The Birdcage (1996 Mike Nichols)

Elaine May has transplanted the original French gay comedy to South Beach, Miami. (The original is reportedly even funnier, though they both have the same IMDB rating.)

We have the delicious combination of Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, pitted against Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest, with the children being Dan Futterman and Calista Flockhart.

The second of today's films directed by a theatre director, thus long confident takes and great performances. Also some very elegant camerawork from Emmanuel Lubezki.

And Hank Azaria is great as the very gay maid. With Christine Baranski.

Away We Go (2009 Sam Mendes)

Written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. Very pregnant Maya Rudolph and not-husband John Krasinsky journey around America to find roots and meet an assortment of terrible or damaged people, the worst of which are Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton. In fact the only nice one is her sister, Carmen Ojogo. Allison Janney makes an impression as a deluded and unpleasant woman who doesn't care anything about her kids, husband Jim Gaffigan. John's parents also are unbelievable - Jeff Daniels and Catherine O'Hara.

Even a random kid they encounter talks of having tried to kill his baby sister.

She won't get married - ever. He keeps trying to shock her to get the baby's heart rate up. They're a lovely couple. A key moment is with his brother, whose wife has left and he's terrified that his daughter will never recover. They find a lovely house at the end and when Alexei Murdoch's chorus "If I should stumble" kicks in I could have burst into tears.

Photographed by Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine, Be Kind Rewind, Blow) and edited by Sarah Flack (The Limey, Lost in Translation and other Sophia Coppola films, Dan in Real Life).

Le Coquille et le Clergyman (1928 Germaine Dulac)

Alex Allin, Lucien Bataille, Genica Athanasiou.

Dulac had been making films since 1915. This surreal study of male desire predates Un Chien Andalou by a year, and anticipates some of David Lynch's most out-there moments, as well as even animated works by the likes of Jan Svanmajer and the Quay brothers. It is also of course an important film in feminist cinema.

Antonin Artaud is the writer.

Opens with 'It is not a dream, but the mode of images itself leading the mind to where is never would have consented to go, the mechanism is within everyone's reach.' The way images are twisted and distorted, the complex overlays, abrupt cutting, interesting lighting and bizarre use of props is altogether a unique experience.

I saw the 2005 restoration which is on YouTube, running 40 minutes.

Bookish (2025 Mark Gatiss)

He also stars as Gabriel Book of Book's Books. With Polly Walker, Connor Finch, Elliot Levey, Buket Komur, Blake Harrison, Tim McInnerney, Danny Mays, Rosie Cavaliero.

It was filmed in Belgium, thus many Belgians in credits.

I found the sound design to be curiously overdone - too much traffic, bicycle bells when none needed, barking dog adding nothing. Curious.

Story two, which I can't even remember now, seemed less involving but the third concluding episode involving Russian princesses and a fading hotel, with the final emotional climax - after a Brief Encounter moment - between Book and Jack, is most successful.

Insomnia (2024 Sarah Pinborough)

Pinborough? Created for the Paramount network, Vicky McClure is the sleep-deprived and childhood nightmare sufferer, Leanne Best her sister. It's a preposterous tale, and ends up beyond nonsense (and then beyond nonsense again). With Tom Cullen, Lyndsey Marshal, Dominic Teghe, India Fowler and Smylie Bradwell.

Sirens (2025 Molly Smith Metzler)

A feisty and somewhat sex-hungry woman (Meghann Fahy, The White Lotus) travels to an island recluse where her sister (Milly Alcock) is the perfect assistant to nuts millionaire Julianne Moore. Who's a bit worried, because if her husband - dope smoking Kevin Bacon - leaves her, she'll be left with nothing. The head of security Felix Solis (Ozark, The Good Wife) proves to be a good and likable character. Bill Camp is the girls' demented father. Trevor Salter is the ship captain.

Liked the scene with Fahy being pursued down the beach by three paramours.

Engage brain power to low. Only five episodes, which is refreshing.

