Good cast includes Gordon Jackson, Dennis Price, Susannah York, Kay Walsh, John Fraser, Duncan Macrae, Percy Herbert, Allan Cuthbertson.

"Whisky doesn't agree with me I'm afraid."

Mills, Guinness, Neame and Kennaway were Bafta nominated, the latter Oscar nominated too.

A Bronx Double-bill: Finding Forrester (2000 Gus Van Sant) / Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981 Daniel Petrie)

A sort of Good Will Hunting, Chapter 2, as the genius from a working class background - Rob Brown, his debut - has to adapt to private education (his basketball rival is oddly underwritten) whilst being mentored by reclusive writer Sean Connery (who co-produced). Matt Damon even cameos. Written by Mike Rich (Secretariat, The Rookie).

Despite its Bronx / Manhattan setting, much of the film seems to have been shot in Toronto.

Interesting score from Bill Frisell and lots of incidental music choices. Interesting editing - Valdis Oskarsdottir (Flag Day, Festen, Eternal Sunshine, Lost River). More beautiful, melancholic, low light lighting from Harris Savides.

With F Murray Abraham as a squid-fiddling professor, Anna Paquin, Busta Rhymes, April Grace, Michael Pitt, Michael Nouri (The Proposal, The O.C.). Brown was recently in We Own This City, also Treme.

You could argue - and I will, since it's Saturday - that the final segment 'Senior Year' is redundant, and could have ended with Connery's stunt double on a bicycle. It's 136 mins.

Then we decided to stay in The Bronx and witness Paul Newman in action as an honest cop in a nightmarish part of New York, smashed and ruined, nicely summarised by the outgoing police captain: "The lowest income per capita, the highest rate of unemployment in the City.. largest proportion of non-English speaking in the City.. Four percent Spanish speaking cops, families that have been on welfare for three generations, youth gangs, winos, junkies, pimps, hookers, maniacs... cop killers." Yes - in Heywood Gould's ironic screenplay, the cop killer (Pam Grier) is never found - the plot twists more around Newman snitching on a murderous fellow officer played by Danny Aiello after tragedy befalls his girlfriend, nurse Rachel Ticotin (we loved her stoned walk). The incoming captain Edward Asner definitely makes matters worse.

Newman's No. 2 is Ken Wahl, and the screenplay is based on real life detectives' experiences of Thomas Mulhearn and Pete Tessitore. Like also the suggestion that the cops are the dregs of the force - people who've given a ticket to the wrong diplomat, beaten up the wrong immigrant, busted the wrong drug dealer etc etc. It's a tough, exciting and impressive film.

Liked "Arrest yourself. Go wait in the van." And "Smack's a vacation for me."

The film is oddly difficult to find now - our second hand copy came from Amazon in the US, and it's a grubby low-res print. Despite poor quality, you can see John Alcott is doing some expert lighting, e.g. in continuous tracking shot where the cops walk in to Hispanic apartment where 14 year old is giving birth. Hadn't heard of editor Rita Roland. Unusual fare for Petrie, who we know from ... No, I'm thinking of someone else. Petrie was long a TV director, made Bay Boy and the 1994 Lassie, displays skill in dealing with big scenes.

The fight between Newman and Aiello is convincingly realistic. There's enough humour to level it out. Newman's great as always.

125 minutes. Fox. 

Never Have I Ever - Season 1 (2020 Creators Mindy Kaling, Lang Fisher)

Kaling was in No Strings Attached, The Morning Show and The Night Before, acted and wrote Late Night. Was a writer on the US The Office. Lang would have worked with her on The Mindy Project.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is our teenaged heroine Devi, her widowed mother Poorna Jagannathan, school friends Lee Rodriguez and Ramona Young, glamorous cousin Richa Moorjani. Crush Darren Barnet, school antagonist Jaren Lewison. Teacher Adam Shapiro, principal Cocoa Brown, analyst Niecy Nash. And of course how could I forget the narrator - John McEnroe.

Devi's dad has died in the middle of a concert recital, thus the analyst. She and her school friends strive to be 'cool'. Most enjoyable 30 minute shows (well, somewhere between 22 and 29 minutes) for Netflix from Universal television.

Boom Town (1940 Jack Conway)

John Lee Mahin's script has a couple of in-jokey references. 'Who do you think I am, the Good Fairy?' asks Frank Morgan, when he was in the 1935 film of the same name. Then later, there's a reference to Dante's Inferno, a film which Spencer Tracy starred in, also in 1935.

