Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993 Krzysztof Kieslowski & co-scr)

Not the debut of La Binoche - she had for example been in Godard's Hail Mary in 1985, then The Unbearable Lightness of Being in 1988, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf in 1991 and funnily enough a version of Wuthering Heights in 1992 before this, but for Kieslowski's film she won the César, and Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

And of course she's wonderful as a woman who has lost her husband and seven year old daughter in a car crash, and withdraws from the world. Or at least, she tries to.

From its arresting opening, photographed by Slawomir Idziak and edited by Jacques Witta, this is a most absorbing, quietly gripping piece of work. I like the way we get these big hits of music, then a fade to black, then the scene fades back in and resumes - not sure I'd seen that before.

Her new address is near Rue Mouffetard in the 5eme.

She cameos in Kieslowski's sequels, Blanc and Rouge, which I'm sure are worth watching. I'd seen A Short Film About Killing ages ago but would also like to catch up with A Short Film About Love (1988).

I was slightly underwhelmed by composer Zbigniew Preisner's supposedly great concerto. In fact I would have ended the film with Binoche saying '"I'll be right over". However the ending as is, with its creative montage to music, is interesting enough.

Agnieszka Holland contributed to the screenplay and Julie Delpy has a cameo (didn't spot her).

A Civil Action (1998 Steve Zaillian & scr)

Robert Duvall died February 15. He's as good as always in this as a world-weary lawyer who's seen it all before and knows how to win. In fact that's the problem with this film - unlike something like Erin Brockovich, the case defeats them and literally leaves all the partners bankrupt. Who are: John Travolta, Tony Shaloub, William H Macy and Zeljko Ivanek.

But it's another seriously staggering piece of work from 'every frame' Conrad Hall, whose pools of light are just mesmerizing. But it's also the way the cinematography enhances the story - the way water and water in glasses is shot. He and Duvall were Oscar nominated.

Also with Bruce Norris ('Cheeseman'), John Lithgow, Kathleen Quinlan, James Gandolfini, Stephen Fry (a non part really - he just disappears) and Dan Hedaya. And Sydney Pollack.

Silent Witness - Season 12 (2008)

Death's Door. Stephen Davis. Director Diarmuid Lawrence.

A body is found with its face removed. An annoying student (Naomi Bentley) has been assigned to the pathology team, clearly with her own agenda. The story takes a sharp turn when she is murdered, and Russians come in to play. And Harry is assigned a particularly useful security officer (played by John Kirk, I believe).

The investigating detective on this one is particularly unpleasant (Midsomer's Neil Dudgeon). And there's a ruthless PR man involved (Phil Davis). Jaye Griffiths is a little bit of love interest for Leo.

Babou Ceesay (We Hunt Together. The Best of Enemies) isn't in it much. Richard Atlee and Philip Quast play Russian.

John Kirk (I think)

The Greengage Summer / Loss of Innocence (1961 Lewis Gilbert)

According to an Amazon reviewer, the DVD is a bootleg and that 'Columbia never officially released it'. I'm not quite sure how they came by that information but apparently the only way to see it in its original form is from the broadcast that TCM made of it. It's certainly odd that this version is presented in 4x3, although I have to say it doesn't particularly look cropped to me. There are bootleg copies available on dodgy websites which purport to run 99m - the UK release DVD is 95. The BBFC shows that the original, which received cuts (you can see the jump in a couple of places e.g. the conversation about the two women of the hotel being lesbians), was 100m, which equates to 96m on video.

According to the BBFC, the cuts were as follows:

Reel 2 Remove "A lady loves a lady?" and "We were so happy before he came, so very happy".

Reel 4 Shorten the scene in which Joss gets drunk.

Reel 5 Considerably shorten the attempted rape of Joss by Paul.

There's a lot going on here, presumably all in Rumer Godden's novel (Howard Koch adapted it with - apparently and uncredited - input from the author). The owner of the Chateau, Claude Mollier, lies to tourists and pretends its some historical relic which it isn't, and is having an affair with mysterious Englishman Kenneth More, supplanting a prior relationship with Danielle Darrieux.

