Foyle's War: Trespass (2015 Stuart Orme, writer Anthony Horowitz)

What starts out as a film about the Israel/Palestine situation (Horowitz was born into the family of a Jewish north London businessman), racism (and Fascism) turns out to have a much more subversive underbelly involving the Foreign Office, whose machinations force Foyle to resign... briefly. Amber Rose Revah, Alexander Arnold, Hermione Gulliford, Alex Jennings, John Heffernan, Richard Lintern (vile Fascist rabble-rouser). Good twisty story, exciting climax. And he often writes sweet little mini-stories. In this one, an ill boy is being looked after by a sweet older Polish couple, and Sam (Honeysuckle) tries to help.

Foyle's War: Sunflower (2013 Andy Hay, scr Anthony Horowitz)

What was Operation Sunflower / Sonnenblume? A horrible Nazi is being protected by British Intelligence;  Foyle is asked to look after him, though the Americans want him for a war crime of the title. But someone from his past is after him too.

Lars Eidinger is the odious German. Charles Aitken gives a stunning performance as the war-shocked survivor. It was something of a nuisance that we missed the last 20 minutes.

Magpie Murders (2022 Pater Cattaneo, writer Anthony Horowitz)

A Famous Author is murdered (he seems a bit of a shit). The way he gets annoyed when people call it 'The Magpie Murders' made me think of Q - 'No, it's not The Bodyguard, it's Bodyguard!' Editor Lesley Manville must find the missing last chapter of his last book. Meanwhile, in the book, a country squire is murdered... Offering good opportunities for characters to appear in both.

I kept thinking of The Singing Detective, with which it shares a similar structure. It was thoroughly enjoyable. Seems to reflect in the plot Conan Doyle's dislike for Sherlock Holmes.

We had attempted to watch a very rough-and-ready film from 1974, The Lords of Flatbush, with Sly Stallone and Henry Winkler, but it was very badly recorded and seemed to be in the Department of Clichés, so we abandoned ship. After the relative disappointment of Cry Macho we just couldn't be there.

With Tim McMullan (a Foyle's War alumni) as Atticus Pünd (not a German word), Conleth Hill (author), Pippa Heywood, Michael Maloney, Daniel Mays, Nathan Clarke, Harry Lawtey, Ian Lloyd Anderson.

Filmed in Ireland and Kersey in Suffolk.

Good opening credits animation by Huge Media:

Cattaneo made The Full Monty and Military Wives and episodes of The A Word and Rev.

Foyle's War: The Cage (2013 Stuart Orme, writer David Kane)

Rupert Vansittart is the new intelligence boss, who is quickly impressed by Foyle, investigating murders of Russian double agents. Honeysuckle's working there too, whilst helping her husband win his local election. Plot also centres on abduction of the wrong Eveleyn Green (a neat plot point). Tom Beard, Jonathan Hyde, Ellie Haddington, Tim McMullan.

It's filmed in Ireland. The Intelligence Services HQ is the Custom House, Dublin. The military base was Kiladoon House.

Crazy Stupid Love (2011 Glenn Ficarra, John Requa)

 Written by Dan Fogelman.

"This is going to be fun!"

Spencer (2021 Pablo Larraín)

Or, The Spencering, as I was getting a strong echo of The Shining, with its feeling of isolation, tracking shots down long corridors, ghastly decoration - even the scene between her and Timothy Spall in the larder - I almost expected him to say 'You've always been here, ma'am'. And weird music (Johnny Greenwood - an amazing score).

Kristen Stewart is simply fabulous as Diana.

Have to mention on camera Claire Mathon, whose team follows, watches, tracks, laterally tracks, pans, runs and nimbly goes wherever it needs to.

With the great Spall, Sean Harris and Sally Hawkins are Jack Farthing again, Stella Gonet (the Queen), Amy Manson (Anne Boleyn), Jack Nielen and Freddie Spry (William and Harry). Elizabeth Berrington apparently plays Princess Anne but I can't say I actually saw her face.

And written by Steven Knight. Love the joke about Diana's concern for safety when shooting. "Of course it will be safe. We wear protective glasses."

It blew me away. Larraín made Jackie, which I wasn't mad about, perhaps need to reevaluate. Something they share is an odd aspect ratio - this I think in 1.66:1. In the totally underwhelming 'making of' film, we did not talk to Knight, Mathon nor Greenwood, who I would have thought are all key collaborators. Nor film editor Sebastian Sepulvida, but that's par for the course. (I should mention the wonderful montage scene.)

