Mr. Monk's Last Case (2023 Randy Zisk)

Written by the show's creator Andy Breckman, this one-off feature isn't unfortunately any more elaborate or fun than one of the medium quality TV episodes. Though there's perhaps more at stake, as Monk is planning to kill himself, much to the consternation of his dead wife Melora Hardin, but needs to find out what happened to his daughter's dead fiancé. (She's Caitlin McGee.)

The usual team reassemble: Traylor Howard, Jason Gray-Stanford, Ted Levine, Hector Elizondo, joined by scenery-chewer James Purefoy.

The Natural (1984 Barry Levinson)

Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel adapted by Robert Towne and Phil Dusenberry. Has a memorable beginning, just before sunset, by Caleb Deschanel. Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker and John Finnegan collide. Then a shocking turn of events involving Barbara Hershey, which is never explained. Years later, an enigmatic baseball player emerges. Wilford Brimley is inexplicably hostile, doesn't even try him out, but Richard Farnsworth has his back. Redford gets involved with Kim Basinger, who's so obviously bad news that you wonder why. There's a satisfying ending when the bad guys are scuppered, in a shower of sparkles. The very last scene suggests a happy ending.

But did Basinger bring on his stomach difficulties? It looked like she's drugged him, so that was a bit odd. I feel the script could have been ironed out a little more here and there. But it's very classy and engrossing and audience-pleasing.

With Glenn Close, Robert Prosky (evil club owner), Michael Madsen.

Music by Randy Newman, who is one of the extended Newman dynasty. Edited by Stu Linder. There's some good Redford-Levinson partnership because 10 years later, Levinson is an actor in Quiz Show, which Redford directed, and Linder is the editor.

A Tri-Star Picture.

What Men Want (2019 Adam Shankman)

What Men Want really isn't the best film in the world, and whilst its departure point is What Women Want, it's also three-fifths Jerry Maguire. Seventeen people wrote it.

Roxie Hart (1942 William Wellman)

Wannabe dancer is accused of murder; she thinks the ensuing publicity will be useful to her career; but she runs the risk of being found guilty and executed. Adolphe Menjou is a flamboyant solicitor who helps, George Montgomery a newspaperman who falls for her, Lynne Overman his older and more cynical colleague. It's told in flashback by older Montgomery in a bar. Based on the play 'Chicago' by Maurine Dallas Watkins, adapted by Nunnally Johnson, the play itself derived from real events. It's quite fun.

Music: Alfred Newman, photography: Leon Shamroy, editor: James B Clark, art direction: Richard Day, Wiard Ihnen. 20th Century Fox.

With Nigel Bruce, George Chandler (annoyingly familiar from something), Phil Silvers, Sara Allgood, William Frawley (juror), Spring Byington.

I would have to say though that none of her costumes looked very 1920s to my uncultured eye.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973 Peter Yates)

Well, I completely read this wrong.  (Paul Monash adapted George V Higgins' novel.) I thought firstly that the Peter Boyle character had shopped the gang to the feds. And then I thought that Mitchum knew full well what was going on at the end, had a plan to flip everything and get away. Instead it's a bleak ending, and as underplayed as the rest of the film.

It's very low key but very watchable due to good performances from familiar faces, and the gnawing feeling that something's going to go wrong somewhere along the line. (I obviously thought I knew better.) With Richard Jordan (The Secret of My Success, Logan's Run), Steven Keats (Black Sunday, Death Wish), Alex Rocco (The Godfather, himself a former member of Boston's Winter Hill Gang), Joe Santos, Mitchell Ryan (Lethal Weapon).

Photographed on location in Boston, by Victor Kemper, where Mitchum would hang around with criminal types. The stakeout at the train station is a memorable scene.

Released through Paramount, but its 'downbeat theme precluded wide popularity'.

The Search (1948 Fred Zinnemann)

Homeless children in Berlin, 1948. Even though they're being helped, they just see any uniforms as danger, hardly speak, obey wordlessly. It's quite a beginning, seeing them in that state. And our focus is on Ivan Jandl, an almost dumb fugitive and prison camp tatooed, who escapes the first chance he gets and is almost killed, but eventually falls into the care of US soldier Montgomery Clift. Then, the healing can begin. But meanwhile his mum Jarmila Novotna searches for him, helped by Aline MacMahon (Gold Diggers of 1933, Out of the Fog, The Man From Laramie). With Wendell Corey.

