Foyle's War: Trespass (2015 Stuart Orme)

Racism, Fascism, terrorism (both in Jerusalem - the King David hotel bombing - and at home). A starkly drawn world pre-NHS. A Foreign Office official (Alex Jennings) who tries to get Foyle sacked - guess what happens?

The level of anti-Jewish feeling - so soon after the liberation and full horror of the camps has been revealed - is startling.

Jim Cartwright, Amber Rose Revah, Hermione Gulliford, John Heffernan, Richard LIntern, Matilda Ziegler, Jonathan Tafler, Alexander Arnold, Yolanda Vazquez... Who's the Palestinian girl then?

You could study any of these screenplays to see how brilliantly the multiple strands are all integrated.

Foyle's War: High Castle (2015 Stuart Orme)

The final season, filmed in Liverpool. Or Zagreb. Or somewhere.

That's it - put Sam in danger again! (She's also pregnant.) Good sub-plot 'Women should stay at home' (Jamie Winston appears). Even better sub-plot - powerful business interests supporting Hitler, but with eye on Russian oil. I.G. Farben is (of course) a real German manufacturing company which did indeed use slave labour from concentration camps.

Good to see repeated character of the eye-patched lawyer from The Hide back again, Will Keen. Rest of cast: Nigel Lindsay, Madeleine Potter, George Lasha, John Mahoney.

DP Tony Coldwell, music Colin Towns, editor David Yardley.

Dead To Me - Season 1 (2019 Creator Liz Feldman)

Widow with anger problem Christina Applegate (Bad Moms, Married with Children) befriends kooky Linda Cardellini, who it turns out was driving the car that killed the widow's husband. She tells her immediately and is instantly forgiven... like FUCK. Ten half hour episodes teeter on this premise. Ends with the old switcheroo so now C.A. has the guilty secret.

Oh yeah - L.C.'s ex James Marsden (27 Dresses) turns out to have been a money launderer.

Has a slightly comic tone. And a slightly 'who cares' feeling.

Foyle's War: The Cage (2013 Stuart Orme) / Sunflower (2013 Andy Hay)

Sam is working at British Intelligence too, alongside an efficient administrator Alex Clatworthy; Foyle has to navigate new boss Rupert Vansittart. A dying Russian brings Foyle's attention to the mysterious goings-on at Barton Hall, during which Foyle finds a job for ex SOE expert (Ross Armstrong). Written by David Kane. With Tom Beard, Jonathan Hyde.

Then, a disturbed man - a brilliant performance by Charles Aitken - glimpses a hated figure from the past, a Nazi - Lars Eidinger - who is under British protection. The flashback scenes in the field are powerfully done, with most of the sound removed - just the evil Nazi whistling. Great double twist too.

Sunflowers have never been more sinister

Les Femmes de L'Ombre (2008 Jean-Paul Salomé & co-scr)

The writer was inspired by an obituary of Lise de Baissac, who was operational with her brother in the SOE around the time of D-Day - why then not make a film about her real-life exploits rather than imagine this wholly fictitious story about protecting the secrets of the D-Day invasion involving a captured British geologist? It at least honours their spirit, I suppose, and the film is reasonably engaging.

Where do we know Sophie Marceau from? The World Is Not Enough? She leads the good cast, with Julie Depardieu (A Very Long Engagement), Marie Gillain, Déborah François, Moritz Bleibtreu (good as Nazi), Maya Sansa, Julien Boisselier, Vincent Rottiers, Volker Bruch.

DP Pascal Risao, editor Marie-Pierre Renaud, prod des Francoise Dupertuis, costumes Pierre-John Larroque (its only César nomination).

The film is rather unimaginatively titled Female Agents in UK. The original invokes Jean-Pierre Melville's brilliant resistance film. It was actually filmed in Paris.

I've got to say the nudity is entirely gratuitous, particularly of the suicide. You wouldn't have got that with a female director, somehow. Doesn't however soft soap the fates of the agents, which is laudable.

Foyle's War: The Eternity Ring (2013 Stuart Orme)

Geddit? Season Seven opens with tale of intrigue at British Intelligence. A very grumpy Foyle is forced into working with them when he learns that Sam may be involved in spilling of military secrets to Russia. The moment where they are both scanned and are positive for radiation is a stand out.

With Ellie Haddington (Hilda Pierce), Stephen Boxer, Kate Duchene, Tim McMullan, Nicholas Jones, Christopher Fulford, Jeremy Swift. Adam has become Daniel Weyman. Very obviously not filmed in London (in fact Dublin).

