One Two Three (1961 Billy Wilder)

Much underrated classic, so clever, well assessed here.

One or two notes. 'Minsk is out, Pinsk is in' surely is a reference to Preston Sturges' classic line 'Get me Minsk, Minsk, Pinsk and Pinsk'. And knowing that a most important film in Billy's life was Battleship Potemkin it's no coincidence that the hotel goes under the same name.

The film has such a rushing momentum that you need to remember to take a breath of air after it's finished.

So stuffed with classic jokes that if you don't pay attention you'll miss half of them.
Also an interesting footnote that Pamela Tiffin was considered for The Birds next.

This is the film which features "Yes, We Have No bananas" (featured also in Sabrina) in German, which seems to have become stuck in my head.

This Is England '90 (2015 Shane Meadows & co-scr)

Naturalistic (improvised) scenes draw you in, then something happens right in front of your eyes that you can't quite believe - episode one has it in a sequence at a nightclub - it's like alchemy.

Then in two, there's a scene so upsetting it's like looking at the sun - though the point of this is about friends who are looking after each other. The moment where we find Jo Gilgun sleeping on Andrew Shim - with the latter's hand on his head - melts your heart.

Great cast: Thomas Turgoose, Andrew Ellis, Vicky Mclure, Chanel Cresswell, Jo Hartley, Michael Socha, Danielle Watson, Stephen Graham.

Stuart Bentley is on camera, Matthew Gray editing, Jack Thorne is the co-writer.

Third episode - featuring painful, extended and clearly improvised dinner table confrontation, just makes you weep, and is unlike anything else on television. (Tom Turgoose really looks like he wishes he were elsewhere.) Andrew Ellis - who clearly is in love with Chanel Cresswell - is as endearing as anything.

And then that ending. One of the most powerful things about it is the way characters suddenly explode. But it's also the combination of sweet and sour. Room for one more?

Laura (1944 Otto Preminger)

OK, there's a debate / mystery about this film. According to Lucien Ballard, he and Rouben Mamoulian shot "75 percent of that together" when Otto Preminger came in with another cameraman, Joseph Lashelle, who then won the Oscar.

Preminger wrote the screenplay and lobbied hard for 'light on his feet' Clifton Webb. The film wasn't going well with Mamoulian and Zanuck replaced him with Preminger, who is quoted as saying "We threw out everything Mamoulian had directed and I finished the picture".

To be honest, it does look like Lashelle's lighting, and it's rather beautifully shot, but it's hard to tell.

With Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Vincent Price and Judith Anderson, accompanied by David Raksin's memorable theme, for 20th Century Fox. Has an interesting moment where Webb exposes himself to Andrews getting out of the bath.

(The sources here are Maltin's book on cinematographers and Bogdanovich's 'Who the Devil Made It?')

Say Anything (1989 Cameron Crowe & scr)

"I gave her my heart - she gave me a pen."

Rather well acted by John Cusack; with Ione Syke, John Mahoney, Lili Tayor, Joan Cusack, Eric Stoltz, Jeremy Piven.

Great screenplay, throwaway lines like "There's no food in your food" but has a mark of authenticity to it as well. He really is a very nice guy. Love the way it ends on board a plane.

Shot by Laszlo Kovacs, with a typically resonant pop music soundtrack.

Edited (and co-produced) by Richard Marks. Certain scenes are ballets of eyes, especially with Joan's little boy (Glenn Walker Harris), who John plays as a guitar at one point! (Cameron's good with kids.)

Aloha (2015 Cameron Crowe & scr, prod)

Cameron's done it again. You can't help thinking about Billy Wilder when you watch his films (the 'silent' sequences between Bradley Cooper and John Krasinski are beautifully set up) but he has a warmth that cynical Billy didn't have and - in this case - a clear love for the country and history of Hawaii, even casting Hawaiian king Bumpy Kanahele to play himself... He's also not so wedded to his script he won't allow improvisation.

From the opening montage of Hawaiian footage and early space stuff, you know it's going to be wonderful... The usual skilfully assembled soundtrack...

Emma Stone (who's wide-eyed look made me think of a manga character more than once) is just right as jet fighter / watchdog. Also features the unique talents of the always unpredictable Bill Murray, a shouty Alec Baldwin, Rachel McAdams, Danny McBride ('fingers') and the lovely Danielle Rose Russell in the film's most beautiful finale.