It's a very interesting film, using bombed out Berlin well. And in fact it's not an American production: Screenplay by Richard Schweizer, David Wechsler and Paul Jarrico, photographed by Emil Berna, edited by Hermann Haller, music by Robert Blum. Released by MGM but in fact a Praesens Film Zurich production.

Also interesting as Zinnemann was one of Wilder's Berlin buddies in the early thirties; they worked together on People on Sunday.

Mulholland Drive (2001 David Lynch & scr)

Incomprehensible film, a sort of corrupted infinite loop. Ostensibly about a young actress who comes to LA and gets mixed up with an amnesiac.

It could - obliquely - be about the difficulties of getting films made, and the scene with the man spitting his coffee out the funniest in it. (Actually the trouble the hit man gets into is also funny.)

David Lynch's own sound design gives the film an ominous undercurrent, but frankly the plot turns  - no, forget plot - the succession of sequences - are absolutely baffling. I suppose it works best as a dream, with all its illogicality, and currents of tenderness, love, fear, madness and horror.

Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, Robert Forster, Dan Hedaya, Ann Miller, 

Difficult to see, I know, but this is a twist on the famous shot from Persona

Photographed by Peter Deming, edited by Mary Sweeney (who also co-produced), production design Jack Fisk. The producer Alain Sarde (also Vera Drake, The Pianist) is a table lamp. (What? I'm being Lynchian.)

Remind me not to watch any more David Lynch films. Well... they're kinda fun, I guess. In a bonkers way.

May December (2023 Todd Haynes)

My least favourite Todd Haynes film is so grubbily photographed (by Christopher Blauvelt, Emma.) that it's annoying and distracting. There's some sort of Persona-like melding of Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman going on as the latter studies the former in order to play her in a TV movie. (Moore has been imprisoned for seducing a 13 year old boy whose now grown up with kids.) There's a lot of unresolved shit going on, and Portman is no saint either.

I was quite pleased with myself for identifying Michel Legrand's theme from The Go-Between used throughout.

Edited by Affonso Gonçalves. I was quite relieved when it was over.

Rebus (2024 Gregory Burke, Ian Rankin)

Richard Rankin is a sort of prequel Rebus though not set in the past (apparently). He's rather good as tough cop in Edinburgh dealing with warring gangs. With Lucie Shorthouse, Amy Manson, Brian Ferguson, Stuart Bowman, Neshla Caplan.

Blue Jasmine (2013 Woody Allen & scr)

Where was Woody coming from when he wrote this? His depiction of the title character is absolutely relentless, not granting an ounce of compassion or understanding. This woman is a self-delusional mess. Is it Mia? Could be. The screenplay is a masterful exercise in providing additional / ironic information / comment throughout. The ending is indeed one of Mr Allen's bleakest.

Interesting yellow / black thing here

A Slight Case of Murder (1938 Lloyd Bacon)

Based on a play by Damon Runyon (thus names like 'Innocence' and 'No Nose Cohen') and Howard Lindsay, adapted by Earl Baldwin and Joseph Schrank, this comedy has gangster Edward G Robinson trying to go straight in the beer brewing business, to the confusion of his family and mob pals. Jane Bryan particularly fun attempting to improve manners and diction. With stalwart support from Allen Jenkins, Edward Brophy and Harold Huber. Ruth Donnelly and Willard Parker are the rather colourless love interest - he's too tall. Too tall, I tell you. Bobby Jordan plays the rebellious orphan 'Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom'. Margaret Hamilton is the orphanage principal.

Photographed by Sid Hickox.

2 Days in New York (2012 Julie Delpy & co-scr)

Julie Delpy's horrible sister Alexia Landeau, her piece of shit boyfriend Alexandre Nahon and her eccentric dad Albert Delpy come to crowd out the apartment she shares with Chris Rock and their son and daughter. (Her mum Marie Pillet had died in 2009.) The behaviour of these people is unbelievable, but very funny. Julie is exhibiting her photographic work, and also selling her soul for $100,000!

