Made in England (2024 David Hinton)

Loved the line from A Canterbury Tale, to the dereliction and flattened buildings - "Well you get a better view of the Cathedral!" - a brilliant line, quintessentially British.

I did not realise (or maybe I did, but had forgotten) that the last ten minutes of Black Narcissus are silent - in fact the music was written first and then the action is choreographed to the music - the first such experiment Powell attempted; then going on to the incredible Red Shoes ballet, which Scorsese says is filmed not theatrically but from the point of view of the dancer, to be within the ballet - something Scorsese himself used on one of the fight scenes in Raging Bull, keeping us inside the fight. Also that the moment in Blimp where the camera drifts away from the duel he also used for a build up to a fight scene in Raging Bull, which is then not shown.

It was fun seeing how Scorsese would have first seen Thief of Bagdad etc, with missing frames and in jerky black and white. But mainly the film avoids trickery, letting the clips speak for themselves, though dividing the screen into squares here and there is well done.

Then this great quote from Emeric: "I always had the feeling that we were amateurs in a world of professionals. Amateurs stand so much closer to what they're doing and they are driven by enthusiasm, which is so much more forceful than what professionals are driven by."

Receiving the BAFTA Fellowship Awards in 1981

Trees Lounge (1996 Steve Buscemi & scr)

Another good example of drip feed writing - we begin to understand exactly how fucked up Steve Buscemi's life is as it goes along, but as he tells his ex in hospital "Things are worse now".

The key moment in the film is that very last fixed shot - Buscemi looking at the sad couple at the bar, and thinking about his old pal in hospital, and then... not having that whisky. 

Carol Kane, Mark Boone Junior, Bronson Dudley, Anthony LaPaglia, Elizabeth Bracco, Debi Mazar, Chloe Sevigny, Seymour Cassel, Michael Imperioli, Samuel L Jackson, Daniel Baldwin.

Photographed by Lisa Rinzler open matte:

Edited by Kate Williams. Released through Orion.

Boardwalk Empire - Season 1 (2010 Created by Terence Winter)

..who was one of The Sopranos writers. This had sat on our shelf for years, unaccountably. According to Wikipedia it was inspired by Nelson Johnson's 2002 non-fiction book 'Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City', about the historical criminal kingpin Enoch L. Johnson. Who is played, of course, by Steve Buscemi.

Episode 1 was directed by Martin Scorsese (but interestingly, not edited by Thelma Schoonmaker). He is also an executive producer, along with people like Mark Wahlberg, Winter and Steve Levinson (no relation). And Margaret Nagle, who's one of the writers.

Cast: Michael Pitt (as the WW1 veteran) and wife Aleksa Palladino, Kelly Macdonald, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Stephen Graham (Al Capone), Vincent Piazza (Lucky Luciano), Paz de la Huerta (Nucky's woman), Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire, sadly no longer with us), Shea Whigam (Nucky's brother), Gretchen Moll (Pitt's mum), Anthony Laciura (Nucky's German 'butler'), Paul Sparks.

Fabulous production design by Bill Groom, Colourful evocation of 1920s. Same ingredients as The Sopranos - must watch plots interspersed with unpleasant violence. Interesting themes: corruption, politics, Prohibition, post-war veterans, movies. Made for HBO.

Uncle Frank (2020 Alan Ball & scr, prod)

Good drip-feed story of young woman in 1973 and her relationship with her uncle, who it turns out is gay and in long term relationship with a Saudi. They are Sophia Lillis, Paul Bettany and Peter Macdissi (who also produced). I am reminded that Ball's early feature, Towelhead, was good and should be watched again - and this is where we know Macdissi and his striking features from. Liliis is good - she started out in the 2017 It remake. Bettany we never recognise in anything, such a chameleon is he.

Intriguingly, the trigger for this was when Ball came out to his mum, she revealed that his dad might have been 'that way', and once accompanied the body of a friend on a train back to his hometown. I was amused to read that Ball doesn't write outlines for features as "it's more interesting to write them and see where they take me". (scriptmag interview.)

Anyway, it's emotional and very good. Great cast includes Steve Zahn, Judy Greer, Margo Martindale, Stephen Root, Lois Smith, Jane McNeill.

In most States homosexuality was still illegal then.

Photographed by Khalid Mohtaseb.

Thelma (2024 Josh Margolin & scr, ed)

Something of a tall story from Margolin, and dedicated to his own grandmother, who appears briefly at the end. The film was exec produced by stars June Squibb and Fred Hechinger. Captures rather well the feelings of the elderly, not wanting to be ordered about but aware that they aren't able to do the things they used to, and that friends are passing fast. Scammed grandmother goes after scammers who have deprived her of $10,000, aided by friend Richard Roundtree (his last film).

With Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell.

The film is meditative, tender and entertaining.

On guns: "How hard can it be? Idiots use them all the time."

Moonflower Murders (2024 Writer Anthony Horowitz)

Lesly Manville is back, trying to solve a disappearance that is connected to a novel by mystery writer Alan Conway (Conleth Hill) and his creation Atticus Pünd (Tim McMullan). Pippa Bennett-Warner is Pünd's useful associate.

So we're also seeing the novel play out and thus the rest of the cast have dual roles: Danny Mays, Adrian Rawlins, Pooky Quesnel, Will Tudor, Rosalie Craig, Joanna Bacon, Thomas Coombes, Mark Gatiss. And the setting of it in the 1950s means we're in that cosy Agatha Christie period.

Horowitz adapted his own  novel in  6 hour long parts. And it's an enjoyable ride.

Alma's Not Normal - Season 2 (2024 Sophie Willan)

The return of Alma, Sophie Willen, her mum Siobhan Finneran and grandmother Lorraine Ashbourne.

Lays the blame for her mum's errant behaviour solely at the door of the failure of social healthcare support. She reads a great poem in prison - would make a brilliant rap.

Ends with Alma / Sophie beginning to write and ends up with her winning the BAFTA! Plenty of imagination e.g. short montages using photos, black-and-white movie recreation.

The Mountains of the Moon (1990 Bob Rafelson)

An awfully big budget adventure film, an unusual choice you would have thought for Rafelson, who's memorably associated with lower budget Jack Nicholson films.

I didn't realise it's the same true story that William Boyd appropriated for his novel 'The Romantic' in which our hero gets involved in the crazy world of Burton and Speke as they journey to find the source of the Nile. It's based on their own personal accounts and written by William Harrison and the director. I didn't really recognise Patrick Bergin, who makes an energetic and charismatic Burton, nor Iain Glen as the more restrained Speke. Their growing friendship, loyalty but ultimate fallout makes the film.

Lots of recognisable people pop up including a young Fiona Shaw, Richard E Grant, John Savident, Peter Vaughan, James Villiers, Adrian Rawlins, Delroy Lindo, Bernard Hill, Roshan Seth, Anna Massey and Leslie Phillips. Paul Onsongo is the faithful expedition organiser. Couldn't work out who is the African king, who's rather good. And must mention One Foot in the Grave's Mrs Warboys, Doreen Mantle!

Fabulous on location work from Roger Deakins, who's also the camera operator (with Dick Pope shooting additional material). The sound designer gets an up front credit - there's a lot going on - production sound mixer Simon Kaye. Thom Nobel is the editor. Produced for Carolco.

Ellis (2024 Created by Paul Logue and Sian Martin)

A new invention for television in three ninety minute films for Channel 5. Sharon D Clarke is fabulous as the roving DCI who's sent to sort out ineffective stations. She picks up DS Andrew Gower in film one and he stays with her, and their relationship - he very polite, she rather brusque and private - is one of the things that males it work. She's also great with suspect whether vulnerable or plain nasty.

We've just seem her as the female lead of Mr Loverman! And was in the 2021 Showtrial. She's been around since the eighties - her first credit is The Singing Detective - so glad she's having her moment. Whether the creators wrote it for her I am unable to establish.

That Uncertain Feeling (1941 Ernst Lubitsch)

The Lubitsch that seems unfairly neglected is like music, with its rhythms and sporadic outbursts of 'Keeks!', 'Phooey!' and the like. And seems only to exist in fuzzy, public domain prints, a great shame as George Barnes' lighting is clearly beautiful, in Alexander Golitzen's sets. Maybe one of the French or Spanish releases is better. Where's Criterion...?

I loved the Amazon reviewer who said "Too many one-room scenes with characters opening and closing doors" thus missing one of the delightful features of a Lubitsch comedy, which are always focusing on doorways.

"Really darling, you talk as if you've never been in a meadow."

"Was it a dull party?"
"No, I'd say she was about your size."

Victorien Sardou and Emilie deNajac's play 'Divorçons' (1883) was adapted by Walter Reisch and screenwritten by Donald Ogden Stewart who found fame mainly through adapting the work of others (won Oscar for the Philadelphia Story) - he emigrated to England in the 1950s Communist witch hunt, and died here. It was previously filmed by Lubitsch as Kiss Me Again (unfortunately no known prints exist) in 1925, with Marie Prevost, Monte Blue and Clara Bow. It's an independent Sol Lesser production,

Great cast: Melvyn Douglas, Merle Oberon, Burgess Meredith, Alan Mowbray, Sig Ruman, Harry Davenport, Eve Arden (who basically sets her character for the next 40 years (she was in Grease - not that that's enough of a reason to watch it), Olive Blakeney.

