Ryan's Daughter (1970 David Lean)

To my mind a better film than either Lawrence of Arabia (boring second half) or Doctor Zhivago (no heart). Filmed in Dingle, the 'wild west of Ireland', where the village and school were built (Stephen Grimes the production designer), and latterly in Cape Town. (I can't believe the village was torn down at the end.)  It's a really beautifully put together film, very cinematic (footsteps in the sand, breakdown in pub, storm, Mills' giveaway miming of the Major), great sound (the generator acting as a symbol for the soldier). Written by Sarah Miles' husband Robert Bolt, originally an adaptation of 'Madame Bovary', with the (almost daily) collaboration of David Lean. Loved also the parallels - the limp that draws Mills and Jones together, the two horses of the two lovers.

Edited by Norman Savage, assistant Tony Lawson. When you see that great storm scene you realise that as well as cameras these giant arc lamps were also having to be managed so that they didn't get swept away. They also used a big - what I think was called a 'Tip tank' which directs huge floods of water in certain directions. Ray Stevens directed the storm scene. The fabulous music's by Maurice Jarre. Freddie Young won his third Oscar for his stunning photography. Anthony Havelock-Allen produced.

Like Calvary, the priest is good and strong entity, the leading figure in the village - he can silence a crowd just by appearing.

Exceptional acting from Robert Mitchum, John Mills, Trevor Howard and Sarah Miles; strong support from Leo McKern, Christopher Jones, Barry Foster, Marie Kean, Arthur O'Sullivan, Evin Crowley, Gerald Sim, Barry Jackson. Mills had studied film of brain damaged patients and rehearsed for three months. His make-up by Charlie Parker was actually quite simple and only took fifteen minutes to apply. He won the Oscar and Golden Globe ("I could finally be known again as somebody other than Hayley Mills' father"), but lost out on the BAFTA to Colin Welland in Kes. (It won no BAFTAs - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid swept the board.)

The critics hated it. Time Out called it 'an awe-inspiringly tedious lump of soggy romanticism', The New York Times thought it 'as boring as cloud-watching' (I find cloud-watching rather interesting, myself), Pauline Kael wrote 'The emptiness of Ryan's Daughter shows in every frame'. I thought it was fantastic.

A performance of unnerving brilliance

Incredible lighting - Young's contribution to Lean's films should not be underestimated

There's Vaseline around the edges of the frame in this sequence.

The DVD cover says it's in 2.4:1 but it's actually 2.2:1. It was shot in 65mm. It runs three and a quarter hours (if you include the Overture, Entr'acte and playout music). Information above derived from the film on the DVD 'The Making of Ryan's Daughter' and Kevin Brownlow's great book 'David Lean - A Biography'.

The Truth About Spring (1965 Richard Thorpe)

John Mills' autobiography 'Up in the Clouds Gentlemen please': "If the picture had turned out half as good as the food, the wine, the time and the laughs we had on that location, it would have been a sensation - unfortunately it wasn't." (It was filmed in southern Spain.) Hayley partly blames the pairing of her dad and Lionel Jeffries, who she says behaved like 'schoolboys'.

It's a very pedestrian script about rivals and treasure, plus tomboy Hayley's growing romance with James MacArthur. Both John and Hayley's accents are all over the place, though they're a winning couple.

With Niall MacGinnis, Harry Andrews, David Tomlinson. Photographed (pretty much entirely) on location by Ted Scaife. Various distressed jean jackets are the order of the day.

Aged 18, Hayley had en route to the filming bought herself a house in Southern France for £24,000!

Queen Bees (2021 Michael Lembeck)

I thought this film was going to be terrible from its plinky and pedestrian incidental music - it was. 

Ellen Burstyn grudgingly stays in a care home while her house is fixed up, meets James Caan - wonder what will happen?

Jane Curtin, Loretta Devine, Ann-Margaret, Christopher Lloyd, French Stewart, Matthew Barnes, Elizabeth Mitchell.

