His Kind of Woman (1951 John Farrow)

For me, this film is a bit of a mess. The exposition is clear enough - gangster Raymond Burr needs to get back to the US in disguise, decides to trade places with someone similar in physique - namely Robert Mitchum (yeah? I don't think so.) Mitchum is enlisted and then we spend an interminable time in an admittedly exotic Mexican hotel set in which everyone is forever ordering drinks than leaving them (you're in one set so Farrow wants to move the actors around it. He - and Harry Wild - do a great tracking shot at one point of Mitchum coming in to the bar.) Shades of Casablanca - there's even the same set up with Mitchum rescuing a woman whose husband is in debt, by cheating at cards - from Jim Backus, a character who doesn't really need to be there at all.

Anyway about an hour in things pick up with strong arm gangsters (Tony Caruso and Charles McGraw) and the arrival of the crook, and a sort of double act emerges between Mitch and movie star / hunter Vincent Price. Whilst Mitchum is being really nastily beaten up and threatened with death on board ship, the Price side of the film descends into slapstick - particularly when a boat load of militia sets sail and immediately sinks - a funny scene, but feels like it belongs to another film altogether. And in the cross-cutting between the Price- Mitchum sequences, the film seems to labour when it should be at full steam. One example of this is when Mitch is finally free on board and stops to load his gun - and he seems very slowly to put in one cartridge, then another.. for Wilder's sake, why couldn't he just have a loaded gun?? Which all contributes to its almost two hour running time - unusually long for this sort of material.

Anyway I don't want to be too hard because overall it's enjoyable, and in quoting his delicious dialogue, Price is in a way foreshadowing his later career as an eloquent horror star, and the action is fast and violent, not just in the editing but in-camera too (some of it hand held, I read).

It was made for RKO when Hughes was in charge.

Let's see what Mitchum biographer Lee Server can tell us. "It was a strange sort of script [written by Out of the Past's Frank Fenton]... To Farrow's credit, he never tried to resolve the script's tonal inconsistencies [why to his credit?] but ran with them all the way." Then Hughes decided to redo the ending, with Richard Fleischer directing new material from Earl Felton, including the big fight on the ship and the comedy boat sinking. And - much to Mitchum's displeasure, the scene where they try to inject him - with his drugs bust he did not want the shot of a needle going into his arm at all. The ensuing cut with all this new stuff was three hours.

But that's not the end of it. Hughes then decided he wanted a new bad guy and all the Burr scenes had to be reshot - this is a year after they started - and fed up, Mitch started secretly drinking vodka on set, and on the last day of filming, exploding. "The film would have registered a nice profit but for the nearly one million dollars Hughes had spent on five months of retakes, added scenes, and cast changes."

What We Did on Our Holiday (2014 Andy Hamilton, Guy Jenkins)

A young old favourite, if you see what I mean.

Of the kids, I would have to single out Emilia Jones for her grave seriousness - hope she'll do more. Holy smoke! What an idiot! It's only now I realise she is the lead in Coda! And Fairyland - young girl growing up with gay dad in 1970s San Francisco, premiered at Sundance 2023 but not due for release until October?? Maybe because it treads similar ground as Alan Ball's Uncle Frank.

Martin Hawkins is the elegant DP, mainly on TV. 'It must have been fun to edit' Q said. I thought there would have been an absolute ton of material to go through and correctly assemble, but I know what she means. Steve Tempia and Mark Williams were responsible.

Just realised I took exactly the same screen shot in 2018!

The Dig (2021 Simon Stone)

Moira Buffini adapted John Preston. And it's not really about the dig, but the many relationships that we see in its orbit, notably between landowner Carey Mulligan and the digger Ralph Fiennes and her son Archie Barnes. Also between Fiennes and his wife Monica Doolan; excavator Ben Chaplin (who's gay) and his wife Lily James and her attraction for Johnny Flynn; and the political maneuverings of Ken Stott. And it all ends somehow inconclusively though well - not everything needs to be all wrapped up - make up your own ending,

Loved Jon Harris' editing, especially the extensive use of displaced sound - haven't seen that done so well since Vic Boydell. And Mike Eley's cinematography, which looks like it's in entirely natural light, should also get a special mention. Stone referenced Diamonds of the Night (1964) and the Ukrainian Earth (1930). Natural light was used as much as possible, with reflectors, and it was mainly shot hand held. The music's by Stefan Gregory.

I enjoyed it more than last time (not that I didn't enjoy it then), thought it was really good. Should check out more of Australian Stone's films. Ah - he's only really made one, The Daughter, with Geoffrey Rush. With the Netflix The Woman in Cabin 10, with Kiera Knightley, in post-production, due in October.

Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: The 4:50 from Paddington (1987 T.R. Bowen)

Seemingly, a straightforward retelling of the original. The denouement is some bonkers - how would Marple know her friend would return to the room just when the doctor was examining her eye?

Maurice Denham is the aging star in this one. Also we were struck by Joanna David, who it turns out is married to Edward Fox, mother of Emilia and Freddie. She seems to have been in just about every British TV programme, from the Last of the Mohicans in 1971 and including Colditz, The Duchess of Duke Street, The Darling Buds of May, Bramwell, Foyle's War, Death in Paradise, Morse and... the Marple reboot! And You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, for good measure.

Hated the performance of the 'artistic one' John Hallam.

21 Bridges (2019 Brian Kirk)

Reminded we'd never seen this through Graham Norton rewatch featuring the sadly late Chadwick Boseman, who seemed like a good presence.

Story and screenplay by Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan is fun as cocaine heist goes wrong, eight cops are dead so renegade detective Boseman decides to shut down Manhattan to catch killers. What do you mean, that's totally unbelievable? It's only until the next morning! But then - corruption sets in.

Lots of good (though sometimes hardly plausible) action makes it fun (though interestingly, not really exciting - didn't feel heart rate going up). Lots of NYC locations used, through they're all remarkably unpopulated. Shoot-out in meat factory is different, though that sort of sequence goes back as far as Powell & Pressburger's Contraband.

With Sienna Miller, J.K. Simmons, Stephan James (Selma, If Beale Street Could Talk, Race as Jesse Owens), Taylor Kitsch, Keith David.

Nicely photographed by Paul Cameron with a sort of Michael Kamen-ish soundalike score. Edited by Tim Murrell (Patrick Melrose).

The Good Liar (2019 Bill Condon)

Not a film you can watch too often, though you have to love the pairing of Helen Mirren and Ian McKellan, and the twist is a doozy - the flashbacks to WW2 Germany add meat. Laurie Davidson good as young Nazi. Plus: Russell Tovey, Mark Lewis Jones, Jim Carter, Lucien Msamati (how do you pronounce this?)

Rather shabbily photographed, though, in what has since become a 'style' by Tobias Schliessler. But no problem at all with Carter Burwell's ominous score.

Written by Jeffrey Hatcher from Nicholas Searle's novel.

That'll teach you!

One Night (2023 Emily Ballou)

Another one of those multi-part things that sets you up with some distant past puzzle and you have to decide whether the journey is going to be worthwhile or a disappointment. This one start quite promisingly though.

Jodie Whittaker has been in UK for a while, returns to Australia and reconnects with friends Nicola Da Silva (who has written the novel of the title) and Yael Stone. The novel though is a thinly disguised version of true events.

Perhaps unfortunately we're watching it contemporaneously with another 'Something happened in the past. What was it? Do we care? - after x hours' (Under the Bridge). Halfway through this is turning into The Stupid Woman, as da Silva has appropriated her friend's rape without her consent, made it all easily identifiable, and has aroused the anger of the local hard-nut Scottish crime bar owning family, with whose son, naturally, Whittaker's daughter becomes besmirched. And she's drinking too much to think of putting up surveillance cameras at her demented Dad's isolated farm.

If the point of all this is that rape is notoriously difficult to prosecute, and that there is a culture of toxic male masculinity in Australia, then these are hardly news. I was quite glad when it was over.

As for this new trend of opening Australian TV with a nod to the indigenous people of these lands, it feels like too little, too late. What would be better is positive discrimination towards Aboriginal people both in front of and behind the camera (certainly no evidence of the former, anyway, here).

Miss Marple: At Bertrams Hotel (1987 scr Jill Hyem)

Been watching some of these old Joan Hickson versions, which I assume are more faithful to Agatha Christie's original stories. We know and love the later version of this well, so it's interesting to see how much invention was added to it and how much more stripped back is this one, despite having a slightly longer running time. (It's symptomatic of the difference that the later version has more murders!) Which also has the delight of a late appearance from Joan Greenwood.

Caroline Blakistone is the adventuress whose neglected daughter Helena Michell (Keith's daughter) is also staying there under the watch of guardian James Cossins (very recognisable face). George Baker is an amiable detective (assisted by As Time Goes By's Philip Bretherton - who doesn't get much of a look in over Marple).

The lighting's good - John Walker. The director is refreshingly a woman, Mary McMurray, who had come to attention through The Assam Garden (1985). The hotel (the exterior, anyway) is Brown's in Mayfair.

