Some People (1962 Clive Donner)

Ahead of his swinging London films comes Donner's singing Bristol film - and a refreshing change that makes, though the plot of teenagers making music and having bust ups is nothing we haven't seen before or since (writer John Eldridge). The Knack's Ray Brooks, volatile David Andrews and a young David Hemmings are the original group with Angela Douglas (Carry On and The Comedy Man) as a sort of groupie. Then we meet kindly choirmaster Kenneth More and his daughter, played very naturally by Anneke Wills, who was in the 1957 Railway Children series and then had a long run in Dr. Who in the sixties. With Timothy Nightingale (the nerdy one) and Frankie Dymon (drummer) who made a short film about Swinging London Death May Be Your Santa Claus in 1969.

Angela and Kenneth got together during this film and were married until his death in 1982. Valerie Mountain is her singing voice.

Edited by Fergus McDonell.

Being commissioned by the Duke of Edinburgh Award gives the film a charming oddness.

Frank & Lola (2016 Matthew Ross & scr)

What's Imogen Poots up to with volatile chef Michael Shannon? This I can tell you - blink, and you'll miss the ending.

Who's Matthew Ross? I dunno. This is his first feature.

Um. Well, it's quite intriguing. Imogen is as good as always, Shannon does glowering intensity well. With Justin Long, Rosanna Arquette, Michael Nyqvist, Patrick Rocca.

Photographed by Eric Koretz.

I didn't really know what I thought of it.

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975 Gene Wilder & scr)

Fresh off the back of the Mel Brooks movies, Wilder writes something similar and reassembles a key cast of himself, Madeline Khan and Marty Feldman - who alone are reason to watch this. (Wilder has the slowest reactions to things; Khan is great when acting and singing; Feldman is so tender.)

Some of it's rather silly, and patchy, but the laugh out loud moments (e.g. fight on top of coaches, the kangaroo song) are there.

With an English supporting cast of Leo McKern, Roy Kinnear , John Le Mesurier, Douglas Wilmer, Thorley Walters... and Dom de Luise.

Shot by Gerry Turpin and edited by Jim Clark.

Funny cameo by Albert Finney!

Marathon Man (1976 John Schlesinger)

I always remember the scene where Hoffman begs the Puerto Ricans over the road to burgle his apartment, I'd just forgotten how great everything else is in this film. You can see Goldman writing it:

The wheels of pram
Close up
A doll's head in the pram.
Sound of TICKING.

And just the audacious plot. How does it begin?

A man running around Central Park
Cut to - black and white flashback of marathon runner
Cut to - a man in a bank vault. Man takes tin out of security box.
Man drives - his car conks out. It's a Mercedes.
Another man. A Jewish man.
The fight, the explosion.

Then - we're in Paris. Roy Scheider. How does he fit in?

All with excellent support from Jim Clark (editing) and Conrad Hall (camera - he and Goldman worked a few times together).

You'd think Goldman would have won awards wouldn't you? No, Larry did. I'm really not sure Larry was ever any good, even though my mum wouldn't like to hear that. I was not impressed by Goldman's story that Method Hoffman wanted to improvise for an hour with he and Larry on their feet, though Larry was really suffering and in great pain. (You can see it in the rather ungainly way in which he climbs into a taxi.)

With Marthe Keller, William Devane.

Thank god he gets some clothes - must have been freezing. Made me think of 'Stars and Bars'.

Scorching story by a Jew about concentration camp monster and diamonds, recognised in Jewish quarter of city, terrific.

Music by Michael Small.

The Notorious Landlady (1962 Richard Quine)

Written by Larry Gelbart and Blake Edwards, from a story by Margery Sharp.

Film is great fun as Lemmon immediately falls for the Kim Novak of the title, aided and abetted by Fred Astaire and Lionel Jeffries. Hollywood London is full of fog and 'Slaughterhouse Lane's, topped by wacky, silent scenes to Gilbert & Sullivan.

Our second Novak / Quine / Duning collaboration of the day.

Strangers When We Meet (1960 Richard Quine)

A good triple bill began with -

Kim Novak is particularly good at conveying emotionally vulnerable characters, never more so than in this, for which she won seventeen Oscars. (Well, in my head. She breaks my heart.) George Duning's music helps.

Our copy is 2.20:1 - unusual for CinemaScope?

David Bowie released a song of the same name.

Written by Evan Hunter, (Last Summer, The Birds) from his own 1958 novel.

I think after Vertigo someone (Charles Lang) realised Kim has a great profile.

Luckily, people on Amazon are better reviewers than I am:

This is a film I watched in the cinema in the early 60's.