1969 (1988 Ernest Thompson & scr)

He wrote On Golden Pond. This isn't the best film in the world. Keifer Sutherland and Robert Downey Jr. do drugs and hitchhike about, neither wishing to be called up for Vietnam, a war which they don't understand (and, looking back on it, neither do we). Best moment is where Downey's sister Winona Ryder gives (and is returned) the peace sign to a convoy of soldiers. Otherwise the film is a bit pastey (if this is a word).

Bruce Dern is Sutherland's father who doesn't understand his son's objections to the war - but somehow, at the end, he does. With Mariette Hartley, Joanna Cassidy (The Laughing Policeman).

That both these films are on at the same time is a nice little touch about 1969

Thirteen Lives (2022 Ron Howard)

Despite everyone knowing the outcome this still manages to be an intense and enjoyable drama. Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell lead the independent rescue mission to get the boys and their coach out of flooded caves - which they did just in time - by knocking them out with ketamine. Joel Edgerton is the Australian doctor responsible. Other divers: Paul Gleeson (not one of the acting dynasty), Tom Bateman. Teerapat Sajakul stands out (I think) in Thai cast, which includes Teeradon Supapunpinyo, Sukullawot Kanarot, Sahajak Bonnthanakit, Sahajak Boonthanakit (Governor), Pattrakorn Tungsupakul (Governor's assistant), and the older guy who makes the bamboo pipes, Chatchawan Kamonsakpitak. Hmm. I must watch some Thai films some time. I think I've got Uncle Boonmee...

The DP is Thai as well - Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Good sound, Oliver Tarney, but it's one of those films you notice it. Good design of the studio-built caves and tunnels. Written by William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Gladiator, Les Mis, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Breathe, Hope Gap).

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012 Colin Trevorrow)

Oddball film, written by Derek Connolly (who now seems to be a Jurassic World writer), has journalists Aubrey Plaza (unhappy), Jake Johnson (New Girl, jaded) and Karan Soni (nerdy) journey to Washington to investigate mad ad seeking partner to time travel with, posted by the weird Mark Duplass, for whom Plaza develops affection. Meanwhile Johnson is there to look up his ex from twenty years ago, Jenica Bergere.

It's about people finding each other, really, though the ending is far out and hilarious.

Avalon (1990 Barry Levinson & scr)

Like Liberty Heights, another lovingly created and photographed autobiographical look at Baltimore, this going back in time even further, following grandfather Amin Muller-Stahl's stories of arriving in America, and how he and his large family made their way. He and wife Joan Plowright live with son Aiden Quinn and wife Elizabeth Perkins, Elijah Wood is his loving grandson. Quinn's cousin Kevin Pollak and he go into business together with unpredictable results. Meanwhile the grandfather's older brother Lou Jacobi is proving an intractable annoyance.

Good music by Randy Newman whose beautiful piano led theme was an original, though feels like it might have been an original piece from the old country (Russia, I think). Funny stuff about the development of TV, endless family arguments, having an annoying mother-in-law in the house.

DP Allen Daviau, editor Stu Linder, sound Richard Beggs.

Eve Gordon, looking up, plays Pollak's wife

While the City Sleeps (1956 Fritz Lang)

One of his last Hollywood films before returning to Germany. Lang worked with credited writer Casey Robinson on the screenplay (from Charles Einstein novel 'The Bloody Spur'). It has three main plots: 1. The hunt for a psychotic serial killer. 2. A competition for a top job between three of the senior management in a media empire. 3. The relationship between writer Dana (pronounced 'Dayna') Andrews and secretary Sally Forrest. They all interweave expertly.

Vincent Price inherits said media corporation, and unknown to him (and us) his wife Rhonda Fleming is having an affair with one of the three, James Craig. The others are the always reliable Thomas Mitchell and George Sanders. Ida Lupino is a man-eating gossip columnist and Howard Duff a copper. With Ralph Peters (journalist), Robert Warwick, Mae Marsh, Vladimir Sokoloff. Lang was able to get so many stars by limiting each one to four or five day's shooting, thus making them affordable - a neat trick.