Families. eh? Who'd have 'em?

Blue Lights - Season 2 (2024 Declan Lawn / Adam Patterson)

Just exceptional acting, particularly from Sian Brooke...

Martin McCann...

Katherine Devlin...

Nathan Braniff and Dearbháile McKinney...

But also Joanne Crawford, Andi Osho, Hannah McClean, Jonathan Harden, Desmond Eastwood, Andrea Irvine, Paddy Jenkins, Frank Blake, Seamus O'Hara, Seana Kerslake.

What's going on? A former army serviceman (O'Hara) decides to take back control of his turf by ousting two warring factions of drug pushers. Plus a young lawyer decides to look into the bombing of a chip shop in the time of the Troubles.

When you really care about your characters, then put them in jeopardy, that's great TV...

Alfie (1966 Lewis Gilbert)

Bill Naughton's adaptation of his own play stands up rather well today in its withering critique of male behaviour, which must have looked pretty bad - to enlightened people, anyway - at the time.

Michael Caine expanded his reach and popularity after hits with Zulu and The Ipcress File, and he was BAFTA and Oscar nominated. He plays a serial womanizer who is interested in fucking and that's about it. The women are Millicent Martin (married), Shelley Winters, Julia Foster (has his child), Jane Asher, Shirley Anne Field, Vivian Merchant and Eleanor Bron. With Murray Melvin, Denholm Elliott, Alfie Bass, Graham Stark (conductor), Sydney Tafler.

Considering it's shot by the legendary cameraman Otto Heller the night scenes are surprisingly crudely lit. Music: Sonny Rollins, editing: Thelma Connell, production design: Peter Mullins.

Love the eavesdroppers

Sonning Bridge without traffic lights must have been quite terrifying

Jane Asher's had enough. Good for you!

Has a memorably dark ending. Well, when I say it has a memorably dark ending, I hadn't actually remembered it, so it's perhaps less memorable than I think. 

Good to see again after Wilder knows how many years. 

Kitty Foyle (1940 Sam Wood)

I must admit, Kitty Foyle was not the film I was expecting. I thought I'd be seeing Ginger Rogers as a nightclub singer who ends up in court on a murder charge. What film is that? She was in films from 1929, if you can believe it, was in the Busby Berkeley films 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, co-starred with Fred Astaire for the first time in Flying Down to Rio in 1933. Top Hat was 1935, Stage Door 1937... Ah - it's Roxie Hart (1942), which seems rather expensive - the original Chicago in fact.

Anyway, Dalton Trumbo wrote this (with additional dialogue by Donald Ogden Stewart), and it's a flashback movie - between ever more irritating shots of a snow globe, Kitty has to choose between Philadelphia money man Dennis Morgan, who's married and can't get a divorce, and nice doctor James Craig... I mean they're both a bit dull, frankly. What does that tell us? The film is 'realistic'? It was based on the rather more adult novel 'White Collar Girl' by Christopher Morley.

Ginger won the Oscar, that much I can tell you... the scene she's in hospital and realises her son has died is one that no doubt sealed that envelope... Robert de Grasse photographs her handsomely.

With Ernest Cossart (dad). Edward Cianelli and Gladys George are in it a bit. And Florence Bates. Roy Webb wrote the music. I liked the 1900 opening with Heather Angel.

Here comes that snow again...

The RKO Story reports that it was a big hit, gave Rogers the chance to go 'straight', even changing her hair colour to 'de-glamorise' her.

Gilmore Girls - A Year in the Life - Fall (2016 Amy Sherman-Palladino)

Lorelai lasts as long on the hiking trail as we suspected...

..and she finds a former old people's home to become her next Inn - this isn't quite followed through - we needed the Michel, Lorelai, Sookie scene. Wonderful episode in which Logan and his three mad friends come to whisk Rory off - 

- (love the way she writes these three) - some exceptional choreography follows, one of the hallmarks of this film - check out also strangely dreamlike, balletic wedding scene - La La Land came to mind. Emily finds peace in Nantucket. ("How can a grown women not know how to reheat something?") Jess so isn't over Rory. But the Bombshell ending - maybe there will be another ten years later?