The arrival of the kids - Susannah York, Jane Asher, Elizabeth Dear and Richard Williams - stirs everything up, including malevolent servant David Saire, who is vile - he attacks young Asher for slapping him, later tries to rape York twice. Thankfully More is around to prevent things from going truly sour - he's great with the younger kids. But he's not above having a flirtatious relationship with York himself, which leads to a tragic outcome. More: "It was one of the happiest films on which I'd ever worked." (His autobiog.)

Filmed on location in France by Freddie Young, edited by Peter Hunt (his greengage montage is a bit overdone), good music by Richard Addinsell.

I was trying to work out if one (or an amalgam) of the kids is Godden - was the Jane Asher character her alter ego? Whilst researching this I found her quote "Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.” Which even though it doesn't help is interesting. Though there is an intriguing BBC article here which tells us that the story was substantially true.

Silent Witness - Season 12 opener (2008)

Safe, which opens season12, is one of the strongest so far, sitting firmly in the realist tradition of The Wire and Top Boy and arguably darker and more pessimistic than either. It was written by Timothy Prager, his first for the series (also Two Thousand Acres of Sky) and directed by Sue Tully.

A girl is killed at a funfair. Two brothers experience gang culture. Leo is on community service - after (slightly) drunk driving - on a South London estate. And a tough tale of gang violence (with a slight Romeo and Juliet undertone) and public silence follows. (Good rap material: 'gang violence... public silence".)

Thought we recognised the elder brother - it's Daniel Kaluuya. Younger is Kedar Williams-Stirling (Sex Ed). Aml Ameen is the dedicated community worker. Paul Higgins investigates. Jamie Sives is a paramedic that Nikki dalliances with. Charles Mnene is the chief gang bastard, Malachi Kirby (A Thousand Blows) a cohort. Acting all good.

Gang rape initiation for 13 year old girls, Brixton being in 'the heart of Somalia', death by tar and feathering, and by dog attack, all vivid details of a lawless side of London. And the ending - bringing kids in with lures of trainers - is a neat way of saying it will all go on.

Betrayal (2026 David Eldridge, director Julian Jarrold)

We were warned off this by several (general public) reviewers who found it crap. Didn't seem particularly good or bad to us.

Shaun Evans is something of a burned out MI5 operative who stumbles upon a terror plot involving Iran. Zahra Ahmadi (who we're used to seeing in Beyond Paradise) is assigned to look after him as he faces disciplinary action. 

Meantime his marriage is in trouble following years of not telling his wife Romola Garai what his job involves; and having had an affair, she doesn't trust him (although it was seven years ago?) and they're now in counselling.

With Nikki Amuka-Bird, Matthew Tennyson (gay MI5), Gamba Cole, Omid Djalili.

4 x 45 for ITV.

It had one or two points of difference I quite enjoyed: a long tailing scene with the suspects' dialogue running throughout, and a climax involving Sarin gas and a community centre largely told from security cameras and drone footage. Seemed to have some quite daft moments but no more than anything else in this genre. The Betrayal / marriage counselling thing is a bit clumsy.

Yes, I'm sure we've come across this Rumi fellow before. 'The truth was a mirror in the hand of God, It fell and broke into pieces'. Not quite sure where that leaves us, but there you go!

Silent Witness - Season 11 conclusion (2007)

Peripheral Vision. Christian Spurrier. Director Bruce Goodison.

Bones are found near a travellers' camp. Are they the missing teenage daughter of ex DCS Jim Carter? Active DI Ian Puleston-Davies thinks it's paedo suspect crusty Ben Smith but Nikki finds evidence to the contrary.  (Also anyone who's seen this sort of thing before will know he's too obvious a suspect.)  Nick Brimble and Adrian Rawlings are also involved. Nikki stupidly finds herself in near-death situation.