I have tried to purchase it for several years and now have managed to get it.

The delivery was very fast and now I intend to enjoy the film.

Thank You.

With Kirk and Kim are Barbara Rush (Kirk's wife), Ernie Kovacs, Walter Matthau, John Bryant her husband, Nancy Kovack, Virginia Bruce, Kent Smith.

Man Up (2015 Ben Palmer)

Have documented problems with this film elsewhere, but like the last one, a big factor in its success is - Simon Pegg.

Midnight in Paris (2011 Woody Allen & scr)

Can't quite put my finger on why I love this one so much. Though yesterday this big thought did occur - Owen Wilson.

Who says Woody doesn't write happy endings?

Hadn't remembered the genesis is Woody's 1971 short 'A Twenties Story' published in 'Getting Even'.

Didn't get 'That was Juna Brown? No wonder she was keen to lead.' Have to download screenplay...

3:42. That's how long that fabulous day in the life of a city opening montage is.

The Crown - Season 2 (2017)

Why is Victoria better than The Crown? we began musing - well better than Season 2 anyway...
it's partly that Victoria's character is much more fun (thus in Jenna vs Claire, Jenna will win). And The Crown is actually too recent - I mean they're both fucking alive for God's sake!

And - it's just a little bit dull, isn't it?

Creator / writer is Peter Morgan.

Full of recognisable people we can't put a name to.

Big budget? Lots of green screen, I'll bet.

Picks up a bit with Margaret (Vanessa Kirby) story about photographer Matthew Goode (she's a much more interesting character than Elizabeth) and episode involving royal critic John Heffernan, who's rather good.

Shocking story of Edward's involvement with Hitler doesn't conclude properly, Charles at Gordonstoun vs. Philip there, Queen doesn't tell Margaret about her husband-to-be's infidelities...

Claire Foy has some great expressions, plays the Q well. Matt also good in less likeable role. With Victoria Hamilton, Alex Jennings, Anton Lesser, Jeremy Northam, Pip Torrens, Greg Wise. Sylvestra Le Touzel..

Shot by Adriano Goldman and others, directed by Philip Martin, Benjamin Caron, Stephen Daldry. Suffers from scenes which are supposed to be big in drama or emotion with tons of music over them.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018 Joel & Ethan Coen)

Bruno Delbonnel joins the group with his wonderful low light offerings. Otherwise it's the usual Burwell, Jaynes, Zophres partnership, with production design by Jess Gonchor (Hail Caesar, Inside Llewyn Davis, True Grit, No Country for Old Men).

Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother Where Art Thou?) is the cheerful singing gunman of the title, which features some of the funniest moments.

James Franco attempts to hold up a bank 'Near Algodones', experiences savage Indian attack and is lynched twice. Stephen Root is the teller.

In perhaps the most dispensable (yet oddly haunting) story 'Meal Ticket' (like one of those 50s horror comics) Liam Neeson trades limbless actor Harry Melling (Harry Potter's Dudley Dursley) for a chicken.

Tom Waits is the prospector in 'All Gold Canyon', Sam Dillon the assailant. 'The Gal Who Got Rattled' features Bill Heck, Zoe Kazan and Grainger Hines and the ghostly finale 'The Mortal Remains' has Brendan Gleason, Jonjo O'Neill (wonderful), Saul Rubinek, Tyne Daly and Chelcie Ross. Love the gradual darkening in the carriage.

It was the first Coen Brothers film shot digitally, partly because being a Netflix non-theatrical release it would have been too expensive to do it the normal way. And Delbonnel had the experience with Darkest Hour.

Did notice references to John Ford, Leone and Shane. Writing is model of making left turns. Wild West depicted as seriously savage place. Also tear-inducingly funny.

Small Time Crooks (2000 Woody Allen & scr)

It's very funny, has line after laugh out loud line, like 'What are you waiting for - the drilling season?'

And as mentioned before, a truly sparkling plot.

"You mean you were reading this map upside down all along?"

And, it's got one of his happy endings....

I disagree with my carp about Zhao Fei's lighting of the river scene - he is providing just enough foreground light in this and the rooftop scene so that we can actually still see the actors against the sunsets.

Misery (1990 Rob Reiner)

William Goldman died November 16 - this was Q's choice of memorial.

I remember not being too impressed by this the first time we saw it, but if taken as a black comedy it's good fun. The writer has some great touches - ' tombstone' cutting to the crashed car, her hitting her head on the typewriter, then the bludgeoning with pig. He jumps into the story fast and drops in little touches, like when Kathy Bates (won Oscar) mentions something about being on the witness stand.

