Play Dirty (2025 Shane Black & co-scr)

JFK (1991 Oliver Stone & co-scr)

Quite a mind-blowing film, both in content and technique.

The editing, led by Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia is mind-blowing and won the Oscar, they were assisted by Hank Corwin  and Julie Monroe. The sound design is pretty amazing also. John Williams' music doesn't even sound like him until near the end. Robert Richardson won his first Oscar.

Kevin Costner is the DA who won't give up, Jim Garrison. His team comprises Laurie Metcalfe, Jay Sanders, Michael Rooker, Wayne Knight (the one who smiles at the trial's outcome) Gary Grubbs and some other people.

With Gary Oldman (who kept making me think of Sam Rockwell) Joe Pesci, Edward Asner and Tommy Lee Jones. Meaningful cameos come from Donald Sutherland, who provides all the info about how lucrative the Vietnam war is, John Candy, brilliant as slippery lawyer, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Kevin Bacon.

Many do subscribe to the theory that Kennedy was going to pull out of Vietnam, but as to the multiple shooters, that is surely beyond dispute (the 'magic bullet' stuff was just so much crap.)

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965 Freddie Francis)

Made always with style by former cinematographer Freddie Francis, e.g. in his interesting blocking and editing. Funnily enough, Alan Hum's photography is garishly high key and the sets look cheap.

Tarot card reading Peter Cushing boards a train and predicts the fate of the passengers, who are:

Neil McCallum. Oh, that was a werewolf story? I didn't realise. With Ursula Howells, Pater Madden and Katy Wild.

Alan Freeman encounters a deadly Creeping Vine in easily the most hilarious of the stories. Still has me smiling. Bernard Lee and Jeremy Kemp try vainly to keep straight faces.

Roy Castle makes the mistake of stealing a voodoo tune and must pay the price.

Christopher Lee - somehow at his most gay - plays an art critic who is pursued by a disembodied hand. Also quite hilarious.

And young Donald Sutherland makes the mistake of killing his wife, thinking she's a vampire.

Most entertaining collection of stories, made for Amicus. Written and produced by Milton Subotsky. Music by Elisabeth Lutyens (Don't Bother to Knock).

Donnie Brasco (1997 Mike Newell)

What? Four Weddings Mike Newell? Enchanted April Mike Newell?

Yes. I was left with two feelings, thoughts, if you will. One was that for all he had to go through, Brasco (Johnny Depp) was handsomely rewarded with $500 and Witness Protection. And the other was that 'Lefty' Al Pacino ended up being quite a sympathetic character, himself somewhat lost and unfulfilled, wishing he could escape on  his boat.. Which is down to the writing of Paul Attanasio, who adapted two books on the subject.

Um. Michael Madsen is rather good as the wannabe crime boss. With Bruno Kirby, James Russo, Anne Heche,  Perter Doyle's atypical music adds an interesting dimension. Edited by Jon Gregory, who died in 2022; he had cut Pushing Tin and Four Weddings for Newell, as well as Three Billboards and In Bruges. Photographed by Peter Sova, who had shot a few films for Barry Levinson, who co-produced this.

So, yeah - we enjoyed it. Particularly liked the scene in which Brasco explains to low-billed FBI man Paul Giamatti the various meanings of 'Forget abaht it'. And when on the boat Pacino says 'Go to the bough' it's funny.

The Majestic (2001 Frank Darabont)

James Whitmore adds to the Shawshank connection, as do Darabont and Castle Rock, but unlike the earlier one, this goes on too long, fails to reach it's concluding act quickly enough. Also I kept thinking Jim Carrey was Tim Robbins. Nevertheless it's very enjoyable in the way of an old Capra, somehow. David Tatersall's cinematography is glowingly nostalgic and a real treat for the eyes.

With Laurie Holden, Martin Landau, David Ogden Stiers, Brent Briscoe, Jeffrey DeMunn, Gerry Black, Bob Balaban, Hal Holbrook, Susan Willis.

Compulsion (1959 Richard Fleischer)

Rather good film of Leopold Loeb pair played by Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell. In 1924 the pair kidnap and kill (offscreen) a fellow classmate - dropped spectacles lead to their arrest and trial. Orson Welles successfully defends them against the death penalty, making it a still interesting subject of discussion. Frankly, it seems to me to have been a worse punishment for the intellectual couple to have been locked away for life. We thought Welles' speech went on too long - but the original took eight hours. So at least we were spared that.

