Endeavour - the Final Season (2022 Russell Lewis)

A magnificent conclusion to an epic series. 

The This Happy Breed moment

"I know thee not old man!" is Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2

Without giving anything away, the ending, the way the threads are tied up, is an amazing feat of writing (and that Morse doesn't tell Thursday the identity of the biker). And the 'You've never called me by my name' scene will leave not a dry eye in the house.

Anton Lesser reads us out from Shakespeare's last play, 'The Tempest', entirely fitting:

"Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air... We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

High Plains Drifter (1973 Clint Eastwood

Well acted and designed bizarre revenge western. Bizarre, because no one in the town of 'Lago' (which is by a lake) can remember the face of the Marshal who was bullwhipped to 'death' a year ago while they stood round and watched. He gets his revenge on the townsfolk and the three whippers in a strikingly red-painted and fiery town.

Or is it? The Marshal in the flashback scene isn't Clint, but Buddy Van Horn, the (good) stunt coordinator, according to the credits. Maybe I don't exist.

Very questionable sexual politics on display here - Clint rapes two women, neither of whom seem to mind much. They are Marianna Hill and Verna Bloom, who doesn't have a line of dialogue until 53 minutes in.

Clint found the location himself: Pyramid Lake, Nevada, photographed by Bruce Surtees.

Whatever's going on, the script was by Ernest Tidyman (Shaft, The French Connection) and put into final form by Dean Reisner, uncredited.

Dee Barton provides a suitably bizarre score. Ferris Webster edits again

With Mitchell Ryan, Billy Curtis, Geoffrey Lewis, John Mitchum.

Clint had to move the schedule about to accommodate Verna Bloom's wedding trip

The Pickwick Papers (1952 Noel Langley & scr)

Delightful adaptation of Dickens novel by the director; James Hayter and Nigel Patrick perfectly cast as the bumbling yet principled Pickwick and the wily rogue Jingle, who perpetually seems to get away with everything.

Large good cast comprises James Donald (good as Winkle), Joyce Grenfell, Hermione Gingold, Hermione Baddeley, Donald Wolfit, Harry Fowler (his best performance as the resourceful manservant Weller), Kathleen Harrison, Alexander Gauge, William Hartnell, June Thorburn (the lovely Arabella, tragically killed in a plane crash in 1967).

Photographed by Wilkie Cooper and edited by Anne Coates, her first as lead editor, who found Langley made 'lots of mistakes' and thus found the job somewhat challenging. An independent Langley-Minter production.

Hayter, Patrick, Alexander Gauge

The Beguiled (1971 'Donald' Siegel & prod)

Both Clint and Don were drawn to Thomas Cullinan's dark Gothic novel, committed to it eagerly and enlisted Albert Maltz to write the screenplay. He did, but bizarrely insisted it have a happy, romantic ending, wouldn't be swayed, and was consequently fired. Going back to the source novel, it was rewritten by Claude Traverse, the film's associate producer,  uncredited. The film's credits read 'John B Sherry' (Maltz's pseudonym) and 'Grimes Grice' (Irene Kamp, who had written two rejected drafts). What a fucking mess! What does this tell us? Like Chaplin, don't believe the credits.

We thought the film was particularly well edited, by Carl Pingitore, with some excellent montage sequences, though we should remember that Siegel was originally a montage editor at Warner Bros. Pingitore was a veteran TV editor, one of several editors interviewed for the project. When Siegel asked him for his resume he snapped back "I've survived for thirty years" which chimed with Siegel and got him the job.

Bruce Surtees' lighting on Ted Haworth's sets is also notable - OK, the candlelit scenes are obviously lit, but in a sympathetic way. Siegel's doing some interesting blocking too in which actors' faces are often half obscured, almost like a Bergman shot.

It's very well acted, and you can see why Clint was drawn to it - it was his first real opportunity not to shoot people but to play a fully rounded character who is wily and trying to manipulate everyone around him, a coward and liar, a drunk and angry cripple... with just a flash of goodness in him too. Geraldine Page led the way for the women, arriving on set with no makeup and no agenda, finding the other actresses followed in her suit. I would single out Mae Mercer particularly as the slave / maid, but also good are Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris and young Pamelyn Ferdin, who provides the film's wonderful circularity - she finds and saves the soldier at the outset, then kills him at the conclusion.

Sexual undercurrents - including Page's incest back-story - are interesting. The film was of course a flop - Universal had no idea how to promote it, even turned down the idea that the film should have its initial release at the Cannes Film Festival. (It was a big hit in France.) It contributed to the deterioration of Clint's relationship with the studio.

I enjoyed it much more than I remembered.

A Malpaso production.