If a Man Answers (1962 Henry Levin)

Mr. Hunter! What do you think you're doing producing such rubbish in 1962? (Let's not forget the powerful Douglas Sirk Universal - Hunter race relations epic Imitation of Life was two years previous.) What is interesting is that ten years from then this would have been total anathema to the box office public - and indeed, it may have only been the Sandra Dee - Bobby Darin popularity with this one that got any bums on seats at all.

'It's a married woman's job to keep a man interested in her.' You know, I don't think we were churning out this sort of stuff in the UK - our women were made of stronger (and more realistic) stuff. (I can't be bothered looking into that further but suspect I'm right.) Anyway Dee's mum Micheline Presle comes up with stupid ideas like the one in the title - flirty Stefanie Powers is the second act complication and Darin's dad Cesar Romero is the third act complication.

The cartoons are quite fun (in fact arguably the best section of the film) but even Russell Metty's lighting can't save it.

Hopeless.

The Thursday Murder Club (2025 Chris Columbus)

Based on the first of Richard Osman's novels, adapted by Katy Brand (Good Luck To You, Leo Grande) and Suzanne Heathcote, neither of whom seem to have any experience with adaptations, funnily enough. You sense a certain nuance has been lost. But as I said to Q, if you get the casting right you can't really go wrong. Helen Mirren is perfect as the leader of the group, with Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie and Pierce Brosnan. Plus Danny Mays, David Tennant, Naomi Ackie (Master of None), Henry-Lloyd Hughes, Tom Ellis (Miranda), Geoff Bell, Richard E Grant and a sadly underused Ruth Sheen.

DP Don Burgess shot Forrest Gump and Cast Away, Don Zimmerman cut it, the music's by the always reliable Tom Newman.

Two notes: That retirement home (Englefield House) looks like it would cost a fortune to live in. (it's a private estate. Who the fuck needs to live in a house that large??) Celia's cakes are excessively large.

Under the Bridge (2024 Quinn Shepard)

Indian girl found dead; group of vicious girls (and boys) may be to blame. Woman writer, ex of the hood, investigates with help of former lover policewoman. These are Vritipa Gupta, Riley Keough (Daisy Jones and the Six) and Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon). The horrible bitches (or misunderstood youths, depending on your point of view) are Chloe Quidry, Aiyana Goodfellow and Izzy G, with Javon 'Wanna' Walton as the lost young man involved. Archie Panjabi and Ezra Faroque Khan are the parents.

It's based on a true story by Rebecca Godfrey, set in 1997 in Saanich, Victoria, Vancouver Island. I don't think she actually went back to Saanich at the time it was blowing up, but she did live there previously. And the character of the cop and her family are also made up for the show. It was developed with the cooperation of Godfrey in the three years before her death and the announcement of the commissioning. 

Halfway through I started wondering if this was the same story that triggered The River's Edge, but as that came out in 1986. that 's a clear no (that film has a similar story and was also inspired by true events).

An eight part series. It was well acted, but too long, as usual (do we need Indian flashback episode, for example), and obviously grim (I don't think we needed the flashback to under the bridge again) so I don't think I'd watch it again.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968 Robert Ellis Miller)

Thomas C Ryan adapted Carson McCullers' 1940 novel, which seems more complex.

Deaf-mute Alan Arkin (fabulous), who moves in with family including teenager Sondra Locke, seems aware of people's failings. In a key moment he helps a self-harming drifter by enlisting the help of a black doctor, who becomes an important element in the story. We hope it won't turn mushy with the girl; it doesn't. The story confronts racism and has tragic elements.

It was shot by Jimmy Wong Howe with music from Dave Grusin.

With Chuck McCann (deaf-mute friend), Percy Rodrigues, Cicely Tyson (his daughter), Stacy Keach.

Now Voyager (1942 Irving Rapper)

I'm going to say go here.

The sub-plot with the depressed daughter Tina (for some reason uncredited Janis Wilson) is a mirror to the main plot - the mother-daughter relationship. I'd say it was pretty advanced for a Hollywood film of this vintage to feature such psychology - I know it's from the novel.

Ilka Chase is Bette's brilliant sister-in-law, Bonita Granville her daughter.

She's Funny That Way (2014 Peter Bogdanovich)

 I'm gonna go with this one, though still love the line 'the happiest girls are the most beautiful girls'.

Any Human Heart (2010 Michael Samuels)

A simply extraordinary film, a whole life story of incredible event, romances, friendships and tragedies. It was - well, no, we had actually seen Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - but it was the first time we'd investigated William Boyd. We first watched it 13-14 December 2010. It won the BAFTAs for Best Drama Serial and for Dan Jones' music (which I just love), and Wojciech Szepel and Jim Broadbent and Gillian Anderson were nominated. And costumes, make up/hair. Tim Murrell's editing is amazing.

