The Morning Show: Season 4 (2025 Creator Jay Carson)

Er... what now. Deep fakery. Paris Olympics. A mysterious chemical leak cover-up.

Jen's done something weird to her lips - not recently - this isn't News - but she shouldn't have done.

Brings Reece back in from the cold. Finds story of the environmental cover-up. Turns out annoying Chief Exec Marion Cotillard was responsible. How can Billy Crudup turn this to his advantage? Is series three leftover John Hamm involved?

Amusing sub-story - amidst many sub-stories.. or are they all sub-stories? Is there one overarching story?

Anyway. Greta Lee's AI version of herself blows up her career. Very good. Lee from Russian Doll, Past Lives.

Ends up with Reece in jail in Belarus, Jen uniting with Crudup to dish environmental scandal dirt on evil pantomime queen Cotillard to get her release. Even John Hamm has redeemed himself trying to help.

So, good ending but like all these things does seem quite padded.

Lindsay Duncan plays Crudup's ailing mother. (She does still live in the UK, if anyone's interested.)

Instant Family (2018 Sean Anders & coscr)

The screenplay - by Anders and John Morris - isn't great. Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne decide to adopt and get three siblings, the eldest of which is the strong-spirited Isabela Merced (who was also in Rosaline and the not well-rated Cuban reboot of Father of the Bride in 2022). It could have been much meatier and more serious but is let down by an inclination towards silliness, e.g. 'support' group who just laugh at the couple's progress. Why have a dog in the cast if you're not going to use it somehow? And bringing in the Joan Cusack character right at the ned -- why? Courtroom ending will induce vomiting.

Margo Martindale brings some oomph as a no-nonsense grandmother. Whilst Julie Hagerty's maternal grandmother is just wet. Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro (The Morning Show) are the adoption counsellors.

Anders was one of several writers of the rather more successful We're the Millers in 2013 but otherwise seems to specialise in dumb films and sequels.

All of Foyle's War (2002 - 2015 Anthony Horowitz)

Eight seasons of the brilliant, decent, morally upright and incorruptible detective, crimes complicated by war. They are all reviewed (or jotted) individually - this is really to remind me what we were doing on those Autumn evenings.

Great people pop up from the off: Emily Blunt, Danny Dyer, James McEvoy, Anton Lesser, Roger Allam Laurence Fox, Charles Dance etc.

Have to give a little mention to Guy Henry and Jonathan Coy, both excellent in 'Fifty Ships'. Funnily enough we just saw Coy as Nick's dad in The Hack.

They're running on Netflix, so it's a nice high res image without ads.

'Do you remember all these?' Q asked. 'Yes,' I said, 'just not all of the plot and the outcome'. Which is another way of saying no. But when in 'Bad Blood' I saw sheep, I knew immediately that Sam would be in great danger. (And that Ken Colley was in it.)

Lovely to see Liz Fraser again, in 'Bleak Midwinter', looking great at 77:

One of the later films is dedicated to Jeremy Silberston who directed some of the early ones, died only 56.

It was a bad choice to move the filming to Ireland - Dublin makes for a weird London. The final season was filmed in Liverpool, which made for a much better London.

Took a while to track down Alex Clatworthy as the super-efficient member of the security team, who has the coupon-buster three-in-one shoe.

It was not an Awards favourite. received just one BAFTA nomination for production design; won the Lew Grade award for 'a significant and popular programme' in 2003. Which is mysterious. I would have thought many times over it was award-worthy in writing, acting, direction, production design and cinematography.

I think two of my favourites come right at the end - Sunflower (which has a particularly brilliant twist and final pay off) and the finale Elise, both directed by Andy Hay. It's also depressingly (or presciently) entirely topical in its storylines on anti-Semitism and anti-immigration.

Nobody Wants This - Season 2 (2025 Erin Foster)

Well they liked it enough to get a second series. It's one of those ones where nobody's particularly likeable.