In parallel, and not intersecting, Harry investigates death of Archie Punjabi's father, and finds himself up against a big insurance company in the guise of Pip Torrens.

Torrens (born 1960) a familiar and dependable face, has been in everything from Bond to Star Wars. Lately we've seen him in Down Cemetery Road, Mr Bates and the Post Office, The Hack, Sherwood and Succession.

Silent Witness - Season 11 (2007)

Hippocratic Oath, Tony McHale. Director Diarmuid Lawrence.

In a stunning beginning, a lorry ploughs into a hearse - the coffin is ejected and two bodies fall out. And it's not long before we're in the company of innovative child surgeon Natasha Little, and the strange machinations at her hospital. It's a crafty and sinewy tale which puts Nikki in danger of being clonked.

One thing that pissed us off is Leo leaves Harry by Nikki's hospital bedside saying 'look after her' (a hospital whose staff are offended at being investigated), and the next thing Harry's over at Little's place having spaghetti bolognese! What the fuck?? (Something was edited out of the script?)

Another good one: Double Dare. Two ghosts from Nikki's past. One is a child murderer she defended four years ago is killed, horribly, by knife wound and a burning car. And her shiftless, lying father comes back on the scene and puts her through the wringer. She begins to doubt her first summation was correct. Then some long dead bodies are discovered. Nice twists here.

Hugo Speer, Nick Court, Cara Horgan, Danny Midwinter (the unpleasant DS).

A Tale of Two Cities (1935 Jack Conway)

Dickens given the MGM Hollywood treatment doesn't compare to the two David Lean classic adaptations of the forties; the adaptation is by W.R. Lipscomb and S.N. Berhman. To be fair it doesn't quite have the same emotions and complications as the other two, and Selznick himself, when comparing it to his earlier adaptation of David Copperfield, felt it didn't have anywhere near the same number of great, rounded characters. Still, it's definitely given the big Selznick touch and the end result is exciting and tragic enough, without somehow quite hitting the nail on the head. For example, the storming of the Bastille scene, researched and written by Val Lewton, is probably historically accurate without being the most exciting moment. And on the eve of the prisoner's execution, there's somewhat too much weeping and wailing before Colman leaps into action - to paraphrase John Madden, the film is dawdling where it needs to motor.

Interesting for the way in which it's presented that the revolutionaries would then murder anyone who had anything to do with the aristocrats, even servants.

Good cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan (I know - who? But she is in Went the Day Well?), Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Blanche Yurka (I thought she was good - had something of the intensity of Pamela Brown - but perhaps a shade too theatrical in the court scene), Henry Walthall (long imprisoned father), Donald Woods (Rathbone's son), Walter Catlett (the fraudster), Fritz Leiber, H.B. Warner, Mitchell Lewis, Billy Bevan.

The wine shop gave Oliver T Marsh photographic problems with the action both in the interior and outside in the street. He used ten varying shades of amber glass on the windows for the time of day. The Paris scenes were an ingenious mixture of sets, matte painting and miniatures.

The music oddly uses bits of Chopin, O Come All Ye Faithful and La Marseillaise!

On right, annoying woman who cackles at everything

Silent Witness - Season 11 (2007)

Harry and Nicki witness a helicopter crash on to a detainment centre for illegal immigrants, leading to a terse and sombre episode - the good that they (try and) do makes matters worse.

Apocalypse was written by Stephen Davis and directed by Maurice Phillips.

Then Suffer the Children looks at child sacrifices for tribal African folk cures. This runs in parallel to the suspected suicide of a priest in a boys' school (couldn't track it down. Yes I could. It's Royal Connaught Park, formerly the Royal Masonic School for Boys, Bushey, which closed in 1970. It's apparently been used in Lucky Jim, The Meaning of Life, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the Harry Potter films.)

And Leo keeps 'seeing' his dead daughter Cassie.

Michael Byrne is the grizzled headmaster / priest

99 River Street (1953 Phil Karson)

Efficient, independent noir thriller, featuring washed up boxer John Payne (Miracle on 34th Street, and the previous year's Kansas City Confidential, also directed by Karlson) whose marriage to Peggie Castle is also washed up - she's having a thing with a murdering robber Brad Dexter.

