Foyle's War: Killing Time (2010 David Richards)

1945. Black GIs Obi Abili and Gary Carr (both good and both in 21 Bridges, funnily enough) getting hassle from locals and their own army, commanding officer Adam James (who we just saw, also in American accent, in Hotel Portofino) and brutish sergeant John Sharian. Honeysuckle Weeks, who's now running a boarding house, gets involved with one of the GI's girlfriends, Charlotte Riley; Zoe Tapper is another tenant. We both think Honeysuckle is so natural.

It made me wonder why we didn't have the whole 28-film series, which ran from 2002 to 2015. Especially the early ones, which were great.

Written by David Kane from Anthony Horowitz's characters.

Uninvited, The (1943 Lewis Allen)

Produced by Charles Brackett and written by his friends Frank Partos and Dodie Smith (based on Dorothy Macardle novel), with strong echoes of Rebecca. Brother and sister Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey buy a haunted house in Cornwall-on-Hollywood from Donald Crisp. His grand-daughter Gail Russell has unresolved issues with what happened there. A scary doctor, scarily played by Cornelia Otis Skinner, is involved, and also a nice doctor, Batman's Alan Napier. Dorothy Stickney is the housekeeper.

Good moments, interesting film. Photographed by Charles Lang, music by Victor Young, edited by Doane Harrison, for Paramount.

"I smell... sausages."

No. 3 in Martin Scorsese's Scariest Films!

Still Life (2013 Uberto Pasolini & scr)

Following Nowhere Special, we had to catch up on the writer/director's earlier film, which is a gem, and which needed a really strong, brilliant actor to carry most of the film - he finds one in the incredible, indefinable Eddie Marsan. I don't know if it's just me, but I kept wondering if there are tiny freeze frames on him, or whether he intentionally just freezes every now and then, suggesting a static, stuck feeling. He has a funny way of standing at pedestrian crossings. Certainly this man lives life alone, searching for families of unloved, unclaimed people, giving them funerals, until one leads him (eventually) to Joanne Froggatt. The ironies of the ending are powerful indeed. And then we have the ending... I was actually sobbing...

"Please don't say any more, Mr. May. You've already said so much."

So glad we found it. Rachel Portman's music adds a certain something. DP Stefano Falivene.

With Karen Drury, Andrew Buchan, Neil D'Souza, David Shaw Parker, Michael Elkin.

Films That Might be Worth Watching (according to The Week)

The World to Come. Challenging life in 1850s America. Casey Affleck, Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterstone.

Our Ladies. Catholic girls misbehave on way to singing competition.

Herself. Abused wife seeks to rebuild life.

No Sudden Move. Steven Soderbergh. Criminal caper goes wrong

The French Dispatch.

Last Night in Soho (2021 Edgar Wright & co-scr)

After this film was over, I didn't know what to make of it. I felt like the film had run over me.

It's a time-jumping cross between Groundhog Day and Midnight in Paris mixed with a drama /horror. Actually, it's the 'horror' element that I had trouble with - the scenes of young Thomason McKenzie being chased through London by faceless corpses. It has the hallmark of the excess of The End of the World.

McKenzie's from Leave No Trace and Jojo Rabbit. With a cocky Anya Taylor-Joy and a nasty Matt Smith, plus a trio of veterans in Rita Tushingham, Diana Rigg (her last film) and Terence Stamp. And Michael Ajeo, Synnove Karlsen, Elizabeth Berrington (someone should make a documentary about this most capable and hard-working lass).

The scenes where Thomasin just starts to experience the (nasty) 1960s as Anya, the trickery of the mirrors, is great, and overall it is of course very classily filmed and edited by Chung-hoon Chung (Oldboy, Me And Earl and the Dying Girl) and Paul Machliss, and the sound design is very good - Colin Nicolson production sound mixer, Julian Slater & Dan Morgan sound editors.

The nasty classmates and nice boyfriend and teacher / female cop seem a bit clichéd (Krysty Wilson-Cairns is the co-writer) and it's maybe in feeling that the film is lacking.

The shots in the credits of deserted London are quite eerie.

At times it seemed to evoke British sixties films like the L Shaped Room and Repulsion.

Ozark Season 4 - Part 1

The black comedy continues. Ruth (Julia Garner) has rejected the family.. all but Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) who shares her loss for Uncle Whatsisname, and he becomes her 'washer' for Darleen's heroin. Garner is sixth billed, or something, but she's the star of the show as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile the situation with Novarro (Felix Solis) is complicated by the entrance of his nephew, who turns out to be (literally) a bloody nuisance.

Q's finding Wendy (Laura Linney) sets her teeth on edge: her smugness, her wilful way of defying people, interfering and making situations worse. Marty (Jason Bateman) is great because he's so calm and always thinking ahead.