Kristen Bell won't commit to converting, so Adam Brodie loses shot at Head Rabbi. Giving his mother Tovah Feldshuh  more fuel against the shiksa. Luckily (or not) Seth Rogan comes along with another offer.

Meanwhile Justine Lupe like falls for her like therapist (whilst everyone in the audience like choruses No!!!!!) whilst continuing friendship with Timothy Simons, to the umbrage of Jackie Tohn.

We were getting rather humpy with it - who cares if she converts or not? Go and screw Judaism. That sort of thing.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965 Martin Ritt)

John Le Carre's brilliantly sneaky tale of cold war spy games adapted by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper.

Richard Burton is suitably grizzled and weary as the spy. Michael Sheen loves this performance because it's all about what isn't on display - what's under the surface. He is definitely a magnetic presence. 

With Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner, Sam Wanamaker, Rupert Davies, Cyril Cusack, Bernard Lee, Peter van Eyck, Michael Hordern, Robert Hardy. Didn't recognise Niall McGuinness, Esmond Knight or Warren Mitchell.

Funnily enough the ending is as bleak as Under the Volcano!

Claire Bloom's affair with Burton was over by then but Elizabeth Taylor was on set to check there was no hanky panky. She and Burton were drinking all day long so he was worse at the end of the day than the beginning - the great speech he gives to Bloom at the end, about the real nature of spies, had to be read off cards that were taped around the car. (By the time he got to Where Eagles Dare he was allegedly drinking four bottles of vodka a day!) And Bloom was sad about this because the Burton she knew had memorised great chunks of Shakespeare.. all of Shakespeare.. it was the drink, she offers by way of an explanation.

Very skilfully shot by Oswald Morris, winning BAFTA, as did Burton (he was Oscar nominated. It was already the fourth of his seven Oscar nominations). Moody score from Sol Kaplan. Edited by Anthony Harvey.

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

Q picked this as a salve for Under the Volcano.

'Tiramisu.'
'What's that?'
'You'll find out.'

The way Ross Malinger and Gaby Hoffman shuffle their feet to turn the chair around. The artfully chosen accompanying songs. Meg's 'horse horses horses'. The way Ross and the babysitter are clearly watching something unsuitable on the TV. The voice of Dr. Marsha Fieldstone (Caroline Aaron). 'Hello.' The old lift operator. Hanks' on set grumpiness.

'He's eight.'
'He's good at it.'

It is - like all the best films - really well edited, by Robert Reitano, who actually doesn't have particularly distinguished credits... but once upon a time, he was the sound editor on Serpico and Night Moves.. yes, he's one of Dede's boys!

Under the Volcano (1984 John Huston)

Did John Huston dislike Mexicans? I'd like to say no, but you can't help the feeling that at the end of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and this, it's the unspeakably vile Mexicans that kill and ruin everything.

A day in the alcohol fuelled life of ex-consul Albert Finney in Mexico, 1938 - he's absolutely brilliant - Oscar but not BAFTA nominated?

It's wonderfully evocative of its place and time - the Day of the Dead, appropriately enough, photographed by Gabriel Figueroa (who'd filmed Huston's Night of the Iguana in 1964) and designed by Gunter Gerszo, who designed Bunuel's first three Mexican films as well as John Ford's The Fugitive (also shot by Figueroa).

It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth but is undeniably powerful and unforgettable. (And, in the early scenes, anyway, really rather funny.) Written by Guy Gallo from Michael Lowry's novel, generally considered unfilmable and packed with literary references which I doubt somehow made it into the film.

With Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Andrews, Ignacio Lopez Tarso, Katu Jurado (Trapeze, High Noon), James Villiers, Emilio Fernandez.

It was edited by Roberto Silvi, who cut Rory's Way, and before that, the Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Mississippi Masala, also Wise Blood and The Dead for Huston - Huston didn't seem overly attached to any one editor. Massacre in Rome - with, funnily enough, Richard Burton, was the first film he edited in 1973.

Rubbish of the Year

Too Much. Lena Dunham thing. Did at least finish it.