Dept Q (2025 Scott Frank, Chandni Lakhani)

They adapted Jussi Adler-Olson's novel 'The Keeper of Last Causes' and it's a bit of another Slow Horses. Burnt out copper Matthew Goode is assigned to the titular department in the cliche of the worst part of the building, where fellow outcasts Syrian Alexej Manvelov and Leah Byrne join the team. The interaction of these three damaged individuals is fun.

Meanwhile, the subject of their investigation, Chloe Pirrie is being held imprisoned in some sort of industrial tank, and it's very disturbing. And she's been there four years, which I can't really believe. I mean she'd either be dead or mad, surely? I must admit to not liking this aspect of the story and hats off to Pirrie for being so filthy and bedraggled.

It's a good cast all round. Steven Miller, Jamie Sives, Kelly Macdonald, Alison Peebles, Aaron McVeigh, Mark Bonnar, Sanjeev Kohli, Tom Bulpett the aphasic brother.

Clearly left open for another series.

Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story (2025 Laurent Bouzereau)

The 'definitive' story? Once again we get only about 60 seconds of the film's editor, Verna Fields. Plus, there's some quite interesting stuff missing. Despite the people of Martha's Vineyard being treated in a glowing light, the locals would also drive their boats into shot deliberately and demand payment to go away - a nice detail from Carl Gottlieb's 'The Jaws Log'.

Some nice contributors in the shape of Cameron Crowe, Emily Blunt, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Soderberg etc. Luckily they had (limited) interviews with the stars from contemporary filming and later interviews. Some fascinating footage of the mechanized shark in action.

We felt for Steven with his years of PTSD resulting from the never-ending shoot.

Cash on Demand (1961 Quentin Lawrence)

Lawrence, mainly a TV director, was assigned by Hammer to direct this adaptation of Jacques Gillies television play The Gold Inside, which he'd also directed and also had André Morell as the robber. The screenplay is by David Chantler and Lewis Greifer.

Peter Cushing is great as the draconian bank manager whose world falls apart when Morell threatens his wife and kid and forces him to help him rob the bank.

Richard Vernon is the very familiar face that bugged us, so familiar and on TV lots, but from what specifically I can't say. Duchess of Duke Street and The Camomile Lawn are two on his long CV.

Also with Norman Bird. Photographed by Arthur Grant. 

Too Much (2025 Lena Dunham & Luis Felber)

Ten part comedy drama. Despite going out with new boyfriend Will Sharpe, Megan Stalter (Hacks) cannot get over her former boyfriend. So when we get to that downer episode five, in which the former couple's relationship over the years is detailed, and we learn what an utter cunt he is, it suddenly makes no sense at all why she is still so obsessed by him. It's the anger she feels that is unexpiated.

With Michael Zegen, Richard E Grant, Rita Wilson, Lena Dunham, Andrew Rannells, Rhea Perlman, Prasanne Puwanarajah, Daisy Bevan, Dean-Charles Chapman, Janicza Bravo. And Rita Ora, Stephen Fry, Jennifer Saunders, Andrew Scott. Liked Oliver Nirenberg as the kid who is the only sane one in Stalter's family.

and Naomi Watts

Not sure taking too many drugs is funny any more, either. Was it ever? Ah, but it does fit in to the plot. So that makes sense.

I felt that there was too much dialogue in many episodes, extended talking, boring. Overall though it was reasonably good. From the 'aren't we all messed up for various reasons' school. And possibly English male Felber and American female Dunham are expressing themselves through the characters' relationship.

Pitfall (1948 André de Toth)

An independent Regal Films production. Bored insurance man Dick Powell has to reclaim stolen goods from model Lizabeth Scott, falls for her. But detective Raymond Burr has unhealthy desires for the girl too. meanwhile Powell's wife (Jane Wyatt) and kid are unaware... Burr is creepily intense. Conclusion is perhaps a little unsatisfactory, 'the wrong person is behind bars'.

Wyatt was in Lost Horizon, Boomerang, None But the Lonely Heart, then much on TV, still working in the 90s in her eighties

Written by Karl Kamb from Jay Dratler novel. Harry Wild shot it (Till the End of Time, Murder My Sweet, The Woman on the Beach, They Won't Believe Me, The Big Steal, 

Choreography in Billy Wilder

Kim Novak deftly avoiding getting her bum slapped twice in Kiss Me Deadly.

