Nothing Sacred (1937 William Wellman)

Selznick turns to comedy - Ben Hecht was one of the few writers he respected as being able to work without close supervision. This is a beautifully cynical tale in which Carole Lombard (then earning $465,000 a year!*) and her doctor Charles Winninger are as corrupt as the newspaper trying to exploit them. March displays terrific deadpan skills at outset, Lombard is intense and skittish, Walter Connolly good as newspaper editor.

W. Howard Greene's early Technicolor photography is lovely. With Sig Ruman, Monte Wolley (briefly), Hattie McDaniel (even more briefly), Margaret Hamilton, Maxie Rosenbloom, Troy Brown Sr (the 'sultan').

Loved it.

March, Connolly and Ben Hecht, who was paid $30,000 to write the script in four weeks

It's Sean Penn! 'Wild' Bill Wellman in publicity stunt dreamed up by far left Russell Birdwell.
Photos courtesy 'David O. Selnick's Hollywood'.

*Though admittedly paying 80% tax on that...

Struck by Lightning (2012 Brian Dannelly)

Star Chris Colfer wrote this high school tale of try-hard individualist who ends up blackmailing his classmates. Allison Janney, Dermot Mulroney, Rebel Wilson, Mila Kunis, Christina Hendricks, Angela Kinsey (counsellor, I'd like to know where we've seen her if only Chrome would work)...Isn'#t that Mila Kunis? I can't check anything...Stick to paper - much better than fucking computers.

Now I have a working computer... It's not Mila but Sarah Hyland. And grannie is Polly Bergen. We have seen Kinsey in Monk and New Girl but she's best known from The Office.

We enjoyed it, despite the fact that it's made in a very predictable way (shot-reverse shot over the shoulder kinda thing).

The Actress (1953 George Cukor)

Ruth Gordon's autobiographical screenplay from her stage play 'Years Ago' is set in 1913 and features Jean Simmons as herself with Spencer Tracy as her disapproving (but ultimately supportive) father and Teresa Wright as her mother. Wright's makeup by William Tuttle is great - she was only 35, and she's terrific, as is Tracy. The film is marked by very long takes which I guess Wright was used to from Wyler, but Tracy's also brilliant, Simmons good too. Anthony Perkins is her beau.

Harold Rosson's photography is particularly classy. It's an MGM picture.

Tadpole (2000 Gary Winick & co-scr)

Aaron Stanford, Sigourney Weaver, Bebe Neuwirth (is it pronounced Bee-bee New-worth, good in mischievous role), John Ritter (recognised him about two-thirds of the way through), Robert Iler (The Sopranos).

Short (70 minutes) tangy film about precocious fifteen year-old's crush on his stepmother, peppered with quotes from Voltaire, includes the sharp line "Silence. Sometimes it's peaceful and sometimes it's a shrill scream".

"Is your liver broken?"

You Can Count On Me (2000 Kenneth Lonergan & scr)

In Kenneth Lonergan's great script, we are initially presented with the two surviving kids whose parents were killed when young: Laura Linney seems to have it all together with son Rory Culkin, Mark Ruffalo appears to be a complete mess. Then the pendulum keeps swinging from one to another as she starts messing up with bank manager Matthew Broderick and lover Jon Tenney whilst Ruffalo starts heading in the ascendant...And down again... Which makes for amusing and emotional viewing.

Lonergan uses lots of classical music over scenes again, and country and western music (loved the song about the other woman which it seems would only work in that genre - 'The Other Woman' by Loretta Lynn ).

Ruffalo and Linney are exceptional (she was Oscar nominated) and film is maybe more enjoyable than Manchester By The Sea. He's also written the new TV version of Howard's End.

Big Little Lies (2017 Jean-Marc Vallée)

So Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) joins the growing camp of feature directors to embrace the long format story (Woody Allen, Jane Campion, Cameron Crowe, Paolo Sorrentino, for example) - this created by David Kelley and written by he and Australian Liane Moriarty from her 2014 novel. It's a pretty fucking inciseful look at domestic abuse, as well as more complex relationships involving families, friends and children, told in an almost Roegish style of mysterious and elusive flashbacks and jump cuts - most welcome cinematic treatment. Also great scenes with no or muffled sound, imaginations and even glimpses of Marienbad (shooting range, for example).