Etoile. Amy Sherman-Palladino thing about ballet. No! Couldn't get past first episode! Didn't even finish the first episode!

Insomnia. Very daft Vicky McClure thing.

Cold Water and The Guest. Both linked by Eve Myles, who should know better. Both unbelievable rubbish.

Dope Girls. Just couldn't get into it.

Girl Friend. More unbelievable rubbish... but I think audiences realise it is. Certainly the ones on Gogglebox seem to.

Zero Day. Robert de Niro President thing. Just never went further than episode 1.

The Iris Affair. Giant super-computer thing? Who commissions this stuff?

Paradise. Dan Fogelman's gone mad. Or it's just not our thing.

Hostage. Farcical Suranne Jones thing.

Suspicion. Oh yeah - that one. More fucking rubbish.

The Assassin. The Williams Brothers. One episode enough.

The Forsytes. You just know immediately whether something is going to work, Bad script => bad acting.

The Ridges. Really annoying over-edited and filmed in that irritating in-out zoom style that I thought and hoped had gone out of fashion.

Murder Before Evensong. 1980s priest-copper Grantchester rehash. Boring. Matthew Lewis weirdly (intentionally?) evoking Bertie Carvel in Dalgleish.

Borderline (2023 John Forte)

Is there still such a sharp North-South divide? I guess there is, in what seems like an Irish version of The Bridge (which may well have been the inspiration).

Amy de Bhrún is the blunt in-hiding detective from the south, Eoin Macken the church-going alcoholic with murdered dad. Though three separate two-part stories take place, these overarching storylines are what draws them together (and, no doubt, will lead us in to season 2).

With Rachel Petladwala

We quite enjoyed it. 

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987 Todd Haynes & co-scr)

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is a 45 minute telling of the superstar's tragic life and death told with Barbie dolls. It's been totally disowned by the Carpenter family and with its unauthorised use of Carpenter material is unreleased and only available on flickery from-VHS YouTube recordings.

And yet even watching this hazy distortion you can see that it not only works, but is actually really quite moving - try listening to 'Rainy days and Mondays get me down' amidst a tale of family and music industry pressure and anorexia and endless laxatives and not be moved.

It was Haynes' college project.

Armistice Day Foyle's War: Enemy Fire (2004 Anthony Horowitz, d Jeremy Silberston)

A perhaps perfect accidentally timed viewing as it incorporates elements from both Wars and neatly parallels the circumstances of burn out in both, the first experienced by John Wood who in WW1 shot himself rather than face any more trench warfare. In the second, Foyle's son Andrew (Julian Ovenden) faces burnout from simply flying too many hazardous missions (all his friends are dead) and he goes AWOL.

This is all set in and around a stately home now hospital for the burn victims being treated by novel saline solution, a real technique developed by Archibald McIndoe (who we know about as Anne Coates worked for him as a nurse). Bill Paterson plays the effervescent surgeon.

The storyline is also as sneaky and snaky as we have come to expect!

Mr. Burton (2025 Marc Evans)

A not entirely successful account of the early life of miner's son Richard Jenkins, who with the help of his teacher / mentor became Richard Burton. It's a very difficult role to pull off and I'm afraid Harry Lawtey doesn't quite convincingly do it - Toby Jones and Lesly Manville as dependable as ever. (We liked Lawtey in You and Me).

Written by Tom Bulloch and Josh Hyams. Rather gloomily photographed by Stuart Biddlecombe.

It was the second Mr Burton's birthday yesterday November 10. He lived 1925 - 1984. The BBC celebrated by showing one of his worst films, The Robe.

Weathering With You (2019 Makoto Sinkai)

Amazing animation, particularly of weather, but trite story. Lost interest, I'm afraid.

Made me want to eat noodles! Did so, and was disappointed.

(The Student Prince of) Old Heidelberg / (1927 Ernst Lubitsch)

Isn't it great when you see something on film that you've never seen before and makes you go 'Wow!' And isn't it even greater when that thing appears in a film that is almost one hundred years old? Well, in Old Heidelberg that happens - a couple falling in love lie on a meadow full of flowers - and all the flowers start trembling!

