Nick's Film Jottings

A magnificent conclusion to an epic series.  The This Happy Breed  moment "I know thee not old man!" is Shakespeare, Henry IV Part...

Well acted and designed bizarre revenge western. Bizarre, because no one in the town of 'Lago' (which is by a lake) can remember the...

Delightful adaptation of Dickens novel by the director; James Hayter and Nigel Patrick perfectly cast as the bumbling yet principled Pickwic...

Both Clint and Don were drawn to Thomas Cullinan's dark Gothic novel, committed to it eagerly and enlisted Albert Maltz to write the 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...

A celebrity arsehole (Dave Franco, Bad Neighbours, The Disaster Artist ) is murdered at a college reunion party. Two detectives - Tiffany Ha...

Why is the Betts / Doug Wright screenplay entitled The Burial ? Because it's based partially on a true story (of the same name) which in...

The one with the train. Elmore Leonard's story elevates the material a bit as Clint gets involved with a ruthless land grabber (Robert D...

Another brilliantly inventive film from Anderson using theatrical techniques such as scene changing and stage lighting, with wonderful and a...

Based in part on a documentary about the mixed race marriage that changed the law in America. 1958. Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton have marrie...

Reeves' penultimate film before Witchfinder General  and his untimely death at 25 (accidental overdose). Written by he and Tom Baker (no...

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

Yes, realised after five minutes we'd seen it before , but needed something blandly enjoyable after the head testing of The Big Short . ...

Christian Bale is the first one to read the mortgage numbers and predict the market will crash. Through an accidental phone call, Steve Care...

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 L...

Based on a story by Nikolai Leskov, previously filmed as Siberian Lady Macbeth  by Andrezj Wajda in 1962, here adapted by Alice Birch, who a...

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 murder...

Baffling, marvellously inventive thriller in which we don't know what  is going on but have fun guessing (are Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gos...

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...

Even back then, Clint was exercising control over his projects, in this case cutting and pasting bits of different versions of the screenpla...