The critics don't get it, once again.

Amazing attention to detail in the scene where the satellite is being bombarded with library footage and audio. Plus you have to marvel at the comic timing when the thing destructs.

Shot by Eric Gautier (in sequence) and edited by Joe Hutshing. The way he makes scenes in which even the smallest reaction shot is perfect (in acting and editing and staging) shows just how good the boy has become.

Full of fabulous moments - the scene with the hat is perfect, because we can't see her face. I started to wonder if Cameron didn't keep writing variations of Miss Kubelik...

Was looking forward to watching it again while it was still on.

Prime Suspect: The Final Act (2006 Philip Martin)

Martin made Birdsong and the Murder on the Orient Express update; written by Frank Deasy.

Easily the most melancholy of the series, we find Tennison on her last case, burned out, alcoholic and utterly alone - to the extent that her 'heart falls' for 14 year old Laura Greenwood (another fantastic performance).

Mirren absolutely owns the character. It's an exceptional body of work, with top-notch acting from people who didn't necessarily make it big.

We get to hear the great repeated line (one that came from the show's inspiration, DCI Jackie Malton) "Don't call me ma'am - I'm not the queen" - which is especially funny as Mirren later became her.

With Steven Tomkinson, Frank Finlay, and dedicated to Tom Bell, who died just before the film was aired.

Interesting - watching a fabulous extras film - that she particularly enjoyed the level of involvement - in scripts, director and casting choices - she had in the series. Why was she not even BAFTA nominated for this (she won the Emmy)??

Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness (2003 Tom Hooper)

Strong stuff about Bosnia-Serbia conflict in Peter Berry's story (another writer without much on his CV), which makes Jane - and thus us too - look at cleaners differently. The King's Speech Tom Hooper directs Mirren, Liam Cunningham, Velibor Topic (good), Oleg Menshikov (also good as the name-changing optician), Ben Miles, Mark Strong. I'm not quite sure who Olegar Fedoro played but he debuted in Stalker!

She always gets her man, and manages to upset Scotland yard into the bargain.

Helen was nominated for an Emmy for this (but won for the Scent of Darkness and the final film) and episodes 2, 3 and 5. The British Academy gave her the award three years running for the first three (you can imagine how the other nominees were feeling in the 1994 ceremony!) and she was nominated for The Lost Child, Errors of Judgement and this one.

After a seven year break we are finally in 16:9. Larry Smith (The Guard, Calvary, Nemesis) shot it with a somewhat distracting overuse of wide lenses.

We also learn conclusively how to pronounce Duscan Zigic (Duzhan Zhigich).

Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgement (1996 Philip Davis)

Yes, that Phil Davis. We had been lulled into a false sense of security with the last two - this is another 200 minute epic, set in Manchester, written by Guy Andrews and dealing with the corrupt coalition between a senior policeman and a feared local criminal known as 'The Street', rather convincingly played by Stephen Mackintosh.

So we have a new team headed by John Mcardle, with Julia Lane, John Brobbery, and the measured Glasgow tones of David O'Hara.

Barry McCann shot this one, with really good black night scenes, but he wouldn't have liked our ITV DVD box set presentation which crops his (presumably) 14x9 image into 4x3 so that even main characters are often slightly out of frame.

The ending, in which the bent cop stands by his decision to ally with a psycho, seems slightly incredible, but there's the usual very tense finish in the kind of derelict industrial estate that Life on Mars then reclaimed for seventies locations.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: One More Mile to Go (1957 AH himself)

Begins as a silent film - husband and wife argues, he kills her. Then sets out in the car to dump the body. Until the end of part one there's no dialogue. Then a traffic cop gets involved, and we're suddenly in a trial run for Psycho (with John Russell on camera).

Simple, neat teleplay by James Cavanagh from a story by FJ Smith features the master's trademark view-POV sequences on a lonely highway.

Prime Suspect: Inner Circles (1995 Sarah Pia Anderson)

Tennison has a female DS who doesn't get any favours - played with commitment by Sarah Stanton (who then became typecast as Eastenders' DCI!). Investigation of murder points to council corruption. Young Kelly Reilly makes an impression, other playing is efficient. Jane buys two bottles of scotch at the supermarket... So would Morse....