It was based on Meyer Levin's novel

Diane Varis is the sympathetic girlfriend, E.G. Marshall the DA. With Martin Milner, Richard Anderson, Robert F Simon, Edward Binns.

Excellent photography from William C Mellor, noticeable editing from William Reynolds, music by Lionel Newman.

Mellor's done this sort of thing before

But this? Trick photography?

Manhattan (1979 Woody Allen & scr)

 A rather more sublime presentation of Diane Keaton seriously at work is in Woody Allen's Manhattan, in which the director should take credit for giving her a much more complex and interesting role than in Annie Hall. Indeed, as a film, it's a lot more grown up than the previous one, which still had half its feet in the gag-Allen films of old like Take the Money and Run which became pruned down from Anhedonia into the film we know and love now, But this, from its stark black-and-white chiroscuro design on, is a more adult affair. Keaton is initially quite mouthy and unlikeably pushy, but we soon learn she's as much a neurotic mess as anyone else, in Woody's study of adults at play. Leaving in fact Mariel Hemingway's seventeen year old student as the single voice of reason.

That ending - on her - ''You've got to have a little faith' always blows my socks off, but it's then the close up on Woody that is the film's final image - how he facially responds to that piece of advice, which seals the film. It's (as I've written before) his greatest performance, particularly in that last scene, in which he unsuccessfully tries to unsay all the good advice he's told her earlier.

It was one of Meryl Streep's earliest roles (after Julia and The Deer Hunter) - a bundle of nervy energy.

In conversation with Stig Bjorkman:

W: I was so disappointed that I didn't want to open it. I wanted to ask United Artists not to release it. I wanted to offer them to make one free movie, if they would just throw it away.

SB: Why were you so unhappy with the film? [Yes - the question everyone always asks. And the answer?]

WA: I don't know. ['I don't know'??] I had worked on it for a long time and I was just not happy with it.

Maybe it's partly because as an actor he is so naked.

There's more info on how Gordon Willis shot it in The Believer, March 2014 issue 106, as interviewed by Chris McCoy, should anyone be interested.

Father of the Bride (1991 Charles Shyer)

How is it this film is so much worse than Minnelli's 1950 original? It's based on the original Hackett-Goodrich screenplay, adapted by Nancy Myers and Shyer. It doesn't have Spencer Tracy, I grant you - Steve Martin is a poor substitute, And while it does have the hidden advantage of a Diane Keaton, she's not really given much to do.

For me, the scene where Martin snoops, loses the bank book and ends up in the swimming pool is where it really goes wrong - it's so far-fetched that it simply isn't funny. Then Martin Short's fake terrible accent ('Cak') adds to the unfunniness.

So I enjoyed it about as much as I did the first time I watched it - not very much.

The young couple are exceedingly colourless, but that's beside the point. With Kieran Culkin, BD Wong.

Photographed by John Lindley and edited by Richard Marks.

Silkwood (1983 Mike Nichols)

We had seen this before - a 'cleaned' TV print, 15/3/92. 'Worthy but long winded, more character study than polemic.' Huh. I'm not sure there was a lot to 'clean' other than the shitty plant they worked in or the shitty house they lived in - Patrizia von Brandenstein's production design is meaningful:

At 2,10 it was quite long, but I thought the time taken to explore the world of Karen Silkwood was well spent, an imperfect woman (who is perfect?) who may have been killed for trying to expose terrible wrongdoing at nuclear plant in 1974. Based on the novel by Howard Kohn, it was written for the screen by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen, who were Oscar nominated, along with Streep, Nichols, Cher (I know) and editor Sam O'Steen, who went on to work on many of Nichols' films.

A grubby and gritty life, somehow rather beautifully evoked by Miroslav Ondricek. I particularly like this static shot, because it then tracks back through the house, pans left to the bathroom, then comes back into the main living area without a cut or a visible light in sight:

With Kurt Russell, Craig T Nelson, Diana Scarwid, Fred Ward, Ron Silver, Bruce McGill (perhaps recognised from Legally Blonde 2!), M Emmett Walsh, David Strathairn, Bill Cobbs

There's a keenly observed moment early on where the older woman (Sudie Bond) who's later 'cooked' mentions her daughter is dying of cancer - it's never explicitly stated, but you get the feeling the daughter worked there too.