Hilda asks Foyle to join MI5. Foyle: "I haven't got the requisite capacity for deceit."

Foyle's War: The Hide (2010 Stuart Orme)

Elderly headmistress: "Christoper Foyle... Yes, I remember him. Always asking questions. I always wondered what became of him..."

This is a real treat, as usual we sit, bemused, as various plot strands converge... But we also have the emerging relationship of Sam and Adam, as their boarding house literally collapses through the episode. A paradigm for post-war Britain? Probably not.

Why won't disgraced soldier Andrew Scott (with those deep mysterious eyes) say anything to prevent him from being hanged or shot ('How would you like your execution today? We have a nice line in fugu poisoning, fresh in from Okinawa...')?

Small pupils, I was thinking.

BUT. The most brilliant thing about this film is the reason why Foyle is interested in the case, which we don't know - or even really think about - until the very end.

Horowitz is the officer at the end who examines Foyle's ticket.

Richard Goulding, Rupert Frazer, David Yelland, Anastasia Hille, Tim van Eyken, Kirsty Besterman, Will Keen memorable as war-damaged solicitor.

DP James Aspinall, editor David Yardley.

Frost / Nixon (2008 Ron Howard)

Peter Morgan's recreation of famous encounter (based on  his play) is not the **** film that Maltin and his team claim; though it's well acted and engrossing not enough happens over its two hours. Martin Sheen and Frank Langella are brilliant in the lead roles but there's good stuff in the supporting cast of Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Matthew MacFadyen and Kevin Bacon; Rebecca Hall has a non-part.

Photographed and operated by Salvatore Totino, Oscar nominated editing by Dan Hanley and Mike Hill - though to this casual viewer there's nothing particularly special about the way the interviews are edited, music from Hans Zimmer. Good makeup / wigs.

Foyle's War: Killing Time (2010 David Richards)

I know, we only watched it in February, but it felt right to complete the series. David Kane wrote it (Shetland, The Field of Blood, Rebus).

The Bamber Bridge race riot referred to was true, a battle that developed between American white MPs and black soldiers who had been racially segregated.

Exile (2011 John Alexander)

Created by Paul Abbott, based on memories of his grandmother, combined with the idea of trying to make sense of some big event when one of the people has Alzheimer's (info from The Guardian); written by Danny Brocklehurst. Originally a 3 x 1 hour BBC thing.

Sacked journalist John Simm returns home (Bacup, Lancashire) to Alzheimer's father Jim Broadbent (superb) and sister Olivia Colman, discovers family secrets involving shady councillor Timothy West. Along the way he reconnects with former friend Shaun Dooley and connects in the bed department with his wife Claire Goose.

Alzheimer's treated well. Interesting location. Engaging - though dark - story. Reasonably gripping. Moments of humour.

Foyle's War: The Russian House (2010 Stuart Orme)

Milner's a bit of a shit (Foyle putting him in his place one of those great scenes); Sam's posing nude for an artist; Foyle won't be told what to do. An escape by Russian POWs triggers another WWII history lesson from Prof. Horowitz, this about the fate awaiting repatriated White Russians back in the Soviet Union, landing at Odessa from the Almanzora in 1945.

Sam does though meet Adam Wainwright (Max Brown) who is swiftly shot, and Foyle too comes dangerously close to death. That was Elenor Bron in the coffee shop. Tim Piggott-Smith, Giles Taylor, Tom Goodman-Hill, Dmitry Drannikov, Christopher Good, Tom Brooke.

Didn't look like London.

Mr. Right (2015 Paco Cabezas)

Most enjoyable hitman / romantic comedy, with Sam Rockwell great as always, Anna Kendrick effervescent ("I told you that would happen!")

At one point I found myself laughing just like my Mum would.

With Tim Roth, James Ransone, Anson Mount, Michael Eklund and Wu Tang Clan's RZA.

Considering it's set and filmed in New Orleans it doesn't use the city very well.

Agatha Christie's Marple: Ordeal by Innocence (2007 Moira Armstrong)

Not originally a Marple story, published in 1958.

Geraldine McEwan, Juliet Stevenson, Denis Lawson, Alison Steadman, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Richard Armitage, Stephanie Leonidas, Lisa Stansfield, Burn Gorman, Jane Seymour, Tom Riley, Reece Shearsmith, Bryan Dick, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Pippa Heywood.