I still wouldn't have bumped off Richard Farnsworth, though.

Also funny about writing / audiences.

George Roy Hill was originally asked to direct it but he felt he couldn't because in Goldman's original draft he had left in the original hobbling scene - she cut his feet off. I know. And he was absolutely convinced he was right. But Reiner and producer Andy Scheinman changed it to what we see now. And Goldman was furious....

And you know what?  I was wrong. The audience would have hated Annie, and, in time, hated us... 

For the record, Butch Cassidy is my favourite Goldman film, followed by The Princess Bride. Both of those were a little familiar, so I was pushing for Marathon Man - with Scheider and Conrad Hall, what's not to like? But I also love the opening of The Great Waldo Pepper...

Funnily enough I tried emailing Goldman recently. I wonder if he ever read it?

'Is it safe?'

Cross of Iron (1977 Sam Peckinpah)

Yes, a very tight anti-war film, reminiscent of the Sven Hassel novels, though in fact based on Willi Heinrich's novel 'Das Geduldige Fleisch' ('The Willing Flesh') published in 1955 and based on his own experiences on the Eastern Front.

James Coburn (one of my favourites) is perfect in the lead, with good support from officer material in the shape of James Mason, David Warner and Maximilian Schell. But all the cast is good: Dieter Schidor, Klaus Löwitsch, Vadim Glowna, Roger Fritz, Burkhard Driest and Senta Berger as a sympathetic nurse.

Yes, the montage that comes out of battle into hospital - Steiner's concussion - is seriously brilliantly done, and the ensuing hospital scenes. Indeed the editing, by Tony Lawson and Michael Ellis, is outstanding throughout, and the great underpraised cinematographer John Coquillon shoots in a suitably melancholic hue. (He died too young - 56.)

Has a most memorable ending also (which, incidentally, seems to have come about because the production ran out of money). Orson Welles reportedly loved it.

Once More / The Magic of Belle Isle (2014 Rob Reiner)

Alcoholic former writer Morgan Freeman befriends lazy dog, woman and three daughters next door. I'm glad he moved in, because I'm not sure the kids would have had a very good time over the winter, when everything closed. Also the eldest daughter should have been allowed to see her dad, surely. But where are my manners? Virginia Madsen is the neighbour, and the girls are Emma Furhmann, Madeline Carroll and Flora O'Neil; with Kenan Thompson (the nephew), Fred Willard (neighbour), Ash Christian (Carl) and Kevin Pollak (agent).

Well, entertainingly written by Guy Thomas (and, apparently, with uncredited help from Reiner and Andrew Scheinman) but with too much sprinkling of Hollywood sugar (particularly in the music department). 'Mrs. O'Neil.' 'Mr. Wildhorn.'

In Her Shoes (2005 Curtis Hanson)

Written by the reliable Susannah Grant from Jennifer Weiner's novel.

Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, Shirley Maclaine, Richard Burgi, Mark Feurstein, Candice Azzarra and Ken Howard (parents), Brooke Smith (friend), Francine Beers, Norman Lloyd.

Good acting, good direction allows actors to breathe (e.g. scene between Diaz and Maclaine where she decides to go into business).

Very satisfying story, knock-out final poem by e.e.Cummings.

Shot by Terry Stacey.

It's No. 53 in the Cahiers du Cinéma Top 100 - ahead of Les Quatres Cents Coups, if you can believe that!*

* I absolutely do not believe that and was right to double-check the list. No. 53 is Some Came Running - In Her Shoes is not in the list at all. Truffaut's film is 58.

The Spanish Gardener (1956 Phillip Leacock)

Whilst experiencing the film in an uncomfortable 4x3 crop of whatever VistaVision shape it's supposed to be in, this is an interesting on-location relationship drama involving brink-of-madness Michael Hordern, his son Jon Whiteley and gardener Dirk Bogarde. With Cyril Cusack, Maureen Swanson, Geoffrey Keen (the doctor), Bernard Lee, Lyndon Brook, Josephine Griffin.

Takes the assertive stance to voice all the Spanish characters in English accents. From A.J. Cronin's 1950 novel, adapted by John Bryan and Lesley Storm.

Shot by Christopher Challis in Technicolor, edited by Reginald Mills, music by John Veale. Filmed in Sagaró near Girona on the Costa Brava.

Mister Johnson (1990 Bruce Beresford)

Male Joyce Cary spent time in Africa and wrote 'Mister Johnson' in 1939, and the character was based partly on the letters of a local fantasist he read as part of his censorship duties and on a terrible clerk he worked with.

