Grosse Pointe Blank (1997 George Armitage)

To compensate for Joan Cusack in the last film, she's great here playing John Cusack's assassin assistant.

When Minnie Driver laughs, you sense it's genuine.

Story by John Jankiewicz and screenplay by he, Steve Pink, John Cusack and D.V. DeVincentis.

The Christmas Train (2017 Ron Oliver)

I like train films, normally. Not this one, a Hallmark production with a sleigh bell around every corner, and a high cheeseometer rating. So bad it's a lot of fun. I sort of regret deleting it already.

Early on, writer Dermot Mulroney says 'I hope there's a story here' to which Q commented 'Well if there isn't we're all in trouble' and that set the scene for the whole thing. (There's a sort of story but it's so unbelievable that I won't trouble any of us with it).

Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Danny Glover, Joan Cusack are involved. The dialogue and pictorials are definitely straight out of Hallmark Cards' back catalogue. And I've never seen such an un-trainy train film. There's barely an exterior shot, and when there is, it's of a model train in the snow. I seriously wanted the film to end with all of the travellers frozen to death, over which plays the song 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas'.

If eggnog can be used as an abusive term it should be applied to this film. But that's what you get watching Channel 5 on a Sunday afternoon in November.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002 Chris Columbus)

The one where Harry learns he can speak Parseltongue, is taken back in time by Tom Riddle (Christian Coulson), saves Ginny and is rescued from an army of CGI spiders (surely child nightmare inducing) by the flying car (which then seems to disappear from the rest of the series). Oh, and frees Dobby the house-elf.

There's another cartoonish Quidditch match and guest Dark Arts teacher is Kenneth Branagh.

Again the production design is wonderful (girls' bathroom, the Chamber, Dumbledore's study).

Shot by Roger Pratt, editor Peter Honess, Williams, Craig.

Is that the Bodleian standing in for a library? Yes, and bits of several other Oxford Universities. And Black Park!

I love that when Moaning Myrtle tells Harry that if anything happens to him, he's welcome to share her cubicle, he sincerely thanks her.. he's so polite!

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968 Tony Richardson)

In William Boyd's list of successful war films in that it is as realistic and accurate as possible and doesn't glorify or sentimentalise war.* The actual charge is presented as a massive balls-up brought about by feuding officers and crap decision-making (personified by a brilliant Trevor Howard, Harry Andrews and John Gielgud). The film also spotlights the lunacy of the soldiers and the situations, with lots of priceless dialogue. Charles Wood's screenplay shows how insane Howard's Lord Cardigan is (having David Hemmings arrested for bringing a 'black bottle' to the mess table; having the tents continually taken down and re-erected). Also the treatment of soldiers and horses (and wives - wives were taken to the front?? And why not.) There's also a romantic triangle - reminiscent of Giu La Testa - for good measure.

The decision to anti-climaxise (why not?) the actual Charge cost the film dearly at the box office, according to Alexander Walker in 'Hollywood, England'.

Handsomely mounted in Panavision by David Watkin and Roy Stevens (production design) and Edward Marshall (art direction), music by John Addison, editing by Hugh Reggett and Kevin Brownlow (supervising), useful animations by Richard Williams. Peter Suschitsky is on second unit camera. A Woodfall production.

With Vanessa Redgrave, Jill Bennett, Ben Aris, Peter Bowles.

Richardson had a most interesting career: Look Back in Anger (Richard Burton), A Taste of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Tom Jones, The Loved One, Mademoiselle, The Sailor from Gibraltar, most of these edited by Tony Gibbs, this, went off a bit after that, ended up on The Hotel New Hampshire.. though should not be confused with Richard Lester.

*Rest of list: Full Metal Jacket, Musa the Warrior (2001 South Korea), Captain Conan (France 1996, Tavernier, WW1, very authentic looking), Downfall, Catch 22, Battle for Haditha (2007 Afghanistan docu-drama),  The Hurt Locker, Das Boot, Contact, Band of Brothers, Tumbledown (Colin Firth in 1988 TV movie, also written by Charles Wood), Platoon, The Bridge (1959 German, teenage soldiers), A Very Long Engagement, The War Lover, The Battle of Britain, Black Hawk Down, Hell in the Pacific, The Battle of Algiers, Oh What a Lovely War!,  The Duellists, Cross of Iron, Generation Kill, The Valley of Elah.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001 Chris Columbus)

Or 'Sorcerer's Stone' as the book and film were known in the US (J.K. didn't have enough clout to stop the publisher's changing the title). It's very like one of those 'kids at school' sort of books or comics.

Robbie Coltrane steals the acting honours though Richard Harris is a fine Dumbledore.

Great production design, lighting and music - Stuart Craig, John Seale, John Williams, well adapted by Steve Kloves.