Hard not to imagine Lubitsch acting out the parts for everybody. That scene where Douglas confronts Meredith - they're so polite to one another. It's another Lubitsch trademark isn't it, if you think the beard scene in To Be Or Not To Be or the confrontation over the swords in The Merry Widow.

Brilliant Lubitsch touch (on three) when he has to slap his wife. Notice shots of closed doors / action happening off-screen. Inspired use of "Keeks!" Many sour-faced photos of Meredith (one being put out of the bedroom like it's a cat). Douglas / Meredith funny. Witty. Photographed by George Barnes with a lovely rain pattern on a bed. Phooey!

P.S. "Keeks!" has since become a much used general purpose expression in this house.

Rye Lane (2023 Raine Allen-Miller)

Extremely quirkily made film, with a crazy soundtrack. Vivian Oparah and Daviod Jonsson make frinds one day in Brixton.

Examples of very weird wide angles, and background action:

Edited by the sublime Vioctoria Boydell, who we know loved her experience of working on the film.

The Man With the Gun (1955 Richard Wilson & co-scr)

Starts memorably when town tough guy Leo Gordon shoots a boy's dog dead. The Marshal does nothing. So that sets things up nicely.

But 'town tamer' Robert Mitchum is on hand to sort out the bad guys - and try to reunite with his little girl, offspring of town madam Jan Sterling.

Meanwhile hot head John Luton is standing up to them too, to the concern of fiancee Karen Sharpe and her father Emile Meyer. Memorable ending to impressively modern Alex North score.

Mitchum was a 'sweetheart' to newbie Sharpe. When they went to New York to publicise it he carried her off the airplane:

Photographed by Lee Garmes.

The title isn't great. Written by Wilson and N.B. Stone. Wilson worked with Orson Welles on It's All True, Macbeth and Lady from Shanghai.

Two Rode Together (1961 John Ford)

James Stewart agrees to accompany soldier Richard Widmark in a mission to restore kidnapped white people back from the Comanche... which proves not to be the greatest idea in the world. Frank Nugent's screenplay comments on the problems of assimilation.

It feels slightly uncertain in tone - Widmark and Stewart are supposedly friends, but Stewart pulls a gun on the other. Repatriated Indian kills his 'mother', turns out he was Shirley Jones' long lost brother all along, before he's lynched. Linda Cristal isn't allowed to fit in anywhere. Andy Devine provides comedy relief. I suppose all Ford's films are something of a jumble but this one feels a little more uncertain. It turns put he didn't like the script, did the film as a favour for Harry Cohn.

Great moments include the opening, Stewart's mercenary girlfriend Annelle Hayes, long take of Widmark and Stewart by the river. With Woody Strode, John McIntire, Paul Birch.

Ford in conversation with PB: "We've got this big screen... If i can play a scene in a two-shot, where you can see both faces very well, I prefer it that way." Photographed by Charles Lawton.

What's Love Got To Do With It? (2022 Shekhar Kapur)

There are a few 'roms' in these pages, such as Never Been Kissed, Love, Rosie, Isn't It Romantic and What If? This one, though like the others not funny, is quite enjoyable as it goes towards the conclusion we know it will go towards, and in talking about 'assisted' marriages ('like assisted suicide?' Lily James asks Shazad Latif) has a certain point of difference.

Whether James and Latif are any good is a moot point.

Noticed the good editing - Guy Bensley and Nick Moore. Written by Jemima Khan. Enjoyed Lily's descriptions of her love life as various fairy tales. And the 'continent' that is between their two houses.

With Emma Thompson, Shabana Azmi (a noted Indian actress and activist), Sajal Aly (the bride), Oliver Chris. Also liked the two empty headed producer types.

DP Remi Adafarasin.

It's a Canon EOS C70, though we both thought she needed separate sound recording

The Hardacres (2024 Loren Mclaughlan)

Something a bit different - family of Yorkshire herring workers strike out on their own and become rich. They buy a local manor and then of course find it tough to mix with the posh lot in society.

Can't help but finding it somewhat ropey and clichéd, however (groundskeeper pointing shotgun at two unarmed women, for example). 6 x 45 for Channel 5.

The Family: Claire Cooper, Liam McMahon, Julie Graham, Adam Little, Shannon Lavelle, Zak Ford-Williams. The neighbours: Holly Sturton, Cathy Belton, Owen Roe. The staff: Ingrid Craigie, Mark Doherty. The financial advisor: Taheen Modak.

From C.L. Skelton novel.

It all ends happily. Hurray!