The way Audrey Hepburn manages to elude Gary Cooper in bedroom in The Ritz in Love in the Afternoon.

How a line of ballerinas is subtly replaced by a line of male dancers who think he's gay, in PLOSH.

Another dance, on a table, in One Two Three.

'I'm just meeting my date' Lemmon tells MacLaine in The Apartment, motioning across the foyer. As he walks towards her, so smoothly orchestrated, her real date enters stage right and they walk off and Lemmon ends up at the shop behind them.

More, I'm sure...

(Originally 19 October 2021.)

Here's another one. Ray Milland's at the hotel in The Lost Weekend and overhears his girlfriend's parents and realises he doesn't want to meet them. She turns up and he's stood with his back to them with a group of three chatting in between them. As the group breaks up each of the three go off in a different direction and Milland beautifully moves away with one of them as though he's been part of that group.

And another. Jack Lemmon's beautifully eloquent moves in electric wheelchair in The Fortune Cookie.

The Fortune Cookie (1966 Billy Wilder & co-scr)

Of course he co-wrote it, that's almost not worth even saying. It has all the perfect clockwork of any other great Wilder-Diamond screenplay.

It was an odd day, otherwise. We were suffering from Gilmore Girls withdrawal and started the new Sherman-Palladino thing Etoile and couldn't even finish it. Then  we saw an episode of Lina Dunham's Too Much which was quite a downer. While all this was going on, Alcaraz lost the Wimbledon final, and we spent several hours reliving Live Aid. The Fortune Cookie is like the solid rock in the centre of it all.

And although it's notable as being the first teaming of Lemmon and Matthau (and he won the Oscar), it is also very capably performed by Ron Rich, Judi West and Cliff Osmond.

"In the old days we used to do these things better. A man says he's paralysed, we simply throw him in the snake pit. If he climbs out, then we know he's lying."
"And if he doesn't climb out?"
"Then we have lost a patient, but we have found an honest man." (Sig Ruman.)

Photographed by Joseph LaShelle, using the widescreen well. Music by Andre Previn, production design Robert Luthardt. Editor Daniel Mandell.

Thunderball (1965 Terence Young)

Good plot and treatment - just the last half hour is boring, even though it's a big improvement on the novel's ending. Peter Hunt's editing is noticeable but less known is that he had to cut down the four and a half hour film without Young's involvement. This had a bigger budget then the previous three combined. 

The story came up between Kevin McGlory (who was fascinated by underwater stuff) and Fleming, and was later written as the screenplay Longitude 78 West by Jack Wittingham. Fleming then used this as the basis for the novel 'Thunderball'. McGlory quite rightly sued (although why wasn't it Whittingham?) and won the literary and screen rights. He was listed as producer of the Broccoli / Saltzman version to prevent him from making a rival version of his own - something he did later with Never Say Never Again.

Seen with a twenty-first century eye, there's some slightly kinky stuff going on. Bond fights a man in drag, then appears in a short pale blue towelling robe. He massages his masseuse with a mink glove and is strapped to an electronic rack (for 'stretching the spine').

The health spa opening is a terrific way of getting us into the plot and the actual hijacking of the Vulcan bomber is still beautifully done. Then we're off into sunny clear waters, scuba diving, mucking about in speed boats and other stuff that Hitch originated years before in To Catch a Thief.

With Connery: Claudine Auger (Domino), Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi, Rik Van Nutter, Guy Doleman, Molly Peters (her only significant film appearance, sadly), Martine Beswick (Bond's Nassau associate - this is the wrong move in the screenplay - Bond should have rescued her), Lee, Lleywelyn, Maxwell, Roland Culver, Paul Stassino, Reginald Beckwith and (uncredited) Philip Stone. Culver was still working up to his death in the / his eighties - The Missionary was one of his last appearances.

Photographed by Ted Moore. Score from John Barry (having once owned the soundtrack album it was very familiar). Ken Adam is the production designer.