This is achieved through regular collaborater Yves Bélanger on camera and new team (neither Pensa nor Vallée themselves were involved for a change) of editors David Berman, Maxime Lahaie-Denis, Sylvain Lebel and Justin Lachance.

Fab cast of Nicole Kidman and abuser Alexander Skarsgard, Reece Witherspoon and Adam Scott, with daughters younger (Darby Camp) and older (Kathryn Newton), ex husband James Tupper and new wife Zoë Kravitz (daughter of Lenny and Lisa Bonet), Shailene Woodley and son Iain Armitage, Laura Dern and Jeffrey Nordling.

By the end you're thinking virtually anyone could be the murder victim, such are the layers of pent-up violence and aggression and the gradual revelations, and in the way it all begins over an allegation reminds me of the similar themed The Slap.

Trainwreck (2015 Judd Apatow)

Know what one of the problems with this is? You can't get an un-Extended cut. It's flabby and full of unnecessarily extended scenes that any sane editor would have cut out. That is the Apatow problem. Which is a shame, because Amy Schumer's script is good enough to work without additional flab.

Then to my astonishment I realised we had been watching the two hour theatrical version all along - the extended version is only three minutes different.  Wow.

It's good to see Bill Hader as the lead, and contributions from LeBron James, Tilda Swinton, Brie Larson, Ezra Miller, Colin Quinn (dad), John Cena, Vanessa Bayer and Norman Lloyd are fun (plus Dan Soder as the homeless guy).

The Trouble with Harry (1955 Alfred Hitchcock)

Hadn't noticed before Edmund Gwenn's disguised oath 'For Rice Cakes'! Also love the exchange 'Let's pop him in the ground' - 'With hasty reverence'.

The Hippopotamus (2017 John Jencks)

Unmistakably full of the rich, fruity language of Stephen Fry (though he wasn't involved in the project), Blanche McIntyre (a theatre director??) and Tom Hodgson's (one previous credit!) adaptation is successful, with intriguing plot and laugh out loud narration. TV comedy writer John Finnemore and Robin Hill (Ben Wheatley movies) were also involved. Jencks experience is mainly as an exec producer.

Roger Allum is perfect as the whisky-soaked antihero.

With Emily Berrington (Humans, no relation to Elizabeth), Fiona Shaw. Matthew Modine, Tommy Knight, Dean Ridge, John Standing (butler), Lyne Renee, Emma Curtis, Tim McInnerny and Geraldine Somerville.

Filmed at West Wycombe Park by Angus Hudson in Panavision.

Jencks and Allum reviewing a take

Little Man Tate (1991 Jodie Foster)

Jodie gets best out of Adam Hann-Byrd, casts Diane Weist as wonderfully uptight intellectual, David (Hyde) Pierce as assistant, Debbie Mazur as friend. Scott Frank's screenplay stresses that the kid needs human warmth - so the day he spends knocking about with Harry Conick Jr is supposed to symbolise what he's missing - but Jodie's a fun mum and you would have thought she would have definitely got up to this sort of lark with the kid? Anyway. Josh Mostel is a quantum physics professor.

Mike Southon shot it. Jazz score by Mark Isham is welcome.

It sort of doesn't quite connect.

Hot Fuzz

Supporting Characters (2012 Daniel Schecter & co-scr)

Schecter wrote and directed Life of Crime. This stars Alex Karpovsky (Girls) and Tarik Lowe (who co-wrote) as editors trying to 'fix' a film with such ingenuity as dubbing different dialogue over it. (Actually they aren't seen doing anything remotely good at all.) Arielle Kebble is one of the stars, Sophia Takal and Melonie Diaz are girlfriends and Lena Dunham is in it briefly.

Yes, we enjoyed it...

Son of Lassie (1945 S. Sylvan Simon)

Filmed in Jackson Hole Wyoming and Vancouver Island, Canada standing in for Norway, Pal actually plays Laddie here. Ah the exquisite pain of the dog being dropped out of aircraft, shot at, blown up and cast into the rapids. I expected him to come down the fjord on skis at one point. There's an astonishing moment where he's running along the runway and a bomber takes off right over his head.

Amazing dog, that, trained by Frank and Rudd Weatherwax. In the home of the latter, Pal died in 1958 aged 18. Pal was in all seven of the MGM films, which continued with Courage of Lassie (1946), Hills of Home (1948), The Sun Comes Up (1949), Challenge to Lassie (the 'Greyfriars Bobby' story, 1949) and The Painted Hills (1951).   Even the puppy is well trained, though.