Re: 1992 comment: I sound up my own arse. Who wants a polemic when you can have a character study? Who do I think I'm writing for, Cahiers du Cinéma (on my 5" x 3" index card)?

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 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'.

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

I Love Trouble (1948 S Sylvan Simon)

An unusual private eye thriller, with Franchot Tone commissioned (by Tom Powers) to investigate his wife - not a mission any film-savvy PI would undertake. Roy Higgins' screenplay, adapted from his own novel 'Double Take' - a better title, by the way - does indeed paint a confusing picture, involving Vegas gangster Steven Geray and his henchmen John Ireland and Raymond Burr, sister of the wife Janet Blair, dodgy couple Janis Carter and Eduardo Ciannelli, Adele Jergens (was she the one with the gun and the swimming pool?), faithful and useful assistant Glenda Farrell, funny man Donald Curtis and Lynn Merrick. Plenty of dames to shake a stick at - what's going on? Tone dishes up humour throughout e.g. waking up under sleeping beauty's bed and leaving a 'Kilroy was here' message for her on her pillow. The machinations of the plot somewhat eluded me, as usual, though I did get the idea that someone was probably not who they said they were.

So that helps. A not particularly stylish but entertaining thriller (though there's a most interesting camera wobble into unconsciousness effect which I haven't seen before), photographed by Charles Lawton sometimes on location. A Cornell pictures indie, distributed by Columbia.

The Capture (1950 John Sturges)

A stupid film. Oil prospector Lew Ayres (yes - All Quiet on the Western Front) is suspicious of payroll hold-up - frankly, so are we. Goes after culprits with no backup. Finds a man who can't lift one arm so shoots him. He later dies. Ayres returns body to home town, is fascinated by his wife Teresa Wright, goes to work for her. She finds out who he is, she punishes him, he knows, turns the tables, they get married.

Then he decides to avenge the dad man's honour and find the real hold-up perpetrator, does so and somehow accidentally kills him? I know. And rather than fess up, goes on the run and - get this - somehow manages to hurt his arm in the same way so he can't raise it either - a serious matter when it comes to giving himself up at the end (presumably this is some kind of bullshit symbolic or thematic mirror device).

I have to blame Niven Busch for all of this, because he both wrote and produced. (he was married to Teresa Wright then. It's no excuse.) An indie, released by RKO, photographed by Edward Cronjager so you can't see what's going on in the night scenes (actually more probably the fault of TPTV's rubbish print - Cronjager's good). Scored by Daniele Amfitheatrof.

Victor Jory (The Miracle Worker) is the Mexican priest Ayres tells all this to. Barry Kelley is the suspicious employer, who should be familiar - we just saw him in The Asphalt Jungle.

Seeing Ayres take a couple of tortillas made me spend the rest of the film thinking about a Mexican chicken dish I could make on Friday. (Then I realised I's already tried it - a Chicken Enchialda recipe - and it was 'stodge filled with stodge'.)

Baby Boom (1987 Charles Shyer & co-scr)

Co-written with Nancy Myers. Diane Keaton is a work-obsessed.. yeah, I'm not quite sure what her job is, actually. Anyway. 'Inherits' a baby and obviously it changes her life. BF Harold Ramis is out, Vermont vet Sam Shepherd is in. 

The 1980s music by Bill Conti almost renders it unwatchable, but it's saved by Diane Keaton and her cute charges Kristina and Michelle Kennedy.

With Sam Wanamaker, James Spader, Pat Hingle (client), Britt Leach. Photographed by Bill Fraker.

Vermont is a little state between New York and New Hampshire with Canada on its northern border.

You scene-stealer!

Hanging Up (2000 Diane Keaton)

Right - let's unravel this and make mockery of IMDB's callous 4.9 rating.

So - Delia Ephron was one of four daughters of screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron, who jointly wrote things like Carousel, Captain Newman MD and Desk Set.

