Chicago Calling (1951 John Reinhardt & co-scr)

...with Peter Berneis, an independent production. Not a film noir but a nightmarish drama, with echoes of Powell's Something Always Happens. Dan Duryea needs to get $53 to reconnect his phone as his wife's calling about their daughter's accident. The boy is Gordon Gebert again, who recalls that Duryea was simpatico and obviously a father himself.

It was shot in some then-dodgy part of LA, making much use of staircases (which perhaps contribute to the dream feeling), shot by Robert de Grasse, music by Heinz Roemheld (Ride Lonesome, The Tall T, Lady from Shanghai, The Strawberry Blonde). With Mary Anderson.

It's great when you chance upon a little classic you've never heard of before.

The Girl Before

Terrible rubbish - I thought it would be - about a house that's so minimalist that tenants aren't even allowed to bring a book. It has such an unbelievable premise that nothing else makes sense. And didn't someone making this realise that having two actresses who look very like each other would confuse the audience? No, I'm sorry, but that's four hours I'll never get back. And it had David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Jessica Plummer, who should all have known better.

Daisy Kenyon (1947 Otto Preminger)

An interesting film. Joan Crawford has been seeing married-with-children Dana Andrews, a hot shot solicitor, who is very charming calling all the people he meets, male or female, 'honeybunch' and other terms of endearment, but who also has the most irritating habit of coming into a room and immediately turning off the record player. Anyway, she meets veteran Henry Fonda, who's a bit of a lost soul in some psychological distress, and who I thought was going to turn into a murderer.. but it wasn't that film (though could have been). Good to see this covered in a film so soon after the war.

When Andrews forces himself on her it's vile... but then so it is when his wife (Ruth Warrick) has struck her daughter so hard her ear is bleeding... It ends up a simple love triangle, but Andrews in particular has a way of just not listening to her requests like 'leave me alone', which is maddening.

Doesn't have much in the way of a music score for a film of this period. We're at Fox, so Leon Shamroy on camera. With Martha Stewart (not that one), Peggy Ann Garner, Connie Marshall, Nicholas Joy, Art Baker.

My Man Godfrey (1936 Gregory La Cava)

Producer Charles Rogers bought the rights to the story for Universal, which originally attracted attention as a newspaper serial called '1011 Fifth Avenue' by Eric Hatch, and the word got round that the script, developed by Hatch with Morrie Ryskind, was a hot one. This attracted William Powell, who'd recently come up in a big way with The Thin Man, and it was he who suggested ex-wife Lombard would be great as his opposite number. Thus he was loaned from MGM and her from Paramount.

Use of French between some of the Forgotten Men make me wonder if they are WWI France veterans. For some reason I found it important to note the family's residence is at 1011 Fifth Avenue, as in the serial.

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951 Robert Wise)

Apart from young Mr. Gordon Gebert again, didn't recognise anyone in the cast, despite having seen it, albeit ten years ago. The room with a hole in the floor the only thing either of us remembered...

Good story, Dana Lyon novel adapted by Elick Moll and Frank Partos. Valentina Cortese survives Belsen, takes on role of another woman who has rich relatives and a son in America. Richard Baseheart is the boy's guardian, who courts then marries the lady. Fay Baker plays (rather well) a slightly sinister maid, and echoes of Rebecca start to float around, particularly as the house in question is old, imposing and itself slightly sinister (it was actually the facade of Julius' Castle, a restaurant). Then along comes William Lundigan to help...

Yes, jolly good, lots of location San Francisco helps, photographed by Lucien Ballard, music by Sol Kaplan, for Fox. Good moments where people creep up on other people, a sort of Val Lewton leftover; ending good though Baseheart's death agonies a bit OTT.

Washington Square (1997 Agnieszka Holland)

Another sumptuous looking film from Holland, who begins by prowling through a house and encountering a mother who's died in childbirth. Cut to - the remaining daughter has become extremely dependent on her father (Albert Finney), who's a bit temperamental. She grows up to be gawky, nervy Jennifer Jason Leigh, heiress to some fortune, who is courted by unemployed adventurer Ben Chaplin to the father's displeasure. 'Get a job', we keep shouting at the screen, but he's a shiftless, charming shit.

When Leigh announces her intention to marry him without the fortune, father takes her away to Europe, where she grows some balls. Meanwhile aunt Maggie Smith, of Variable Accent US Inc. (why not cast Americans?), sticks her oar in to help the couple. It's a stingy tale. The servants seem quite earwiggy, openly so.