Lubitsch's film is full of wonderful visual humour and brilliant orchestration of groups of people.

Heir apparent Philippe de Lacy comes to stay with King Gustav von Seyferrtitz. Enjoys a dull life until, grown up to be Ramon Novarro, he meets wonderful professor Jean Hersholt who has come to educate him. Hersholt is fabulous, kept making me think of a sort of version of Dr Dreyfuss in The Apartment  (which knowing Billy could well have been a deliberate allusion).

In the town of the title the young Prince experiences the camaraderie of fellow students, beer drinking and falling in love, with Norma Shearer. Loved the moment they are being rowed, start kissing, and when we cut back to the rower, he is discreetly facing the other way round! Also the scene in which they realise they are sitting on either side of a wall.

And it doesn't have the fairy tale ending you're expecting. Which frankly was a really big surprise.

I watched TCM's presentation with an orchestral Carl Davis score, which made me think in an odd way of watching an opera with no singing. The 'MGM Story' says it was a major hit. Shearer married Irving Thalberg after filming concluded.

John Mescall photographed it. It's a shame a better print doesn't (seem to) exist.

Lubitsch had been in the USA since 1922's The Eyes of the Mummy. Early successes had been Rosita, The Marriage Circle, So This Is Paris, Lady Windermere's Fan and Forbidden Paradise. (Actually not sure if that last one was a hit. Need to read a Lubitsch biography.)

Paths of Glory (1957 Stanley Kubrick)

Based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel which itself takes the true execution of four French soldiers for cowardice in WWI. It's written by Kubrick, Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham.

Colonel Dax, Kirk Douglas, is given an impossible mission by superior Generals Adophe Menjou and George Macready (both great). In parallel a Lieutenant (Wayne Morris) takes two men out on patrol, panics and accidentally kills one of them - the survivor Ken Dibbs threatens to report him. Dax's mission fails and Macready at one point wants the guns turned on his own soldiers. The Generals decide to court martial random soldiers as punishment - it's a great incentive, apparently...

Dax defends. One is a decorated hero, Ralph Meeker, one is Joe Turkel (who was the bartender in The Shining) and Timothy Carey plays a methody discontent, more NYC than France, somehow.

But of course Dax's defense  isn't listened to and they are executed - one of them barely conscious in a stretcher.

It's a heavily ironic film and is a most successful anti-war statement. The battle scene was filmed using six cameras with Kubrick himself operating hand held on Douglas. Most memorable sequences throughout - from camera track through trenches to final (ironic) sweet German song.

Kubrick appears to be using wide lenses and interesting compositions and again makes me think how much he has influenced Yorgos Lanthimos. George Krause is the DP - it was filmed in Germany.

Toxic Town (2025 Creator Jack Thorne)

True story of how airborne chemicals affected unborn children in Corby and how the council tried to cover it up - though no one was prosecuted. Story well told.

Jodie Whittaker, Aimee Lou Wood, Rory Kinnear.

You feel for the poor lad who's operated on. (Played older by Bentley Balazs.)

With Robert Carlyle again, Brendan Coyle, Joe Dempsie, Claudia Jessie, Ben Batt again, Michael Socha, and I did not recognise Karen Pirie's Lauren Lyle at all (Q did). Although, having said that, we just watched the first episode of The Ridge and neither of us recognised her. 

Directed by Minkie Spiro. Amy Trigg  contributed writing to episode three of four.

To say that Jack Thorne is prolific is somewhat underselling the situation.

Pauline Coillins Double Bill: Quartet (2012 Dustin Hoffman) / Shirley Valentine (1989 Lewis Gilbert)

Pauline Collins died yesterday, aged 85. To us she was first the irrepressible and cheeky Sarah of Upstairs Downstairs and the long time wife of John Alderton. There was something lovably mischievous and defiant in those blue eyes.

Dickensian by Tony Jordan was one of her last roles in 2015.