He's also mixed up (in a platonic way) with Broadway wannabe Evelyn Keyes (Hell's Half Acre), who suckers him into a fake murder scene at the theatre (this is a lovely twist scene); he loses it, violently, but is even more upset when his wife is murdered and he looks like the suspect. The film is typified by violent fights and violent characters.

From producer Ed Small, who'd given us T-Men and Raw Deal. Walk a Crooked Mile is (according to Eddie Muller) worth checking out also. 

Photographed by Franz Planer, edited by Ed's son Buddy Small. With Frank Faylen (buddy at taxi co), Jay Adler, and Jack Lambert (heavy, The Killers, The Enforcer) who kept annoying Q by hitting Payne on the neck.

Silent Witness - Season 10 finale (2006)

Christian Spurrier wrote Schism about animal rights activists. I thought the torturing dentist bit was way unbelievable, but putting Nikki in danger a good idea, with Harry thinking about leaving for a professorship in the US. Nicholas Renton directed. Didn't quite understand the end - who was undercover (if anyone)?

Leo is defending an old friend in court in a less interesting storyline.

Joseph Mawle, Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Lead Balloon, Jack Dee thing).

Circle of Two aka Obsession (1980 Jules Dassin)

Fifteen year old schoolgirl Tatum O'Neal falls in love with sixty year old artist Richard Burton. I mean, it's a must, isn't it? I rather enjoyed it. And it's got one of those sad, sort of 'European' themes that I'm a sucker for (by Bernard Hoffer). Filmed in Toronto. Based on the novel 'A Lesson in Love' by Marie-Terese Baird.

The despicable parents are Patricia Collins and Robin Gammell, who are way more concerned over this May-December relationship than the fact her boyfriend tried to rape her, and they keep her prisoner in her room! Michael Wincott is the horrible ex.

It's apparently 106 minutes and in 1.85:1 - our copy was 98 minutes and in 4x3 (though didn't look badly cropped).

Count Dracula and the Vampire Bride is not a real film.

Was vaguely wondering how many bottles of vodka a day Burton was on at the time.

Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944 Lloyd Bacon)

Martha Cheavens' story was adapted by Wanda Tuchock and Melvin Levy. Anne Baxter runs a poor Florida family of much younger kids without help from 'Grandfeathers' Charles Winninger. Anne Revere (and maid Marietta Canty) are neighbours. John Hodiak is the soldier who comes to lunch (eventually).

And that's it. A delightful film. The kids are Bobby Driscoll, Connie Marshall and Billy Cummings. With Chill Wills, Robert Bailey and Jane Darwell.

It's slightly trippy seeing Russell Spencer and Lyle Wheeler's 20th Century Fox fake Florida. Joe MacDonald's the photographer. The music's by Alfred Newman.

I thought the chemistry between Baxter and Hodiak was tangible; they married in 1947.

Le Notti di Cabiria (1957 Federico Fellini & co-scr)

A fabulous opening: the camera tracks  a courting couple at polite distance, they reach the river... then he grabs her bag and pushes her in. Swept away by the current, she is drowning... but some ragazzi spot her and save her. A crowd gathers and she is revived... But she just wakes up mad at the guy who pushed her in.

This fiery, independent, vivacious character is given life by Giulietta Masina, who won Best Actress at Cannes, but amazingly not the David di Donatello award - che stronzi! They gave it to Ingrid Bergman for Anastasia instead! (Fellini at least won Best Director and it was Best Foreign Film Oscar.)

In typically episodic fashion, streetwalker Cabiria shouts and fights, is picked up by a film star, goes to a Holy Blessing, is hypnotised on stage and romanced by a bourgeois accountant. You just know it's going to end badly, and it does, with some circularity, but then Cabiria responds to the smiles and songs of passing people.

Nino Rota's score adds a lot.