Leading to th two big mysteries: Why wasn't Will even nominated for Best Screenplay and why wasn't Murrall?? Peter Bowker won for Eric & Ernie; Five Daughters, Getting On and fucking The Inbetweeners were nominated!

The sound - Nigel Heath, Alex Sawyer (dialogue editor), Adam Armitage (sound effects editor) and Alistair Crocker - was also nominated - it's extremely good, and not just the way in which the sound is often pulled out of a scene.

Poor Logan - you sense if his wife and child had not have been killed, he would have been all right.

More about locations coming..

Can't argue with this.

Flora and Son (2023 John Carney & scr)

Yer feller Carney does something wonderful with music. There.

Eve Hewson, Orén Kinlan, Joseph Gordon Levitt.

Carney has Power Ballad in post-production. 'An uplifting music-driven story about a wedding singer, a rock star, and the song that comes between them.' Doesn't sound like one of his films.

Available only on Apple TV.

Mr. Bigstuff - Season 2 (2025 Ryan Sampson)

More entertaining nonsense, with Danny Dyer - who's the main reason for watching. Though Harriet Webb and Fatiha El-Ghorri also fun.

In My Father's Den (2004 Brad McGann)

A shattering and tragic adaptation of Maurice Gee's novel, with excellent performances, particularly from Matthew Mcfadyen and Emily Barclay as maybe-his-daughter. Rest of cast good: Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings), Colin Moy, Jimmy Keen (nephew), Jodie Rimmer, Vicky Haughton (teacher).

My favourite moment: Macfadyen and Barclay throwing horse shit at each other - as they disappear into the trees the horses follow them.

McGann sadly died a couple of years later after this, his first feature.

Stuart Dryburgh handsomely shot it. I'm glad they leave the story on an unchronological 'up'. Editor: Chris Plummer.

L'Amica Geniale - Season 4 (2024)

Writers are Elena Ferrante (from her novel), Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paulucci and Severio Costanzo.

We open as Elena (Alba Rohrwacher) is making a hash of her life. She hasn't been with her children for two years yet wants to make a future with them in Napoli with Nico (Fabrizio Gifuni - you have to admit he plays him well) - only she's unaware he hasn't left his wife - it takes Lila (Irene Maiorino) to tell her. As it (slowly) progresses, she's so stupid she knows she's fallen out of love with him but is still paralysed by indecision even when she catches him fucking the maid. Again, Lila has to tell her Nico's been coming on to her at every opportunity he's had.

That apartment with the view over the Bay of Napoli must have cost a fortune even then.

It's a bit of a downbeat slog. And I was reading Richard Osmon talking about the filming of  'The Thursday Murder Club' and he was expecting the film to be different otherwise it would be "nine hours of every single line of dialogue and every single internal monologue... The world's most boring film." (Which was also I guess the fate that befell Greed). And I think that's the problem here - so reverential are the producers to Elena Ferrante's novels that they film everything in great overlength resulting in a ten hour version - just what Osman was talking about. There's a happy medium when you consider Any Human Heart - the absolutely best adaptation of a William Boyd novel, a novel that is packed with incident over a character's whole life - that's still only four and a half hours.

It's also quite difficult to like anyone in it.

Anyway, it's not until episode seven that things start happening - and a lot happens, most shockingly the disappearance of Lila's daughter Tina, and then the murder of the Solaras. Lenu's two elder daughters desert her and she finally moves away to Turin - and writes this. Nice little coda in which Nico is arrested for some big conspiracy.

So it was worth the long slog in the end.

Hostage (2025 Matt Charman)

Oh dear. Another load of nonsense. PM Suranne Jones' husband is kidnapped. If she steps down as PM, he and three other doctors, will be released. So what do you do? 'Unfortunately, due to personal problems, I'm going to have to step down.' Catch the kidnappers, then reinstate self with alive husband. At least that's what everyone around the world watching would have done. But daft PM goes another way and deaths begin.

And that's the main problem with it throughout. (French President Julie Delpy is blackmailed with a sex tape. So what? In France, that would probably increase her popularity.) I sense that the fun everyone has with it is shouting at the screen things like 'No!' and 'Don't be so stupid!' The whole premise, that it's a protest against reducing the armed forces, is patently absurd. That could have been a serious basis for a thriller, but this is absurd beyond belief. Twaddle is the word. Entertaining twaddle.

