The White Lotus - Season 3 (2025 Mike White & d)

Natasha Rothwell was in the Hawaii one. Joined by son Nicholas Duvernay.

Tayme Thapthimthong is besotted by Lalisa Monobal.

Walton Coggins (dark, unhappy past; Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight) and Aimee Lou Wood.

They befriend Charlotte le Bon and Jon Gries

Michelle Monaghan (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Leslie Bibb and Carrie Coon old 'friends'.

Family comprising Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook.

Lek Patravardi is the hotel owner / singer / actor, a big star in Thailand.

Eight episodes for HBO. I am told by my reliable Q that it's called The White Lotus after its creator. Although she might have been winding me up. I'm not sure.

As Time Goes By - The Reunion (2005 Bob Larbey)

Three years later, one plot year later. Jean wants grandchildren, Lionel doesn't. His 'son' from Kenya turns up, David Oyelowo. Sandy is pregnant. Goodbye.

Newman brothers double bill: War of the Roses (1989 Danny de Vito) / A Man Called Otto (2022 Marc Forster)

The Douglas - Turner war is scored by David Newman and photographed by Stephen Burum, who photographed  Rumble Fish  and  The Outsiders, Body Double, The Untouchables, The Escape Artist and St Elmo's Fire. So it's a handsome and well presented tale of marital discord with black comedy moments ("If I were you I'd pass on the fish course").

There's a non-Bond Ian Fleming short story called 'A Quantum of Solace' about a simple man who marries an air hostess, then she takes him for anything he can afford, and has affairs, and he ends up by demarcating areas of the house that she's allowed to live in. I wondered if this might have spawned the idea in the head of novelist Warren Adler (the screenplay's by Michael Leeson). 

As I found last time, the gimmick of de Vito's client never saying a word was stupid. Ida Random is the production designer.

A Man Called Otto is a simple and moving story told in drip-feed style,scored by Tom Newman in at times his recognisable style, at other times sounding totally something different.

I didn't notice the over-directing / editing thing this time, was enjoying Hanks' performance and the relationship between he and Mariana Treviño.

Photographed by Matthias Koenigsweiser.

Loved the line "She always paints you in colour". Hanks' frustrations at the world are totally understandable. The pay-off is fabulous.

Hacks - Season Three (2025 Lucia Aniello, Paul Downs)

Deborah badly wants the late night TV show gig. But she cravenly doesn't want Ava to be the head writer, leading to a wonderful showdown between the two - Hannah Einbinder finally has a great moment. (I hope they filmed that with two cameras. I'd hate to think of her having to do it multiple times.) And then - to use my wife's fantastic expression - she brilliantly twists the tables.

It was over in a flash.

"What a cunt!"

Another Woman (1988 Woody Allen & scr)

First things first - it rains! (In a flashback scene.)

Gene Hackman, and his wife and dog, all died recently in somewhat mysterious circumstances, though he was 95. An actor with great range and charisma, who's never far away. In fact we just saw him in Runaway Jury. Here he plays a man who is madly in love with repressed housewife Gena Rowlands, but she rejects him.. we think to her regret. Particularly as her current husband is not really interested in her (Ian Holm). Because she starts over hearing Mia Farrow's therapy sessions she starts looking at her own life - sometimes in flashback but also through an extended dream scene - and we find out more about her. So in a way it's an early Blue Jasmine, but this woman is a sympathetic character who is going to change for the better,

Shot with mournful sensitivity by Sven Nykvist, contains an atypical (and mainly classical) soundtrack and concludes in an hour and fifteen - Woody's shortest film? Wonderfully complex in its storytelling techniques and really a very good human drama. He certainly could attract the talent then. With Gena are Martha Plimpton, Blythe Danner, Betty Buckley, John Houseman, sandy Dennis, David Ogden Stiers. Philip Boscoe, Frances Conroy, Fred Melamed (who I confused with Francis Ford Coppola!)

Woody himself thought the film was too cold, the characters too cold. But it's very interesting.