With Francois Perier, Franca Marzi (also good as her friend). Written with Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Photographed by Aldo Tonti.

It's maybe my favourite Fellini, and kept making me think of Woody Allen and just how influential the Italian was.

Silent Witness Season 10 cont (2006)

I actually didn't really enjoy Supernova for a change. It was written by Paul Farrell and directed by Phillippa Langdale, so you might start off pointing the finger of blame there. A school girl is killed; suicide is suspected but all is not what it seems, and the culprits are a group of teenagers executing 'criss cross' murders. It's not very credible. But worse than that is that someone's made the sound designer the most prominent person in post, with giant 'bangs' every time an email is sent, or those stupid 'whooshes' that accompany a superfluously tricksy edit. Such a shame; and interesting, as we're essentially watching how TV thrillers were presented over a period of time - none of this stuff was remotely needed in the earlier films.

I Swear (2025 Kirk Jones & scr)

Scott Ellis Watson and Robert Aramayo are both brilliant as respectively the younger and older version of real life Tourette's sufferer John Davidson (who's featured in the end credits).

Scene where he meets fellow Tourrette's case in car had me crying with laughter, but of course it's not a funny business, as the attack with a crow bar proves.

Ably supported by Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan and Shirley Henderson. And Paul Donnelly.

DP James Blann. Composer Stephen Rennicks. Editor Sam Sneade.

Silent Witness - Season 10 (2006)

Terminus. There's a lot going on in this one - too much, arguably. Written by Jeff Povey, directed by Alrick Riley. What happened about the self-inflicted firestarter, for example. We really didn't like the investigating detective, played by Nigel Betts. There's also a story of a run over teenager and how he connects to a footballer.

Rhidian Brook's Body of Work (directed by Martyn Friend) begins promisingly with Harry kissing Nikki. But then a woman who meant something to him when young rolls up in the morgue. You wouldn't believe what goes on in this one - it's a corker. And at the end, you somehow think the Harry-Nikki thing is doomed not to work. Great performance from Tom Ward here. He hasn't been on screen since 2017.

Featuring Jim Findley, Deborah Cornelius, Larry Lamb, Sean Chapman, Matthew Dunster, Harry Procter.

In parallel the death of a conceptual artist bothers Leo.

Silent Witness - Season 10 (2006)

Cargo. Doug Milburn. Director Michael Offer.

A boat of illegals is found in the Thames. People from China, Albania and the Ivory Coast are among them. Some have survived, including a little girl, who Nikki will not give up on...

Wai Kee Chan, Li-Leng Au. lovely to see Bert Kwouk, Patrice Nalambana.

Tricksy editing is distracting.

Little Caesar (1931 Mervyn LeRoy)

Released in January, this isn't up to the standard of The Public Enemy (released May) - what a difference a few months make. (Also our print is noisy and soft.) From the W.R. Burnett novel, his first published, in 1929, adapted by Francis Edward Faragoh and Robert N Lee. Of main interest for Edward G Robinson's star making performance and for the way it addressed the Italian gangster (i.e. Mafia) organization, in its own way influencing both The Godfather and The Sopranos as the later film did.

I was wondering if it was cinematographer Tony (Antonio) Gaudio's first film but he'd been shooting them since 1903 - born in Cosenza, Calabria; in the US from 1906. The interesting set designs are by Anton Grot.

But I was a bit confused in a couple of places.. I thought the guy he shot down on the church steps was his dancing buddy Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Turns out it wasn't. And was that his mother who he gave all his dough to? We hadn't seen her before - could have done with one more scene. Loved though that she would only give him $150. Also the drive-by shooting from an ice cream van! Use of machine guns on both sides interesting - a vestige from WWI, perhaps?

So, overall enjoyable Warner Bros. hit. With Glena Farrell, William Collier Jr, Sidney Blackmer (top boss), Ralph Ince, Thomas E Jackson (detective), Stanley Fields, Ferike Boros (uncredited).

And then the solitary moment of compassion...