Nora- Sleepless in Seattle, book and film of Heartburn, both of them You've Got Mail.. caught up now? (This is addressed to me as much as anyone.)

And - pay attention - Delia wrote the novel 'Hanging Up' , published in 1996. 'I was 11 when my parents became alcoholics'. Interesting comment. How would you know that? Sister Norah died in 2012 of leukemia - one that runs in the family - Delia got it too. Her older sister had been published first, was a success first.

Sorry - went down a rabbit hole after Nora mentioned restaurant Cinq Sentits in Barcelona - will not be going there. Now what? A Nora Ephron interview by Kathryn Borel - good. Feel I'm not really getting to the nub of anything.

Let's have some pictures while we're digesting all this:

Matthau no doubt cracking up Ryan and Kudrow for real

You forget that Walter used to specialize in quite unlovely, despicable characters like in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and Strangers When We Meet. After years of playing the eccentric nice guy it's quite a shock to see him flaring up into angry rages the way he does here - a truly great last performance.

Um. It's rather snowily photographed by Howard Atherton. The editing by Julie Monroe (Life Itself, Mud, Danny Collins - before that as assistant on three Oliver Stone films, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors and JFK) is fine. Meg steals the film from the other two girls; Diane's character is more in the background. Considering father's behaviour at the kids' party it's amazing any of the girls forgave him at all.

The Iranian doctor and his mother are a nice touch - Shaun Duke and Ann Bortolotti. With Adam Arkin, Cloris Leachman, Celia Weston.

So. I can't find a single interview with Delia relating to the publication of 'Hanging Up'. Which in itself may be revealing - that she didn't want to talk about something so clearly autobiographical. (Where the lack of information is the information.) Possibly. Or not. And it seems like the adaptation - which was by both Delia and Nora - is faithful to the novel. But what we do know then is that Delia was one of several competitive sisters whose father (and mother) was an alcoholic and who did die after suffering from Alzheimer's. So I would say that this film is honest and well observed and familiar in many ways, and not just to my own life, and well acted, and interestingly directed, and therefore that it is rather good.

The Diplomat - Season 2 (2024 creator Debora Cahn)

We are out of the loop - this came out a year ago - they're about to release Season 3!

It wasn't at all annoying that Netflix wouldn't play the recap. But by episode two we were caught up enough. It directly follows 1, and we're reeling from a bomb blast which may have originated from within the British Establishment.

Like everything streaming, it seems to take forever for nothing to happen. We're being repeatedly told that attention spans are dwindling, that kids only watch minute TikTok videos - why then is everything streaming so attenuated, so long, so endlessly stretched?

The supporting story between Ali Ahn and Ato Essandoh - they've split up, we don't really know why - is so frivolous it may as well not be there. And he's out-of-the-loop working-his-way-back-in - blah blah plotting. David Gyasi is all set to launch a coup against the PM Rory Kinnear (good) then becomes his most devoted subject??

Thankfully it's only six episodes. The ending is funny as never trustworthy husband Rufus Sewell has accidentally 'killed' the President.

With Allison Janney, Narnia's Georgie Henley (I wonder why they only made the first three - oh, OK, I can guess..), Celia Imrie, various writers. Henley's character is going to become something significant, you just know it, the Fifth Agent of Smersh or The Third Man or something...

"Season 3's been commissioned - you're kidding"

Diane Keaton Tribute: Annie Hall (1977 Woody Allen & co-scr) / Something's Gotta Give (2003 Nancy Myers & scr)

Diane died yesterday, October 11, suddenly, of an unknown illness aged 79. And you almost have to say, 'Diane Keaton is dead. Well - la di da, la di da.' *

Of course Anne Hall is the best way to celebrate her, as it's all about her - her real name is Diane Hall, her clothes were all her own choices, like her character, Keaton was very modest and apologetic like 'all smart people are' (Woody). And she has a knockout voice, which I'd forgotten we do hear uninterrupted in her divine take of 'Seems Like Old Times', which also ends the film (there's very little music throughout - the beginning and end credits are noticeably and abruptly silent - almost fitting when seen as a tribute). She won the Oscar (and BAFTA) for this - beating off stiff competition in Marsha Mason (The Goodbye Girl), Jane Fonda (Julia), Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft (both in The Turning Point).

