Shaun of the Dead (2004 Edgar Wright & co-scr)

The opening synthesizer track which sounds so familiar is 'Figment' by Simon Park, used in Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978).

It's great fun.

Last seen two Halloweens ago.

One thing I didn't get is that when the two resistance groups meet they're actually pairings of comedy duos - thus Pegg and Jessica Stevenson (Hynes) from Spaced, Martin Freeman and Lucy Davis (The Office), Dylan Moran and Tamsin Greig (Black Books).. leaving Matt Lucas. Also Q points out that each character (as they pass each other) is mirroring their counterpart in attire.

David Dunlap is the cameraman behind those efficient tracking shots, though to be pernickety you can see the exposure change on one of the entrances into the supermarket.

Mandy / The Crash of Silence (1952 Alexander Mackendrick)

Written by Nigel Balchin and Jack Whittingham, based on 'This Day is Ours' by Hilda Lewis (1946) which drew from her husband's experience as a deaf educator - thus he becomes Jack Hawkins.

Mandy Miller is beautifully expressive - and indeed well-directed - in tale of deaf girl. Behaviour of father is difficult to understand, even 60 years ago.

Phyllis Calvert, Terence Morgan, Nancy Price (the ageing and deaf governess, who was also in I Know Where I'm Going!)

Shot with customary care by Douglas Slocombe. Music by William Alwyn.

Can also be viewed as about the way parents pull their children about between them.

Mandy retired ten years later and was last seen in Aberdeenshire being rescued by a neighbour in his Capri! (Source)

Mr Holmes (2015 Bill Condon)

From the director of Gods and Monsters and the pilot of The Big C, Condon is thus reunited with Ian McKellan and Laura Linney, adding a confident Milo Parker as the boy (in interview, the 11-year old sounds twice his age). Jeffrey Hatcher's screenplay is stately (source novel Mitch Cullin) delivering a slow, subtle, satisfying whole.

Well acted. With Hattie Morahan (I guess known to us from The Bletchley Cirle and one-offs like Lewis and Marple), Hiroyuki Sanada, Roger Allam, Phil Davis, Frances de la Tour.

Music: Carter Burwell. Cinematography: Tobias Schliessler (who also shot Condon's Dreamgirls about a black soul group in the 60s). Editor: Virginia Katz (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters). Production design: Martin Childs (Parade's End, Quills).

There were one or two on location shots in Japan, but it's mainly Chatham Docks. Baker Street is Bedford Row, and those great cliffs (also in Atonement) are near Seaford.

A Swingin' Summer (1965 Robert Sparr)

Film is awful - like Carry On Summer Holiday - and for that reason, rather enjoyable. The sixties hasn't really caught up with these kids yet - there's no sex, drugs or booze, just some pretty tame rock from Gary Lewis or someone. Has the most prurient of cameraman, who is absolutely fixated by endless shots of bikini clad bosoms and bottoms in tight pants. There's an astoundingly bad fight scene, very dodgy acting, and a risible script (as evidence, the best line in it is "OK, let's go!")

Of note as Raquel Welch's debut. Film really only comes vaguely to life in Righteous Brothers' finale.

Also filled with characters who seem really gay.

The fact we watched a 4x3 crop of a Techniscope print, replete with rolling frames and flashes of green, made it even funnier.

The Fire Raisers (1934 Michael Powell)

This one for Gaumont-British, based on a contemporary newspaper story, written by Powell and Jerome Jackson - when else (apart from Armadillo) do you get a story about loss adjusters and the murky world of insurance? Leslie Banks plays the opportunistic claims pursuer, Anne Grey the love interest, Frank Cellier her father, Lawrence Anderson a claims investigator and Francis L Sullivan as a rotten baddie. However of most interest in the cast is Carol Goodner, who has a genuine naturalness ahead of her time.

Edited by D.N. Twist who also cut The Phantom Light and Edge of the World for Powell, and 39 Steps for Hitch. Effective use of cutting and audio in interrogation scene. Also features early credit for Alfred Junge. There's no music in these cheap, short, energetic, imaginative films.

