Concrete Cowboy (2020 Ricky Staub & co-scr)

Written with Dan Walser. Wild child Caleb McLaughlin is sent by despairing mom to dad Idris Elba in Philadelphia - experiences the lives of the urban cowboys who look after and ride horses. Meanwhile the life of drug crime, embodied by Jharrel Jerome, pulls him in another direction. Some of the real cowboys appear as themselves.

It's not quite there, somehow. Maybe the non-professional actors hurt it, or the story is too familiar - a sort of black Lean on Pete.

With Lorraine Toussaint, Method Man. Music: Kevin Matley, camera: Minka Farthing-Cole, edit: Luke Chiarrocchi. Lee Daniels and Idris are among the producers.

Luther - Series 1 (2010 Creator/writer Neil Cross)

In Episode 1 we meet the clever / crazy Luther, Idris Elba, and a clever / crazy woman who's killed her family, Ruth Wilson. These two are great - the whole show, really, despite presence of other characters: Steven Mackintosh (The Jury, The Jacket, Lock Stock), police boss Saskia Reeves, ex Indira Varma, Paul McGann, Warren Brown (new DS).

Brian Kirk directed this and two, in which ex military Sam Spruell is killing coppers at the behest of his father, Sean Pertwee. Both episodes edited with bravura by Vic Boydell.

Paul Rhys is the nutter in three, directed by Sam Miller - nasty episode involving woman in freezer. And in fact it's the gratuitous violence against women in the series - particularly in the final two episodes - which is really off-putting. Dermot Crowley is the investigating detective. Miller has a tendency to frame his characters to the edge of the screen, which can cause some disconcerting edits (Tania Reddin - The Salisbury Poisonings, Cilla, He Kills Coppers).

Friday Night Dinner (2011-2020, Created and written by Robert Popper)

We had been watching all six series over the last couple of months, and so having Paul Ritter so good and so funny in our minds, it was like losing a great friend. (Of course other roles, like his gruff pathologist in Vera, were also cherishable.)

So we look forward to the next time we hear 'bambinos', 'a lovely bit of squirrel', 'shitting shit on it' and 'don't tell your mother' all over again. 

'There's glass in the soup...'

Also bloody brilliant in it is Tamsin Greig. With Simon Bird, Tom Rosenthal, Mark Heap, Tracy Ann Oberman, Rosalind Knight (Paul's mum), Nellie Buller (Tamsin's mum, they both died 2020).

He Kills Coppers (2008 Adrian Shergold)

Paul Ritter unexpectedly died of a brain tumour yesterday, aged 54. Here, he's typically accomplished as a wily and hard-nosed newspaper editor. It's a great loss.

Jake Arnott's novel, adapted by Ed Whitmore, is based on a true cop killer who murdered three policemen in 1966, and follows the murderer for twenty years until he's finally apprehended (in fact he was caught in three months). (Arnott wrote 'The Long Firm' too.) It's disgraceful how the killer gains some popularity amongst idiots, including hire-a-mob types, but the truly disgusting scene in the film is the police attacking and assaulting a group of harmless campaigners. So yes, it's not just a manhunt.

At the centre is Rafe Spall, whose buddy Liam Garrigan is one of the victims, their shared girlfriend Kelly Reilly, the killer himself, Mel Raido and his mum Maureen Lipman, and a journalist who befriends her, Steven Robertson (a wobbly performance). Also appearing are James Dreyfus, Stanley Townsend, Bryan Dick and Kate Dickie, Neil Maskell and Tom Payne (the son).

Photographed by the most talented David Odd in his verité style, but also with great lighting. Edited by Tania Reddin (lots of ITV productions, an early one being Shergold's Dirty Filthy Love), fabulous music by Ben Bartlett (Vera).

The murders which end episode one are artfully cut against Dusty Springfield's 'If You Go Away', to such heartbreaking and potent effect that the credits that run after were silent, with no announcer. But those two endings with Riley and Spall looking into camera do not work for me at all.