Stewart has been Oscar nominated but I would have voted for Mathon and Greenwood also.

Cry Macho (2021 Clint Eastwood)

Cry Macho - which is not a good title, by the way - begins with some clunky expository dialogue and acting - it isn't necessary to say 'You've won five rodeo championships and then broke your back, and since your wife and kid weren't around I've looked after you'. Absolutely none of that needs to be said, especially as we see all his trophies and newspaper headlines - all the rest can emerge slowly, as in the best screenplays. And this is odd, because Nick Schenk has been involved in Gran Torino and The Mule and The Judge. And therefore, you'd think, knows what he's doing. Plus, as we know Eastwood the director gets involved in scripts, you would have thought he would have found problems there himself, so maybe some accusations that the ninety-year-old is losing his grip are valid.

He also finds the boy (Eduardo Minett) far too easily and the boy comes along far too easily - where's the conflict? Anyway, when the couple find the town and sleep in the church and meet the widowed grandmother, then it begins to find its feet and becomes an amiable adventure, with the boy's chicken proving useful. It's also beautifully photographed, by Ben Davis (Three Billboards, Doctor Strange, Seven Psychopaths). Edited by Joel and (I'm guessing his son) David Cox.

Based on a novel by N. Richard Nash, who co-wrote. With Natalia Traven, Fernanda Urrejola, Dwight Yoakam, Elida Munoz, Horacio Garcia Rojas.

Foyle's War: The Eternity Ring (2013 Stuart Orme, writer Anthony Horowitz)

In between The Cage and this, Foyle has been to America and is person non grata with the FBI, like there's a missing episode (maybe it's a novel). Straight off the boat he is summoned by MI5 to look into a case involving nuclear scientists and Honeysuckle Weeks, which he grudgingly accepts. Michael Kitchen's great, incisively cutting through the crap.

Cross-cut with this is the story of how a former constable of Foyle, returned from a Japanese POW Camp, is having difficulty settling back in. Hopefully we haven't seen the end of it.

With Ken Bones, Stephen Boxer, Tim McMullan, Ellie Haddington, Nicholas Jones, Daniel Weyman (Honeysuckle's husband). And ex solder Jo Duttine, wife Jennifer Hennessy and son Sam Clemmett.

No Return (2022 John Alexander, writer Danny Brocklehurst)

I bet Sheridan Smith's agent was happy that two things with her came out so close together. Brocklehurst is best known in this house as the adapter of dodgy Harlan Coben stories.

On holiday in Turkey, her boy is accused of sexually assaulting another kid and arrested. This leads to an Uncovering - or an Unwinding - writer's conflict, if you prefer. It's enacted by Sian Brooke, Michael Jibson, Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Murat Seven, Dabid Mumeni and Lily Sutcliffe

We loved the character and performance of the Turkish lawyer, Philip Arditti. Also Cosh Omar as the judge.

Four-parter for ITV. Moral of the story? Don't go on holiday to Turkey. (It was filmed in Spain - not Morocco, as I had guessed.) Which considering the Turkish Tourist Board has been quite active in advertising recently, I found quite funny.

Maybe it's an Unravelling. Something Bad happens, and everything Unravels. It's in Chapter 3 of the TV Scriptwriter's Book.

Foyle's War: The Hide (2010 Stuart Orme, writer Anthony Horowitz)

Good film. Foyle has retired, but still gets involved in trial of young man (Andrew Scott) caught in Nazi POW troop, survivor of Dresden. Many echoes abound with back story of his family (set at West Wycombe Park again), father David Yelland and step-mum Anastasia Hille.

Beautifully melded into this is Foyle's previous DI Anthony Howell and how his investigation of the murder of a young woman in Brighton fits in.

And in another side story, Honeysuckle Weeks and her man Max Brown are struggling to keep their boarding house afloat - face redevelopment by profiteers.

With Richard Goulding.

West Wycombe Park has been in Endeavour: Canticle, Belle and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Chloe (2022 Alice Seabright & scr)

She's a Sex Ed director. Concerning a strange young woman, and her anonymous and sneaky penetration of a circle of friends who are connected with the mysterious Chloe, clearly an ex-friend of hers who has cast her aside, now dead. The husband turns out to have been a controlling freak, the musician friend is in denial, as is the girl's supposed best friend. It evokes Rebecca / The Uninvited, slightly, with its dead woman and cliff-top ending. The ending seemed a bit nebulous, somehow, like nothing was really resolved. And how she is then supposed to go on with no job, no place to live and Mum in expensive care home, we can only guess. (She does seem quite good at PR, when she's not being sneaky.)