The CGI is not very good (the Quidditch scene is not particularly well handled). Columbus brings the 'Whoah!' factor despite an exclusively British cast.


Also I'm not sure a fitting detention for first years is to go into the Black Forest (or whatever it's called) at night to stop unicorns being slain, J.K.

It's taken me this many years to wonder why HP doesn't fix his own eyesight with a spell.

P.S. 30/10/21. I note from the Time Out Film Guide there's a 1957 Satyajit Ray film called The Philosopher's Stone, which can change base metals to gold...

Yesterday (2019 Danny Boyle)

First of all, 'Yesterday' is a phenomenal song.

Richard Curtis (and Jack Barth) story posits a world where the Beatles never existed (and in an amusing joke, therefore neither does Oasis), but failing performer Himesh Patel somehow remembers them and starts doing good business with their material. He leaves his best friend / manager Lily James (who's clearly nuts about him) to make it big in the US, that corrupt bigness represented by a caricature baddie / producer Kate McKinnon, meeting Ed Sheeran along the way - who's at a loss how this genius keeps coming up with great songs.

Curtis has some fun with this, for example he struggles to remember what the confounding lyrics of 'Eleanor Rigby' are, though somehow remembers all the others easily (I don't think I could remember all the lyrics of any Beatles song - well, maybe some of 'A Day In the Life', but that's it.)

Meanwhile a couple of people who do remember the Beatles make an appearance for no good plot reason. As does John Lennon (Robert Carlyle).

Then there's a massive gig in the performer's home town, and he spills the beans, releasing all the material free (he might have taken this opportunity of having an audience of thousands to play his own material) and reunites with the girl.

Some jokes about other things that also don't exist (smoking, Coke, Harry Potter) don't make much sense, like the film as a whole, which is undemanding fun, but a notch below other Curtis gems, almost an auto-pilot Curtis, featuring the usual Curtis 'types' all over the place (e.g. thick friends, unimpressed parents Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar), and Boyle's trademark annoying tilted cameras for no good reason.

I have enjoyed About Time more each time I've seen it, which is also nonsense, so maybe this one will grow in stature, but I'm afraid to say that my initial impression is that it isn't very good.

Unlike some of Jon Harris's editing (T2 Trainspotting, Kingsman, The Two Faces of January, 127 Hours, Kick-Ass, Eden Lake, Stardust, Starter for Ten, Layer Cake - hm, must watch Layer Cake again some time), which is cool.

Living With Yourself (2019 Creator / Writer Timothy Greenberg)

Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Greenberg mainly known for being a producer of The Daily Show.

Fairly unsubtle really - about our hidden and untapped potentials. But with an interesting structure (each episode is based on a flashback). Funny, ultimately inconclusive.

Paul Rudd, Paul Rudd, Aisling Bea.

Have to say I loved the very unusual and quirky synth music score - Brit Anna Meredith. Turns out it's not just synths but trombones, cellos, drums and other acoustics. It gives it a whole new flavour.

For Netflix. 8 x 30 mins.

Love, Honour and Obey (1999 Dominic Anciano, Ray Burdis & scr)

A messy movie in which wannabe hard-nut gangster Johnny Lee Miller is supplanted on a farcical group of North London gangsters, headed by Ray Winstone and his nephew Jude Law.

The Miller character, who distractingly narrates dressed as a clown, is annoyingly undeveloped - has no seeming purpose other than to be a gangster and cause trouble with the South London boys Sean Pertwee (not terribly convincing) and Rhys Ifans. So we don't really care about him or the film.

Most fun in the buffoonery of gangsters and molls Sadie Frost, Kathy Burke, Denise van Outen, Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis (who play the bouncers), Perry Benson etc. and in various karaoke bits.

Anciano & Burdis had made Final Cut the previous year, also with Winstone, Law and Frost, a sort of 'home movie' which has very mixed reviews.

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (2018 Mike Newell)

I think I would have dropped the 'potato peel pie' idea from both the title and screenplay in predictable war-time intrigue. Not sure Lily James is terribly convincing as the investigating writer, faced with eccentric group of Tom Courtenay, Michiel Huisman, Katherine Parkinson, Jessica Brown Findlay and Penelope Wilton. With Matthew Goode, Glen Powell, Kit Connor as the kid.

Edited by Paul Tothill, written by Don Roos, Kevin Hood and Thomas Bucha from Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows' novel, shot by Zac Nicholson.

Best thing in it is succulent roast pork featured near the beginning.

Filmed in Devon and Cornwall, with interiors at Ealing Studios.

The Long Memory (1952 Robert Hamer & co-scr)

John Mills emerges from prison after 12 years seeking revenge on the people who put him there - but in the end can't be bothered to exact it. Unusual drama (it isn't really a thriller) benefits from Kent / Gravesend locations / milieu and an uncharacteristically tough John Mills.