Ghost Town (2008 David Koepp & co-scr)

Dentist Ricky Gervais is not a people person, and it turns out not a ghost person either; still ends up trying to help resolve things with dead Greg Kinnear's ex Tea Leoni, and falling for her. Marvellous scenes with Kristin Wiig and Michael Leon-Wooley in hospital. With Dana Ivey. Some of Gervais's lines sound like he's written them. Doesn't quite work here and there, but enjoyable enough overall.

The Mauritanian (2021 Kevin Mcdonald)

Based on Mohamedou Ould Slahi's book, adapted by 'M.B. Traven' aka Michael Bronner* (also a producer), Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, originally called Guantanamo Diary, then during production Prisoner 760, arguably a better title than the one we have now. It's a great screenplay - the unseen man from Marseille, the legal assistant quitting, the great scene where both defendant and prosecutor learn of his torture at the same time (through different means), the friendly jailer.

Tahar Rahim is brilliant in the lead role (back in prison again after A Prophet), and it's a true pleasure to see Jodie Foster back on top form, though Benedict Cumberbatch (himself one of the producers) and Shailene Woodley are also great. 

Editing (Justine Wright) and photography (Alwin Küchler) good too, in widescreen and 4x3 for the flashbacks.

I think grandfather Pressburger would have been proud of his grandson's achievements, of which this is perhaps the highlight. (Won Oscar in 2000 for One Day In September and BAFTA for Touching the Void in 2004.) It also stands as a fierce criticism of US politics generally and Guantanamo Bay specifically. Jodie won the Golden Globe, but surprisingly wasn't nominated by BAFTA, though Rahim, screenplay and film were; but the film was completely ignored by the American Academy, I suppose on political grounds, which is a big joke.

* What's this all about, I wonder? B. Traven was the mysterious writer of Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

California Split (1974 Robert Altman)

George Segal just died. He's good in this as addicted gambler, Elliott Gould good too as his more upbeat partner in crime. I thought Altman's use of multi-layered audio tracks would be confusing - it wasn't. He's zooming in subtly as was his custom in his films of this era.

Also good are escorts Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles.

Joseph Walsh wrote this, his only published screenplay. It's often very funny, and sweet (they are genuinely pleased to see one another), becomes exceedingly tense towards the end. And then that ending - Segal just goes home. (In my head, he's going home to sort things out, pay off his debts.. wasn't there something about an ex wife and former home?) 

Lou Lombardo cut the film (with son Tony assisting), Kay Rose edited the sound. Paul Lohmann shot it.

You think of comedies with Segal - he was also good in No Way to Treat a Lady, The Owl and the Pussycat, Where's Poppa?, A Touch of Class, Too Many Chefs, but my favourite of his films is The Quiller Memorandum which is a great vehicle for his cynical weariness, and that comes over loud and clear here too.

As one of the reviewers noted, it's also an intriguing snapshot into  various bits of America in 1974. I don't know why, but I think that song 'Basketball Jones' was absolutely everywhere.

Fear (1996 James Foley)

Teenager Reese Witherspoon, in uncertain waters with estranged father William Petersen and step-mom Amy Brenneman, falls for Mark Wahlberg, who turns out to be a psycho and drug dealer, leading to a siege of the family home by a gang of morons. (I did not understand at all what her friend saw in Hairy Moron.) After Wahlberg is thrown out of the window and onto rocks below, just before he dies, he says 'Thanks - you've fixed my back problem...' Well, that perhaps isn't in Christopher Crowe's original screenplay, which ends abruptly.

'Fear' is a terrible title. 'Asshole' would be more accurate, but I'm not sure would sell well. 'Boyfriend Material'?

Found severed dog head coming through flap funny.

Was the father an architect, by the way? I'm not sure if that was clear, but he had designed his own house, it turned out. Perhaps some plot exposition had been removed, because some stupid executive thought it was too long, or something.