In Quartet she joins a stalwart cast of acting royalty playing singers in the kind of retirement home that makes even the one in The Thursday Murder Club look cheap. In Ronald Harwood's thinly plotted film, she plays one of four... Yeah, never mind the plot. She holds herself up well and naturally against Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly and Tom Courtenay.

Perhaps for contractual reasons, Hoffman is unable to shoot anyone in close up.

Amazing tree, filmed at Hedsor House

Well edited by Barney Pilling. Photographed by John de Borman.

Loved the Bette Davis line, ‘Getting old ain’t for sissies’.

Then the one she's most remembered for, at least in the news, for which she won the BAFTA.

9 November 2016:

I like the surprises in Willy Russell's screenplay - that Joanna Lumley is a hooker, that uptight neighbour Julia McKenzie gives her a dress she's never dared to wear, that Shirley doesn't fall for the Greek but for the place. It's a truly lovely performance from Pauline Collins and one that when she looks straight at the audience is quite provocative, though the scene where Lumley says goodbye and hugs her is also beautiful. Russell writes for / about women well. Originally a play (I guess somewhat oddly transposed to London), has some very funny lines and moments. Lewis Gilbert lived till 97.

I don't quite know why every DVD version is cropped to 4x3. Channel 5 managed to find a full screen print. Alan Hume shot it, Willy Russell also wrote the music. With Tom Conti, Alison Steadman, Bernard Hill. Should mention Gillian Kearney as the young Shirley (Sylvia Syms is the headmistress).

8 September 2020.

Willy Russell also wrote the music, though Marvin Hamlisch wrote Patti Austin's title song (lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman), Stravinsky's 'Firebird' gets a look in, and there's some rather lovely (but out of place) flamenco (uncredited) and a dash of Greek music besides.

Like the rather open-ended ending.

In a public statement, John said she would always be remembered for Shirley Valentine, "not only for her Oscar nomination or the film itself, but for clean-sweeping all seven awards when she portrayed her on Broadway in the stage play, in which she played every character herself".

Pauline lost the Oscar to Jessica Tandy (Driving Miss Daisy). 

Romcoms and Romantic dramas

What's the beef, jilly jeans? I'm looking into romcons and romdrams and what makes them tick.

The greatest: The Apartment. It's for one thing a romantic triangle - see Lubitsch. But it's greatness is that it's also a biting corporate world satire. And a romantic drama comedy.

Avanti. The twist - their parents had been having an affair for 10 years. There isn't a 'straight' comedy-drama in Wilder's work.

Lubitsch - That Uncertain Feeling. A romantic triangle. This underpins lots of Lubitsch, The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise. So This Is Paris. (Wilder's triangle - Sabrina.) Ninotchka is that rare thing - a politico-cultural romantic comedy. Heaven Can Wait - a whole life story. 

The best. Pretty Woman. Twist - she is a prostitute. (Same twist as Breakfast at Tiffanys.) Sleepless in Seattle - the twist - they don't meet. You've Got Mail / Shop Around the Corner - twist - they don't realise they are each other's secret pen friends. Roman Holiday - twist - she's a Princess.

Elizabethtown - so much more than a romcom. Death, family, new places. Say Anything Cameron's only straight rom.. romdram? With funny bits? Twist - her dad's a criminal. Annie Hall. Somehow stands in a category of its own - hugely influential.

Something's Gotta Give. Older couple, he doesn't want to / can't reform from bachelor habits. When Harry Met Sally - and its progeny Friends with Benefits - can friends become romantic?

Oh - here's a subset - Jane Austen. Period romantic comedies with satire on class and privilege.

OK - we're making some ground with that. Now - 'straight' romantic dramas of note. Brief Encounter - they're both married. (Which with at least one of them married leads to - The Bridges of Madison County, In the Mood for Love, Past Lives, Strangers When We Meet, In Name Only, Carol...) Two For the Road - the story of a whole relationship told over the same routes / different holidays into France. (Bad Timing a sort of Roegian variant, with suicide attempt.) A Star Is Born - she on way up, he on way down (and the later version La La land), The Way We Were. 

