The Railway Children (1970 Lionel Jeffries & scr)

Bernard Cribbins (93) died today, thus the first in our double bill of British train-themed films. He and Jeffries obviously knew one another as they'd acted together in such films as Two Way Stretch, The Long Arm of the Law and Dunkirk, perhaps how the casting of Cribbins as Albert Perks came about - a nice way to be remembered in all time favourite family drama.

The cast seems comfortable with the actor's direction, but Jenny Agutter stands out.  Where other actors might emote, or 'act', she remains very still and internal and thus her performance seems not like acting at all. It's probably the film she'll be best remembered for, too. Also enjoyed Peter Bromilow as the drinking doctor. In fact started having most unworthy thoughts about which of the characters would have fancied bonking Bobby - the doctor certainly would have been one of them. Even the nice old gentleman William Mervyn - 'Come into my study, dear - I want to thank you properly'.

Good score from Johnny Douglas. Wardrobe supervisor Elsa Fennell is I think no relation to Emerald.

Hopefully the watch Bobby's received (for saving the train) will be in the sequel.

The Dry (2022 Paddy Breathnach, writer Nancy Harris)

Dublin-set dramedy as five months in remission alcoholic Shiv returns to family home for grandma's funeral. Rest of family seem quite fucked up too, and a brother has died... Her return (seems to) make the rest of the family unravel.

Roisin Gallagher, Siobhan Cullen (sister), Pom Boyd (mother), Adam John Richardson (brother), Ciaran Hinds (father), Moe Dunford (ex).

We enjoyed it. Broadcast by Britbox.

Control Room

Another daft Summer Series begins when a control room operative takes a call from a woman who says she's just killed a man - and they recognise each other's voices. In a style which I describe as 'shadowy glue', we don't know what went on between them, but no doubt we'll find out if we persevere. Shouldn't really be the right response, should it? What you want is 'Wilder! That opening episode was so riveting, I can't wait to watch the next one'. But that's why it's on in the summer.

Hadn't noticed actor Iain Caestecker, but he uses his hands a lot (not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing at the moment). With Joanna Vanderham.

Episodes 2 & 3 followed, sadly.

Bringing Up Baby (1938 Howard Hawks)

Breathless screwball comedy - maybe the best one made? Grant and Hepburn are indescribable, but watch too for a brilliantly unshowy performance from Wesley Ruggles as the Major.

Hawks says in this scene - 

- the censors were laughing so much they missed the line of Grant's "I feel a perfect ass". Well I'm sorry to say they did notice, as that line isn't in the film. Which just shows to go you shouldn't believe a word film directors tell you (except John Madden, who seems entirely trustworthy).

Gardens of Stone (1987 Francis Ford Coppola)

James Caan died July 6. He and Coppola met at Uni, then was plenty on TV before Hawks cast him in El Dorado, then Coppola put him in The Rain People and then famously The Godfather. This was his comeback film after wilderness years - he was difficult to work with, walked off a film and was addicted to cocaine. I'm glad we watched this as his performance is good - he brings the right pathos.

He's accompanied by other good people in the shape of James Earl Jones (now in his nineties) and Anjelica Huston. With DB Sweeney, Dean Stockwell, Mary Stuart Masterson, Dick Anthony Williams, Lonette McKee, Sam Bottoms, Elias Koteas, Laurence Fishburne, Casey Siemaszko.

Written by Ron Bass (Black Widow, Rain Man), from Nicholas Proffitt's novel, it's a nicely balanced screenplay, as anti-Vietnam feeling is raging (it's 1968), Huston is a protestor, but all Caan wants to do is go back to Nam and help the soldiers. The pomp and ceremony of the military burials is a nice irony to the senseless loss of life. It's an elegiac film, and as it takes place largely in a massive cemetery, that's probably exactly the right word.

DP Jordan Cronenweth, editor Barry Malkin, music Carmine Coppola.

It's also a very interesting companion piece to Apocalypse Now; here there's no action except TV newsreel footage; the two films are linked by The Doors (here 'Break on Through').