Some good jokes in Stewart Harcourt's adaptation, e.g. Shearsmith to small boy 'Did you bludgeon Mrs Argyle to death?'

Rhind-Tutt good as diffident scientist, though they might have found him some romantic action somewhere. It was one of the films handsomely photographed by Cinders Forshaw.

The Road to Glory (1936 Howard Hawks)

"I don't think the girl was really in love with [Warner] Baxter. Of course you couldn't really tell much from the picture because June Lang couldn't act, and it was pretty hard to get across an emotion of any kind." (Hawks.)

Filmed around existing WWI night scenes from  a French film called Les Croix du Bois, with a script by William Faulkner and Joel Sayre. Weary platoon commander Warner Baxter (his brandy and aspirin habit based on a real soldier Hawks knew) and newcomer Fredric March fall in love with the same woman. Baxter's father (Lionel Barrymore), over sixty, somehow manages to enlist. It's a good anti-war picture made about the French, for a change. Great scene where soldiers hear German tunnelers beneath therm - '"If they stop tunnelling, that's when the bomb will go off". Much typical Hawks bravery, professionalism and laughing in the face of death. Appalling print doesn't help show off Gregg Toland photography. Film has air of authenticity (Hawks himself served in France in WWI).

Great touches: steel helmets (when threat is from under them), man hand grenading own troops, wind blowing transfer order into fire. I take it the title is ironic.

With: Gregory Ratoff, Victor Kilian, Paul Stanton, John Qualen.

Touch of Evil (1958 Orson Welles & scr)

A whirling dervish of a film that starts with an epic four minute tracking shot and then literally explodes into a frenetic firework of cutting, camera moves, grotesque scenes and performances, an overheated Latino score (Mancini) and overlapping dialogue ad extremis. And a sensational turn by Marlene Dietrich at her most world-weary - "Your future is all used up."

Joseph Cotten's in it? Where? Q spotted Zsa Zsa Gabor, I don't know how. With Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Akim Tamiroff, Joseph Calleia, Joanna Moore, Ray Collins, Valentin de Vargas, Dennis Weaver, Mercedes McCambridge. Must have been weird being directed by Orson when's he's in all his makeup and getup.

There's a sequence of Heston and Mort Mills driving at speed through the streets that is just like no other - camera mounted at the front. Russell Metty shoots the whole thing brilliantly, whether a sweaty close up or one of his trademark sweeping crane shots. Those silhouettes all over the place are also brilliant. Orson is using a 'snip-frame' technique in which he's cutting every other frame out of a shot to speed it up, e.g. zoom when car explodes.

And - Psycho all over the place - Janet Leigh alone in motel where 'we don't get much passing trade since they closed down the motorway' - Mort Mills is only the traffic cop who wakes her up! -!¬

The restoration was supervised by Walter Murch.

Originally cut by Welles and Virgil Vogel, recut at the studio's insistence by Ernest Nims. Camera operators are John Russell (" a great camera operator - one of the last great ones") and Philip Lathrop, but Welles also gives much credit to the grip, steadying the camera on its rails.

The long take that no one ever notices was where they 'find' the dynamite in the boy's apartment. It was the first thing filmed. They rehearsed all day, then at ten to six filmed it - twelve pages of script in one shot.

Leigh's brilliant. And Heston was apparently 'the nicest, nicest man' (quotes from 'This Is Orson Welles' by Peter Bogdanovich).

Something about the film (the black comedy?) so upset Universal that when he arrived to the studio one day, he simply wasn't allowed in. The film was taken away from him and he never made another studio picture.

Raymond and Ray (2022 Rodrigo Garcia & scr)

Two brothers with issues drive to their abusive father's funeral, meet people who knew him differently, including ex lover Maribel Verdú. Ewan McGregor, Ethan Hawke. A strange, unlikely screenplay is not without its share of surprises and humour. With Todd Louiso, Sophie Okonedo (great accent), Vondie Curtis-Hall (underwritten priest).

One of the producers was Alfonso Curaon, and both Inarritu and Chivo get a 'thanks'. Made for Apple. It was photographed by Igor Jadue-Lillo with lots of elegant tracking shots, great jazzy score by Jeff Beal, who also plays the trumpet solos.

More Big Bang Theory

Loved the episode in which Sheldon invents two new chess pieces: The Serpent, which if it takes you, you die two moves later.. unless you reach The Old Woman, who turns into The Empress.

