Clocking Off - Season 1 (2000 Paul Abbott)

Everyone's in it - John Simm, Philip Glenister, Lesley Sharp (Scott and Bailey, Capital, Sarah Lancashire, Chris Ecclestone, Siobhan Finneran, Maxine Peake, Christine Tremarco (serially unfaithful), Jack Deam, Jason Merrells, Andrew Sheridan, Wil Johnson, Diane Parish... even Julian Rhind Tutt.

Abbott originally wrote them as separate film ideas, then needed to bring them together into a cohesive whole. The challenge of writing six episodes solo was a big one for him, but its success (and BAFTA) led the way to State of Play and Shamless, or Shameless, if you prefer.

MASH (1970 Robert Altman)

Written by Ring Lardner Jr., loosely based on Richard Hooker's novel, and partly improvised; I'd forgotten how funny this is. It sometimes comes across like a silent slapstick comedy but is anarchic and particularly anti-authoritarian, finding targets for fun in adherence to strict military practices and religion, the 'last supper' of Painless being one such example. Altman's predilections for the zoom lens and overlapping dialogue are well in evidence. But amidst the gore of the surgery scenes you come away with the impression that these surgeons really know what they're doing. The camp loudspeaker announcements are frequently hilarious.

Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould make a wonderful couple heading a large cast, also comprising Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Roger Bowen, Robert Duvall, Rene Auberjonois (priest), David Arkin, Jo Ann Pflug, Gary Burghoff (Radar), Fred Williamson ('Spearchucker'), Michael Murphy, John Schuck and Bud Cort.

Photographed by Harold E Stine, well edited by Danford Greene and Altman. Paramount.

Altman reckoned he got away with it as 20th Century Fox was preoccupied by large scale problems on Tora, Tora, Tora and Patton. It was unexpectedly a huge box office hit.

The Godfather, Part II (1974 Francis Ford Coppola & co-scr)

In scope of course it is much bigger - the budget had risen from $6 million to $13 million, and shows in its recreations of New York in the early part of the twentieth century, and its journeys back to Sicily and onward to Cuba.

It's a film of two halves, cross cutting Vito's early life with that of the increasingly embittered Michael, and it's an irony that when both men take their vengeance against people who have betrayed them, the victims are all old men - a token victory only.

It is supposedly the better film because it has more to say - about the corruption through big business and politics - but I think it's the lesser of the two films. You don't really feel any emotion, or suspense, or joy - there's nothing to laugh about in this one. But it is marvellously photographed by Gordon Willis, and has an amazing golden look. Amazingly, he wasn't even Oscar nominated. But winners were Coppola for film, direction and screenplay (with Mario Puzo again) Dean Tavoularis for the production design, and Nino Rota for the music. Some of those artful dissolves from new to old also eluded the Academy - Barry Malkin - Richard Marks, Peter Zinner. Walter Murch was the sound designer.

Robert de Niro also won for best supporting actor. With Cazale, Keaton. Shire and Duvall are Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo (the old-school Pentangeli), G.D. Spradling (Senator), Bruno Kirby, Marianna Hill (High Plains Drifter), Morgana King (Mama Corleone), Dominic Chianese (Junior Soprano), Harry Dean Stanton, Danny Aiello and Roger Corman (one of the senators). Talking of the senate enquiry, I don't know if it was supposed to, but it seemed to me very much to invoke the feel of the HUAC hearings.

Q wasn't impressed that I made us watch the remastered edition which Channel 4 broadcast over her original, boxed set Valentine's Day gift (!), but you can see the difference:

Original

Remastered

Original

Remastered

And here's a reminder of how dark Willis dared to go (from the new edition):

Ordinary People (1980 Robert Redford)

Donald Sutherland died June 20 aged 88. I probably first saw (and loved) him in Kelly's Heroes. You felt that in whatever role he was in, he was always true in it. Here he's a confused father struggling to deal with his son's post-suicidal life. The dialogue is almost Pinterish in that nothing being talked about is relevant - it's what's not being talked about that is crucial.

Redford draws wonderful performances out of everybody - Sutherland, Timothy Hutton, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch and Elizabeth McGovern - and John Bailey paints them in that slightly autumnal, shadowy light of his.

Alvin Sargent adapted Judith Guests's novel in the 'drip feed' narrative style. It's moving, and very good. Won Oscars for Picture, Director and Screenplay, and for Hutton.

Great lines like -

"We would have been all right if there hadn't been any mess"

- and -

"I'm crying because I don't know if I love you any more and I don't know what I'd do without that".

Edited by Jeff Kanew, his only film of note.

Avanti! (1972 Billy Wilder)

It was Billy's birthday. Though no one remembers Izzy Diamond anyway. Actually you have to give it to Samuel Taylor, who wrote the play. Then, it's as beautifully constructed as all their other gems. For example early on Carlucci says "You father always used to call me Carlo" which Armbruster never does until the very end.

Also you have to admire the way in which Armbruster falls for Miss Piggott but he never falls for Italy at all.