Good cast: John McCullum (Superintendent), Elizabeth Sellars, Eve Bergh, Geoffrey Keen (the journalist), Michael Martin Harvey (eccentric beach dweller), a marvellously oily John Chandos as the 'dead' man, John Slater, Thora Hird, Vida Hope, Harold Lang (rather good as Chandos' No. 2) and Reggie Perrin's Doc Morrissey John Horsley.

Photography Harry Waxman, music William Alwyn. Well directed by Hamer.

The Drop (2014 Michael R Roskam)

Tom Hardy pulls off a perfect New York accent and comes over a bit simple, and somehow triumphs - or does he? - in somewhat murky ending. Dennis Lehane wrote the novels of 'Mystic River' and 'Gone Baby Gone', and a few episodes of The Wire, and he adapted this from his own short story 'Animal Rescue', featuring, as it does, a rescued dog.

He and James Gandolfini (his last film) run a bar that is itself run by Chechins, and 'The Drop' is when all the illegal Brooklyn money is deposited. You'd think it would be stolen, but it isn't, though we think Gandolfini was after it, and that's why he's iced in an alley - thus it is all a bit murky, but Hardy does connect with Noomi Rapace and does away with Matthias Schoenaerts, who's difficult to spell and annoying, maintaining the rescued dog is his dog. John Ortiz investigates on behalf of the LAPD or wherever they are - OK, it was actually filmed in New York (by Nicolas I, Tonya Karakatsanis).

We watched it, of that I'm certain, and a good chunk of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, which was after it - a sort of guilty bad pleasure that kept us up too late; you can't trust people whose eyes are too blue, you see.

Love, Rosie (2014 Christian Ditter)

Actually I was thinking this was another film altogether - only after it had been on for five minutes did I realise that was Me Before You, with the charismatic Emilia Clarke - this fortunately features the charismatic Lily Collins and Sam Claflin, so that's all right.

One of those films in which the friends (Jamie Winstone in this case) aren't really properly integrated as characters - they're just there to be called upon when the script needs them.

Anyway - the film could have been called Bad Timing as well (or Big Eyebrows Are In), but that's neither here nor there. It all comes from a novel called 'Where Rainbows End' by Cecilia Ahern, adapted by Juliette Towhidi (Calendar Girls, Death Comes to Pemberley and - on TV today by odd coincidence - Testament of Youth - an adapter, then). The friends both make rubbish partner choices before finally...

Christian Rein sumptuously filmed it, and also featured are Christian Cooke, Suki Waterhouse, Tamsin Egerton, Jamie Beamish, Lorcan Cranitch and Ger Ryan.

Too many songs over soundtrack.

Lily Collins is filming Emily in Paris.

Pacific Heights (1990 John Schlesinger)

Daniel Pyne (one of Doc Hollywood's writers) gives us a couple who buy a house they can't afford, and saddles them with a serial asset-stripper for a tenant, who somehow moves in uninvited (he later enters their part of the house quite nonchalantly). Quite why he also infests the ground floor with cockroaches I'm not sure - let's just say this is to get the audience shifting awkwardly in their seats.

Matthew Modine keeps losing his temper over it all, and ends up on the wrong side of the police, leaving Melanie Griffiths (in unflattering jeans and trousers) to track down the rogue and turn the tables. The rogue, incidentally, is Michael Keaton - no relation of Diane - who's more charismatic than either of them. Also features Mako and Nobu McCarthy as the Japanese tenants, Laurie Metcalf, Carl Lumbly and Tippi Hedren, though she's not in any scenes with her daughter (that would have made them both laugh).

It all moves along very smoothly. Steven Ramirez edited Amir Mokri's images to Hans Zimmer's music.

The house isn't in Pacific Heights at all, but in the allegedly downmarket district of Potrero Hill.

The Hunt for Tony Blair (2011 Peter Richardson & co-scr)

I don't know why this popped into my head, but it's very, very funny, co-written with Pete Richens. We need more stuff like this - The Comic Strip Presents - Brexit... When you need a reminder of why Channel 4 is good and challenging.

In 1950s style, Tony Blair (Stephen Mangan) is wanted for murder... Robbie Coltrane and James Buckley are after him. Add a dash of The 39 Steps and Sunset Boulevard - providing the film's funniest cameo - Jennifer Saunders (who else?) as a perfect amalgam of Gloria Swanson and Margaret Thatcher. With Catherine Shepherd, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Ronni Ancona, Ross Noble, Tony Curran, Harry Enfield, John Sessions.

I didn't realise Blair killed John Smith.. or Robin Cook.

It shows a certain looseness, as though made in a rush - Q argues this may have been intentional. Lit by Mike Robinson.