John (Drew) Barrymore Jr. is suitably menacing as the psycho. At one point, Andrews proposes his girlfriend - sorry, fiancée - to act as bait for the killer...to which she agrees!

It's very good. The noiry lighting is Ernest Laszlo (I contend it's too late for a film noir), the editor is Gene Fowler Jr. and in one of her first films, Verna Fields is the sound editor.

It was one of the last RKO releases, though an independent production.

The Laughing Policeman (1973 Stuart Rosenberg)

Written by Thomas Rickman from the novel 'Den Skrattande Polisen' by Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, one of a series of novels featuring Stockholm detective Martin Beck, transplanted to seedy seventies San Francisco. Starring Walter Matthau in one of his dead serious roles, with Bruce Dern as his new associate trying to solve the murder of a busload of passengers. Dern rather steals the film - Matthau not only seems on low power, but the editing favours Dern also. (All Walter's biography says is he 'liked walking the hilly streets' of the city.) So I don't really know what's going on there. But there's a gradual warming up of relations between the two men (it never seems to go the other way round - two cops start out liking each other but by the end can't stand one another.)

The film is impressively detailed - the scenes in which the detectives minutely examine the murdered passengers and bus, and the hospital scenes, are almost documentary-like, played out with little music. (Thus when music does kick in later, it seems out of place.)

The plot revolves around an investigation by his murdered partner that links back to an earlier case of Matthau's he was unable to solve. I've got to admit I didn't really understand the villain's motivations, nor what he thinks he's doing at the end, about to shoot another busload of passengers with his 'grease gun'. Maybe it's his thing...

So it doesn't quite click but is interesting. With Lou Gossett, Albert Paulsen, Anthony Zerbe, Val Avery, Cathy Lee Crosby, Mario Gallo, Joanna Cassidy. Photographed by David M Walsh (Sleeper, Silver Streak, The Goodbye Girl) and edited by Bob Wyman.

Union Station (1950 Rudolph Maté)

Paramount thriller, in which Union Station detective William Holden helps Nancy Olson locate a kidnapped, blind heiress (the two also acted together in Sunset Blvd.; both films were released in August 1950). Written by Sydney Boehm from Thomas Walsh's novel 'Nightmare in Manhattan', it also stars Barry Fitzgerald, with Lyle Bettger (No Man of Her Own) good as the kidnapper, Jan Sterling as his moll. Strange that no one thinks about where and how the kidnapping took place, which might have helped track down the culprits. Quite exciting, however.

I'm sure at one point Sterling says 'What'll we do with all that cabbage?' meaning cash - hadn't heard that one before.

Photographed by Daniel L Fapp.

Jan Sterling with Allene Roberts as the kidnappee

Union Station is in LA and looks very much unchanged today.

Per Qualche Dollaro in Più / For a Few Dollars More (1965 Sergio Leone)

A complex gestation: based in fact on an (uncredited) treatment by Enzo dell'Aquila and Fernando Di Leo called 'The Bounty Killer', then adapted by Leone and Fulvio Morsella, then scripted by Luciano Vincenzoni, with some polishes (such as the great joke at the end where the bounty on all the dead bandits doesn't add up) from Sergio Donati. Apparently the film also borrows from westerns Leone was familiar with such as The Bravados, The Bounty Hunter and The Tin Star. Influential on later films - the flashback device anticipates Giu La Testa, the revenge story comes into Once Upon A Time in the West, the final circular duel foreshadows the ending of The Good the Bad and the Ugly.

Assistant director Tonino Valerii went on to direct My Name is Nobody, editors are Eugenio Alabiso, Giorgio Serrallonga, more great deep focus photography from Massimo Dallamano. (Yes, the credits are all using their proper Italian names on this one.)