In an odd turn of events, Darlene (Lisa Emery) and Wyatt (Charlie Tahan) are dating. A match made in heaven. Darlene's great line on Wendy: "I'd burn her at the stake if I didn't think the devil himself would show up and save her." Did think Darleen wasn't going to make it through to the end of episode 7 but wasn't expecting what did happen. Loved Ruth blowing up. Intrigued that Robin Wright directed some episodes.

The Teacher (2022)

In a (literal) haze of alcohol, dysfunctional teacher Sheridan Smith shags her pupil in a night club, finds herself suspended and charged. Or did she...? Problems with father, mother's suicide, may be underlining things..

With Kelvin Fletcher, Samuel Bottomley, Sharon Rooney, Sarah-Jane Potts (Kinky Boots), Ian Puleston-Davies, Cecilia Noble.

Created by Mike Benson and Barunka O'Shaughnessy. Directed by Dominic Leclerc. For Channel 5.

Mothering Sunday (2021 Eve Husson)

A half an hour into this I asked Q if she thought anything would actually happen. By the time it does, we're ahead of the film, and have already guessed it, and looking forward to the next episode of Trigger Point. The story of one day in the life of a maid in 1924 and how it changes her would have made a great 20 minute short. It's so slow.. Not that I have anything against a slow film like a Malick or Tarkovsky... It's just this is irritatingly slow.

In Alice Birch's adaptation of Graham Swift's novel, Odessa Young plays the maid who rendezvous with Josh O'Connor, then spends much of the film wondering around the house in the nude. Meanwhile her employers, Colin Firth and Olivia Colman, await the youth at a lunch in Henley. His parents have lost two other sons in the war, the others have also lost two and Colman is overwhelmed by grief. Firth expresses his by a kind of forced bonhomie, but he cares about the girl, perhaps as he's lost everything - in the best moment, he is glad she's leaving to go and work in a bookshop. I also liked the very slow scene in which she serves a group of friends - including Josh - at dinner. So it's not a bad film by any means, just... too long by an hour and ten minutes. And lacking in energy. Glenda Jackson, who plays the older version, was paid by the second.

DP was Jamie Ramsay, editor Emilie Orsini, music Morgan Kibby.

With Sope Dirisu, Emma D'Arcy, Patsy Ferran, Emily Woof.

Birch wrote Lady Macbeth and Normal People. You know, the more I think about it, I really didn't mind it. It does manage to actually tell an entire life story, so it's not one day. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. Perhaps I'll catch it again when it surfaces on Channel 4 (who made it with the BFI).

I have to say the DVD cover presents a most unflattering image of Ms. Young:

The Lady from Shanghai (1948 Orson Welles & scr)

The most amazingly directed and edited film, it looks like Hitchcock on speed. And this was after the studio had toned down some of Welles' 'wilder' inclinations. It's so very distinctive in its overlapping dialogue and sudden bursts of energy. The cutting makes you edgy. Time and time again you're struck by the way a scene is shot or edited. It's interesting that cameraman Charles Lawton isn't known for much, yet this looks stunning - you can only infer that Welles made it look like that (same comment applies to editor Viola Lawrence). (To be fair, and possibly because of delays caused when Hayworth fell ill, it should be mentioned that it was also shot by Rudolph Maté and Joe Walker.)

Welles shoots ex-wife Rita Hayworth lovingly; she gives a great  performance. Also most eye-catching are Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia, Erskine Sanford. Location shooting in Acapulco and San Francisco adds flavour. Scene in Chinese theatre amazing, so too is the sequence just before the Hall of Mirrors. It actually has a very bitter ending - most unusual - though that adjective applies to the movie as a whole, which is often shot from very low down. Peter Bogdanovich describes it as a feeling of vertigo, that you're constantly on the edge. Aquarium scene also stunning.

Previous jottings here.

Nowhere Special (2020 Uberto Pasolini & scr)

More of a producer, normally, though he also wrote and directed Eddie Marsan Still Life. This, the third in a triple bill of films today about characters with children who are in some way conflicted about them, is the most touching, as dying dad James Norton has to determine what's to happen to his little boy when he's gone - it faces him with agonising choices. His occupation as window cleaner is a nice device as it lets him see into other lives. And the young social worker assigned to him would seem to share his concerns about the unsuitability of most of the foster parents they visit.

Norton and four-year-old Daniel Lamont are wonderful together, and are often in long takes. It made Norton seriously think about having kids. With Eileen O'Higgins (Misbehaviour, Brooklyn), Niamh McGrady, Siobhan McSweeney, Stella McCusker.

Pasolini based it on a newspaper article he'd read.

People Places Things (2015 Jim Strouse & scr)

Dedicated to all the director's students. He did Grace Is Gone in 2007. Enjoyable and funny.