Get Shorty (1995 Barry Sonnenfeld)

The real Chili Palmer appears in Scott Frank's adaptation of Elmore Leonard's book. John Travolta is very cool, Gene Hackman funny. Feel like I'm writing this aged 12.

A delectable cast. Rene Russo, Danny de Vito, Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo, James Gandolfini, David Paymer, Martin Ferrero, Bette Midler, Harvey Keitel.

Music: John Lurie, DOP Donald Peterman, editor Jim Miller.

In 2017 a TV version began with Chris O'Dowd and Ray Romano.

8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997 Tom Schulman & scr)

A farce involving a bag of heads that ends up with the wrong people. That says it all. The best thing about it is Greg Cannom's heads.

Joe Pesci, Any Comeau, Kristy Swanson, Dyan Cannon, George Hamilton, David Spade, Tod Louiso.

Halloween III: The Season of the Witch (1982 Tommy Lee Wallace & co-scr)

Originally written by British horror legend Nigel Kneale, featuring a mad toy-maker who tries to reclaim Halloween through evil masks.. but it's become filtered into some nonsense with evil coming in the shape of bland and robotic corporate executive types.. which is a shame, because somewhere in here there's the germ of a good idea.

I know the previous two feature some variable acting, but even the lead in this one is terrible - Tom Atkins (actually, he's so bad it's enjoyable).

We saw a cropped version, which is a shame, because the only decent thing about the film is Dean Cundey's cinematography, originally in 2.39:1.

Amazingly, it does carry the names of John Carpenter and Debra Hill.

Without wishing to be rude, this is a textbook example of bad direction, even in the simplest of scenes.

28 Days Later (2002 Danny Boyle)

Frenetic film-making, a film on a tilt as much as The Third Man - only it works here - unlike in the Getty drama Trust - in which it was distracting. Also some incredible editing - by Chris Gill (The Guard, Calvary) and photography (Anthony Dod Mantle)  unite to give this enormous visual style. It was shot on Mini DV so as to film the 4AM London scenes as quickly as possible (angry commuters and anxious police all around), and that gives the film quite an odd and interesting look, especially in rain scenes.

Alex Garland's screenplay is a kind of Day of the Triffids / Survivors riff, but there's some interesting sub-text - about animal rights' groups, the army mentality and... er, something, can't remember now... oh yeah, consumerism (the beginning of the film is plastered with redundant consumer imagery).

Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson (in a slightly unusual accent), Megan Burns and Chris Ecclestone star.

Features a charming use of a London Black Cab, also.

"The end is extremely nigh."

Halloween (2018 David Gordon Green & co-scr)

Well, we thoroughly enjoyed this sequel / remake / funny parody, the latter evident in the scene where doctor Haluk Bilginer relates the same sort of psycho-babble as his mentor Loomis would have done (he even sounds quite like Donald Pleasance). With tons of references to the original to please fans like us, and a winning disregard for logic and even the source story (he only killed five people? we last saw him burned to death at the end of II? He can't be killed!! - the more I think about it, the Brexit reference works - whatever you do, it / he still comes back to haunt you.)

Did they ask Dean Cundey to shoot it? Michael Simmonds was DoP. The music's a nice reimagining by Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, Timothy Alverson edited.

Written by Green, Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride. Carpenter (70) was an exec producer.

In the washroom scene I'd rather be stabbed than crawl around on that floor.

With Jaime Lee are daughter Judy Greer and her daughter Andi Matichak, with Will Paton, Rhian Rees, Jefferson Hall, Toby Huss (good as Greer's husband).

Rather pleased with myself for identifying the snatch of Repo Man after Wilder knows how many years.

Green made Pineapple Express with Seth Rogan and Danny McBride, and also wrote a Suspiria draft which Luca Guadagnino then ignored (probably to that film's loss).

Didn't have much in the way of suspense, and not nearly as stylish as the original, but great fun.

And When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007 Anand Tucker)

"My last recollection of my father was the look on his face after I placed him in a nursing home in Miami, Florida. Wracked by Parkinson's disease and heart trouble, I was saddened by how far removed he was from the authoritarian and emotionally distant man I feared when I was young, yet a lifetime of resentment could not be entirely forgotten..."

So begins an IMDB review from one Howard Schumann, a bracingly honest statement, and evidence that the film - written by David Nicholls from poet/author Blake Morrison's memoir - stirs up filial feelings and prompts discussion about our own fathers.

Great cast: Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Gina McKee, Juliet Stevenson, Matthew Beard, Claire Skinner, Sarah Lancashire, Elaine Cassidy, Carey Mulligan.

Music by Barrington Pheloung (like Tucker, born in Thailand), photographed by Howard Atherton, who's having fun with mirrors:

It's good. Seven years was too long to leave it. Perhaps there was a reason for that.