Leone had again tried to get Henry Fonda and James Coburn and Charles Bronson (he did in the end, of course), almost got Lee Marvin who cancelled at the last minute. Lee Van Cleef had been badly injured in a car accident and had given up acting when offered the part - he had to delay for two days whilst finishing painting a house! He had some difficulties on set, couldn't run, could ride only a very tame horse, and was seen self-medicating many an evening in the hotel bar. Being 40 he wasn't that much older than Clint, so the 'Old man' / 'Kid' repartee doesn't really work. Gian Maria Volonte is good as dope-smoking villain (the first in a mainstream film).

It's also funny from the opening scene; the kid who demands money, the man thrown out of his hotel room, the ending, the duel between Eastwood and Van Cleef - when Clint's hat is bobbing up and down in the air it made me think of René Clair, I'm not quite sure why - something to do with Entr'acte? I think the biggest laugh I had was in the extended pocket-watch scene with the man who betrayed Indio - it's very protracted but then goes into a massive church organ passage - it's so over the top I found that hilarious. Ironic use of interesting instruments - the single twang of the Sicilian maranzano (Jew's harp') as a quirky commentary. Quite irreligious in the way Indio 'preaches' to his gang from the pulpit of a church. Loved the scene with the old man (Joseph Egger) who's house is dangerously close to the railroad - Clint here displaying a nice line in bemusement. His character is essentially a little more human than in the previous film. His salary of $15,000 had risen to $50,000, and the film's bigger budget shows in the interior designs (by Carlo Simi again) and the creation of an entire town in Almeria.

With Luigi Pistilli, Klaus Kinski, Luis Rodriguez, Mara Krupp, Mario Brega.

It was the biggest hit in Italy up until then and held the record until 1971, when it was topped by the first Terence Hill / Bud Spencer Trinity film (I think - it's just a jotting - don't actually quote me on any of this shit. Actually most of the above information comes from Christopher Frayling's extraordinarily detailed and well researched book 'Something To Do With Death' - a must for any Leone fans.) Also an interesting Nick Fun Fact that Sergio's wife Carla was often on set trying to smooth potential bust ups between the crew.

P.S. Why isn't it Per Qualche DOLLARI in Più?

RT: 130 mins.

Dangerous Minds (1995 John N Smith)

Written by Ronald Bass, from LouAnne Johnson's autobiographical account 'My Posse Don't Do Homework', though to us it's very reminiscent of To Sir With Love. Our major problem is there isn't a confrontation scene with the principal, who is so insistent on good manners that he denies the at-risk pupil help, an act which condemns him to death. Also we didn't really buy Michelle Pfeiffer an an ex Marine (though to be fair LouAnne doesn't look like one either, insofar as you can 'look like' anything), but enjoyed the film overall.

With George Dzundza, Courtney Vance (principal), Robin Bartlett (Alice, 12:01, Inside Llewyn Davis), Wade Dominguez (the doomed one), Idina Harris (the smart one), Renoly Santiago, Marisela Gonzales, Marcello Thedford.

Shot by Pierre Letarte, edited by Tom Rolf. A rappy soundtrack.

Wedding Season (2022 Tom Dey)

From the sublime to the ridiculous. Annoying Indian mothers put pressure on children to get married. Shiwani Srivastava has fed his or her characters into the romcom generating app and the result is entirely transparent, predictable and really quite poor. 

Pallavi Sharda, Suraj Sharma, some other people.

The Sun Shines Bright (1953 John Ford)

Another piece of Ford brilliance: warm, witty, tender, poignant. Small town Virginia - the Civil War is over, and what remains of North-South hostilities is played out in respectful admiration with duels over banjo-played songs and flag 'borrowing'. Great script from Laurence Stallings from stories by Irvin S Cobb, story involves election battle between Judge Billy Priest, and town secret concerning the local Madame. Funeral procession scene is one of those that are so simply done yet so deep and moving. Lots of understatement and plot being revealed slowly, subtle looks and touches, lots of fondness for black community - scene where he saves boy from lynching, whilst similar to Young Mr Lincoln, is wonderfully gripping.