Ferdinando Scarfiotti is the art director responsible for recreating the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria. His credits include The Sheltering Sky, The Last Emperor, Daisy Miller, Death in Venice, Il Conformista and American Gigolo as 'visual consultant'.

The Offer (2024 writer Michael Tolkin, Leslie Greif)

Based on Al Ruddy's life as a producer and his experience of working on The Godfather. He is Miles Teller, Bob Evans is played by Matthew Goode, with a slightly blocked nose (I found this a little distracting), Coppola rather well by Dan Fogler again and mobster Joe Colombo by Giovanni Ribisi, also with a slightly distracting accent. Actually Burn Gorman has one as well, playing the head of Gulf & Western.

With Juno Temple as a highly useful assistant, Colin Hanks on good serious form, Jake Cannavale (son of Bobby and Jenny Lumet), Lou Ferrigno. And Patrick Gallo as Mario Puzo, Anthony Ippolito as Pacino, Nora Arnezedar as Ruddy's girlfriend, Meredith Garretson as Ali MacGraw, Joseph Russo as 'Crazy' Joe Gallo, Justin Chambers as Brando.

Temple plays her character well and she's a great one - chumming up to the boss of Gulf & Western, independently seeking help from Colombo, sorting out the script. Good stuff between Coppola and Puzo. There were so many problems associated with this film - Italian pressure, Sinatra really didn't want it made, a proposed sale of the studio, Evans and Ruddy being sacked - it's amazing it was made at all, never mind being the brilliant iconic film it became - which I guess is partly why this is so interesting.

A lavish ten parter for Paramount +. Tolkin wrote The Player. Though we almost thought that episode 9 was the last one - particularly the special screening for the mob, in which you can see just from their reactions which bit of the film we're at. Ruddy's decision to leave the GF and go his own way is almost anticlimactic. Nevertheless we thought is was one of the best streaming things of the year, and Juno Temple's Bettye McCartt a fabulous character.

Loved the scene in which Brando very simply becomes Don Corleone. Also where the actor playing Talia Shire's husband has hit her for real and Juno instructs Caan to beat the shit out of him - not true, but a great scene.

Directed by Adam Arkin, Dexter Fletcher, Colin Bucksey and Gwyneth Horder-Payton.

We'd been planning to watch just two episodes then celebrate Donald Sutherland with MASH, but we just had to watch the last four together.

Evans' career pretty much tanked after Chinatown; Ruddy did not much better, latterly though producing both Million Dollar Baby and the less successful Cry Macho for Clint Eastwood. And it is true that editor Aram Avakian was involved early on but not to sabotage Francis - in fact the opposite. They were friends (Aram had cut You're a Big Boy Now) and when Ruddy asked Avakian if he could replace Coppola as director he refused - see here.

Call Northside 777 (1948 Henry Hathaway)

An attempt to tell a true story using the actual locations wherever possible (the curved prison cells structure being one of the most interesting) gives the film a unique feeling and must have given Joe Macdonald some interesting lighting challenges. There's no music either.

James Stewart really does not at all believe cop killer Richard Conte is innocent... until he starts digging deeper into the story. Lee J Cobb is his editor.

With Helen Walker (detective's wife), Betty Garde, Kasia Orzazewski.

Ride In the Whirlwind (1966 Monte Hellman & co-scr)

And the other writer of this simple and direct western is its co-star, Jack Nicholson; the two of them also produced this independent B movie (for Roger Corman) which runs just an hour and a quarter. We start bang in the action with (Harry) Dean Stanton's gang pulling off a stagecoach robbery, then three cowboys turn up to their shack riding through to Waco. During the night a posse of vigilantes surround the shack and Nicholson and his buddies are mistaken for part of the gang and go on the run.

Rough justice is quickly dispensed by this gang of vigilantes.

Nicholson and Cameron Mitchell get away, find farmers George Mitchell (no relation), Katherine Squire and Millie Perkins and have to steal the guy's horses to survive. Which they know is wrong, but it's do that or die.

It has good little touches, like an attempt to play chequers, and the last slow fade out is an enigmatic ending.

Photographed by Gregory Sandor and edited (uncredited) by Hellman, who also shot The Shooting back-to-back with this one, also with Nicholson.

The Well (1951 Leo C Popkin & prod, Russell Rouse & co-scr)

And Clarence Greene was the other writer / producer in this independent production, released through United Artists, which contains a powerful racial text for small town America.

A little black girl falls down a well, the family report it to detective Richard Rober, a man who has talked to her is identified and caught - he's Henry Morgan. His uncle is the local business bigwig Roy Engel, tries to get him out unsuccessfully, is then harassed by two members of the missing girl's family, which ends up looking like assault... And that sets off a horrible chain reaction of false rumours and interracial violence which is really quite nasty. 

But then the girl is found, and the community is united in the rescue attempts to dig her out, something of a laborious process for the film and the audience, with lots of phallic equipment being pummelled about.