Clint and Bob at the premiere

Cold Comes the Night (2013 Tze Chun & co-scr)

Well-acted thriller with nice touches. Alice Eve is a single mum who lives in a motel frequented by prostitutes, where one is found murdered; she's having an affair with a married, bent cop. Staying there is a vision-challenged gangster, Bryan Cranston, who's en route to a massive cash drop-off and he enlists Eve's help. Well, no, he doesn't 'enlist' it, he forces her to help him.

One of the writers, Osgood Perkins, is indeed the son of Anthony and grandson of Osgood. His credits are not impressive but I am intrigued by the (admittedly low-rated) I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, with Ruth Wilson, Bob Balaban and Lucy Boynton. Nick Simon is the third credited writer.

Logan Marshall-Green is the bent cop and I loved the way he stoops to try to pick up the fallen bundles of cash even as he's dying. The little girl is Ursula Parker and 'Donny from Cincinnati' is Leo Fitzpatrick, from Larry Clark's Kids and Bully.

The Afterparty - Season One (2022 Creator Christopher Miller)

A celebrity arsehole (Dave Franco, Bad Neighbours, The Disaster Artist) is murdered at a college reunion party. Two detectives - Tiffany Haddish and John Early - investigate by interviewing the suspects episode-by-episode: they are Sam Richardson, Zoe Chao, Ike Barinholtz, Ben Schwartz, Ilana Glazer, and Jamie Demetriou. I know - no one much familiar.

The playing and dialogue are rather on the broad side and it's mindlessly enjoyable. 'Musical' episode, and animated one, are both awful; does have a decent resolution, fortunately.

The Burial (2023 Maggie Betts)

Why is the Betts / Doug Wright screenplay entitled The Burial? Because it's based partially on a true story (of the same name) which initially appeared in The New Yorker. Funeral home director Tommy Lee Jones attempts to sell businesses to powerful tycoon Bill Camp, who fucks him over. Jones is encouraged by young lawyer Mamoudou Athie (The Front Runner, The Circle) to engage flamboyant personal injury lawyer Jamie Foxx, who's never lost a case, to sue him.

They are up against powerful legal mind Jurnee Smollett, who shouts a lot.

With Alan Ruck, Pamela Reed.

This version of events is that the contract between them was never signed, thus making the whole court case extremely murky (unwinnable in fact). What happened in real life was that Loewen did buy one of the funeral homes but contrary to the agreement started selling his own insurance policies. Now that makes much more sense. Why didn't they stick to the real version of events? And why does the film open with Foxx as a church pastor? That also muddies the waters.

Er. I mean it's quite formulaic in a way. Obviously, the outcome is good. It didn't quite click for me.

DP Maryse Alberti (she's French), edited by Lee Percy and Jay Cassidy, production design Kay Lee.

Amazon has acquired MGM, apparently.

Joe Kidd (1972 John Sturges)

The one with the train. Elmore Leonard's story elevates the material a bit as Clint gets involved with a ruthless land grabber (Robert Duvall) and a Mexican revolutionary bandit (John Saxon in one of his typecast 'foreign' roles). Tense moments when Clint is imprisoned with Mexican villagers who are to be executed five at a time - naturally he outsmarts and out-shoots everybody.

Good support from Duvall's thugs Don Stroud, James Wainright, Paul Koslo. With Gregory Walcott, Stella Garcia.

Photographed by Bruce Surtees, music by Lalo Schifrin, art direction Henry Bumstead and Alexander Golitzen, editing Ferris Webster, the first of fifteen films he cut for / with Clint. Future director (of The Enforcer, for example) Jim Fargo is the assistant director. Malpaso for Universal.

The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar (2023 Wes Anderson & scr)

Another brilliantly inventive film from Anderson using theatrical techniques such as scene changing and stage lighting, with wonderful and amusing attention to detail. Benedict Cumberbatch with his theatrical experience is a good front man to carry the momentum of the story but it's bang! bang! bang! with no lulls or pacing in its 40 minutes. Also, whilst initially funny, the actors addressing the camera with "I said to him" etc. just becomes wearisome. Wes has forgotten to put emotion in his recent films, which is a shame.

With Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade.

Photographed (if you can read the scarcely legible credits) by Robert Yeoman and edited by Barney Pilling and Andrew Weisblum. Based on Roald Dahl.

Loving (2016 Jeff Nichols & scr)

Based in part on a documentary about the mixed race marriage that changed the law in America. 1958. Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton have married, despite the fact that it's illegal in Virginia - first mistake - and are caught and tried. They are forced by law to leave the state and relocate to Washington, but they both come home for the baby's birth - and are caught again - second mistake. (Why didn't he just drop her off and go back to Washington?) Anyway, many years go by and the case is picked up by the American Civil Liberties Union and the court case continues - though Edgerton's behaviour is reluctant and sulky (for some odd reason). This stupidity and unlikeability do work against the film, though are likely part of the true story.