The Class / Societal Rift - from City Lights. An Officer and a Gentleman. Chalet Girl. Far From Heaven and its antecedent All That Heaven Allows, apparently Mississippi Masala a good example, Me Before You - and he's totally paralysed... 

Which leads us to the morbid sub-sect of romantic illness / death drama of which Love Story is a pukey representative (but let's not forget a massive hit). One Day. Five Feet Apart. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Which all comes from classic literature, surely - Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, Romeo and Juliet (the 'wrong side of the tracks' plot which informs countless stories). Let's not get in to David Lean's massive historical love stories on a huge canvas. That great ITV thing - was it Me and You? Another death. The Notebook.

Boy meets girl, loses girl, gets her back - it's the classic formula. Even The Apartment is that (most subtly disguised). Even Casablanca is that. But the great films aren't just that - they're always something better, something more.

Letter From an Unknown Woman. She's mad about him. Apart from a brief dalliance, he doesn't even notice her. A delicate film that blossoms and dies like a flower.

The reason I'm writing all this? I've written a 'straight' romantic drama - two kids meet, become friends. Twenty years later meet again, have an affair - but he's a shit and is already married, breaks her heart. Ten years later, they meet again - he's become a better person, she's bitter and hostile - they make it work, somehow - love prevails. So what? No twist, no death, no variation on a theme. Characters nicely written, three dimensional, but nothing really more than a nicely observed soap opera. Now I see why Q didn't love it. And I still can't think of a 'straight' romantic drama - without twist, without death, without variation, without an interesting historical backdrop or division of some kind - that was any good. Not one.

The Hack (2025 Jack Thorne)

Begins most refreshingly with David Tennant playing Nick Davies playfully, to audience, redacting and changing names at will. (Funny moment when we meet 'Mr. Apollo' and several unlikely candidates - including Jonathan Ross - open the door first, before being rejected for Adrian Lester, who has the right gravitas).

Then episode 2 abruptly takes us back 10 years to the story of a police detective (Robert Carlyle) who is trying to gain convictions on a gang of lovely thugs, finds the News of The World's paid freelance journalist harassing him. (So many well known guest appearances here it begins to be distracting. Shh. Shouldn't complain.) This part of the story is filmed 'straight'. Then continues to cross cut both stories, bringing them into the same orbit.

I have to say - we'd been watching The Morning Show - and this was much more interesting.

Overall it's a good way of getting over a mound of complex material and is more entertaining than a straight documentary. Ultimately it's another massive fuck up by our government which seems to leave the industry open to such interferences (not a strong enough word, I know) in the future.

Great cast: Toby Jones, Rose Leslie, Eve Myles, Kevin Doyle, Daniel Ryan, Dougray Scott (Gordon Brown), Lee Ingleby, Neil Maskell, Pip Torrens, Steve Pemberton, Phil Davies, Ron Cooke, Sean Pertwee, Paul Kaye... see what I mean?

Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948 Max Ophuls)

There's something about this film... 

And if I were Orson Welles I'd say it was a lot down to the production design, dummy! - by Alexander Golitzen. His recreation of 'About 1900' (love that title) Vienna is vital to the way this film works, not just in that interesting courtyard / apartment block design - its mysterious angles and connections - but especially in the film's key sequence - where Louis Jourdan does finally notice Joan Fontaine and takes her for a night on the town - a town of horse and carriage, sophisticated suppers, a panorama 'train', pretzels being served from baskets on long poles and dances when the band has gone...

And I was thinking... censorship made these romantic scenes better. You can't just jump into bed, you have to do something instead, something that lingers way after everyone else has gone to sleep...

My Q, with her sense of logic and moral decency, seems to miss the point - "You can't leave your life, your son, your husband for this.. this womanizer!" No, of course, in those terms. But. It's amour fou. There ain't nuthin' you can do about it, baby.

And that beautiful anguish at the end - the silent manservant Art Smith -- of course he remembered her...