Lucien Msamati, Corey Mylchreest (Delpy's stepson, My Oxford Year), Ashley Thomas (PM's husband), Martin McCann (from Blue Lights), Jehnny Beth (French traitor), James Cosmo, Mark Lewis Jones and Isobel Akuwudike as the daughter.

A five part Netflix series.

Suspicion (2022 Rob Williams)

An eight part thing for Apple, which is in itself a problem. Why make things so long?

It starts out as three seemingly innocent Brits - Kunal Nayyar (from The BBT), Georgina Campbell (Broadchurch, Flowers), Elizabeth Henstridge - are suspected of kidnapping a prominent PR exec's son (she Una Thurman). Angel Coulby and Noah Emmerich investigate. Elyes Gabel is an extremely violent and psychotic hit man (I mean, does he have to blow up the girl on the yacht?) Tom Rhys Harries's zippy student has charisma but seems to be in the wrong show (he was in the disastrous White Lines). Robert Glenister is an American (I feel the whole show was shot in the UK even though we seem to be in Washington Square Park and Times Square).

Good motorbike chase scene, edited by Mags Arnold (her only episode). Adam Suschitsky is a cameraman on four of them, and brings a certain class with him.

When I was in primary school, let's say I was seven or so, my friends and I decided to put on a little play for the class, involving diving and searching for buried treasure. It started out OK but then everyone just started doing their own thing and it turned into an unscripted disaster, and eventually our teacher had to call time. I mention this because while watching Suspicion I was thinking of that episode. This becomes more bewildering and unconvincing as it goes on, and manages to end so badly that we don't even know if our innocent Brits can return to a normal life - something that was set up so fully early on - like just jettison the plot. Stuff with whole super-assassin bit is just bullshit.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015 John Madden)

I cannot believe Tamsin Greig is American and neither can anyone else.

Richard Gere woos Lillete Dubey. Celia Imrie cannot make up her mind. Judi Dench is deflecting Bill Nighy. Dev Patel is annoyed. In fact the basis of Ol and John's screenplay is everyone's being annoying.

John Madden's constantly moving camera mixed with Vic Boydell's energetic editing makes for a kinetic mix. 

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011 John Madden)

Written by Ol Parker (and, almost certainly, Madden). My Mister Madden, you do make a film that moves, not just in plot or cutting but in a very fluid camera. We both enjoyed this more than any other time.

The combination of Madden with editor Chris Gill (Calvary) and photographer Ben Davis (Three Billboards, The Banshees) - and composer Tom Newman - is a potent one.

And the dream cast: Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup, Dev Patel. Tom Wilkinson, Tina Desai and Lilette Dubey.

Annika - Season 2 (2025 Nick Walker)

Whilst investigating marine-related murders, Nichola Walker has to navigate a difficult personal situation when she reveals to long time co-worker Jamie Sives that her daughter is also his.

Her to-camera asides - on Robert Louis Stevenson, Prometheus, King Lear, 1984 - are fun and also relate to the plot.

Silvie Furneaux (the daughter), Katie Leung, Ukweli Roach, Paul McGann, Kate Dickie and the new motorbike riding cop Varada Sethu.

It seems there is some doubt over whether a third series will be commissioned.

Bjørn Ståle Bratberg (Karen Pirie, Shetland) photographed all six.

Almost Famous (2000 Cameron Crowe & scr)

Emotional. Brilliantly written. In his Oscar acceptance speech he says it was a love letter to music and to his family, Alice Crowe, Cindy Webber and his wife Nancy Wilson. It's probably Cameron's greatest film.

Almost certainly Cameron's own stuff

And - as though it needs saying - it has an insanely good soundtrack featuring amongst others Simon & Garfunkel, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Elton John, Yes, The Who, The Allman Brothers and David Bowie (his version of Waiting for the Man from 1972).

Gran Torino (2008 Clint Eastwood & prod)

Extremely grumpy widower Clint thaws in dealing with next door Hmong family, particularly in interaction with cute and funny Ahney Her (her only performance of significance) and Bee Vang, who has tried to steal the titular vehicle. And you know, I was thinking of that casting director who worked on Invictus saying Clint is not about recognised actors, only about good actors, and so he has this mainly unknown cast that works - John Carroll Lynch the only recognisable face as the barber. Clint didn't rehearse this young cast, just let them go, occasionally winding back to correct something. It was shot in 32 days around Detroit.

First time screenwriter Nick Schenk brings in this priest who won't give up, and they form an unlikely alliance - he's played by Christoper Carley.

Interesting observations here.

Very darkly photographed by Tom Stern. Most enjoyable.