In the United Kingdom and the countries thereof, mixed race marriage has never been illegal.

There's a moment of a rope going round the branch of a tree which is for a second horribly triggering of lynching - turns out to be the kids stringing up a play rope, though maybe it was a deliberate intention.

Well shot by Adam Stone again. Edited by Julie Monroe. Music by David Wingo. Production design Chad Keith.

Terri Abney, Alano Miller, Martin Csokas (sheriff), Nick Kroll (initial lawyer, reminds me of Richard Benjamin), John Bass (second lawyer, Molly's Game, Sword of Trust), Michael Shannon, Bill Camp.

The Sorcerers (1967 Michael Reeves & co-scr)

Reeves' penultimate film before Witchfinder General and his untimely death at 25 (accidental overdose). Written by he and Tom Baker (not that one), from an idea by John Burke. And what a weird idea. An elderly couple, played by Boris Karloff and Catherine Lacey (the nun in The Lady Vanishes, also Whisky Galore!), develop a mind control machine they use on Ian Ogilvy which controls his actions. The woman (interestingly) gets totally carried away with the power and ends up forcing him to commit murder. His girlfriend Elizabeth Ercy and mate Victor Henry start to get pissed off with his violent behaviour and it all ends in a high speed chase through strangely deserted North London and a fiery finish.

Karloff doesn't have much to do - a lot of the time we see the old couple 'concentrating' whilst the action happens, and in fact Lacey has the more interesting part, and it's her psychotic face you are left with.

Susan George is in it, but I wouldn't have recognised her.

The performed music, from the 'Swinging Sixties', is utterly dire.

Photographed by Stanley Long, whoever she is. Looks like it was filmed primarily on location.

"We're controlling his mind."

Night of the Hunter (1955 Charles laughton)

Author Davis Grubb illustrated moments from the book, and on Laughton's request sent some 100 sketches in all showing what a scene looked like in his mind.

What else? Mitchum was first choice for producer Paul Gregory and Laughton, though at one point Olivier became interested - luckily United Artists wanted to stick with Mitchum.

Credited writer James Agee was drunk the entire time he 'worked' on an unfilmable screenplay which Laughton essentially rewrote without credit. (They hadn't realised that the same thing had happened on Agee's The African Queen - John Huston and Paul Viertel had rewritten it uncredited.)

Lilian Gish is absolutely wonderful in this; in fact she only occurred to Laughton because he had been screening D.W. Griffith films in preparation (films he shared also with DP Stanley Cortez).

The result is a strange and fascinating film, a horror movie fairy tale, which absolutely flopped critically and commercially.

According to Mitchum, "It was a midget riding a miniature horse, and Charles shot that on a stage." (Projections 7, 1997)

13 Going On 30 (2004 Gary Wenick)

Yes, realised after five minutes we'd seen it before, but needed something blandly enjoyable after the head testing of The Big Short. Previous comments apply - also that everyone at the party would know all the Thriller dance moves is ridiculous.

Is Judy Greer fated to be a supporting actor, like Eve Arden? Someone should put her in as a lead, as she's good and paid her dues.

Julia Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Andy Serkis, Kathy Baker, Marcia DeBonis, Christa B Allen (young Jennifer), Sam Marquette (young Mark).

The Big Short (2015 Adam McKay & co-scr)

Christian Bale is the first one to read the mortgage numbers and predict the market will crash. Through an accidental phone call, Steve Carell and his team of Jeremy Strong, Rafe Spall and Hamish Linklater get in on the act, and young start-ups Finn Wittrock and John Magaro are also on the same trail, and enlist the help of Brad Pitt. Ryan Gosling is the disingenuous narrator / ringmaster.

What is most appalling about it is the way the bonds and CDOs retained their value even through the mortgage defaults started escalating just long enough for the big institutions to sell them off, triggering a worldwide collapse. And that no one was held accountable.

So a good screenplay by McKay and Charles Randolph, winning Oscar and BAFTA, based on Michael Lewis's non-fiction book. Hank Corwin's stylish editing won the ACE award.

Photographed hand-held and nervy by Barry Aykroyd.

Ryan seems to be sporting a nice line in lipstick

The Reckoning (2023 Neil MacKay)

We seem to be in a multiple car pile up of drama documentaries about unspeakable people, what with Dr Death, The Girl From Plainville, The Long Shadow and now this tribute to that popular hero, Jimmy Saville, played well by Steve Coogan (though you can't help hearing Alan Partridge).

With Robert Emms, Gemma Jones, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Fenella Woolgar (Thatcher), Mark Lewis Jones, Michael Jibson (Bill Cotten), Siobhan Finneran, Mark Stanley (biographer), Peter Wight. Jeff Pope is the exec producer.

Though broadcast by the BBC it was produced by ITV - speculate at will.