The famous lobster scene was the first thing filmed by a new cinematographer, Gordon Willis. Woody loved the spontaneity of it and kept the one take in which Keaton makes him break up. Susan Morse is an assistant editor.

Woody mentions 1975 in the film - it wasn't actually released in the US until 1977, took until September to get here. I didn't see it in Reading until 3 March 1978.

Did I realise before that the lobster pictures she's taken are there?

And it's so familiar you almost forget how great those great bits are - like the totally unfunny comic Alvy has to write for, or the two Brooklyn-types who corner him outside of Face to Face. 

"Keaton is a stronger comic than me, she just has a more magnetic and funny screen personality.. When the camera hits her, that's what you want to see... I see it in other people's films - the film with Jack Nicholson and Amanda Peet, Something's Gotta Give, and The Family Stone; when she was in the film about the dying kid (Marvin's Room) She's just got something that works." He also thought she was great in Baby Boom. (Conversations with Woody Allen, Eric Lax.)

Which leads us nicely into Q's second choice, y'know, the one with the nice kitchen. There's not a lot to say here other than that Keaton and Nicholson spark off each other beautifully, naturally. Q thinks that Diane didn't act, she just was the character, and that's a hard thing to do.

(Though Frances McDormand quietly steals the film.)

As to the ending, well. We all know that film making is a commercial business - leave the audience with what they want. Here's my alternative ending. Harry leaves Erica and Julian - happy together - at Le Grand Colbert, walks off into the Parisian night. Then chances upon a young women - one of his 'types' - who needs help in getting back to her hotel, or somesuch. Harry does indeed help her - but instead of accompanying her back to the girl's residence, he gallantly sends her on her way... he's grown up.

Yeah? No? La-di da!

* I am of course paying tribute to the famous headline in Le Monde when Billy Wilder died: 'Mort de Billy Wilder : personne n'est parfait'.

As to the presence of Steve Rotter as 'additional editor' he told us "Nancy Myers had hired someone else to edit this film [Joe Hutshing: JFK, Jerry Mcguire, Almost Famous] and then panicked and called me as insurance. I didn’t really like the other editor but he was quite accomplished and did an excellent job." Thank you! And added ".Diane never made a wrong move and was always up to whatever was given her."

John Candy: I Like Me (2025 Colin Hanks) / Uncle Buck (1989 John Hughes & scr)

Tribute to the big (and strong) feller, with contributions from Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, Chris Columbus, family and friends, He was lacking in self-confidence and haunted by the death of his father aged just 35.

Rather over-musiced. Ryan Reynolds was a producer.

Intrigued to see him in a clip from JFK, which we still have never watched. And found the complete absence of Cool Runnings curious (maybe copyright reasons). Also would have liked a contribution from Gaby Hoffman.

Q insisted we then watch what we both agree is his (and John Hughes') best film, Uncle Buck.

Fortune Is a Woman (1957 Sidney Gilliat & co-scr)

Winston Graham's novel was adapted by Val Valentine, then screenwritten by Launder & Gilliat. Their humour is evident in recurring scenes with insurance investigator Jack Hawkins' infrequent meetings with flirty Greta Gynt. Otherwise, moody tale of art forgery and murder has unexpected twist.

With Arlene Dahl (no connection to Roald), Dennis Price, Violet Farebrother, Geoffrey Keen, Malcolm  Keen (yes - his dead), Ian Hunter, Bernard Miles, Christopher Lee (one scene - as a Welsh actor!)

They got their money out of the through-the-windshield night drive to the Manor shot. 

It was only OK though.

Music: William Alwyn, photography: Gerald Gibbs.

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.

Rear Window (1954 Alfred Hitchcock)

It occurred to me that (presumably) there are all sorts of neighbours on Stewart's side of the building that we never (of course) see. It would be a funny exercise to make film which is set in the apartment above or below Stewart's and how they maybe see bits of the action but attribute different meanings to it. (Some of it could be in the background e.g. Kelly shimmying up the fire escape could be in the background to something totally different going on the the foreground.)

Miss Torso, Georgine Darcy - her only close up

That process shot of Stewart falling from the window almost takes us straight into Vertigo.