It's a film that makes you write reviews (well, jottings) full of ellipses...

On camera: Franz Planer. Score: Daniele Amfitheatrof. Cast: Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Carol Yorke, Howard Freeman., Erskine Sanford.

An Independent Rampart production released through Universal. From a story by Stefan Zweig, adapted by Howard Koch. I take it that's her husband he goes off to fight the final duel with - it's not clear (maybe I need a better print - you would have thought it would have rated a Criterion or Masters of Cinema restoration).

For me, it gets better as I get older.

Trigger Point - Season 3 (2025)

Our Vicky McClure ('Wash') is the whole show, really - by now a painkiller addict but still the best goddam bomb disposal expert on the team! 

The plot has become really quite silly - intricate bombs designed purely to expose members of a consortium who hid asbestos in buildings to make money causing long term slow deaths - why not just administer them with the same long term poison rather than blow them up? Or a slow prison sentence, also preferable.

So it's really a series of tense set pieces sometimes ending in people blowing up, with rather irritating storylines (e.g. new boss makes the wrong decisions the whole time).

Little Women (1994 Gillian Armstrong)

This was the fifth adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's semi-autobiographical two volume hit  - there were two silent versions in 1917 and 1918, both lost. Robin Swicord (The Jane Austen Book Club) is the adapter on this one, which features Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Trini Alvarado and Kirsten Dunst (and, grown up, Samantha Mathis from The Thing Called Love - somehow not a good Dunst adult version), with Susan Sarandon as mother. Plus, Eric Stoltz, Cristian Bale, Gabriel Byrne. John Neville is the grandfather and it's a pleasure to see The Man Who Came to Dinner's Mary Wickes as the great-Aunt.

Photographed by Geoffrey Simpson (Under the Tuscan Sun, Shine, Fried Green Tomatoes, Green Card) with a fairly atypical but good score from Tom Newman.

Er. I'm not an expert on the subject but it seemed fine to me, Ryder quite capable of anchoring it, Dunst already a capable veteran by this time (had done Interview with the Vampire already).

There's also a 2017 version which I was unaware of with to me an unknown principal cast. It's quite well rated. Alcott's sequel 'Little Men' was also filmed with undistinguished results.

Dunst is in Roofman coming soon, Civil War from Alex Garland, 2019 series On becoming a God in Central Florida.

Your Sister's Sister (2011 Lynn Shelton & scr)

Low budget indie, largely improvised with (I would guess) two cameras filming concurrently.

After death of brother, his friend (and girlfriend of former brother) sends him to rehabilitate in house on island off Seattle, unaware that her half-sister is also staying there - merry complications ensue.

Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt.

Shelton also made Sword of Trust. I'm not really a fan of improvised stuff - I'd rather watch a Woody Allen that sounds improvised but is scripted. She also directed scripted things like Little Fires episodes. 

But it remains quite watchable.

Task (2025 Creator Brad Ingleby)

We start by cross-cutting two storylines. Two chaps (Tom Pelphrey and Raul Castillo) discuss dating and getting away from it all, but we know they're up to no good. Mark Ruffalo is a priest turned FBI agent. Turns out the fellows are robbing drugs houses and Ruffalo is instructed to gather a Task (Force) to bust them. They are: Thuso Mbedu (a stand-out as the abused sharp-shooter), Fabien Frankel and Alison Oliver. And us and them getting to know each other is another good part of the mix, especially when it's suggested that one of them might be a leak.

But things aren't right in either the household of Ruffalo (a drunk, whose wife is dead, his daughter and he barely communicating, some family tragedy in the background) and Pelphrey (his brother is dead, he's in conflict with his niece Emilia Jones - you know, from Coda and What We Did on our Holiday -  who's another stand-out).

So lots in the pot - oh yes, I didn't even get into a kidnapped boy - who Pelphrey is good with - until he loses it with a well-wisher and goes way over the top, reminding us at this point he's not as nice as he might be - and a gang of nasty Hell's Angels, the 'Dark Hearts', and their involvement.