Screenwritten by Eric Deacon from a story by Meredith Oakes (no significant credits on either).

London Road (2015 Rufus Norris)

We had to see this following Norris's film Broken (2012). Norris is an intense-looking theatre director - Q correctly identifies the film as having operatic roots (comparing it to Turandot at one point!). Having no idea what it was about we were initially intrigued by curiously worded singing by TV presenters, then realised that everything in it is real words spoken by residents of Ipswich road where murderer was caught. The effect is incredible. Often very funny e.g. the two girls who can't trust anyone, the TV presenters outside court. But also very impactful - in particular the song performed by the (remaining) prostitutes - we hear some of the real material in audio at the end - and this is the way all of writer Alecky Blythe's stuff is constructed. (This was originally a stage musical.)

Unfortunately for us, Norris is halfway through a year-long stint as resident director at the National, so no more films for the time being.

With the utterly fabulous as always Olivia Colman, Anita Dobson, Kate Fleetwood, Paul Thornley, Janet Henfrey and (briefly) Tom Hardy.

Music by Adam Cork, shot by Danny Cohen (with a noticeable shift from desaturated to full colour as the story progresses).

Miss Marple: Nemesis (2007 Nicholas Winding Refn)

As previously described, one of the most stylish of the series.

Refn is Danish and lived in New York from eight. Only God Forgives (2013) was his second pairing with Ryan Gosling, a Bangkok-set thriller with mixed reviews.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967 Arthur Penn)

The film that jumped American film into modernity is claimed to be the first that really embraced the nouvelle vague - evident especially from Dede Allen's dancing editing - and indeed Truffaut initially was approached to direct - writers Robert Benton and David Newman loved A Bout de Souffle and Truffaut; Robert Towne then worked on it.

Truffaut finally rejected it after learning Beatty had bought the script and was producer.

"Actually", he wrote to Elinor Jones, "I have no admiration for Warren Beatty and, moreover, he seems to me an extremely unpleasant person. As far as I'm concerned, he and Marlon Brando, and several others, are on a little list I have classified in my head as 'Better not to make films at all than to make films with these people'."

'Truffaut', de Baeque & Toubiana (1999).

Faye Dunaway is just great, for example in scene where she's scoffing a burger and Beatty tells her to change her hair. Also the vision of the blonde, stocking-wearing moll brandishing a tommy gun is memorable indeed.

I realised after that Michael J Pollard's character is the couple's adopted son. With Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons (AA), Gene Wilder. Burnett Guffey's photography is superb, memorably in shot which catches the sun going behind a cloud over a field, but also in the pastel scenes where Bonnie visits her family (amusingly he's reported to have hated the way he was made to shoot it).

The way they are executed at the end disgusts even the cops. It's still quite an ending.

Jack Warner hated it. The critics hated it, except a young Roger Ebert, who had just started working as a reviewer. And according to Newton, Pauline Kael attempted to rescue it in her fierce defence in the New York Times.

Fabulous, and still fresh.

Deconstructing Harry (1997 Woody Allen & scr)

Nothing really to add to this.

What Women Want (2000 Nancy Meyers)

Written by Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa and Diane Drake. By and large a great story and in getting into the heads of women actually unique, refreshing, original.

Ph. Dean Cundey.

No conversations this time about whether Clooney would have been better, rather enjoying Mel's performance. With the questionable Helen Hunt, Alan Alda, Marisa Tomei, Ashley Johnson (the daughter), Delta Burke and Valerie Perrine (who amusingly don't seem to generate any thoughts at all) and Judy Greer as the quietly despairing filing girl (the film's most poignant moments).

Short Cuts (1993 Robert Altman Co-scr)

There's something distinctive about Altman - the slow zooms, overlapping dialogue, use of music, ensemble cast - that's unique and has been since MASH.

It's probably useful to group the cast together like the film does, despite the story overlaps.

So we have:

Andie MacDowell, Bruce Davison, Jack Lemmon and Zane Cassidy, crossing swords with revengeful baker Lyle Lovett.. (Has one of the best moments where MacDowell loses it, then he starts offering them cakes).

Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine. Anne Archer and Fred Ward as the quartet who have such a successful dinner party they're still hanging around the next day.