Jemaine Clement, Stephanie Allynne, Michael Chernus, Jessie Williams, Regina Hall (who did not win the Oscar for Beale Street - that was Regina King), Gia Gadsby, Aundrea Gadsby. Original artwork by Gray Williams.

The ex's house looked like it was in some blindingly expensive bit of New York (seemingly Brooklyn); his place in Astoria, Queens, looked a bit more affordable (a two bed apartment is $365,000 for example).

"I guess you stopped talking, and I got used to the silence" a good line.

Liked the credit for re-recording at Dead Aunt Thelma's Studio!

To Each His Own (1946 Mitchell Leisen)

Charles Brackett's fabulous weepie, co-written with Jacques Théry. Olivia de Havilland won her first Oscar as the aged anti-social spinster and her younger self, dealing with baby born to dead flyer father. She's great. Apart from Roland Culver, and John Lund, most of cast unknown. Mary Anderson is the friend who adopts the baby, Phillip Terry her husband. Griff Barnett the father, Victoria Horne the nurse, Virginia Welles (the son's fiancee), Frank Faylen, Bill Goodwin (bootlegger), Willard Robertson.

Photographed by Daniel L Fapp, score by Victor Young. Paramount.

Film provides definition of audience-pleasing finale. We loved it.

Mitch had to warn the crew that O de H was in makeup so they wouldn't think she'd gone to seed. I wonder if she should have launched a perfume brand 'Eau de Hache' (or whatever 'H' is in French - try Googling that one).

Don't Look Up (2021 Adam McKay & co-scr)

Overlong, funny, wry, trenchant black comedy about a crisis threatening the earth, and the dull-witted response of the government, the media and the public. Leo Di Caprio is the slightly awkward scientist, Jennifer Laurence his outspoken comrade, Meryl Streep the President and Jonah Hill a sarcastic and incompetent Chief of Staff. Mark Rylance is the Zuckerberg figure who's actually the most powerful person in the country ('Bash Media' is credited as the film's production company!) He has developed an algorithm that predicts exactly how you will die!

The Ariana Grande number should have been cut entirely, it slows the film down, which at 2 hours 18 is too much. In fact now I think about it, cut all the Ariana Grande stuff. With Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Rob Morgan, Timothée Chalamet, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey (who looks more familiar than she has a right to).

Photographed by Linus Sandgren (didn't even notice it and thus need to watch again), exceptional editing from Hank Corwin, music by Nicholas Britell.

Spunky Laurence: "Unless you're taking me to the Bat Cave, fuck you for putting this hood on me."

Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry make great shallow news presenters

My Son (2021 Christian Carion & co-scr)

Carion wrote and directed Joyeux Noel - about the temporary truce between armies in 1914 - in 2005, which was BAFTA, César and Oscar nominated. He first made Mon Garçon in 2017, in which Guillaume Canet and Mélanie Laurent did not know the script, in six days. He repeats the experiment here, with just James McAvoy in the dark. Of course that can't have been it entirely; for example the moment he realises there's no room for his son in the step-father's house is so critical they couldn't chance it that he wouldn't notice. Anyway it becomes very tense. The director clearly valued his composer Laurent Perez Del Mar, who gets third billing, but DP Eric Dumont and editor Loïc Lallemand are equally important contributors. With Claire Foy, Tom Cullen, Gary Lewis.

The Highlands come over as majestic, sombre and cruel.

Hotel Portofino (2022)

1926. Year of jazz and Fascism. Bland series begins blandly - Anna Chancellor being fed 'lemonade', cook crying as no food has been delivered, owner's son shagging the maid. And people keep saying 'How did you find your room?' ('It was at the top of the stairs where you said it would be') / 'How do you find Lucien?' ('I go to his room and there he is') / 'How do you find Italy?' ('With a map') etc.

Pretty pretty Portofino and sunshine keep it going (and a zuppa de pesce). Actually it was filmed in Opatija, Croatia.

A 6-part Britbore original, a sort of Downton in Italy, written by Matt Baker (Professor T). Rather clearly left open for season 2.

With Natasha McElhone, some other people... Not too convincing: Mark Umbers, Adam James (Yank), Imogen King, Lorenzo Richelmy, Claude Scott-Mitchell, Elizabeth Carling, Oliver Dench, Lily Frazer. Louisa Binder acquits herself as the nanny. Pasquale Esposito is the baddy.

As We See It (2022 another Jason Katims thing)

And it's about autism again, which I guess must have some personal association for Mr. Katims. Three young adults live together in LA: computer genius Rick Glassman, trusting and hyper Sue Ann Pien and insular Albert Rutecki (who actually are all on the spectrum), their Life Coach is Sosie Bacon (Mare of Easttown). With Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians, Palm Springs), Joe Mantegna (Searching for Bobby Fischer, Alice, Celebrity).