Sullivan's Travels (1941 Preston Sturges & scr)

Interesting that film director invokes Make Way For Tomorrow at one point - Sturges a fan (Veronica Lake hasn't heard of it). And the black chapel: Sturges is not a show off director, but I love his low shot of the chained feet coming in, parting (like the Red Sea) revealing the pastor in the background. Also I love the scene in which Lake begs McCrea to take her on the road with him and Robert Greig joins in - she has no idea he's married (purely for tax reasons, you understand).

Otherwise, fully reviewed elsewhere. Other reviews need not apply.

Fort Apache (1948 John Ford)

Despite a rather dark and poor version on DVD not best to view Monument Valley, this first in Ford's 'Cavalry trilogy' is another masterpiece, beautifully judged in mood. Note the economy of one of the opening scenes: Shirley Temple immediately bumps into Lieutenant John Agar, is smitten; he is greeted by his family, who are a great bunch of Irish, junior in rank; Henry Fonda is a bitter colonel who crosses swords with Captain John Wayne immediately, thus setting in motion a continuing dissent between them.

Thus we have - broad comedy (Victor McLaglen proving his worth again here - training of new recruits brilliant), sweet romance, loyalty, family, friendship, tension, honour, warped duty, cultural comment - the massacre at the end, totally caused by Fonda's inability to work with the Apache, even to the extent of supporting a trashy corrupt trader, is totally whitewashed as a great victory by the media. As such it's one of Ford's boldest moves, particularly in wiping out several lovable characters, and in its support for the Apache cause.

Fonda's great in (almost) totally unlikable role. With Ward Bond, George O'Brien, Anna Lee (Mrs Wayne), Irene Rich (Mrs. Bond), Dick Foran, Guy Kibbee, Grant Withers (trader), Movita (maid), Miguel Inclan (Cochise). Fonda and Wayne both great.

Written by Frank Nugent, from James Warner Bellah story.

Ford: "It's good for the country to have heroes to look up to." (Even if they aren't.) It's a post-war movie.

On camera: Archie Stout.

National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985 Amy Heckerling)

Because Dana Hill was in this also. We were quite shocked to see the Pig in a Poke host snog her, thinking she was only a kid, but in fact she's old enough to have a boyfriend (William Zabka, bully from Karate Kid) and was in fact in real life twenty one!

This is fairly coarsely scripted (by John Hughes and Robert Klane) and made, with a fun gallery of guest stars (Eric Idle, Maureen Lipman, Robby Coltrane, Mel Smith, Paul Bartel). Everything is fairly predictable, with an enjoyable bike/car chase through various recognisable bits of Rome.

Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Jason Lively.

Best bit is highly sarcastic French waiter. To him 'Coke' is 'American Champagne'.

Shoot the Moon (1982 Alan Parker)

Seriously good, powerful, well-observed study of a couple (Finney & Keaton) splitting up and the effect on four children, always seems completely honest. Scene where enraged Finney bursts in and starts beating the eldest daughter Dana Hill I found really upsetting. And the effect on the younger three (Viveca Davis, Tracey Gold, Tina Yothers) is also beautifully studied.

Brilliant screenplay by Bo Goldman (Oscar winner for Melvin and Howard and Cuckoo's Nest).

Beautifully shot by Michael Seresin. Edited by Gerry Hambling.

With Nancy Allen, Peter Weller. The leads are as good as you'd expect.

Too close to reality for comfort to make it one we'll not be able to watch often.

Parker died last year, 76. The Life of David Gale was his last, in 2003. At one point, the kids are all singing a song from Fame, and there's a poster for Pink Floyd's The Wall on Dana's bedroom wall - he directed both films.

Sweet November (2001 Pat O'Connor)

Director of Cal, A Month in the Country, Stars and Bars, The January Man, Circle of Friends, The Ballroom of Romance.

Written by Herman Raucher, originally, for 1968 version with Sandy Dennis and Anthony Newley - which explains the fact that it still has a sort of sixties vibe to it in the wacky and unpredictable behaviour of the Charlize Theron character and San Francisco locations. (Specifically I was thinking The Owl and the Pussycat.) This version by Paul Yurick and Kurt Voelker.