Leonard is going out with Raj's sister. At the end of season four, a drunken Penny reveals she should never have ended it with Leonard, but she and Raj end up sleeping together.

The girls: Kaley Cuoco (The Flight Attendant), Mayim Bialik, Melissa Rauch, Aarti Mann, Laurie Metcalfe, Christine Baranski. Carol Ann Susi is the voice of Mrs. Wolowitz. Kevin Sussman is the comic book store owner. Wil Wheaton was in Stand By Me.

Season 5 ends with Howard finally having to go into space, and getting married.

Jim won his first two (of four) Emmys in 2010 and 2011.

Foyle's War: All Clear (2008 Tristram Powell)

It's 1945 already and the well caught days just before the war is officially ended. The police station is about to close, the band to be disunited, ending series five on just three films. But what this episode is really about - Horowitz the Historian again - is the Exercise Tiger incident at Slapton Sands in which due to errors 749 American serviceman died and the story was hushed up.

The poem Andrew (Julian Ovenden) recites, 'All Clear' sure sounds like a Pudney...

They sounded out the last all clear
And told us, those that made it here
That very soon we'd hold once more
Those very things that we held dear
Yet nothing's clear to me
I gaze from darkness to a summer haze
And though they part, the clouds of war 
Lead only to uncertain days.

... but isn't.

Foyle's War: Broken Souls (2008 Simon Langton)

Written by Michael Chaplin for a change. The episode theme is all in the title.

Joseph Mawle returns home from war to wife Natasha Little (Any Human Heart, The Boys Are Back) and child, having spent all of it as a prisoner of war, is not too happy to find a dishy German helping out on the farm (the not very German sounding Jonathan Forbes). A young man has run away and returns to his evacuee 'parents' Phyllida Law and Graham Crowden. Foyle plays chess with Polish psychiatrist Nicholas Woodeson. Also with Jesse Birdsall, Roger Sloman, Alexander Gilmour, Sally Leonard, Oliver Kieran-Jones, Duncan Bell.

I love the way the plot strands all converge. Would not have guessed the ending in a million years.

Knew Mawle at once, maybe from Five Daughters, Red Riding or The Street - good actor.

Foyle's War: Plan of Attack (2008 Tristram Powell)

Season Five. 1944. It's a year later and Sam is helping Foyle to type a book about the Hastings police during WW2. She also has a job at an air force reconnaissance centre, where some frictive types work (just made that word up, probably thinking of 'fictive'). You know there'll be a murder or two.

Morale at the station is much lowered and Milner is thinking of transferring. Ultimately Michael Jayston pops up again and begs Foyle to help with the case, much to the delight of everyone.

Nice thinking that Horowitz has introduced the triple aspects of religion and war - those that will not condone any killing, those that want the enemy treated as brothers, that it's too soon to do anything - as realised by Sam's uncle in trying to comfort a woman who's lost two sons and now a husband and 'has nothing left to give'. Also that military secrets might be being leaked to priests.

Didn't know most of cast: Malcolm Sinclair, Fiona Glascott, Vince Leigh, Julian Wadham, Sheila Ballantine, Nicholas Day.

Actually Langley Park, Slough

No idea what cartoonists were doing employed at a RAF Mapping centre, but sure Horowitz was right in his detail. For example, there was indeed an attack on an aircraft factory in Marienbug, though I did mishear it as 'Marienbad' and assumed H. was joking with us! Wouldn't it be funny if every insight, assumption, theory or observation I've made in this blog was wrong!*

* Ed. No.

Agatha Christie's Marple: The Pale Horse (2010 Andy Hay, written by Russell Lewis)

Well, this is a diabolical and fiendishly clever story, somewhat tweaked by Lewis - it was not, for example, originally a Marple mystery at all. I wondered if the curse placing scene was Lewis's mischievous nod to Hammer films, but apparently this flavour was in the original 1961 novel, and may have been an allusion to the novels of Dennis Wheatley which were popular at the time.

Agatha's poison of choice for this one is Thallium.

With Julia McKenzie are JJ Feild, Neil Pearson, Jonathan Cake, Nigel Planer, Susan Lynch, Pauline Collins, Tom Ward, Sarah Alexander, Amy Manson, Bill Paterson and - briefly and didn't recognise her - Holly Willoughby! And - not quite so briefly - Nicholas Parsons.

Foyle's War: Casualties of War (2007 Tristram Powell)

Another corker - both Milner and Sam are in peril, whilst Foyle finds his hands tied in two cases to such an extent that he (series finale) resigns. 