Carol Doyle adapted Henry James' 1880 novel. With Judith Ivey, Jennifer Garner. DP Jerzy Zielinski. 

Warning sign #1: he didn't run away from this.

Obscure fact: Henry James was born in Washington Square but when he revisited in the early 1900s he was dismayed already by how built up it had become, and that his family home had been torn down.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005 Shane Black & scr)

Enormously entertaining film just keeps doing things unexpectedly, like Black deliberately set out to write a film that behaves unlike any other. I've mentioned before the scene under the bed with the dying girl, and the hanging from a corpse, but these are just two examples. For example, the dog that eats his finger, he then pats it. And the Russian roulette scene which is just so funny. And the spider / bra scene - I mean have you ever seen that before?

Loved the asides, such as right at the end:
'And if you're wondering who the Best Boy is, he's someone's nephew. Sorry to all the folks out there in the Mid West for swearing so much..'

It also keeps getting better. Really nicely lit (Michael Barrett). Lots of red in the decor throughout.

It's Christmas!

Michelle Monaghan

Loved that the film's original title was to be 'You'll Never Die in This Town Again'!

Party Animals (2007 Created by Ben Richards and Rob Jones)

Richards wrote Showtrial. This is an eight-parter for BBC.

Great beginning as we're introduced to all protagonists in dramatic opening of political drama. They are Labour MP Raquel Cassidy, researcher Matt Smith and assistant Andrea Riseborough; Tory MP Patrick Baladi, his assistant (and mistress) Shelley Conn and No. 2 Pip Carter; and Smith's brother, lobbyist Andrew Buchan and fellow Niall Macgregor. Turns out Smith has left his boss's speech in a pub toilet and his opposite number seizes it. Works its way well to a fractious conclusion that is somewhat open-ended.

Apart from bit parts, this would have been the first thing we saw Riseborough in. We had already encountered Smith the previous year in The Ruby In the Smoke. They and Cassidy are particularly good.

With slutty journalist Clemency Burton-Hill, lobbyist boss Colin Salmon, Whip (or some sort of political figure) Peter Wight, Kika Markham, Marian McLoughlin, Emily Beecham.

Holiday Affair (1949 Don Hartman)

I like this film. It's not sentimental and is quirky. No reason at all why Janet Leigh and her son Gordon Gebert couldn't go to California. Gebert is still with us, interviewed here, talking about Chicago Calling, which looks interesting... But back to Holiday Affair, it works because it's not at all mushy. Leigh / Mitchum / Corey works (they had good repartee on set). Gebert manages to hold long takes well, praises the director. Scene between Mitchum and the boy was largely improvised.

With Harry Morgan as a sarcastic cop, Henry O'Neill (store owner).

Music Roy Webb, DP Milton Krasner. RKO.

It's odd reading in 'The RKO Story' that the film's reviewed (in 1982) as being 'garnished with treacly sentiment.. [a] holiday turkey' - neither true. It lost $300,000 at the box office.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942 William Keighley)

Music by Frederick Hollander.

I have to say though in my defence that both Casablanca and My Man Godfrey are perfectly acceptable Christmas films.

I love Bette in this. Monty Wooley had played the character on Broadway. He's based on theatre critic Alexander Woolcott. Mary Wickes was the only other actor to have been in both.

It's a great example of how to film a play interestingly. Tony Gaudio's on camera.

The Many Saints of Newark (2021 Alan Taylor)

Written by David Chase and Lawrence Konner (a seasoned TV writer), I'm not sure this is so much how Tony Soprano was made as about his uncle Dickie Moltisanti, played by Alessandro Nivola (You Were Never Really Here, American Hustle, Black Narcissus). In fact the last thing Tony does is he seems to reject crime by throwing the stolen speakers out of his window. I found the film a little confusing but very enjoyable and would like to see it again already. The hindsight moments are good and the contemporary story (Newark riots 1967) adds an interesting element. The beginning - graves relating their past - is great.

I thought I recognised the person playing Livia but it's only Vera Farmiga, who does a brilliant job of portraying Tony's vile mother. With Leslie Odom Jr., Corey Stoll, Jon Bernthal, Ray Liotta, Michela Di Rossi, Michael Gandolfini, John Magaro.

Cinematography by Kramer Morgenthau in a muted palette, edited by Christopher Tellefsan (I remember saying to myself at one point - Odom pursuing Nivola with shotgun - "Now you notice the editing". It's always the way).

Had no idea Apollonia was the 'patron saint of dentists'. Good to hear The Last Poets recreation.