A short eight-parter, we enjoyed it, it slips down easily, and hope another series will be commissioned. Universal Television / Amazon Studios.

The Responder (2022 Tony Schumacher)

Modeled on Schumacher's own experience in the Liverpool police. Conflict absolutely abounds here in all directions. Burned out copper Martin Freeman (great accent and performance - obviously - when is it anything else?) has a drug dealer as his best friend (Ian Hart), was busted from detective by a vengeful Warren Brown, is trying to (a) look out for and (b) find stolen drugs from wayward young Emily Fairn (good), has huge mental issues in that his dad was a monster (encountered in therapy with Elizabeth Berrington), isn't finding the time or love for his family (MyAnna Buring and daughter, the unlikely named Romi Hyland-Rylands) and has to work with rule-book newcomer Adelayo Adedayo (good) AND has to look after dying mum in care home Rita Tushingham. The night, action, gallery of dysfunctional, sad characters had me thinking of Bringing Out the Dead more than once. Touches of humour welcome if not essential - 

- wry dialogue like -

"My advice. Take some time off. Get some sleep. You look like shit."
"You live in a bin."
"Take it or leave it."

Plus delightful Liverpudlian colloquialisms like "Give yer head a wobble" (= think again).

Sweetest moment - Fairn trying to get her bag back, Freeman grabs her, turns into a big hug, he telling her not to write herself off. It finishes, but the open end suggests another series.

With Josh Finan (also good as slightly thick drug dealer). David Bradley, Victor McGuire, Christine Tremarco ('doctor', The Rotters' Club, Good Cop), Mark Womack (Good Cop), Marji Campi (Brookside), Dave Hill (tons of TV, recently After Life, All Creatures, Porridge), Matthew Cottle ('Father Liam Neeson'). Yes, talking of Father Liam Neeson, that's quite a scene, and when the drunk lies there saying his life is a fake, you can see Freeman thinking 'Well that's my life'.

Look at this merry jumble (it was shot in lockdown, thus the streets of Liverpool are so quiet, but nevertheless): Directed by Philip Barantini (1&5), Tim Mielants (2), Fien Troch (3&4). DPs Johan Heurlin Aidt (1), Matthew Lewis (2&5), Seppe Van Grieken (3&4); editors Danielle Palmer (1), Alex Fountain (2&5), Jay Patel (3), Donovan Jones & Alex Fountain (4). Distinctive music from Mark Herbert. Series producer Rebecca Ferguson. The playout track is 'Pilgrim' by Fink, which gives it the right note. 'From small beginnings come big endings'.

Where Danger Lives (1950 John Farrow)

Surgeon Robert Mitchum falls for suicidal Faith Domergue. When he thinks he's accidentally killed her husband Claude Rains, and suffers concussion, the inexorable nightmare has begun... My 'RKO Story' sadly doesn't list how the audience reacted to it, but spares time to detail how bad Domergue's (debut) performance is. Poor old Bob - as weary and bashed in as I think I've seen him. (Another way to put this is it's a fine performance.)

Charles Bennett's screenplay has a rich gallery of laughing yet dodgy car salesmen, pawnbrokers, theatre owners, and most amusingly an Arizona town of bearded men who force the couple to get married... She's crazy, by the way... Bennett contributed to Blackmail, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, The Secret Agent, Sabotage, Young and Innocent and Foreign Correspondent.

All caught in the glare of Nick Musuraca's camera, underscored by Roy Webb. Nice Cadillac they had, too...

Ellipses City...

Ed. Yes - you're just being silly now.

Didn't recognise Maureen O'Sullivan. Admittedly she did have a mask on some of the time. She was married to the director, John Farrow, and had several children, including one Mia... J. Farrow made The Big Clock.

Death to 2021 (2021 Jack Clough / Josh Ruben)

A stalwart cast take the piss out of the year; lead writer is Ben Caudell, with seventeen other writers then credited (no joke).

Hugh Grant, Lucy Liu, Tracey Ullman, Stockard Channing, Cristin Milioti, Diane Morgan, Samson Kayo (scientist), William Jackson Harper.

Like last year, I laughed a lot; can't remember at what, especially, though liked the comment about the 6 January terrorists who were both being criminals and good citizens at the same time by providing evidence of their crime by taking all the footage. And the Olympics: 'Perfect people's trade show.'

Ozark - Season 3 (2020 Bill Dubuque / Mark Williams)

I'm quite enjoying this series, Jason Bateman and Laura Linney trying to out-manoeuvre each other, Julia Garner fiercely loyal and blunt. Janet McTeer is heavily involved. Plus Laura's unstable brother Tom Pelphrey, a counsellor, Pedro Lopez the crime boss, and pregnant FBI agent Jessica Frances Dukes..

Welcome notes of relief in episode 9:

Julia Garner and Charlie Tahan

And no, you will not find any alligators in Missouri lakes.