Moreover his goddaughter has returned after 10 years and her son has become mute following his school being bombed. (Though you also hear from (another) kid "We found a bit of shrapnel once. I hope the war never ends!") The Sandhurst Road school bombing was a real event - thought it might have been. And did notice officer's name 'Boothroyd' as a probable Bond reference.

Q is amazed that a woman wouldn't be allowed on such hush-hush military work and has to be disguised as a secretary - loved it's the Dam Busters project.

I keep watching this and thinking that I really should have noticed these moments of plot point significance, e.g. it's the wife's desk, not the husband's.

And all in tandem two youths (Gerard Kearns from Shameless and Harry Eden) are operating espionage acts for dodgy Spanish diplomat Stanley Townsend. With Kate Fleetwood, Joshua Lewis, Richard Clothier, Dermot Crowley, Abigail Cruttenden, Kevin Doyle, Michael Jaystone.

Dedicated to Jeremy Silberston, who had directed many of these, died too young at 55, was a friend of Horowitz.

I Was An Adventuress (1940 Gregory Ratoff)

Zorina may be a good ballerina but she has the acting abilities of a carp; Richard Greene has the charisma of a hatstand. Luckily we have Peter Lorre and Eric von Stroheim (and briefly Sig Ruman) in support. Story about group of swindlers is Hollywood comedy template #144, quite fun, written by too many writers to list. Swan Lake sequence adds nothing to plot. Film is professionally photographed by Leon Shamroy and Edward Cronjager for Fox.

Cora Witherspoon is no relation to Reece.

Sapphire (1959 Basil Dearden)

Esoteric cast in British crime thriller with race undertones (or overtones), starring Nigel Patrick (The Sound Barrier), Yvonne Mitchell (Woman in a Dressing Gown), Michael Craig (Payroll, Doctor in Love, The Angry Silence), Paul Massie (The Rebel), Bernard Miles, Olga Lindo, Earl Cameron.

Photographed in Eastmancolor by Harry Waxman. Written by Janet Green, with Lukas Heller supplying additional dialogue ("Move it!" his best line).

Doesn't exactly paint the Brits of 1959 in the most favourable light.

Foyle's War: Bleak Midwinter (2006 Gavin Millar)

A girl is killed in  a munitions factory, her boyfriend is a psycho, Milner's wife wants to come back to him, she's murdered, leaving him prime suspect.

Foyle himself is actually in danger in this one... but not as much danger as we think.

Gavin Brocker, Sian Brooke, Ron Cook, Caroline Martin, Alexander Perkins, Jay Simpson (proving to be a hit as Sgt Brooke), Paul Jesson, Liz Fraser (you know, from I'm All Right Jack).

Foyle's War: Bad Blood (2016 Jeremy Silberston)

Brilliant episode in which anthrax tests put Sam's life in peril.

Philip Franks, Jonah Lotan, Jay Simpson, Caroline Martin, Tom Harper (not another Tom H.!), Roy Marsden, the indispensable Ken Colley, Tim Delap, Anthony Flanagan, Gawn Grainger, Claire Cox.

Foyle's ex-WWI buddy has himself been gassed with chlorine, what the Germans called 'Disinfection'.

Great stuff between Kitchen and Weeks in hospital - "Think I'll need a couple of days off sir" etc.

North West Frontier (1959 J Lee Thompson)

Film begins with a voiceover, which is not needed at all, indicative of the film's problem - talky and boring script. Action bits are OK in tale of band of travellers fleeing muslim horde on old train.

Kenneth More, Lauren Bacall, Herbert Lom, Wilfred Hyde White, I.S. Johar, Ursula Jeans, Eugene Deckers, Ian Hunter.

Should have ended with boy-prince driving train into final station.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993 Nora Ephron & co-scr)

 Love this film.

Marple: They Do It With Mirrors (2009 Andy Wilson)

Damned odd episode, written by Paul Rutman, from Agatha's 1952 Marple novel. Most of the acting seems pantomimey, especially Maxine Peake, Tom Payne, Brian Cox, Nigel Terry, Ian Ogilvy.. in fact it's easier to say who is non-hammy: Julia McKenzie, Sean Hughes (as a comic, the only actually subdued performance) and Alex Jennings. Penelope Wilton's American accent is distracting and annoying. With Joan Collins, Alexei Sayle, Emma Griffiths Malin, Sarah Smart, Jordan Long.

Didn't have a clue what it was all about, felt utterly confused.