In this massively entertaining drama, Tracy and Clark Gable are rival oil prospectors who both love Claudette Colbert - the story was by James Edward Grant, and spans several decades. There's a really thrilling oil fire scene, which must have been bloody dangerous, and some of those dazzling montage sequences which look like they've been done by Vorkapich (they're credited to John Hoffman in fact, though Slavko was still at MGM and possibly supervised). Fabulous editing by Blanche Sewell, photography Harold Rosson, music Franz Waxman (didn't really notice the music, to be honest, but I'm sure it was very good!)

With Hedy Lamarr, Chill Wills, Lionel Atwill, Minna Gombell.

119 mins. MGM.

Twenty Twelve - Season 1 (2011 writer John Morton)

Hilarious series typified by deadpan narration (from David Tennant) about the team of idiots who are organizing the 2012 Olympics, headed by the indefatigable Hugh Bonneville (actually the only one of them with any sense, who manages to solve every problem). They are all brilliantly played - Jessica Hynes as Head of Brand, Amelia Bullmore (Sustainability), Karl Theobald (infrastructure, 'What, you mean this Friday?'), Vincent Franklin (I think in charge of the building work) and of course Bonneville's brilliant, indispensable secretary Olivia Colman ('notaproblem').

Morton previously co-wrote a humorous news programme Broken News and before that People Like Us, a mockumentary held together by the now out-of-fashion Chris Langham as an off-camera interviewer, with the same kind of dry nonsense delivery (e.g. 'a company of just over 86 employees'). He  is responsible for the 'Yes. No. Absolutely.' kind of dialogue that infuses this and the subsequent W1A.

In an exact case of life imitating art, the real Olympics countdown clock stopped working the very same evening as episode 1 was broadcast.

Marriage (2022 Creator / writer Stefan Golaszewski)

What's wrong with Marriage? Well unlike Stefan Golaszewski's Mum, with which it shares certain similarities, its episodes are 60 minutes rather then 30, Nicola Walker isn't Lesley Manville and Sean Bean isn't Peter Mullan. You can see it's all about what's not being said, but the end result is really quite irritating, from the horribly annoying theme music on. Similar ground was covered in Dawn French's Roger & Val Have Just Got In, with Alfred Molina.

Easily the most irritating programme on television. Walker's boss is as vile as he can be at a conference - yet she still wants to go back to his hotel room. Why? Why? And then why does Bean turn up and smash the boss's car up?

These questions remain unanswered, but at least it's only four episodes. Ridiculously over-praised, also.

Five Bedrooms - Season Three (2022)

Oh dear - Ben does the unmentionable with his ex - Simmo guesses - it leads to his confession.

Liz kisses her rival who it turns out has had a crush on her all these years.

Ends very much up in the air at Ainsley and Simmo's wedding - though they are much in love they don't get married, which isn't really explained. Ben's still in love with Heather but she's dating her college professor. Liz rejects her female lover but isn't sure about her husband either. Harry runs around trying to help everyone.

Did like the stag ('buck's') do, in which the chaps end up in a circle doing haikus at each other.

I can't quite remember how this happens, but Ben's shoulder doesn't seem to be troubling him too much

They side-stepped Covid entirely, which was refreshing. Now won't be able to enjoy people saying 'mate' to each other until the next series.

Clash By Night (1952 Fritz Lang)

Written by Alfred Hayes, from a play by Clifford Odets, and it hasn't managed to shake off the play-like feeling; in fact, with hindsight, it reminded me of Woody Allen's most play-like recent film Wonder Wheel, particularly with its unfaithfulness and coastal setting (here, the sea and cloud cutaways do add a certain mood, I suppose). Before we get into the studio-set bars and houses, there's a long montage of the life of a fishing town, which also builds mood. This was filmed by Lang and DP Nick Musuraca in Monterey, just the two of them.

But where are my manners? Introducing Ms Barbara Stanwyck, a lady who likes a whisky (though she would have preferred a brandy) with her morning coffee, romanced by good-natured but oafish fisherman Paul Douglas, succumbing eventually to bad boy Robert Ryan. In sub-plot, Stanwyck's brother Keith Andes is romancing Marilyn Monroe (all good performances, though perhaps Andes is a bit one-note and glowering). Douglas is variously aided and abetted by his Italian father Silvio Minciotti and craven uncle J. Carrol Naish.