The Miracle Worker (1962 Arthur Penn)

William Gibson wrote it (with the uncredited help of Arthur Penn) first as a 1957 TV movie with Teresa Wright, Patty McCormack and Akim Tamiroff, directed by Penn. It was a massive hit. Penn had directed many TV films by then. Gibson then wrote the play 'Two for the Seesaw' which opened with Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft. So knocked out by Bancroft was he that he decided also to adapt the Helen Keller story for theatre for her. It opened on Broadway in 1959 with Bancroft and Patty Duke, with Arthur Penn directing, so all three were well rehearsed for the film - and it shows. 

Penn had had one feature film under his belt - The Left Handed Gun with Paul Newman. When it came to the film of The Miracle Worker, he was allowed his own cast (the studio wanted Audrey Hepburn to play the lead) and final cut. Bancroft and Duke quite rightly won Oscars, as did Gibson, and Penn was nominated.

His only regret was that he left too many of the play's words on-screen, not fully realising the power of the film medium. (Thanks to the Archive of American Television for this interview.) However this is where I'll butt in and say that Penn hired the right editor, and that elevates the film to a higher level. Aram Avakian was best known for his documentary editing on Jazz on a Summer's Day in 1959, had one feature to his credit (Girl of the Night). He does these incredible things with overlapping images and sound, multiple exposures, and also brings in this element of the childhood flashbacks appearing in a super-grainy, almost ghostly way, again, only exposing a part of the image.

There's no way the girl's six, by the way - she's far too strong. The scenes of conflict between the two women are exhausting, brilliantly filmed (multiple cameras? They would have been on TV. Not sure. According to TCM, via Wikipedia, the dining room scene was shot over five days with three cameras.) Made me think they were the inspiration for The Exorcist!

Rest of cast good too: Victor Jory, Inga Swenson, Andrew Prine, Kathleen Comegys. Hadn't heard of Cuban DP Ernesto Caparrós, music by Leonard Rosenman.

Avakian edited the weird and wonderful Lilith, again with some panache, then cut Mickey One, again for Penn.

So great to see something so good we'd never seen before.

Trying (2022 Andy Wolton, Margaret Cabourn-Smith)

We think this might be the best series so far, as they have actually adopted a young girl and her even younger brother, determined not to let them be parted.

Rafe Spall, Esther Smith, Darren Boyd, Sian Brook, Oliver Chris, Phil Davis, Paula Wilcox, Roderick Smith, Marian McLoughlin.

The Duke (2020 Roger Michell)

Roger's last film leaves us liking him again. Richard Bean and Clive Coleman's script seems to be original, though is based on a real case of the theft of a Goya from the National Gallery in 1961. (There's a smart reference to this in Dr No, which is pictured at the end.)

Jim Broadbent is our amateur playwright and social conscience, grieving the death of his daughter. Helen Mirren is long-suffering wife, who won't talk about the loss, Fionn Whitehead the son. Plus Anna Maxwell Martin, Matthew Goode, John Heffernan, Charlotte Spencer, Aimée Kelly, Charles Edwards, Joshua McGuire.

Three minor carps: shouldn't have been in widescreen, the split screen bits don't add anything, there's one too many shots of the court administrator tittering (going to prove that comedy - editing, writing, acting, all aspects - is a very tricky thing to get exactly right). Actually four - wouldn't have used 'Jerusalem' for no reason at the end either. Otherwise, thoroughly entertaining and positive.

" 'I will not let anyone walk through my mind with dirty feet.' Mahatma Ghandi." Knows 'The Cherry Orchard' too.

DP Mike Eley, editor Kristina Hetherington (My Name is Leon, Le-Weekend, Parade's End, Birdsong), music George Fenton.

It began when the grandson Chris, had a go at writing the story himself, then the producers got Bean and Coleman involved. Bean's a playwright with no screen credits, Coleman a barrister turned journalist with the odd TV and theatre credit. They wrote it with Jim in mind, for his voice.

From the Terrace (1960 Mark Robson)

Long - I knew it would be. Filmmakers thought that colour and Cinemascope weren't enough to drag audiences away from television, everything had to be super-long as well.

Paul Newman is the surviving son of unloving, strict Leon Ames and alcoholic adulterer Myrna Loy (who sadly disappears from the film entirely). Wants to make it big. Marries Joanne Woodward, from a good family, though it turns out she's a slut who's soon cheating on him. In saving the life of the grandson of Felix Aylmer, Newman gets job for the financier but it helps ruin his marriage. Then he meets Ina Balin...