Barry had recorded the title song 'Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' with Dionne Warwick, on YouTube here. But at the last minute United Artists insisted the theme song should have the same title as the film and gave Barry four days to come up with 'Thunderball', lyrics by Don Black. Tom Jones recorded it in one take and held that last powerful note so long he blacked out.

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

Perfect conclusion (or is it?) to the show, revived after a nine year gap, in four feature length films. It would be great to come back to it when Rori's daughter (of course it is) is herself sixteen.

"I'm not broken - I'm just a little chipped."

The Swimmer (1968 Frank Perry)

Written by Eleanor Perry, adapted from John Cheever novel. Novel? Say what now? No, a short story. That's more like it. A thirteen page short story after which Cheever said "I felt dark and cold for some time after I finished".

Which is entirely understandable. My response to it after a gap of some sixteen years was a feeling of immense sadness, even during it - the episode where the swimmer - a fantastic performance from Burt Lancaster - teams up with his former baby-sitter Janet Landgard - is somehow crushingly sad. It's in his eyes.

And it certainly had us talking afterwards. It's probably the drip-feed piece - we learn everything really in drips and drops as we progress. And certainly the swimmer has gone though some terrific psychological jolt - he seems to have lost some of his past, and not just the two years he's been out of action. And it turns out he's not the friendly nice guy he seems.

Marvin Hamlisch's music adds a potent element to this sad mix (even though it may have been influenced by Michael Legrand's Umbrellas of Cherbourg theme).

John Garfield Jr (christened David) plays the ticket seller. He later turned editor - Desert Bloom  and The Karate Kid II. Didn't recognise any of the other cast, even Kim Hunter and Joan Rivers.

The filmic style is interesting, for example the scene in which Landgard relates her teenage crush, and the camera is all about the trees and nature and hazy long shots. Three editors were involved: Sidney Katz, Carl Lerner and Pat Somerset. The DP is David L Quaid (Pretty Poison).

Phantom Lady (1944 Robert Siodmak)

Exceptional noiry thriller opens like Kafka. A man picks up a melancholy woman in a bar. They see a show together. The drummer ogles her. The show's star is put out because the woman is wearing the same hat as her. She won't tell the guy her name. They separate. He gets back to his flat. The police are there. His wife has been murdered. The police are distinctly unfriendly. And that's just the start of a series of bizarre occurrences and near misses.

From the fevered brain of William Irish (Cornell Woolrich), produced by Hitch collaborator Joan Harrison, directed by the great Siodmak. Full of interesting scenes, e.g. she (Ella Raines) pretending to be the moll and accompanying drummer Elisha Cook Jr to a tiny jazz cellar. Or the moment she's stalked dodgy barman Andrew Tombes to a deserted railway station and for a second you think he's going to push her in front of a train.

Alan Curtis is the innocent accused, Raines his faithful employee, Franchot Tone good as crazy man, Thomas Gomez the investigating detective. 

Not knowing anything about B movie DP Elwood Bredell you can't help thinking Siodmak has influenced the cinematographic style. And the editing.

Boston Strangler (2023 Matt Ruskin & scr)

Inspired by the true partnership between journalists Loretta McLaughlin (Kiera Knightley) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon, The White Lotus, The Post, Fargo Season 3, Gone Girl). They investigate the Boston Stranglings of the early sixties and find out there's more than one perpetrator. 

Quite involving. Doesn't help that DP Ben Kutchins has shot it so darkly that you often can't make out who you're watching. Amidst the murk you'll find Chris Cooper, Alessandra Nivola and a load of people you've never heard of. Though The MMM's Luke Kirby is in it, some way down the cast list.

Back in Stars Hollow

 Lorelai and Rory summoned us.

Loved when Rory's fractured her arm and Lorelai sleeps in a chair at the end of the bed and we cut to her asleep later and then the camera shows Chris is also there and also asleep. (He's let himself in unbeknown to the girls.) Lovely touch.

Judy Geeson, Seth MacFarlane and John Hamm pop up. And Michael York.

'Oy with the poodles already!'

Alternative title: "Shut up Paris!"

Lorelai's "Pull a Menendez" = brothers who shot their parents.