Erin Doherty (The Crown) is appropriately sly and furtive; with Billy Howle (The Serpent), Jack Farthing (Poldark), Pippa Bennett-Warner, Brandon Michael Hall (looked familiar but wasn't), Poppy Gilbert (Chloe), Ashkay Kannah, Lisa Palfrey (mum). Made with a certain flourish in the editing, music and sound mixing (the death of the little sister is particularly well done), but it all adds up to I don't know what, and as usual, I'm left wondering if it's a six hour story. And if you're going to keep showing shots of text messages, make sure we can fucking read them!

In the Heat of the Night (1967 Norman Jewison)

Broadcast by the BBC as a tribute - quite right. Good though Steiger is though, the Oscar should have gone to Poitier. Though as it turns out, he wasn't even nominated! (BAFTA did so.) That is scandalous. Film also won Best Picture, Screenplay, Editing and Sound.

Jewison's blocking is noticeable, Hal Ashby's editing is incisive, Haskell Wexler's photography is subtle but exceptional (very long shot zoom in on bridge is perfectly in focus). Well acted by all: Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Larry Gates, James Patterson, William Schallert, Beah Richards (also Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), Peter Whitney, Ms. Quentin Dean, and the creepily good Anthony James (also in High Plains Drifter). Plus a young Harry Dean Stanton. Scott Wilson, as the suspect, was in In Cold Blood because Poitier recommended him.

A Mirisch Corporation film released through United Artists. Music by Quincy Jones. Written by Stirling Silliphant, based on a novel by John Ball.

Earthquake (1974 Mark Robson)

Watch out! For falling papier mâché and script clichés! ("This used to be a helluva town.") Enjoyable soap opera / disaster movie, starring Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Ava Gardner, Genevieve Bujold. With Lorne Greene, Richard Roundtree, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Marjoe Gortner (with the hair), Victoria Principal (also with the hair), Walter 'Matuschanskayasky', Monica Lewis, Pedro Amendariz Jr, John Randolph, Donald Moffat.

The earthquake bits are not badly done, except for the moment when a cattle truck goes off a freeway and the cows don't fall out and all look like plastic. Crazy soldier killing looters / impending sexual assault story seems somewhat out-of-place, misjudged.

Real cheese-o moment when lift plummets to bottom and this happens:

I guess Heston and Gardner got swept away, then? One missed opportunity - unharmed Matthau should have been there right at the end.

Edited by Dorothy Spencer (Oscar nomination), who used a take of a real bike crash and had extra lines filmed so it could be worked into the story. Sound won Oscar (Ronald Pierce, Melvin Metcalfe), Philip Lathrop's photography nominated. Universal.

The film on in the cinema is High Plains Drifter, released (of course) by Universal.

Foyle's War: Killing Time (2010 David Richards)

1945. Black GIs Obi Abili and Gary Carr (both good and both in 21 Bridges, funnily enough) getting hassle from locals and their own army, commanding officer Adam James (who we just saw, also in American accent, in Hotel Portofino) and brutish sergeant John Sharian. Honeysuckle Weeks, who's now running a boarding house, gets involved with one of the GI's girlfriends, Charlotte Riley; Zoe Tapper is another tenant. We both think Honeysuckle is so natural.

It made me wonder why we didn't have the whole 28-film series, which ran from 2002 to 2015. Especially the early ones, which were great.

Written by David Kane from Anthony Horowitz's characters.

Uninvited, The (1943 Lewis Allen)

Produced by Charles Brackett and written by his friends Frank Partos and Dodie Smith (based on Dorothy Macardle novel), with strong echoes of Rebecca. Brother and sister Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey buy a haunted house in Cornwall-on-Hollywood from Donald Crisp. His grand-daughter Gail Russell has unresolved issues with what happened there. A scary doctor, scarily played by Cornelia Otis Skinner, is involved, and also a nice doctor, Batman's Alan Napier. Dorothy Stickney is the housekeeper.

Good moments, interesting film. Photographed by Charles Lang, music by Victor Young, edited by Doane Harrison, for Paramount.