The leads are as good as you'd expect. With Elizabeth Allen, Barbara Eden, George Grizzard, Patrick O'Neal, Malcolm Atterbury, Ted de Corsia.

John O'Hara's novel adapted by Ernest Lehman, leaves things slightly inconclusively - has he lost his job? Were the photos printed? (At any rate he must still own his dad's steel mill?) Did Myrna Loy sober up? Still, most enjoyable.

Photographed by Leo Tover, scored by Elmer Bernstein and edited by Dorothy Spencer, who's in a dissolvey phase, though doesn't mind pulling off an audacious jump cut before the boy falls through the ice. 20th Century Fox.

Val Lewton - The Man in the Shadows (2007 Kent Jones & scr)

Useful documentary of the melancholy Lewton and his themes of war and repressed femininity. Born in Yalta, home of 'The Lady with the Dog', nephew of actress Alla Nazimova. Interesting on his use of less familiar actors, good contributions from his son. Narrated by Scorsese.

The Curse of the Cat People looks like the masterpiece we've yet to see.

Roger Corman and Robert Wise are among the contributors.

Everything I Know About Love (2022 Dolly Alderton)

She wrote the novel and is credited with writing it... but there's also a credit for 'Writer's Room'...

Emma Appleton (The Last Letter From Your Lover) and Bel Powley are childhood friends who move in to a London house, shared with Uni friends Aliyah Odoffin and Marli Siu (teacher). Appleton gets lucky with a job in TV (the 'reality' show 'Heirs and Graces') offered by Jill Halfpenny, less lucky with musician boyfriend Connor Finch, who's a bit of a twat (evidenced  by his film poster - House of Frankenstein - I mean, is that supposed to be cool or something?); Powley finds her first love with straight insurance guy Ryan Bown.

The girls fall out somewhat in the penultimate episode as Powley says she's leaving them to move in with her BF. The finale sees Appleton on her own and not enjoying New York - Greenwich Village no less - until she bumps into a guy who seems perfect for her. Almost the very ending is a beautifully written monologue from her mum, Sophie Thompson, that maybe the guy appealed to her so much because he's like her friend (who by the way has aged before her time - what 25 year old wants a salmon dish??)

7 x 45 Working Title for BBC. Directed by China Moo-Young and Julia Foster. Looked very much like it was set up for Season 2. We thought it was most successful, well acted - the girls are a bit much sometimes.

Sorry Wrong Number (1948 Anatole Litvak)

Barbara Stanwyck, a bed bound hypochondriac, receives a crossed line telephone call which seems to announce a murder - it takes her a while to figure out it's her own. Lucille Fletcher adapted her own radio play, which was filmed before for television in 1946, with Mildred Natwick.

Then we flash back a lot, to see how she got together with Burt Lancaster, taking him away from Ann Richards, and how doctor Wendall Corey, chemist Harold Vermilyea and gangster William Conrad are involved. With Ed Begley as Stanwyck's father.

It's funny how the calls she keeps making and receiving are hindered by background noise of one sort or another.

Sol Polito's camera prowls around beautifully - he gets the rare solo credit that you usually only see with Gregg Toland - but credit to his operator and focus puller too. Powerful score by Franz Waxman.

A Paramount film. The ending is unusually bleak and surprising. Stanwyck was Oscar nominated.

The Undeclared War (2022 Peter Kosminsky)

It is 2024, and Russia has taken down the Internet with a cyber-attack. Workplace student at GCHQ Hannah Khalique-Brown joins the malware team and starts to crack the code. The way this is done is interestingly visual - she is walking down corridors, selecting doors, removing blockages, using tools, climbing... (Kosminsky started out making documentaries.)

She teams up with American Maisie Richardson to help, as well as a former decoder Mark Rylance. (Kosminsky also wrote and directed The Government Inspector.)

Meanwhile, we learn how a fellow student of hers Herman Segal ended up in Russia on the other side of the war, with newly acquired girlfriend Tinatin Dalakishvili.

Starts to sprawl - rigged elections, staged news, deep fakes. It ends in a rush of almost-war, like there's going to be a second season. And the murder (?) of the Rylance character seems particularly unexplored and elusive.