I thought one of the (non-speaking) baddies looked familiar - it's Danny Green, to be seen in The Ladykillers.

Something Always Happens (1934 Michael Powell)

One of our double bill of Michael Powell quota quickies, written by Brock Williams, both distinguished by interesting, original material.

This one immediately elicits our sympathies for orphan John Singer (who later appeared in In Which We Serve) whose experiences are cross-cut against down-on-luck chancer Ian Hunter (the screenplay continues to do this successfully throughout), who then picks up Nancy O'Neil under false pretences. That it then turns into a battle between two rival petrol station companies is not what we were expecting at all.

Muriel George (Last Holiday, Went the Day Well?) is the sympathetic landlady. It's quite charming, lively, winning and - of course - short. In fact it's amazing how much you can seem to pack into 60-odd minutes - a lesson in film story-telling.

Basil Emmott shot it. American Ralph Dawson (it's a Warner Bros Teddington film), who cut it, won three Oscars including one for The Adventures of Robin Hood, and also edited Kings Row.

Della (1964 Robert Gist)

Recluse Joan Crawford (heavily gauzed) won't sell her land to aggressive lawyer Paul Burke (who isn't going to win any awards). Daughter Diane Baker doesn't seem to like going out much, becomes infatuated with the hot-head.

Was originally a pilot for a series to be called 'Royal Bay', thus the 4x3 ratio, and the billing of Crawford as 'Special Guest Star'.

Short but inoffensive.

The Man in the White Suit (1951 Alexander Mackendrick & co-scr)

Written with John Dighton and Roger Macdougall, from his play.

Guinness is terrific, displaying a weird mix of diffidence and confidence; Joan Greenwood is also wonderful.

Perry's unenlightening 'Forever Ealing' skips through it in a couple of paragraphs and doesn't even mention two of the most distinctive things about it - and of any British film come to that - the luminous suit and the extraordinary soundtrack to Guinness's chemical experiments. The latter was apparently created by sound editor Mary Habberfield using a tuba and a bassoon (unsubstantiated), mixed with bubbles. It was turned into 'White Suit Samba' performed by Jack Parnell and His Rhythm (and Mary's "Gurgle Glub Gurgle" is credited on the record).

But how Douglas Slocombe achieved that luminosity in night scenes without lighting everything else around him I've no idea. He's 102!

With Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger, Howard Marion-Crawford (rather good as one of the industrialists), Vida Hope, Olaf Olsen, Judith Furse (nurse), Miles Malleson (tailor) and little Mandy Miller as a useful decoy.

It's not one of the Auric Ealings, but the score by Benjamin Frankel is good enough.

The Ghost Camera (1933 Bernard Vorhaus)

A somewhat schoolboy adventure script is enlivened by the quirky character played by Henry Kendall (one of ten features he appeared in that year; Rich and Strange was his Hitchcock in 1931), who talks like a thesaurus, sparking off cute Ida Lupino, with John Mills in early support. Vorhaus - in his first feature - sets up some interesting stuff such as subjective camera, and shots which allow David Lean to edit briskly (one character walking into camera becomes another walking out).

IMDB credits the American Ernest Palmer (Blood and Sand) as the cinematographer, but double-checking with the Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers confirms that it was the English one (who made the Ghosts of Berkeley Square).

Victor Stanley provides broad comic relief, Felix Aylmer is the judge, George Merritt the 'detective' (also in Young and Innocent and A Canterbury Tale).

Back to the Future Part III (1990 Robert Zemeckis & co-scr)

Cast adds Mary Steenburgen. Marty borrows Fistful of Dollars trick a bit too obviously.

Even Marty says "Great Scott!" at one point.

Monument Valley? Sure looks like it.

Back to the Future Part II (1989 Robert Zemeckis & co-scr)

So, four years after the original, neither Glover (who wanted too much money) nor girlfriend no. 1 Claudia Wells appear, making the recreations of Part I all the more crafty.

Liked the in-joke about Jaws 19 - "the shark still looks fake" (apparently provided by Spielberg himself).

And did a germ of this sink into JK Rowling's mind, becoming integral to the plot of the equally ingenious Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban?