It's a little difficult to buy into at first, until you know (or suspect) what's going on. Then it's rather sweet.

With Keanu Reeves, Jason Isaacs, Greg Germann, Frank Langella.

Photographed by Ed Lachmann, with a rather odd use of blue filters for the beginning and ending of days. Edited by Anne Coates, who I've suggested before was something of a romantic - more later.

The Karate Kid Part II (1986) and III (1989, John Avildsen)

Did Ralph Macchio have a stunt double? Did Sony buy Columbia? Why didn't the Japanese girls make it into III?

There isn't a pop song in earshot in II, instead an annoying overuse of Japanese flute, as we head to Okinawa, Myagi's old flame (and Miss Tokyo) Nobu McCarthy (Pacific Heights and much on TV) and a former friend who wants to kill him (Danny Kamekona), plus cute love interest for Kid Tamlyn Tomita (also lots of TV).

Then in III Macchio's filled out a bit, and we pick up with disgraced Cobra Kai leader Martin Kove and his nutty psycho millionaire buddy Thomas Ian Griffith, who becomes Kid's trainer, for a while. (There's some weird stuff with millionaire's personal secretary and chauffeur, who mysteriously disappear from the plot.) Kid has a completely platonic relationship (he seems to have less and less sex as the series continues) with Robyn Lively, and the pair go climbing into the Devil's Blender (or whatever it's called) to dig up Mr Miyagi's old bonzai - well we all know he's not going to be happy. Despite playing dirty, Kid naturally rises to the occasion and wins in the ring etc etc.

Sony bought Columbia in 1989. Avildsen takes co-editor credit on all three films. He made the Jack Lemmon film Save the Tiger before getting the Rocky gig, and IMDB claims he's lined up to film the new Karate Kid II, which is interesting, as he hasn't directed a film this millennium. (Harald Zwart did the first one in 2010.) In fact, as I now learn that Avildsen's been dead for four years, that doesn't seem very probable at all. To answer my own question, there was a female Karate Kid, Hilary Swank no less, in the 1994 The Next Karate Kid, also with Pat Morita, which doesn't have great ratings. There's also a three series sequel to the original films, Cobra Kai, reuniting Macchio and School Bully William Zabka.

Il Mia Nome e Nussuno / My Name is Nobody (1973 Tonino Valerii)

A Sergio Leone film in all but name. Terence Hill, or Mario Girotti as he is still known, had just appeared in the biggest Italian box office hit Trinity Is Still My Name and Leone wanted him in something with more depth, came up with this idea, almost as a farewell to the western - he didn't make another, nor another film until Once Upon a Time in America. Thus, the precise timing (1899) and the theme of the great gunfighter (Henry Fonda) wishing to retire before he's killed.

But having said all of that, it's much more jokey and funnier than other Leone pictures, with accompanying Morricone score to suit. Hill is great - for example in long takes in barroom drinking competition. Written by Fulvio Morsella and Ernesto Gastaldi. We think there's a boiling kettle used a couple of times as a sound effect.

Absolutely beautifully photographed by Giuseppe Ruzzolini in Almeria and Armando Nannuzzi at the Indian reservation in New Mexico, and final showdown scenes in New Orleans.

That old guy from the pool room scene sure looks familiar - from another Leone?

Note references - 'Peckinpah', 'Valance'.

Hill's still going strong. He has been playing Don Matteo, a crime-solving priest, in Italy from 2000 - 2020.

There's something quite original about this - you don't see other westerns with urinals, or carnivals featuring men on stilts and halls of mirrors, or indeed a gunfight being photographed, It's rather wonderful, all in all.

The Karate Kid (1984 John G Avildsen)

Scored like a pop video and with its eye keenly on the teen market. Ralph Macchio is likeable as the New York punk who is straightened out by karate (and bonsai) guru Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita - in fact with his bicycle fixing abilities, beautiful house, collection of vintage cars, is there anything this guy can't do?