With Martha Plimpton, Silvia Dionicio, the overly glowering Jamie McShane, Sam Keeley, Owen Teague, and that was Isaac de Bankolé as the priest!

I find the title annoying, even though I do realise it's what internally they call it. But it's a very exciting and well written show, well acted. Love the poignancy of Pelphrey asking ex priest about moments of death and later is cradled by same as he dies.

7 x 1 hour for HBO.

A Walk in the Woods (2015 Ken Kwapis)

Adapted from Bill Bryson novel ("I'm not writing a book") by Little Miss Sunshine's Michael Arndt (under the pseudonym of Rick Kerb which he mainly uses for rewrites), and Bill Holderman. It was originally optioned in 1998 as another Newman-Redford collaboration.

One particularly sticky moment might have finished them off for good, but luckily two helpful young chaps turn up.

Photographed by John Bailey and edited by Carol Littleton.

Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (2011 Laurent Bousereau)

Polanski interviewed by his old friend and producer Andrew Braunsberg about his whole life and the highs and lows, one of which was his mother being killed in Auschwitz.

Having as a boy (he was unluckily born in 1933) been separated from his father, who was taken to a concentration camp but miraculously survived - he often had this image that some presence in the distance would be him - and it even pops up in his first short film, Mammals. Also recounted how after the Krakow ghetto when living in the Polish countryside (weirdly near Auschwitz), he was randomly shot at by a soldier when blackberry picking and ran like hell for his life into the woods. Also in Krakow he'd seen a middle aged woman in a line of prisoners stumble to the ground and shot in the back by a Nazi.

He didn't look back too kindly on Repulsion but thought Cul-de-Sac much more like it.

A useful corrective on his legal problems. He had in fact served 42 days in prison undergoing a psychiatric report, and the prison discharged him as a free man. But the Judge then decided to change his mind and said Polanski would go back to prison until he decided, which is of course illegal. So Polanski fled. He did not 'skip bail' because at that point he was a free man.

He was then also held under house arrest in Switzerland for nine months pending a US extradition request. 

Photographed in Gstaad by Pawel Edelman, music by Alexandre Desplat.

He said the one film he'd most want to be remembered for was The Pianist.

King Rat (1965 Bryan Forbes & scr)

Well, I thought this was fabulous, an adaptation of one of James Clavell's 'Japanese' novels (actually set in Malaysia). (And actually filmed in California.)

George Segal plays the laid back 'King', who can get anything, make any kind of deal - a similar idea to that in Stalug 17. Clavell's first novel was written in 1962 and based on his own experiences in Changi Prison. He'd started as a screenwriter (writing The Fly amongst other things!) and a writer's strike made him pick up a novelists's pen (it's a heavier, more substantial one) instead. He wrote The Great Escape and others before returning to novels, with Tai Pan and then Shogun, which then was a huge TV success.

Anyhow. A young James Fox comes into his orbit and their friendship is the key to the story, especially as Fox is useful translating Malaysian for the deal maker. Then he becomes really seriously ill. Fox is brilliant - brilliant, I say.

The antagonist is another great performance - from Tom Courtney - as the weasley (what?? OK it's weaselly) and vindictive camp Provost Marshal - head of military police in the camp. And some outrageous things happen with the stealing of food, which is the worst crime imaginable; ultimately involving senior officer John Mills, lending his usual gravitas to proceedings. Has a particularly stingy ending. (It stings.)

The other standout performance is James Donald as the phlegmatic doctor. Though everyone else is great too: Patrick O'Neal. Denholm Elliott, Leonard Rossiter, Geoffrey Bayldon, Reg Lye (the Australian), Michael Lees (other doctor), too many to mention.

Walter Thompson's editing is noticeable and notable - such as those freeze frames, and the very opening. (Fat City, The Nun's Story, Jane Eyre). Burnett Guffey photographed it. John Barry provides a suitably melancholic score. Art / set Robert Smith, Frank Tuttle.