I was quite pleased with myself for identifying Key Largo just from the soundtrack.

Home Alone (1990 Chris Columbus)

Written by John Hughes, the chief virtue of this film is John Williams' amazing score, brilliantly orchestrated by John Neufeld and Herbert Spencer.

John Heard, Daniel Stern, Joe Pesci, Catherine O'Hara, Macauley Culkin, Roberts Blossom, Joe Pesci.

DP Julio Macat, editor Raja Gosnell.

That slightly chilling Christmas song we hear in the church is 'Carol of the Bells' by Leontovich, and the carol is 'O Holy Night' from 1847.

The ending is like a Covid-19 test.

13 Going on 30 (2004 Gary Winick)

Written by married couple Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa (What Women Want) in the Big vein. Jennifer Garner realises that in achieving all her goals in becoming a famous magazine publisher, she's become a bitch and lost contact with the best person in her life, now grown up to be Mark Ruffalo (who lives in the Village, so that's cool). Actually there's lots of good NYC footage here.

Anyway, Judy Greer, Andy Serkis, Marcia DeBonis and Kathy Baker contribute something, but it's kind of instantly forgettable, and doesn't make enough use of its premise. Adding the marriage scene in at the end after the back-to-age-13 is a no no. Thriller dance routine only works because it worked in the first place, if you see what I mean.

Bank Street, Greenwich Village

Big Night (1996 Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci & co-scr)

Stanley Tucci is a real foodie - we'd just seen him on Graham promoting his new book 'Taste'. And this film is about food, and two brothers, 'Primo' (a great performance by Tony Shaloub) and 'Secondo' (Tucci), who cannot make a go of their 1950s New Jersey Italian restaurant, even though the one across the street, run by Ian Holm, is a roaring success. The fault is Primo's perfectionism. The 'Big Night' in question is a fabulous meal in celebration of singer Louis Prima (who appears frequently in the soundtrack). It's a bitter-sweet concoction. Joseph Tropiano is the other writer.

A great cast includes Minnie Driver, Isabella Rossellini, Allison Janney, Liev Schreiber and Campbell Scott himself as a Cadillac salesman.

Made with some lovely touches as well as some brilliant long takes, such as the final one where Tucci makes an omelette - the camera doesn't move - though as I remember it, he doesn't season it.

The meal includes a soup, three risottos, a Timpano ( kind of big pasta pie - the only thing about this film I remembered), fish and poultry, a suckling pig, plenty of colourful vegetables and an undescribed dolci.

Good music from Gary DeMichele.

That's Rosemary Clooney singing the 'Mambo Italiano'.

Peyton Place (1957 Mark Robson)

Yes.. I do like a widescreen colour American fifties film... but this one is too long, and it's symptomatic of the way they were then, they thought not only the novelty of CinemaScope and colour would bring audiences away from television, but they had to make them super-long as well. Here, the courtroom scene just starts to sink the entire film.

Lana Turner is Diane Varsi's no-fun mom, though she begins to be intrigued by new principal Lee Philips, who became a hard-working TV director. Hope Lange is the unfortunate step-daughter of Arthur Kennedy, Betty Field (from Kings Row) is her mom. Lloyd Nolan of course is the nice doctor and Russ Tamblyn the bookish love interest (not of the doctor - that would be another film altogether, and not one from 1957 either). Then the sub-story of Barry Coe and Terry Moore (how does she describe herself - 'flashy') and disapproving father Leon Ames.

John Michael Hayes adapted Grace Metalious's novel. 

William Mellor photographed it, in Maine and on Fox sets, Franz Waxman wrote the great music which Edward Powell orchestrated. Film, Robson, cast, cinematography, script, all Oscar nominated... not the score??

Labor Day, September 5, is a national holiday designed to honour the Labor movement, beginning in the late nineteenth century. Which is all well and good - the problem I have is the fried frankfurters.

Artful lighting. Even when Turner crosses to the other side of the room, she's still the one lit, Philips remains in shadow

Uncle Buck (1989 John Hughes & scr)

It's a Mercury Marquis 1975-8 V8. Sounds a bit like the car in Once Upon a Time.. In Hollywood. It was filmed in Chicago.

Interesting editing credits: Lou Lombardo, son Tony Lombardo and Peck Prior, with Gina Lombardo first assistant.

It's a Film for All Seasons.

Miles: "U.B's home."
Buck: "You guys seen Tea?"
Miles: "She took a breeze, U.B."

