The Apartment

Characters who say 'three" whilst holding up four fingers (this happens twice).

Baxter does have a name!

Watching Jack Lemmon in this is like watching poetry.

Bad Neighbours / Neighbors (2014 Nicholas Stoller)

Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne (The Place Beyond the Pines, Bridesmaids), plus baby, have the nightmare of a frat house moving in next door, chaired by Zach Efron. It's not as bad as it could have been and slips down easily enough, like a glass of Pinot Grigiot. Stoller wrote Gulliver's Travels, The Five Year Engagement and the new Sex Tape.

Walk Don't Run (1966 Charles Walters)

Set in the Tokyo 1964 Olympics, Cary Grant's final film is an old-fashioned affair in which he effectively matchmakes Jim Hutton with the fresh-faced Samantha Eggar, who's been mainly on TV and who's main credit is perhaps William Wyler's The Collector.

It's a sort of USA-Japan PR exercise.

Harry Stradling lights the sets high key.

Inoffensive but bland, like a ham sandwich with no mustard.

Strawberry Blonde (1941 Raoul Walsh)

Enjoyed turn-of-the-century shenanigans (actually quite well caught in detail) of dentist Jimmy Cagney, 'friend' Jack Carson and the objects of their affections, Rita Hayworth and Olivia de Havilland. Alan Hale puts in quite a turn as the lothario father, George Tobias is the 'Greek' friend and Una O'Connor one of the neighbours.

Popular music medium is brass band and barbershop quartet, unfortunately.

Shot with customary simplicity by James Wong Howe, for Warner Bros

Contains the great line "Oh boy! She's just the fudge!", written by Julius and Philip Epstein. Unusually, concludes by asking the audience to sing along to "And the band played on".

The Family Man (2000 Brett Ratner)

We (re)watched this on the strength of Maltin's ***½ review and his description of it being an overlooked Christmas movie. Well I'm sorry Mr Maltin, you who are so often right, but we thought it should remain overlooked and had more in common with Overboard  than It's a Wonderful Life, which it clearly wanted to emulate.

Nicolas Cage has a supernatural 'glimpse' of being married to Tea Leoni with two kids and a job as a tyre salesman.

Bad Santa (2003 Terry Zwigoff)

Seems to be becoming something of a seasonal fixture

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946 William Wyler)

Reviewed fully here, but to add that Wyler must have been a hell of a director to get these performances (e.g. Russell was a non-professional, Cathy O'Donnell a newcomer) in such long takes. Also there's a kind of poetry in it. The way the camera moves in the bathroom scene between Wright and Mayo is sublime, picking up its various combinations of mirrors and reflections. The staging in those deep, deep focus shots (not one is shallow) in which the actors' movements are carefully staged, like in a play. Note Myrna Loy's very subtle restraining motion towards March where Wright is threatening to become a homewrecker. And the line that is drawn between Andrews and Wright in final, beautifully staged wedding scene (in which we're not as interested in the couple getting married).

A brave film, one of the Hollywood Greats, and one of our favourites.

Holiday Affair (1949 Don Hartman)

Hollywood Christmas story that isn't at all slushy, Isobel Lennart wrote it (as well as the fabulously named 1952 Skirts Ahoy!) from John Weaver's story 'Christmas Gift'. Great cast of Mitchum, a young Janet Leigh, Corey Wendall and Gordon Gebert as the boy, with Harry Morgan as a judge. Lots of nicely played long takes perhaps need more editing, as it's a bit static.

Very nicely lit by Milton Krasner; music by the always reliable Roy Webb.

The Inbetweeners 2 (2014 Damon Beesley & Iain Morris & scr)

Awfully written, really quite bad sequel, featuring far too old leads for their characters.

No, no. I'm sorry: no.

Match Point (2005 Woody Allen & scr)

Beautifully atypical WA, a chilly murder drama in the spirit of Chabrol. Great cast comprises Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johanssen (beautifully lit by Remi Adefarasin), Matthew Goode, Emily Mortimer, Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton, Jimmy Nesbitt, Paul Kaye, Alexander Armstrong and Mark Gatiss (playing ping pong with Scarlett!), John Fortune, Rupert Penry-Jones, Zoe Telford, Margaret Tyzack (the unfortunate neighbour) and Ewen Bremner (making impression as Inspector).

The snippets of ancient recordings of Caruso, particularly 'Una Furtiva Lagrima', are enormously successful, but (and I thought this last time) the long opera excerpt over the murder scene doesn't really work.

Long for a WA.

The runner is a young man called Maximillian Roeg, son of Nic and Theresa.

Hannah and her Sisters (1986 Woody Allen & scr)

First I dollied around the table to set the shot up and I remember I thought to myself, Well I can't keep going around and around. But it could be cut and go in closer and cut and go in closer the third time. Then as I looked at that to set it up, I thought, If they're talking naturally, there's no way I'm going to be on the right person all the time. And Barbara Hershey said, "So what? So you're not on the person talking, you're on the reaction shot." And I thought to myself, Well Barbara [laughs], you're not only pretty [laughs harder] but it's a very good idea...

