Nick's Film Jottings

Suspensefully directed film, perhaps rather tenuously plotted when put under examination (Eric Roth the writer... ah yes, who has mixed cred...

Written by Alan Bennett from his own short publication - thus it was his own idea to split his character into two people, which makes a diff...

Apparently we haven't seen this since 2011... Like then, I love his past life of savage African running from a lion, and the moment wher...

William Hurt, Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter. Now Hunter's maybe not my favourite actress, and her character here is volatile and frankl...

Rufus tells us that Skunk (Larry Lamb's daughter Eloise Laurence) is the positive centre of a story which otherwise would be dark, relie...

He is I think nothing to do with Michael Clayton' s Tony Gilroy. Essentially a series of conversations over time between older and wis...

A very simple story, beautifully and artfully presented, in its discretion (and with the beginning being the end) similar to Brief Encounter...

Lumet (pronounced with a hard t) had an interesting career - I'm slightly surprised he got the job, not really being his sort of thing, ...

Screenplay by Casey Robinson, based on the play by Zoe Atkins and the 1924 short story by Edith Wharton (who also wrote Age of Innocence ). ...

We've started off enjoying David Hare's meditation on immigration, wrapped up as a political crime thriller. But we were disappointe...

The Lubitsch that seems unfairly neglected is like music, with its rhythms and sporadic outbursts of 'Keeks!', 'Phooey!' and...

A huge hit - it grossed $400m worldwide from a $15m production budget - did Hooper get a share? I bet he didn't. He had made The Damned ...

I got it right  the first time  - it's that long take of Felicity Jones recounting her mother's death that shows just how good she i...

Stevenson and ace cameraman George Barnes give Bronte the full on expressionistic treatment with wonderful shadows and clever lighting aroun...

Reviewed  here ,  here  and  here . The production design is by Anne Seibel, for a change (also To Rome With Love  and  Midnight in Paris )....

It was broadcast on Channel 4 under the second title. Features those ridiculously quickly edited fight and chase scenes. Idris brandishes hi...

Should really be called 'the Crocker-Harris Version' as that's the translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon that we're intere...

Anna Karina is 77. Here, she is 22. The moment where she looks directly into the camera is disconcerting, Michel Legrand's theme is haun...

Those lamps that surround Kim Hunter, the beginning, the heavenly conductor... A remarkable cinematographic debut. I don't think you c...

It's Lean doing Mike Leigh. There's some subtlety about what sort of war Newton and Holloway have had - the latter's initial c...