The Stars Look Down (1940 Carol Reed)

We seem to be seeing a lot of Emlyn Williams recently. Here, he's a total badun out only for himself and money. A.J. Cronin's story is about a mining town (again). Miner Edward Rigby knows there is a plan of the mines showing where the danger from underground water lies, but the owner Allan Jeayes denies any knowledge of it. It's this that leads to the film's climactic disaster. In the meantime Michael Redgrave falls in with Williams' cast off, Margaret Lockwood, who talks him into not finishing his Uni degree and becoming a lowly teacher, thus ruining his life.

It is in fact rather a downbeat film which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Reed's direction is occasionally clunky - in fact I would have dated it earlier than 1940. It was screenwritten by J.B. Williams and A. Coppel.

Nancy Price makes an impression as the tough-as-nails mother.  (We might know her from Mandy, and rather more recently, IKWIG! One of her earliest appearances in 1921 is in the fabulously titled Belphegor the Mountebank!)

Showtrial: Season 2 (2024 Ben Richards)

Adeel Akhtar plays a damaged lawyer who takes on case of policeman Michael Socha who has been charged with killing a climate activist - and he does have a motive and a previous relationship with the man.

Nathalie Armin is the prosecutor, Joe Dempsie the investigating DI. Fisayo Akinade is a climate activist. With Zoe Telford and Nina Toussaint-White. And Kerry Hayes as the female PC.

Quite interesting points of view being expressed, such as that the police can't do anything nowadays without doing something wrong. And the lot of a female PC. Also that a climate change protest has caused the death of a pregnant woman.

Richards wrote the last one, which impressed us back in 2021.

Marvellous playout to episode 3 c/o Fink, 'Warm Shadow', who also provided a fine ending to The Responder.

The Deep Blue Sea (1955 Anatole Litvak)

Written by Terence Rattigan, from his play, another grouping of characters in a single residence, this time a huge house on the Embankment that's been converted into individual flats. The story jumps around in time.

We found the Vivian Leigh character rather wet and unlikeable, and the ending downbeat. Kenneth More is in serious mode, for a change, reprising the role he played on stage. Rattigan's play is allegedly a mirror for his own closet relationship with Kenny Baker, its failure and aftermath. Which is actually more interesting than the play itself.

With Eric Portman, Emlyn Williams, Moira Lister, Dandy Nichols, Jimmy Hanley, Alec McCowen, Sidney James.

Music: Malcolm Arnold. Photography: Jack Hildyard. Editing Bert (as 'A.S.') Bates. Production design Vincent Korda. Our extremely blurry and jumpy copy broadcast on TPTV didn't help.

I think we found the Terence Davies version from 2011 more satisfactory.

Madigan (1968 Don Siegel)

Richard Widmark and Harry Guardino play detectives on the trail of a murderer. Simultaneously, Henry Fonda is the commissioner who finds something dirty on Chief Inspector James Whitmore, who we perhaps recognise from The Shawshank Redemption and earlier, The Asphalt Jungle (also Them and much on TV).

Peter Bogdanovich thought the "fatal shoot-out at the end is among the most brilliantly shot and cut pieces of action ever made".

I'd anticipated that happily married Guardino would be killed, but got that totally wrong.

Unfortunately the music is terrible - makes it sound like a sixties TV drama.

Siegel and the producer did not get on and the latter made stupid changes. Siegel had loved the book (by Richard Dougherty) which was adapted by Howard Rodman, then reworked by Abe Polosnksy and Siegel himself. 

The cars look like they're in a widescreen process all of their own.

With Inger Stevens, Susan Clark, Michael Dunn, Don Stroud (impressively Methody).

I doesn't look like a Russell Metty picture, perhaps because it's not studios set. Universal.

Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2016 Joseph Cedar & scr)

I'm afraid I just didn't get this film this time - I don't even really understand what happened. 

Interestingly done and good cast in the shape of Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Hank Azaria, Steve Buscemi, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Michael Sheen, Dan Stevens.

Saving Private Ryan (1998 Steven Spielberg)

The perfect choice for Remembrance Sunday. The Dirty Eight: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies. With Matt Damon, Paul Giamatti, Ted Danson, Dennis Farina... and, Kathleen Byron!

Janusz Kaminski's photography is marvellous and the decision to shoot hand held absolutely the right one. For the record the camera operators are Seamus Corcoran, Mitch Dubin and Chris Haarhof.

Written by Robert Rodat, inspired by four brothers killed in the American Civil War.

The first 25 minutes are  certainly visceral, filmed in Southern Ireland.

It was funny to see that some of Steven's home movies are little war films. This stands as a correction to the types of John Wayne gung ho war films like Back to Bataan that he had grown up with, and it's a tribute to his Dad, who served.

Michael Khan edited it on a Moviola and won the Oscar as did John Williams  and the director (also Sound). Hanks was nominated.