"I smell... sausages."

No. 3 in Martin Scorsese's Scariest Films!

Still Life (2013 Uberto Pasolini & scr)

Following Nowhere Special, we had to catch up on the writer/director's earlier film, which is a gem, and which needed a really strong, brilliant actor to carry most of the film - he finds one in the incredible, indefinable Eddie Marsan. I don't know if it's just me, but I kept wondering if there are tiny freeze frames on him, or whether he intentionally just freezes every now and then, suggesting a static, stuck feeling. He has a funny way of standing at pedestrian crossings. Certainly this man lives life alone, searching for families of unloved, unclaimed people, giving them funerals, until one leads him (eventually) to Joanne Froggatt. The ironies of the ending are powerful indeed. And then we have the ending... I was actually sobbing...

"Please don't say any more, Mr. May. You've already said so much."

So glad we found it. Rachel Portman's music adds a certain something. DP Stefano Falivene.

With Karen Drury, Andrew Buchan, Neil D'Souza, David Shaw Parker, Michael Elkin.

Films That Might be Worth Watching (according to The Week)

The World to Come. Challenging life in 1850s America. Casey Affleck, Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterstone.

Our Ladies. Catholic girls misbehave on way to singing competition.

Herself. Abused wife seeks to rebuild life.

No Sudden Move. Steven Soderbergh. Criminal caper goes wrong

The French Dispatch.

Last Night in Soho (2021 Edgar Wright & co-scr)

After this film was over, I didn't know what to make of it. I felt like the film had run over me.

It's a time-jumping cross between Groundhog Day and Midnight in Paris mixed with a drama /horror. Actually, it's the 'horror' element that I had trouble with - the scenes of young Thomason McKenzie being chased through London by faceless corpses. It has the hallmark of the excess of The End of the World.

McKenzie's from Leave No Trace and Jojo Rabbit. With a cocky Anya Taylor-Joy and a nasty Matt Smith, plus a trio of veterans in Rita Tushingham, Diana Rigg (her last film) and Terence Stamp. And Michael Ajeo, Synnove Karlsen, Elizabeth Berrington (someone should make a documentary about this most capable and hard-working lass).

The scenes where Thomasin just starts to experience the (nasty) 1960s as Anya, the trickery of the mirrors, is great, and overall it is of course very classily filmed and edited by Chung-hoon Chung (Oldboy, Me And Earl and the Dying Girl) and Paul Machliss, and the sound design is very good - Colin Nicolson production sound mixer, Julian Slater & Dan Morgan sound editors.

The nasty classmates and nice boyfriend and teacher / female cop seem a bit clichéd (Krysty Wilson-Cairns is the co-writer) and it's maybe in feeling that the film is lacking.

The shots in the credits of deserted London are quite eerie.

At times it seemed to evoke British sixties films like the L Shaped Room and Repulsion.

Ozark Season 4 - Part 1

The black comedy continues. Ruth (Julia Garner) has rejected the family.. all but Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) who shares her loss for Uncle Whatsisname, and he becomes her 'washer' for Darleen's heroin. Garner is sixth billed, or something, but she's the star of the show as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile the situation with Novarro (Felix Solis) is complicated by the entrance of his nephew, who turns out to be (literally) a bloody nuisance.

Q's finding Wendy (Laura Linney) sets her teeth on edge: her smugness, her wilful way of defying people, interfering and making situations worse. Marty (Jason Bateman) is great because he's so calm and always thinking ahead.

In an odd turn of events, Darlene (Lisa Emery) and Wyatt (Charlie Tahan) are dating. A match made in heaven. Darlene's great line on Wendy: "I'd burn her at the stake if I didn't think the devil himself would show up and save her." Did think Darleen wasn't going to make it through to the end of episode 7 but wasn't expecting what did happen. Loved Ruth blowing up. Intrigued that Robin Wright directed some episodes.

The Teacher (2022)

In a (literal) haze of alcohol, dysfunctional teacher Sheridan Smith shags her pupil in a night club, finds herself suspended and charged. Or did she...? Problems with father, mother's suicide, may be underlining things..

With Kelvin Fletcher, Samuel Bottomley, Sharon Rooney, Sarah-Jane Potts (Kinky Boots), Ian Puleston-Davies, Cecilia Noble.

Created by Mike Benson and Barunka O'Shaughnessy. Directed by Dominic Leclerc. For Channel 5.