Great score from Victor Young, shot by Archie Stout.

Charles Winnegar great as drinking Judge. With Arleen Whelan, John Russell (no-good returnee), Stepin Fetchit (I maintain the source for the best friend character in Forrest Gump!), Russell Simpson (Doctor), Ludwig Stossel, John's brother Francis Ford (permanently drunken marksman), Slim Pickens, Eve March, Jane Darwell.

Ford: "It's my favourite picture - I love it. And it's true to life, it happened. Irvin Cobb got everything he wrote from real life, and that's the best of his Judge Priest stories." (Ford talking to Peter Bogdanovich, 1966.) It was a remake of his own Judge Priest in 1934.

用心棒 / Yojimbo / The Bodyguard (1961 Akira Kurosawa & co-scr)

The film that Leone remade as Per Un Pugno di Dollari. Toshiro Mifune is rather cool as the samurai who plays two evil families off against each other. The baddies seem almost pantomime villains. It isn't as funny as Leone's version.

Interesting compositions and use of widescreen, aided by unusual score by Masaru Satô, who several times collaborated with Kurosawa. The DP is Kazuo Miyagawa, who captures the town and chilling Autumn well.

Indian Summer (1993 Mike Binder & scr)

An unofficial remake of The Big Chill supplanted to a kids' summer camp; even Alan Arkin and Diane Lane cannot boot life into this lame 'what are we like now?' comedy-drama. As though to complicate things, director Sam Raimi plays the camp goof.

It doesn't help that two of the leading men look too much like each other.

Getting high scene - "I'd forgotten about the munchies" - is just embarrassing.

Matt Craven, Bill Paxton, Elizabeth Perkins, Kevin Pollack, Vincent Spano, Julie Warner, Kimberly Williams.

Per Un Pugno di Dollari / A Fistful of Dollars (1964 Sergio Leone)

The first of Leone's spaghetti westerns already bears his trademark stamps - gallows humour, deep focus widescreen, dynamic cutting, drawn out scenes to Morricone, the deguello ('cut throat') theme*, slaughter. According to Mark Cousins, it was the innovation of the Techniscope process in Italy that allowed for the deep focus not so easily achievable in other widescreen formats - there's less of it in the Cinecitta interiors. And Leone's work as assistant director in  big budget Hollywood films had given him a sure sense of mise en scene, e.g. tracking shot of Eastwood under the boardwalk whilst the Rojos search for him and end up right on top of his position.

Eastwood is marvellously confident already (particularly working with a European crew with little English), Gian Maria Volonte is a charismatic baddie. The one aspect I didn't remember is that the Man with No Name ('Joe') helps the mother and her child 'Because I once knew someone like you' - not the totally amoral figure you remember. (It had been a LONG time.)

Joseph Egger is the coffin-maker (he is NOT the elusive actor I was trying to place from My Name is Nobody) and Jose Calvo the innkeeper. Plus Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, Margarita Lozano, Mario Brega.

Clint eventually realised that the film he'd made, then called The Magnificent Stranger, was the hit Italian success A Fistful of Dollars - no one had bothered to tell him. A massive hit across all of Europe, eventually finding its way to the US in 1967. One young critic who was impressed by it was Dario Argento. It was written by Leone, and, uncredited, Duccio Tessari, Victor Catena and G. Schok, with dialogue by Mark Lowell. The credits are amusingly Americanized, thus DP Massimo Dallamano is 'Jack Dalmas', production designer Carlo Simi is 'Charles Simons' and editor Roberto Cinquini is 'Bob Quintle'!

One of the terms of Eastwood's was that he could change the dialogue. In the end, he fought for reducing his lines substantially - Leone's script, he argued, was over-expository. He's not an infallible anti-hero - he's twice saved by other people. But the ending - his armour plate, and the final quick draw - is a doozy.