I've had the feeling all along that Alexis isn't a natural hugger.

Gilmore Girls - A Year in the Life - Summer (2016 Daniel Palladino & scr)

Starts off at a good lick with Rory being back in Stars Hollow ("I'm not back"), becoming the Gazette's editor. Plus Stars Hollow - the Musical, with which Lorelai has many problems (based on the fact it's copying 'Hamilton') but which we thought was good fun.

Then things get bad as Michel quits, mother and daughter fall out (again) and Lorelai hears a song which sounds like it's written directly at her, and declares she's off...

Next, Jess rips off Luke's cap and chucks it - something that most of the audience would have relished

Gilmore Girls - A Year in the Life - Spring (2016 Daniel Palladino & scr)

Has a rather scrappy beginning involving Pride March, Marcel in a mood etc. perhaps showing us that the Palladinos are less comfortable in long form, but does settle down and becomes funnier. Lorelai and Emily are in counselling, Rory is having a tough time knowing where her career's going. Luke is being forced to expand and unwillingly accompanies Emily and realtor around various establishments.

Tonight's the Night! / Happy Ever After (1954 Mario Zampi & scr)

Irish comedy that isn't funny. David Niven inherits estate, pisses off all the villagers. They want to kill him. Amazed it was filmed in precious and expensive colour. Even Barry Fitzgerald can't help it.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life - Winter (2016 Amy Sherman-Palladino)

So, nine year later, they are back. And Amy is back as writer-director of hour-and-a half episodes (films). This seems better written than series 7 already.

Lorelai doesn't look much different; Rory looks identical. Paris is sporting a cool short hair look. Rory seems to have been dating some guy for two years that no one can remember. But - Richard has died, leaving Emily in a somewhat weird state - she's wearing jeans at one point, for goodness' sake! And Lorelai has managed to upset her by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time again.

Edward Herrmann died in 2014.

The Boys in the Boat (2023 George Clooney)

I'm afraid I didn't find this very interesting, another of the 'will the underdog triumph?' in the sports genre. Apart from that, there's nothing at stake. The one thing I thought would happen - our protagonist would use his mechanical engineering to find an improvement to the rowing itself - didn't happen. So it's another of Mr Clooney's worthy films about real stories, and it's well enough made, but so what? (Now there's a fleeting reference to Jesse Owens, the black athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, and actually that sounds like it would have made a much better story.)

Callum Turner (War & Peace, The Last Letter from Your Lover, Emma.), Joel Edgerton, Peter Guinness, Sam Strike, Robert Elms, Hadley Robinson. Photographed by Martin Ruhe (Catch-22, The American) and edited by Tanya Swerling (The Tender Bar, Catch-22, Six Feet Under).

The Godfather (1972 Francis Coppola & co-scr)

I thought I knew this film so well I could have related it in detail - but there's more stuff in there than you remember.. it just sucks you in. A wonderful example of filmmaking, everything just works so well together. Nino Rota's score is rearranged in many different ways, the most interesting bit of music is the anticipation of the horse's head.

I like that two of the characters seeking a favour on the Don's daughter's wedding then reappear later. Also at the hospital - the baker is shaking but Michael's hands are steady - what did he do in the war, to qualify as a 'hero'? We don't know but he's clearly made of steely stuff, and the film is about him becoming corrupted by the mob and emerging as a dangerous Don.

The acting's fabulous. As is the editing - William Reynolds and Peter Zinner - often consisting of elegant dissolves. There's even an old Hollywood style montage with spinning newspapers! And who's left on - note at the end when his sister bursts in and the editing stays on Pacino.

It's a quite complicated story from Mario Puzo and he and Coppola won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Brando and the film also won. The way all debts are scored at the end is fabulous.

Fabulous coat / cab combination

Special mentions to Richard Castellano as Clemenza ('Leave the gun, take the cannoli') and Morgana King as Vito's wife.

It will be interesting to see the fictionalized account of the film's production in the Paramount+ series The Offer.