The play was somewhat re-written by Hayes, softened - the husband originally kills the lover. (I suppose you couldn't get away with that on film, unless the husband is caught and punished.) Lang had the luxury from producer Jerry Wald to rehearse the main three carefully. Stanwyck was great, of course, but he had problems with Marilyn being late, fluffing her lines and being the rising star and centre of attention - according to Lang, 'the reporters said "We don't wanna talk to Barbara, we wanna talk to the girl with the big tits"... She had a peculiar mixture of shyness and uncertainty and - I wouldn't say "star allure", but, let me say, she knew exactly her impact on men.' (This of course from Peter Bogdanovich's ''Who the devil Made It?')

Score by Roy Webb at RKO.

we knew Douglas from Executive Suite and A Letter to Three Wives.

Catch and Release (2006 Susannah Grant & scr)

Not quite as successful as some of Grant's other films (Erin Brockovich, In Her Shoes, Unbelievable) perhaps because she directed it herself.

Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Sam Jaeger, Kevin Smith, Juliette Lewis, Fiona Shaw.

With John Lindley on camera, Anne Coates editing. Too many montages to pop songs as well.

I Start Counting (1969, released 1970 David Greene & scr)

Adapted from Audrey Erskine-Lindop. A fifteen year old girl, played by Jenny Agutter, is in love with her forty year old step-brother (Bryan Marshall), even though she suspects he might be the local serial killer. To complicate matters she witnessed the death of his fiancee when a child and is obsessed by their former, derelict, family home. Meanwhile her friend Corinne Eldridge (good) is boy hungry. Add in to the mix a bus driver (Simon Ward) and a white rabbit and other Alice in Wonderland references. The ending is deliciously weird after edge of seat stuff.

Set in an unusual Bracknell location, which looks pretty much a building site. Jenny's drunk scene is great.

Nicely performed and handled, e.g. Jenny's fantasy scenes, well photographed and edited by Alex Thompson and Keith Palmer.

It was a treat to see it newly restored on Blu-Ray.

David Greene was married seven times. As Jenny was so young he told the crew that none of them were allowed to swear - they didn't.

Five Bedrooms - Season 2 (2021)

A new house, with a shed to be converted for Ainse's new baby, but Ben falls off a ladder, buggers up his arm, starts drinking too much, alienating Heather. Cue arrival of older brother, who seems to like Liz, though she's started seeing her ex again. Meanwhile Harry's relationship is taking him into unchartered waters... Then tragedy strikes.

With Johnny Carr as Simmo, Dennis Coard as Marty, Josh Mckenzie as Xavier.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974 Sidney Lumet)

I was watching this very carefully for Annie Coates' editing ahead of the Invisible Women film we'll be making. She really does an incredible job. For example, all the interrogation scenes are edited differently. Thus Anthony Perkins is quite wide, classic shot/reverse shot; Ingrid Bergman is in one, amazing, continuous take of 3 or 4 minutes; Michael York and Jacqueline Bisset is all about close shots quickly cutting between the three of them.

In interview both York and Bisset confess that the denouement scene was torture - to get all the reactions, Finney had to repeat his eight page dialogue scene innumerable times.

Did also notice not just how great Richard Rodney Bennett's score is but how well he themes it - thus the kidnapping has its own queasy strings theme which comes back in significant moments, the train has its own theme.

Also Geoffrey Unsworth's team is just great when you have these big actory close-ups but then the actor rises or sits and the operator's right on it, following them perfectly (Peter MacDonald, who worked frequently with Unsworth). I did notice that Annie does these 'barn door' wipes when an interrogee is referring to a flashback but when Finney refers to the flashbacks they are straight cuts; but I did not notice that in his version of the flashbacks the scene is lit differently and shot though wide lenses. And the murder scene is shot with two cameras, in one take, with one close up on Betty Bacall.

As to Jonathan Bates' sound design, I'm sure I noticed in two places a train whistle which sounds like a child shrieking.

How Lumet got the gig I still have no idea - it was made by EMI. Maybe something to do with the previous year's Lumet / Connery collaboration The Offence. For this film, Connery was such a big star he had a percentage of the profits.

Won BAFTAs for music, Gielgud and Bergman; Finney & Coates nominated.