With Adrian Lester, Simon Pegg, Alex Jennings, Kerry Godliman, Edward Holcroft, Hattie Morahan, Ed Stoppard.

Some of the early scenes seem a bit stilted.

Think I've heard of what3words.com - tried it on our address and it was wrong! Seems a bit pointless though made a good plot device. Useful to be told FSB is the new KGB.

IWWAZ (1943 Jacques Tourneur)

It was 36°C today. There's quite a lot of opacity to this tale - Tom Conway's wife (Christine Gordon, her only performance) cannot be a zombie - yet when she is stabbed, she doesn't bleed. And what was going on with her - was she about to leave him for his brother, drunkard James Ellison?

Tourneur met Val Lewton when both were working for David Selznick on David Copperfield in 1935. When Lewton set up his mini-studio at RKO, producing that series of intelligent and atmospheric horror films, Tourneur was his first choice, and he directed Cat People, this and The Leopard Man, all of which are terrific - but for pure atmosphere, and its subtext of island culture and slavery, this one takes the cake. And eats it, if that doesn't scramble metaphors too badly.

Frances Dee is the nurse, Edith Barrett the enigmatic Mrs Rand. Sir Lancelot seems like a nice polite man, but when he finds Dee on her own, he's almost threatening her with his calypso (Q says warning). Theresa Harris is charming as the maid, Darby Jones memorable as Carrefour (was he stoned, or had the RKO medics given him starey potion?) I love that moment when he's at the house, advancing, and there's a close shot of him that's quite out of focus - it doesn't matter, in fact it may have been deliberate. As I've said before it's possibly J Roy Hunt's finest hour and is one of the most texturally interesting examples of cinema photography ever.

Love those wind-powered hanging flute bowl things, same sort of principle as an Aeolian Harp.

From an original idea by Inez Wallace, whoever she is, written by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray. I think comparisons to 'Jane Eyre' are rather over-stretched.

Passport to Pimlico (1949 Henry Cornelius)

It was 35ºC. Hermione Baddeley great as feisty dress shop owner, Betty Warren as the common sense one ("Well why don't you go and turn it on again?") Charlie Hawtrey has one of his most substantial performances (he's actually billed higher than Margaret Rutherford). The British like supporting the underdog, even though it's (sort of) foreign.

"Genuine stolen nylons."

Rear Window (1954 AH)

Last seen here. Only 48 in the AFI's Top 100 (Psycho is 14). You could watch (listen to) the film purely as an example of great sound design (as I mentioned before, it's a terribly noisy neighbourhood). We are, I pick up, off West Ninth Street - Greenwich Village, in fact, whilst Lisa (naturally) lives in a posh Uptown district of West 63rd Street.

In the Truffaut book, Hitch reveals that the Stewart-Kelly relationship in which he is disabled mirrors the murderer's in which the wife is similarly confined - mirror images. And that he was disappointed with Franz Waxman's love theme which the composer is creating.

The scene with the dead dog is the only one that breaks the 'rules' of the film where the shots are not from Stewart's point of view.

With Notorious, Truffaut's favourite Hitchcock film.

I love the way everyone just lets themselves into Stewart's apartment without knocking, even the detective - this is obviously a very deliberate point as finally, it's the murderer who lets himself in - he's just copying everyone else.

I Hired a Contract Killer (1990 Aki Kaurismäki & scr, ed)

Had long wanted to see Karusmäki's only English language film, starring the quintessential Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Léaud, who's as fabulous as ever.

Delighted to see it was dedicated to Michael Powell and from the red credits through Margi Clarke's red lips and roses you get that Powell red thing running throughout. In mood though, it reminded me more of Powell's better 'quota quickies' of the thirties in its brevity and wacky plot. Léaud puts out a hit on himself then changes his mind when he meets Clarke. Love the way he leaves a note for his assassin to say he's in the pub opposite! Meanwhile the killer, Ken Colley, isn't feeling very well... 

Colley is not only still alive but features in upcoming Dan Hawk Psychic Detective. And he was in Peaky Blinders (briefly). He was a favourite of Ken Russell.

Short quirky scenes and deadpan humour conspire beautifully together in a run-down looking London.

Off thing though is Clarke's delivery of lines, almost like English isn't her first language. (It isn't of course - it's Liverpudlian!)

Photographed by Timo Salminen. Good sound, too, from Timo Linnasalo.