Then we have the rather good and understated Jennifer Jason Leigh who's with Chris Penn, plus Lili Taylor and Robert Downey Jr. in the most shocking story development.

Madeleine Stowe puts up with asshole cop Tim Robbins, having affair with Frances McDormand, which ex Peter Gallagher dislikes. 'Susie' is the male, motorbike travelling dog.

And don't forget the flaky relationship of Lily Tomlin and Tom Waits.

Finally singer Annie Ross and daughter (and actual cellist) Lori Singer.

Shot by Walt Lloyd in Panavision. Dylan Tichenor is an assistant editor and seeing he later cut Magnolia there's a definite link in the material and the way it's presented. (Also The Town, There Will be Blood, Zero Dark Thirty, Doubt, The Asassination of Jess James by the Coward Robert Ford, Brokeback Mountain, The Royal Tenenbaums, Unbreakable, Boogie Nights).

Detour (1945 Edgar G. Ulmer)

One of the tautest, shortest (68 minutes on DVD) films noir, snappily written by Martin Goldsmith and (according to the director*) made in six days (several of them in front of a back projection screen). Ann Savage is memorably nasty, Tom Neal is the voice-overed, doomed protagonist, who in real life did time for manslaughtering his own wife.

As fatalistic as the best of them, there isn't a well-known name in the credits (except for Bud Westmore) and the film only seems to exist in warped and jumpy form, like watching Tarantino's Death Proof. In fact, viewed with a sense of irony, the film is pretty funny and still effective - when he's tugging on the telephone cord, you know he's killing her...

Lighting of the flashback scenes is reminiscent of the same year's Brief Encounter.

Ulmer worked with Murnau ('the best') and co-directed People on Sunday, with Robert Siodmak, Eugene Schufftan, Fred Zinnemann and Billy Wilder. According to Eddie Muller (who includes this in his Top 25 noirs), Ulmer fell for Shirley Castle who divorced her husband, Carl Laemmle's cousin, who 'got even by blackballing Ulmer at all the major studios. Poverty Row became home, but Castle remained his devoted wife for the rest of his life'.

* In Peter Bogdanovich's 'Who the Devil Made It?' From the same source we know that Ulmer's favourites of his own films were this, The Black Cat and Naked Dawn.

The Proposal (2009 Anne Fletcher)

I quite like seeing films directed by women, there can be something slightly different about them - this one isn't. It's written by a man - Pete Chiarelli - not too well I have to say.

Some films are like pebbles bouncing along the bottom of the sea, like this one. Some are happy dolphins swimming above, like a Crowe or Bogdanovich. (Very occasionally, like Tarkovsky, you get the whole ocean.)

Anyway, film is exceedingly dumb as hard-nosed boss Sandra Bullock (see earlier misgivings) forces (?) Ryan Reynolds (as bland as a teddy bear) to marry her. Naturally there is some confusion (though nowhere nearly as much as there should be) from parents Mary Steenburgen and Craig T Nelson and granny Betty White (who provides the film's only joke in a helicopter). Denis O'Hare is one of The Good Wife's judges.

Shot in Dulux tones by Oliver Stapleton.

Prime Suspect: The Lost Child (1995 John Madden)

We have become even more conventional in shorter TV film length episode written by Paul Billing (and shot by David Odd), though story of abducted baby and paedophile is gripping. Robert Glenister is the PS, Leslie Sharp his missus. Mossie Smith returns. Tennison is the Gov'nor now but is just as hands on as always.

Prime Suspect 3 (1993 David Drury)

In true The Wire style we change subject matter again, this time focusing on paedophilia and high level corruption - a hot and timely topic indeed. Jane's moved to vice, reteaming with Tom Bell (who surprises us by being both compassionate and good with the kids) and Richard Hawley and encountering a new team including Mark Strong, shady Andrew Woodall, Philip Wright and out-of-the-closet Mark Drewry.

Most interesting cast also includes David Thewlis, Peter Capaldi in drag, Ciaran Hinds, Jonny Lee Miller and wee Danny Dyer.

Seems like the series might be the template for The Wire, The Killing etc. though this one is rather more conventional - more music, less docu-approach.

She ought to have made it clear that one of her officers was HIV suspected through. But the scene in which Mirren stands up to her superiors is wonderful indeed.