We all know though what a fiend and horror show Saville was and in that respect that programme could be have been more hard hitting. As it stands the testaments of former victims remain the strongest thing about it. Also the relationship with his mother, and cat-and-mouse games with biographer, aren't actually that interesting - the ending is actually dull. I suppose it's the way he manipulates and evades the BBC and journalists that remains the most interesting aspect.

Lady Macbeth (2016 William Oldroyd)

Based on a story by Nikolai Leskov, previously filmed as Siberian Lady Macbeth by Andrezj Wajda in 1962, here adapted by Alice Birch, who also worked on The Wonder (also Mothering Sunday, episodes of Normal People and Succession. The End we Start From is a 2023 film by Mahalia Belo.)

I don't know if I was meant to, but I found it blackly funny, in a dry, Kubricky way. I hoped Florence Pugh would do something against vile, vile husband Paul Hilton - she does, also bumping off his equally unspeakable father (Christopher Fairbank) and his illegitimate child, so she can have her wicked way with estate worker Cosmo Jarvis (Calm with Horses). The ending is a beauty. With Naomi Ackie, Golda Rosheuvel.

Photographed with naturalistic beauty again by Ari Wagner in Panavision.

Scenes of Cosmo sleeping on stone floors looks uncomfortable but ultra-realistic.

Endeavour: Terminus (2021 Russell Lewis, Director Kate Saxon)

Unlike most of these films, it opens very simply - just two stories going on - one, a bus journey, two a hotel which was the scene of murders in the 1960s. What Lewis does, by incredible sleight of hand, is turn And Then There Were None into Murder on the Orient Express!

Marvellous acting, photography, editing, production design (Madelaine Leech).

Stay (2005 Marc Forster)

Baffling, marvellously inventive thriller in which we don't know what is going on but have fun guessing (are Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gosling in fact the same character? Is Naomi Watts dead?) The film is written by David Benioff, who also wrote the same director's The Kite Runner and subsequently was a showrunner on GOT. The ending is straight out of that rare 2003 TV movie Promoted to Glory (Ken Stott, Lesly Manville, written by Rob Heyland) but is satisfying. So almost not worth the effort, though Matt Chessé's editing, and the concurrent digital effects, are staggering. (When it was on I told Q I wanted our next film to have Humphrey Bogart in it and 'when he hits someone, they fall over'.) Photographed as usual by Roberto Shaffer, music by Asche & Spencer and Massive Attack, production design Kevin Thompson.

With Bob Hoskins, Janeane Garofolo, Kate Burton, Elizabeth Reasor, BD Wong and (in a tiny role Q noticed) Sterling Brown.

Ryan's performance is brilliant.

Certain one word titles can be great (think Hitchcock): this one is crap.

Sex Education - Series 4 (2023)

Because of Covid delays, our cast are all looking rather old to be at school now, a new school, one that is amusingly so PC it's rubbish (the old location was redeveloped).

Otis finds there is already a sex therapist at the school (liked his election video "I'm messed up, and I think all teenagers are"), his mum is struggling with the new baby, her sister comes to help (Lisa McGrillis, Mum, Best Interests, Maternal, Only You).

It's still sort of enjoyable but I'm getting the feeling it's all a bit samey.

Gets a bit more meaty when Maeve's mother dies. Edward Bluemel is her brother. 'Dream A Dream' Bic Runga. Elizabeth Berrington has a delicious cameo as a 'celebrant'.

I sense Emma Mackey would have done well as a 1960s star. She's looking rather gaunt.

Sex in an empty swimming pool? Deep End.

I get the feeling that the show sacrifices story to a veritable litany of worthy subject matters - transexuality, religion, bullying, disability, peer pressure, teaching, family, addiction - but concludes satisfactorily.

Hang 'Em High (1968 Ted Post)

Even back then, Clint was exercising control over his projects, in this case cutting and pasting bits of different versions of the screenplay to suggest a better whole. It's also the first Malpaso (co) production and his first lead role in America.

And the subject was quite appealing to him - an innocent man is lynched, then runs across a bloodthirsty Judge who's rather too keen to hang himself (Aaron Sorkin would have fun telling me off about that line - I mean of course to hang other people himself). Clint displays a nice line in anti-authoritarianism and a good anger.

Perhaps less convincing is his 'cure' of woman (Inger Stevens) whose husband was killed and her violently raped.

With Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Ben Johnson, Charles McGraw, Ruth White, Bruce Dern (giving a good, gutsy early turn), Arlene Golonka, Dennis Hopper, L.Q. Jones, James MacArthur.

Dominic Frontiere's music lets it down. Photographed by Richard Kline and Leonard South. Edited by Gene Fowler Jr.  Art direction John Goodman.

Clint then  ended up looking the same age for at least the next twenty years.