The Nun's Story (1959 Fred Zinnemann & prod)

Begins slowly in Belgium with seemingly endless formations of black and white and prostrating nuns - the whole process of becoming a nun seems a mad practice and really quite negative in its repression of memories and self-castigation. "I hope this film ends in a bar in Montparnasse' I said hopefully, perhaps thinking of Buñuel's Simon of the Desert again. In fact, more the thought, "If only this film had been directed by Buñuel" - that would have been something.

Anyway, apart from relishing Audrey Hepburn's great performance (she was Oscar nominated), and admiring Franz Planer's photography and Franz Waxman's music, and enjoying the thought that most of the interiors were filmed at Cinecitta, the story picks up when she moves into the outside world at a tropical medicine school, then a mental institution, before she finally gets her dream to practice in the Congo. (There's no mention here of course of the awful history of the Belgians in Congo.) She becomes a match for hardworking doctor Peter Finch (good), who saves her life when she acquires TB.

Wasn't sure why there is an episode where she travels to meet a doctor who's dealing with leprosy victims - it doesn't integrate with the rest of the story.

Then things take a strange turn - she's summoned back to Belgium and WWII starts, she loses her desire to be a nun and is more interested in helping the resistance. And thus it ends with her leaving the order in a beautifully held long shot (where Q's joke comes in - 'Why change the habit of a lifetime?') Not a recruitment film for wannabe nuns, then, but overall, interesting.

With Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger, Mildred Dunnock, Patricia Collinge, Beatrice Straight (good as Mother in sanatorium), Lionel Jeffries, Coleen Dewhurst (schizo patient). Written by Robert Anderson, novel Kathryn C. Hulme. Edited by Walter Thompson (also Fat City, Farewell, My Lovely). Warner Bros.

I would have called it 'A Nun's Story', myself.

Sergio Leone was one of the assistant directors. He tried to pigeonhole Zinnemann about the High Noon train station scenes, but he was too busy.

The 'Warner Brothers Story' notes the decision not to have music at the end was because if it was upbeat, it indicated Hepburn had done the right thing, if downbeat that she hadn't - both of these could have upset portions of the audience. Much against Jack Warner's wishes, Zinnemann held out for none. It actually makes it work better.

The Great Buster (2018 Peter Bogdanovich & scr, narrated)

Feature length documentary, with some great material, e.g. the ads he did in the 1950s and 60s. Thankfully he did recover from his terrible mistake of moving in 1930 to MGM, where all creative control was taken away from him and he was badly mismanaged. Love that at the 1965 Venice Film Festival he received the longest standing ovation in its history. Some brilliant clips from early shorts and his run of amazing features, and loved the montage which showed all his injuries sustained throughout making them.

An eclectic cast of commentators includes Richard Lewis, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog and Carl Reiner.

The Navigator, Sherlock Jr., Our Hospitality definitely all on the must-see list.

We Own This City (2022 Reinaldo Marcus Green)

Y'know - King Richard. Before that, three episodes of Top Boy.

David Simon and George Pelecanos were showrunners on The Wire, but this is based on a non-fiction account of police corruption from Baltimore Sun journalist Justin Fenton (Simon introduced him to his publisher for a book deal, not thinking about making a TV version of it), so it feels like familiar Simon territory. Yes, I can't read any more of that interview as I've inadvertently read about the death of a character. But they definitely feel police corruption is now worse than it was in The Wire days. (Jimmy McNulty may have been unorthodox, to say the least, but at least he got results. These guys get results actually - they're just pocketing most of the cash and drugs they seize.)

It's quite complex, jumping between time zones, but very absorbing. And ultimately shattering, that the corruption extended way up as well. And that the war on drugs is lost. And that under Trump, civil rights went right on the back burner.

Jon Bernthal, Wunmi Mosaku (Temple, Luther, Capital, Dancing on the Edge), Jamie Hector (homicide cop), Josh Charles (The Good Wife), McKinley Belcher III (the least bad of the corrupt unit), Darrell Britt-Gibson, David Corenswet, Don Harvey, Delaney Williams (police commissioner), Larry Mitchell.

A six part series for Sky, edited by Matthew Booras and Joshua Raymond Lee, photographed by Yaron Orbach (Modern Love, Sing Street).