William Boyd's adaptation - he has a good way of dropping you straight into the story - places the action in West Africa 1923, where the titular clerk, played by  Maynard Eziashi, works for local official Pierce Brosnan. He is reckless, spendthrift, entrepreneurial, positive, polite and impeccably dressed and apes the European style - it is the destiny of every man - he says - to be civilised. This is the key - without it all, Johnson wouldn't have these materialist dreams. On the other hand he is a flawed human being (Brosnan: "You'd steal the smell off a goat".) And stealing from the local store owner (Edward Woodward) leads Johnson to kill the man - in self-defence, we assume, but nevertheless he must face his fate.

While all this is going on he tries to behave as a husband, though his wife Belle Enahoro is constantly being returned to her village when he cannot pay the bridal duties, and dealing with the shady local liar Waziri (Femi Fatoba).

Also with Dennis Quilley, Beatie Edney, Nick Reding.

Good (Nigerian) flavour and music (one frenetic song with the road-building sounds strangely close to a 1980s fruit machine), earthbound music by Georges Delerue, photographed by Peter James and edited by Humphrey Dixon (Room With a View). Seems to exist only in crappy from-VHS 4x3 cropped version.

Bad Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2014 Nicholas Stoller)

From the sublime to the ridiculous... It's not as bad as some, though the tone is set in scene one with just pregnant Rose Byrne throwing up into the face of Seth Rogan.

Chloe Grace Moretz leads a new sorority next door - largely fuelled by an appetite for weed and partying - funny how weed has become so pervasive in everything. This threatens the couple's plans to sell, and must try and get them out, with the help of former next door enemy Zac Ephron.

You know, one of those babies with dildoes kind of films... (I like the fact that OED states the origin of this word is 'unknown'.)

Spaced (1999 Edgar Wright)

Written by its stars Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg, all of Edgar's later films are present in budding nascency here - Sean of the Dead (Playstation episode), Hot Fuzz (paintball), Scott Pilgrim vs the World (argument to computer game) and even Baby Driver ('Tyres' episode).

This is also where Wright and editor Chris Dickens learned to collaborate so brilliantly.

With Julia Deakins, Nick Frost, Mark Heap, Caty Carmichael, Bill Bailey, James Lance, Peter Serafinowicz, Michael Smiley. Even David Walliams is in it. And John Simm. And Lee Engleby. And Joanna Scanlan. And...

It's very inventive and stylish and brilliantly written, bursting with film references, clever and very funny, not like anything you find around now...

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943 Powell & Pressburger)

That Time Out review that celebrates the film for its 'generosity of spirit' is exactly the right thing to say about this pinnacle of British cinema, this gold standard of screenplays. Not just about war either - but a celebration of love and friendship. (Interestingly, Derek Malcolm also uses exactly the same phrase in his review in 'A Century of Films' published 2000.)

I have waffled on about it many times. In the key scene - that slow track in on ageing Anton Walbrook / Pressburger, as he explains why he needs to be back in England - notice how the officer behind him, though out of focus, stops what he's doing to listen. It's one superb take, lasting 2 minutes 35 seconds, and the camera starts pulling back out as it ends.

And everything else in the film is as good as that.

It's a bit of an epic, and by far their most serious work, pulled off in the height of the war (Churchill tried to ban it), which just makes it all the more extraordinary.

Deborah Kerr turned twenty one during the filming. (Wendy Hiller, the original choice, became pregnant.) Roger Livesey's wife Ursula Jeans is Walbrook's date at the first bridge game. James McKechnie is 'Spud'.

The pub is still there - The Bull in Gerrard's Cross.

Difficulty level: high

It existed for years in severely truncated forms and was only restored in 1983. It came in at 45 on the BFI's 1999 100 Greatest British films - should have been #1. (AMOLAD is at 20, The Red Shoes no. 9.)

The Time Out 2018 poll (which included Mike Leigh, Sam Mendes & Wes Anderson) placed Red Shoes at 5, AMOLAD at 6, Blimp at 14, Black Narcissus at 16, Canterbury Tale at 17, IKWIG at 26... Much more like it!

"This is dead cow crossroads." Sure I also heard a reference to "corned horse"!

Talking of which, I liked the note in Kevin Macdonald's book: like Clive and Theo, 'Emeric and Michael frequently addressed each other as 'old horse' (or variations: 'antique stallion, 'viejo caballo' etc) or as 'Holmes and Watson' (Emeric was Holmes; Michael, Watson).'

I guess it must be a double for Livesey when he falls into the pool, and emerges, without edit, as young Blimp. Must have been. Otherwise..?