The children's book titles Lorelai makes up are 'Goodnight Spoon' and 'The Horse that Wanted to Bark'.

'Show her Nick Nolte's mug shot'. Nolte had been arrested driving off his head on GHB and (it wasn't actually a mug shot but a police photo) he looks like a wild man.

Luke's sister and brother-in-law are annoying and redundant.

We laughed at "Well I'll leave you men to your drinks".

The season 7 writing really isn't bad, definitely in the right spirit.

They Live By Night (1948 Nicholas Ray)

This film is just marvellous, and I don't quite know why. Farley Granger and especially Cathy O'Donnell are terrific as the virginal couple on the run. The film has a wonderful momentum. Something's always happening. Robbery filmed from back seat of car very innovative and pre-dates Gun Crazy. It's brilliantly directed and edited (and photographed). I've had to buy the Criterion Blu-Ray. Written by Charles Schnee, adapted by Ray. Novel 'Thieves Like Us', Edward Anderson, which Altman remade in 1974.

Camera: George Diskant. Music: Leigh Harline, Editor: Sherman Todd.

With Howard da Dilva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig, Will Wright, Ian Wolfe.

What great names everyone has: Bowie, Keechie, Chickamaw, T-Dub, Mattie, Mobley.

Most ironic that the main theme is 'I Know Where I'm Going'. Last seen 12 years ago, review here. Well overdue. I think it might be Nicholas Ray's best film (On Dangerous Ground a contender).

And from last time:

A New Wave favourite, here's Truffaut writing in the fifties: "We discovered Nicholas Ray about seven or eight years ago with Knock on Any Door. Then there was the dazzling confirmation of They Live By Night, which is still his best film." And Godard's debut Breathless also features a young girl who's mixed up with a criminal, and which ends tragically.

It begins straight in the middle of the action (and hardly pauses for breath) with hardened criminals 'one eye' Howard da Silva and Jay C. Flippen and young Farley Granger as prison farm escapees, taking refuge with alky Will Wright and daughter Cathy O'Donnell, with whom Granger becomes instantly smitten. (Some of their exchanges are great, demonstrating much naivety on both sides e.g. "Wasn't there even a boy who used to walk you to church on Sunday?" "No, do you think there should have been?" - after all, the film opens declaring that this couple haven't learned to grow into the world properly.) The couple's happy moments are like isolated pockets of sun in a dark storm. It's clear they have both had a pretty shit upbringing.

Suggestion here of being behind bars?

Good immediate filming was what must have appealed to our New Wavers, unusual helicopter shots which track some of the progress of what is essentially an early road movie; a great bank robbery shot from the back seat of a car (George E Diskant) putting us in to the action, an abrupt car crash and execution. With lots of noiry double crossing film leads inexorably to tragedy and reminded me most strongly of Bonnie and Clyde and Malick's later Badlands, and thus is influential on many fronts.

Good acting (O'Donnell especially; I just realised she's Harold Russell's fiancée in Best Years of Our Lives). Produced by John Houseman with music by Leigh Harline; for RKO.

P.S. 24/1/22 I read today that Charles Brackett worked on this script in 1944.

American Gigolo (1980 Paul Schrader & scr)

A beautifully designed and photographed modern film noir - credited art director is Edward Richardson but Ferdinando Scarfiotti designed it and is credited as 'visual consultant', John Bailey photographed it. Cool pimp Richard Gere gets sucked into murder investigation and realises he's being framed. Meanwhile finds a girl who he's actually interested in, for a change, Lauren Hutton. But as things worsen, his formal and beautiful life, and his cool demeanour and wardrobe, all start to unravel.

According to Tony Reeves in his 'Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations' Gable and Lombard once resided here

But then the inside dope - as soon as you know that Schrader is a massive Bresson fan, you realise it's a cover-up - this is his version of Pickpocket - a man who cannot stop his crime until eventually - and only when he's in prison - does he find his salvation.

So, interesting on either level. With Hector Elizondo, Nina van Pallandt, Bill Duke, Brian Davies.

Giorgio Moroder's synth score slightly lets the side down.