Peter Lawford, June Lockhart, Donald Crisp, Nigel Bruce, William 'Billy' Severn, Robert Lewis.

Lovely skies you get over at MGM

Written by Jeanne Bartlett, photographed by Charles Schoenbaum.

Jonas Qui Aura 25 Ans en L'An 2000 (1976 Alain Tanner & co-scr)

In mood, music and vignetty treatment, and in left wing characters, plays a little like an early Mike Leigh, in Switzerland, with black and white fantasy scenes.  Interesting characters, well played.

Thief and teacher - Miou-Miou and Jacques Denis

Idealist - Rufus aka Jacques Narcy

Mystic and journalist - Myriam Mézières and Jean-Luc Bideau

And Myriam Boyer (pregnant), Roger Jendly (artist), Dominique Labourier, Raymond Bussières (old man).

Promised Land (2012 Gus Van Sant)

Both Matt Damon and John Krasinski have worked with Cameron Crowe. They wrote this. I think they may have been aspiring for something similar. There's also a whiff of Capra (and Local Hero, come to that) of small town selling out to frackers, though the latter part of the story really gets an unbalanced share of the attention, before the Right Ending (Damon is fired and stays on in hope of amorous connection with Rosemarie DeWitt). Frances MacDormand is good, Hal Holbrook the voice of reason. Still, pretty enjoyable, e.g. Gas, Guns, Guitars & Groceries, Danny Elfman music, Linus Sandgren photography nice and dark in places.

I'd watch it again, though. Kraskinski good too, plot has good twist.

Penny Serenade (1941 George Stevens)

Nothing wrong with the acting - Cary Grant was Oscar nominated*, Irene Dunne also good - in Morrie Ryskind's study of marriage and loss. Our GMVS copy was execrable - soft and noisy. A shame as you can't properly appreciate Joe Walker's handling of snow, rain etc. Shouldn't be allowed. However, film is really slackly directed / edited and thus its already too long run time of two hours feels like it's even longer... Needs zip.

Edgar Buchanan is 'Applejack', Beulah Bondi the slightly sinister adoption person.

Get off.

* Happened to see a really long take of Cary Grant pleading for the baby - amazing stuff. (10/24.) Perhaps his own lost childhood is coming into play here.

Table 19 (2017 Jeffrey Blitz)

Blitz write the screenplay from a story by himself and Mark and Jay Duplass.

Left to right: Anna Kendrick, Craig Robinson (This Is the End, Pineapple Express), Stephen Merchant (very funny), Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Lisa Kudrow and June Squibb (Nebraska, About Schmidt).

Contains the memorable bittersweet line 'I'm due about the same time you are'.

Manages to engage and entertain whilst in its one location over an hour and twenty minutes.

Crisis (1950 Richard Brooks & scr)

A timely film, with Venezuela kicking off, depicting a dictator-led South American country where surgeon Cary Grant is kidnapped to save the brain of top bastard José Ferrer. Both are good - Cary in serious mode - another lesson to our neighbour who says he's the same in everything - and Peter's right - he looks totally convincing as doctor / surgeon. Miklos Rozsa gets in some music before some good flamenco takes over.

George Tabori came up with this good story, which opens exactly like Touch of Evil. Ray June shot it. With Paula Raymond, Signe Hasso, Leon Ames, Ramon Novarro. MGM. Very interesting, suspenseful drama.

Man Up (2015 Ben Palmer)

I identified the problem last time - it's way too heavily edited, a long take would have been lovely. I think it interrupts Lake Bell's performance particularly - notably in the shots to the bathroom mirror where you yearn for a few more seconds of each.

Also the Rory Kinnear character is just too weird, and would have worked better if dialled down a peg.

Otherwise, previous good things apply. Does it look more diffused than a normal Andrew Dunn film?

Double Bunk (1961 C.M. Pennington-Richards)

Liz Fraser, now a sprightly 87, asserts she really loved Sid James - you can see it in the scene where they drink too much 'Wodka'. Ian Carmichael and Janette Scott are the newly weds with a houseboat. All four are fine. Dennis Price is the scheming harbour master and there are fleeting appearances from Irene Handl, Miles Malleson, Terry Scott, Reginald Beckwith, Noel Purcell and Naunton Wayne.

Love the bubble car (in fact a Heinkel Kabine).