But you know, I was completely dissatisfied with that shot at dailies. I thought it was pretentious. Finally the "that's great" prevailed. I guess I was wrong and not seeing something. 

Conversations with Woody Allen, Eric Lax.

Because (following Cold Feet Series 3) we wanted more great women acting, which we got, with the added bonus of Michael Caine in a most atypical, nervy, wonderful performance.

The Sitter (2011 David Gordon Green)

Pretty crappy comedy as babysitter Jonah Hill eventually wins over his three young charges whilst having to deal with cast-against-type baddie Sam Rockwell.

Babel (2006 Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Incredible team at work produces gripping, mesmerizing work of art.

Guillermo Arriaga's usual splintered storyline (sometimes tangentially) connects couple Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in Morocco with kids Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait el Caid; meanwhile the excellent Adriana Barraza is a Mexican nanny who (with nephew Gael Garcia Bernal) takes her charges Elle Fanning (of course!) and Nathan Gamble over the border; and Rinko Kikuchi (in the shortest skirt imaginable) is a desperately lonely deaf-mute Tokyo girl.... (Kôji Yakusho is the father.)

Incredible photography by Rodrigo Prieto is in different styles per story, e.g. Japan in anamorphic. Shot of Rinko on swing sensational as is closing track out (though disappointingly it turns out to be CGI). Also:

In terms of production design, Alejandro came up with using one color that would unify the story, and that color was red, with different shades of red for each section. For Morocco, we used a burnt red, with a little bit of umber, with different elements of the set and costumes. In Mexico, it was more of a primary red. And in Japan it’s more of a magenta-red. That was mostly achieved in the production design and wardrobe, but sometimes I applied it in the lighting, particularly in Japan. There’s a nightclub scene and I tried to paint gels on the lights, mostly using a combination of pink and green gels. - See more at: http://www.studiodaily.com/2006/06/d-p-rodrigo-prieto-on-shooting-babel/#sthash.jQzuF5p0.dpuf

Nightclub scene cutting from sound to silence is astonishing. Editors are Stephen Mirrione (Monuments Men, Hunger Games, Biutiful, The Ides of March. Leatherheads, Good Night and Good Luck, 21 Grams, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Ocean's 11-13 and Traffic) and Douglas Crise (who had been an assistant on many of these). Oscar and BAFTA-winning music by Gustavo Santaolalla.

Really terrific, though perhaps doesn't really add up to anything - dedicated to Iñárritu's children, who are perhaps the heart of the story.

To Sir With Love 2 (1996 Peter Bogdanovich)

Perfect sequel, thirty years on, made for TV in 4x3, a ratio our classic film lover PB has no difficulty with. Brisk, well written (Philip Rosenberg), beautifully staged film is strangely hypnotic, and moving. Poitier doesn't point and is supported by Christian Payton, Dana Eskelson, Fernando Lopez et al. with Judy Geeson and Lulu in brief cameos.


"When you act a scene with Sidney Poitier he listens intently to every word you say. You can feel your words hit him. He makes the scene utterly real." (Judy quoted in Aram Goudsozian's book, source unknown.)

Cold Feet (1997 - 2003)

I put cast in this order of quality:

Hermione Norris and Fay Ripley.
Jimmy Nesbitt.
John Tomson, Helen Baxendale and Robert Bathurst.

Early series display strong visual humour, e.g. Brief Encounter pastiche, Hermione talking to herself at dinner party, lots of sixties-style cross cutting between conversations. Mike Bullen wrote (most of) it.

It's terrific fun.

To Sir With Love (1967 James Clavell & scr)

Sidney Poitier, Judy Geeson (19), Christian Roberts, Suzy Kendall (other teacher), Patricia Routledge (as 'Clinty Clintridge'!), Adrienne Posta, Lulu.

Judy makes me smile, Poitier a thinking actor. The JDs are a bit too nice really.

The museum montage is unfortunately overdone, but the photos used are excellent.

Ph Paul Beeson (lots of British stuff) in 4x3.

Brief Encounter (1945 David Lean)

Celia Johnson is most awfully good.

Those dissolves in which a part of the setting remain in shot - awfully clever: Citizen Kane only more so.

Horrible Bosses (2011 Seth Gordon)

An unofficial remake of Nine to Five in which Jason Bateman, the squeaky voiced Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis exhibit no chemistry whatsoever - Jennifer Aniston in fact steals the show.

Film is most awfully written.

Ida (2013 Pawel Pawlikowski)

Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Joanna Kulig (the singer).

His best film, comprised of most interesting compositions in 4x3, briskly edited by Jaroslaw Kaminski and shot by Pawel regular Ryszard Lenczweski (and, when he fell ill, Lukasz Zal). Powerful, simple.

Scene at the grave is unforgettable.

I liked that band.

Death Comes To Pemberley (2013 Daniel Percival)

Original review, December 2013.

In memoriam of P.D. James.

Well adapted by Juliette Towhidi (Calendar Girls).

Absolutely as good as the first time.