Nick's Film Jottings

Silvia Syms died on January 27, aged 89. I was intrigued to read in her obituary that she was warned not to appear in the film - which sever...

I think I nailed it last time . It's still massively timely (More in the US than here). Sirk: "I tried to make it into a picture of...

Thoughts: I love Ann Sheridan. She is in fact star billed, even though she doesn't appear until an hour and three minutes in. Does she h...

River Phoenix got himself on the film, recommended Dermot Mulroney and Anthony Clark, wrote some of his songs and brought in the duet betwee...

'Reese colour groups her books too', Q told me, confidently, whilst I was thinking how McKenna had gone off. This was an original sc...

Having failed a counter-terrorism exercise, MI5 agent Jack Lowden is relegated to 'Slough House', the pits, run by the most jaded ma...

"No", I said, when I saw the trailer. But it was OK (suggesting, in fact, that the trailer was poor), some moments of extreme daft...

The Crossroads  actor who was unexpectedly fired at the height of her popularity in 1981, expertly played by Helena Bonham Carter. With Augu...

Hawks actually just nicked a story Warners already owned set in a circus and changed it to the world of racing, which he himself had been in...

Mark Stanley plays an aggressive teacher, whose wife Mollie Winnard in terror has started seeing and taking drugs from pharmacist Amit Shah,...

Well reviewed here . Notice the framing (I didn't) in these shots, the window that's ever-present. Is this lighting / composition or...

With Willem Dafoe as a Good Man in Florida, Bria Vinaite as the worst mother in the world, and Brooklynn Kimberly Prince as the six year old...

Because Michelle Yeoh was on Graham Norton talking about this and what receiving an original script felt like (and also about her fearless s...

Pitch black dry suburban comedy has such an unlikely premise that it left me bewildered and - despite an interesting filming style and commi...

Minnie Driver empathically heads cast. But Joby Talbot's music is mentionable as it somehow delicately sprinkles the film forward in a w...

Another bittersweet fable from Carla Lane - Butterflies  was also about infidelity, in the latter case, more imagined than practised. Here, ...

Another film (cf. My Policeman ) that doesn't really do anything. Shot entirely handheld, and with improvised social scenes, this comes ...

Amusing film written by John Warren and Len Heath (Alan Hackney additional dialogue), with Peter Sellars, David Lodge and Bernard Cribbins a...

In flashback to 1957 Brighton, we learn that Gina McKee's husband Linus Roache had an affair with art historian Rupert Everett - now the...

"It was all going fine until he chopped off all his  fingers." I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that when they were young...