Only recognisable names behind the camera are Ernest Laszlo and Dmitri Tiomkin. The sound track is amusingly awful when scenes go from having sound track to none. The copy we saw was of a dubious bootlegged nature with pretty silver track marks and ambient splodges.

Features one of those "It's quiet out here - too quiet" moments.

Christine Larson is the spunky diner lady - 

"OK - which one of you's next?"

Maidie Norman (Susan Slept Here, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Airport 77) and Ernest Anderson (In This Our Life; and uncredited in both Palm Beach Story and North by Northwest as railway porters) are the girl's parents.

And I'd like to think it was a final, classy touch to depict Morgan as a black man at the end!

A rather rare film now.

Eric (2024 Lucy Forbes, writer Abi Morgan)

1980s New York. An alcoholic, hallucinating children's show puppeteer neglects his nine year old son (Ivan Howe), who then goes missing. Benedict Cumberbatch does these manic roles so well. His wife who looks familiar is only Gaby Hoffman!

McKinley Belcher III is the missing persons detective, harbouring a secret in that his lover is not only a man, but one who's dying of AIDS. He manages to dig into the corruption in the force and in politics, partly through his relationship with a previous lover.

Dan Fogler (from Fantastic Beasts) is Cumberbatch's puppet partner. Bamar Kane finds the boy, Clarke Peters is a caretaker.

A six-parter for Netflix. It was partly based on Abi Morgan's own time as a nanny in 1980s New York. It was very good. Forbes also directed This Is Going To Hurt.

New York is played by itself, though interiors were shot on sets in Budapest.

There's a quick reference to Seneca Village in the final episode, a community in the 1850s of African-American and Irish homeowners who were involuntarily relocated when Central Park was developed - not a well known bit of NYC history.

It was filmed in 1.66:1, for a change. I didn't notice.

Inside No. 9 - Season 1 (2014 Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith)

'Sardines' memorable first episode, but the second ('A Quiet Night In') is a brilliantly worked out and hilarious one, in which Reece and Steve attempt to steal a painting. It's a silent episode, and the way it works to music (and without music) is inspired.

Queenie (2024 Candice Carty-Williams)

Poor old Queenie, who starts out as a not terribly nice character who dumps her boyfriend, then indulges in random sex with people who are horrible, then gets sacked because of one of those couplings. It turns out, through therapy, she's has a most unsettling childhood... Candice based it on her own novel.

Dionne Brown is the title character.

I liked the use of record static at various crisis / flashback points.

The Absent-Minded Professor (1961 Robert Stevenson)

Professor Fred MacMurray is so busy accidentally inventing Flubber he forgets to get married to Nancy Olson. Keenan Wynn (and his son Tommy Kirk) try to steal the invention, Leon Ames tries to steal her. Edward Andrews is the defence secretary. The highlight is undoubtedly a zany basketball match.

Disney managed to release a cropped version of their own film on DVD. Oh well done!

Oh yeah - there's a flying Model T Ford as well.

It was referenced in The MMM, should you be wondering.

Geek Girl (2024 Holly Smale, Jessica Ruston)

Holly Smale really was a geek who became a model for a short time and wrote the 'Geek Girl' book series. Her (slightly autistic) character is portrayed by Emily Carey.

It's not the best written thing in the world but is reasonably enjoyable. We particularly like Emmanuel Imani as her agent.

With Liam Woodrum, Tim Downie, Rochelle Harrington, Jemima Rooper, Daisy Jelley, Sarah Parish and Sandra Yi Sencindiver.

10 parts for Netflix.

Limbo (2023 Ben Sharrock & scr)

A Syrian refugee Amir Al-Masry joins others on a remote Scottish island to wait and wait... His brother is fighting in Syria, his parents are struggling in Turkey. Fellow immigrant Vikash Bhai has been there three years. Ola Orebiyi and Kwabenah Ansah are pretending to be brothers. Sidse Babett Knudsen and Kenneth Collard are .. trying to teach them to fit in.

A quiet, formally photographed and slow film in which not much happens, with the highlight his eventual playing of the oud at the end, where the film stretches out from 4x3 into widescreen. (There, though, I'm not sure why it goes into the strange music of the film rather than just staying on the music of the oud.)

An interesting film, not without its little laughs.

Out of Africa (1985 Sydney Pollack & prod)

It had been so long that I remembered nothing whatsoever about it.

It's based on the true story of Karen Blixen and her years in Africa. Meryl Streep is really good as she, opposite Robert Redford and Klaus Maria Brandauer.

The film is most enjoyable but not a true classic - there's no tears to the eye, no gasp  of surprise, no laugh out loud moment. The screenplay is good, by Kurt Leudtke, e.g.

"When did you learn to fly?"
"Yesterday."

David Watkin and John Barry give it a lush sheen.

With Michael Kitchen, Malick Bowens, Michael Gough, Suzannah Hamilton, Grahame Crowden, Leslie Phillips.

Edited by Sheldon Khan, Fred and William Steinkamp and Pembroke Herring.

It' a bit of a shame that the couple's spectacular flight in a biplane is marred by some back projected close-ups of them.