That reference to the Manzanar camp where his fictitious wife died was in fact where Morita and his family were interned during the war. He was Oscar nominated for this, had previously been a stand up comic, and appeared lots on TV in Happy Days and things.

Elisabeth Shue is the spunky girlfriend, Randee Heller mom, William Zabka the School Bully, Martin Kove the evil karate master.

Didn't know James Crabe on camera. Has the look that it's shot at one end of the day or other. Avildsen is co-editor. Columbia.

The Stranger (1946 Orson Welles)

Welles was kept very much in check on this by Sam Spiegel - he needed to prove he could make a film in a straightforward manner and not get carried away into the 'excesses' of Kane and Ambersons. The result is one of his least distinctive films. The bit he was most pleased with is a South America episode featuring the Welles Nazi character, which was deemed too strange, and twenty minutes was cut. There's a little bit of the flavour of this in the opening, as Konstantin Shayne enters the US in Russell Metty's chiaroscuro lighting - this definitely has the feeling of nightmare. It's dazzling. And whilst things do become a little more conventional in a white picket fence town, it's by no means uninteresting. Welles' camera is constantly tracking from on high, there's a lovely long take in the woods, ending in murder, the dog becomes suspicious... Plus great scenes at the hardware store, where everyone helps themselves to coffee, with Billy House.

It was also the first drama film to show concentration camp footage.

Anthony Veiller is credited with the script, which was also written uncredited by John Huston and Welles, from Victor Trivas story. With Edward G Robinson, Loretta Young, Philip Merivale, Richard Young (Tomorrow is Forever, The Dark Mirror). Music Bronislaw Kaper.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974 Joseph Sargent)

Peter Stone adapted John Godey novel, with suitable cynicism and wit. This is a cracking good thriller, with Matthau at his most serious, in which four disguised men hijack a New York subway for a million dollar ransom. I thought Robert Shaw should have looked more gruesome when he fried. Packed with multi-ethnic local New York flavour. Loved the touch of Matthau and police returning to scene of escape, passing the earlier police car which is being turned back on its wheels. The only thing I missed is how they got around the 'Dead man's switch' or whatever it's called that stops the train running if no one's operating it.

Hijackers: Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman. With lots of faces that looked familiar: James Broderick, Dick O'Neill, Lee Wallace, Jerry Stiller, Kenneth McMillan, Tony Roberts.

Owen Roizman is your NY cameraman (in Panavision). Well edited by Gerry Greenberg (and Robert Lovett), music by David Shire.

Didn't understand the black guy's comment to Shaw near the beginning: " Ain't you ever seen a sunset before?"

Made in Italy (2020 James D'Arcy & scr)

You know - Hitchcock - played Anthony Perkins. Marple. The Trench..

Micheál Richardson and his artist Dad Liam Neeson return to childhood home in Tuscany to do it up and sell it. Turns out his mother's ghost inhabits the place. Well, not literally. There's also a useful local restaurateur Valeria Bilello, and an estate agent, Lindsay Duncan. And a Vespa. And a modern art wall.

I told Q I thought it somehow failed to connect. She told me, somewhat unhelpfully, that she'd rather be in Tuscany than here. And, more helpfully, that Richardson is Neeson's son, and thus story of prematurely deceased mother is of singular relevance. 

(We then saw a Zoom interview with father and son on Graham Norton. Son made a point of saying his name was pronounced 'Mee-haul', then later his father called him 'Michael'??!)

Photographed by Mike Eley, edited by Mark Day and Anthony Boys.

The film they watch in the piazza is not I Vitelloni but another about young men in a small town, I Bisilischi, the debut of Lina Wertmuller (1963), with a Morricone score.

The Switch (2010 Josh Gordon, Will Speck)

Writers Jeffrey Eugenides, Allan Loeb. Did not know one name behind the camera.

In a barely plausible plot development, Jason Bateman substitutes his sperm for that of Patrick Wilson, resulting in he being the unwitting father of Jennifer Aniston's weird kid. Cut to six years later.

It passes the time in a not unpleasant way.