And the teacher who has the temerity to describe Maizy as "a twiddler, a dreamer, a silly heart, a jabber-box"...

Oh, and that Candy's make up is by Ben Nye Jr., whose dad was Fox's resident makeup artist and who worked on literally thousands of films. (Not really. A lot, though.)

Billions - Series 1 (2016)

Created by Brian Koppelman, David Lavien & Andrew Ross Sorkin (no relation).

Damien Lewis is a billionaire, so he must have done something wrong (he meets his solicitor in an underground car park, so that looks dodgy to begin with). Certainly the DA Paul Giamatti thinks so, and begins to attempt to build a case (he, by the way, is a masochistic kink.) Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that his wife, played by Maggie Siff (Mad Men), works for the billionaire.

But is this essentially to be cat and mouse over four seasons? In which case, are we to bother? Or might the characters begin to change, Lewis becoming a better person, Giamatti resorting to unorthodoxy to pursue his prey? 

With Malin Ackerman as Mrs Billionaire (with working class roots), Toby Leonard Moore (DA's No.2), David Costabile (Billionaire's No. 2), Condola Rashad (up-and-coming in DA Dept.)

Axe has never seen Citizen Kane, ironically, and when he does set it up in the screening room, he then keeps interrupting the beginning.

It portrays a horrible environment of jerks who are perpetually slapping each other's bodies. But really comes into its own in the final episode with Axe and 'Dollar' Bill Kelly AuCoin's pretend argument in his office, and the revelation of a double twist featuring supposed plant David Cromer. (It takes $40 million to educate and house two children, apparently. Well it does in this rarefied world.)

Miracle on 34th Street (1994 Les Mayfield)

"Hey I just got some mistletoe. Do you want to go back to my place and try it out?" I don't think original co-writer George Seaton would have been pleased to have been roped in on the screenplay credit with Chris Columbus at all. This is rummy slush, with an unsympathetic Elizabeth Perkins, bland Dylan McDermott and yucky Mara Wilson, leaving Dickie Attenborough to carry the film. Oh, it's 'A Les Mayfield film' by the way, so we know who to blame, produced by John Hughes.

With Robert Prosky (judge), J.T. Walsh, Jane Leeves and (briefly) Allison Janney.

Best bit: Santa signing to deaf kid.

A Woman's Secret (1949 Nicholas Ray)

Atypical Nicholas Ray film, not of the ilk of They Drive By Night, In a Lonely Place or On Dangerous Ground; but perhaps more recognisable as one from the pen of Citizen Kane's Herman Mankiewicz, with its flashbacky structure helping to solve the film's riddle - who shot Gloria Grahame when Maureen O'Hara is the only other person in the room, and she has confessed? I still don't really understand why she confesses, but it sounds like she would have changed her story soon anyway. O'Hara isn't as good here as she is in a John Ford film, Grahame is sweet, Douglas on usual form.

What makes it more interesting is Melvyn Douglas's involvement with detective Jay C. Flippen and his amateur sleuth wife Mary Philips, which brings a quirky element in to it.

With Bill Williams, Victor Jory, Robert Warwick, Ann Shoemaker, Virginia Farmer (maid), Ellen Corby.

Photographed by George Diskant and one of those rare RKO films that wasn't scored by J Roy Hunt (it was Friedrich Hollaender). Based on Vicki Baum novel 'Mortgage on Life' (also 'Grand Hotel').

You Don't Know Me (2021 Sarmad Masud)

We thought this was rather good. At his trial for murder, Samuel Adewunmi (Angela Black, The Last Tree) takes over his own defence to deliver his version of events in a two day summing up (whether this is possible or allowable I don't know). He recounts how he courts Sophie Wilde until she suddenly goes missing. He enlists the help of local drug gang leader Roger Jean Nsengiyumva (who looked familiar but wasn't) to track her down. Add in a sister Bukky Bakray (from Rocks), mother Yetunde Oduwole and childhood friend Tuwaine Barrett. (Timing of friend coming in to the story is great. Adds some humour too, which is needed.)

Whilst it is partly in the 'Cut to - Nasty part of London' oeuvre, it does have some sympathetic characters and isn't annoying.

Tom Edge adapted Imran Mahmood's novel (the latter is a barrister; this was his first novel in 2017, based on the stories he's heard from defendants). Edge wrote Strike and Vigil, and the feature Judy.

Liked the stuff about all her books, and how the two school friends met. Good plot twist and edge-of-seat ending.

It was a four-parter for BBC.