*Which - it turns out - was inspired by Dmitri Tiomkin's theme from Rio Bravo. Thanks to Christopher Frayling, covered in his novella-like chapter on the film in his 'Something To Do With Death'.

Spanish poster, based on the original Italian design - there's no Eastwood representation because no one knew who he was. Note director credit - 'Bob Robertson'! Note also top billing of Marianne Koch despite her two lines of dialogue!

The Newsreader (2021 Emma Freeman)

Created by Michael Lucas, and written mainly by he, with Niki Aken, Jonathan Gavin & Kim Ho. Sucks you in right from the off of six part series.

1986 Australia. A highly strung newsreader Anna Torv is in conflict with her producer William McInnes. Wannabe reader Sam Reid (Belle) becomes involved with her after a suicide attempt. (Good performances from all three.) Weaves in real news (police station bombing in Melbourne, missing baby / dingo case, AIDS, Chernobyl) well.

I was expecting lots of sexism, racism and boorish behaviour, so was pleasantly surprised. The synthy music score is a nice touch (composed by Cornel Wilczek).

With Robert Taylor (other anchorman), Stephen Peacocke (sports journalist), Michell Davidson (super-useful researcher), Chai Hansen (cameraman), Marg Downey (manipulative wife).

Vertigo (1958 Alfred Hitchcock & prod)

Hitch apparently approached the filming with great seriousness unlike his usual self. He was not best pleased at not having Vera Miles in the lead (she was pregnant) and didn't have the greatest rapport with Novak. He moulded her, the same way Stewart's character moulds her, but most critics acknowledge he brought out her finest performance. The film was a flop. The New York Times thought it 'devilishly farfetched' and Time claimed it was 'another Hitchcock-and-bull story in which the mystery is not so much who done it as who cares'. Wow.

The restaurant featured, Ernie's was (in typical style) one of Hitch's favourites.

Barbara Bel Geddes' character Mitch is the heart and soul of the film

A film to marvel at time and again.

Odd to see a scene set amidst the giant Sequoia trees which are currently under threat from Californian wildfires. Some of then are 3000 years old.

Brief Encounter (1945 David Lean)

We didn't want to think today - just wallow in great films. We happened on two in which trains are central. And what links all today's choices are incredible performances by their female leads - here Deborah Kerr, or Celia Johnson, as she's sometimes known.

I've kinda covered all this ground before, but there's a lot going on here. The soundtrack is marvellous. The way their trains are going in different directions is a great metaphor for their relationship. I think those flashback moments are done simply by killing the fill light and leaving the key light on the actor (well, Johnson) against a backdrop of blackness, but there's a more complicated dissolve when she appears bottom right in the sitting room but the rest of the frame is still the flashback scene - not sure how that was done.

And on thinking the scene with the friend's flat inspired Wilder and The Apartment, there's a scene after of Johnson running away along a street that you could cross-cut with Wilder's film and Shirley MacLaine doing exactly the same thing.

And as I've said a million times before, it's a very modern film, beginning at the end the way it does (Lean's idea). Also, the parallel relationships - there's certainly also something going on between conductor Stanley Holloway and tea shop proprietress Joyce Carey (even, in very slight sub-story, a romance between her assistant and a passing soldier).

It was Oscar nominated for Johnson, Lean as director and Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allen for screenplay; though interestingly it was not BAFTA nominated for a single thing*. Also won Grand Prize at Cannes. Noel Coward wrote the original idea as a thirty minute play called 'Still Life' set entirely in the waiting room.

J. Arthur Rank was one of the film distributors at the time who had no involvement in the creative side of the films he financed and thus it was a very successfully creative period of British film making, if you think of Powell & Pressburger, Lean, Carol Reed etc.

*Ed. That's because the first BAFTA Awards were not held until 1949.