Halloween (1978 John Carpenter & co-scr)

I was trying to delay the pleasure until next weekend, but Q said 'why don't we just watch it now?'

The second Dean Cundey film we saw in a row.

Rather like Psycho, nothing really happens for the first 50 minutes.

I could swear that music shifts up a fraction of a tone at one point.

Back to the Future (1985 Robert Zemeckis & co-scr)

...with Bob Gale. It's the anniversary. Christopher Lloyd, and his Heath Robinson collection of toys, steals the film. Liked the touch that the 1955 car disappears into a cinema playing 'Atomic Boy'.

Michael J Fox, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover (not a fan), Thomas F. Wilson.

Shot in that very saturated colourful 80s style (by Dean Cundey) which I think the French might have introduced with the 'cinéma du look'. Music by Alan Silvestri.

It's an ingenious story, with a certain debt to It's a Wonderful Life.

The excessive product placements are funny - I can't tell you the number of times the JC Penney department store logo is in shot.

Quantum of Solace (2008 Marc Forster)

Bond filtered through Bourne, film is over-edited to the point where you have to fight for a plot to materialise. (Not to mention that you just don't know where you are half the time.) Disappointing from the title sequence and theme song on, film is spectacularly well set up and edited, by Matt Chessé (Kite Runner, Finding Neverland) and Richard Pearson (Bourne Supremacy - see, told you so) and shot by Roberto Schaeffer. Olga Kurylenko is one good thing about it and although Mathieu Amalric is quietly sinister he doesn't have the presence for a Bond villain. With Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini, Rory Kinnear, Gemma Arterton, Jeffrey Wright. Paul Ritter's in it, but we didn't notice.

Good opening in Siena, then falls apart somewhat.

The quantum is the leap Skyfall made after it.

Paul Haggis (Crash) has been brought in to write, along with series regulars Rob Wade and Neal Purvis - but you wouldn't notice.

Singles (1992 Cameron Crowe & scr)

Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, Sheila Kelly, Jim True, Bill Pullman, Matt Dillon, Eric Stoltz (mime), Jeremy Piven, Tom Skerritt, Paul Giamatti.

Loved the mime pretending to smoke - so how does he exhale a real puff of smoke?

Cameron's tribute to Manhattan, edited by Richard Chew, shot by Tak Fujimoto and Ueli Steiger.

Stuff about the supertrain reminds me of the failed sneakers in Elizabethtown. There's a poster advertising a band called 'Stillwater' (Almost Famous). The band is called 'Citizen Dick' - in Vanilla Sky his nickname is 'Citizen Dildo'.

Again you are reminded that Cameron has heart (Billy was a cynic).

Scene where Fonda goes to have her breasts enlarged is funny, as is car with new sound system.

Vanilla Sky (2001 Cameron Crowe & scr)

We've avoided it for a long time, this most un-Cameron like project, based on Abre Los Ojos (written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil; and you can hear Penelope Cruz speak these words right at the start, which is cool) - 'the Cameron that got away'. It was a most welcome re-acquaintanceship, though through much of the film we were admittedly puzzled (yet intrigued). Is the bar scene a mirror of the party? Is there a corporate conspiracy?

It sounds like a Cameron Crowe film, in places, and you notice the fake skies. And yes, you notice Noah Taylor ('tech support') was from the operation scene, though by now it's all gone a bit Last Year at Marienbad mixed up with The Manchurian Candidate - though the ultimate explanation for characters' origins is wholly unexpected and brilliant. Some of it's very funny, especially the Lucid Dream stuff, and the frozen dog business.

We liked Tom Cruise in those days, before he was an alien, though Penelope Cruz probably steals the acting honours - Cameron Diaz is good too though. With Jason Lee, Timothy Spall, Kurt Russell, Jonathan Galecki, Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon.

What's the lesson? "You need the sour to appreciate the sweet." Loved that elevator to heaven, which seems quite Powell & Pressburgerish. And the weirdness of Cruise with his mask on the back of his face.

Shot by John Toll. That final montage - edited by Joe Hutshing and Mark Livolsi - is so amazing we had to watch it first in slow mo (which was still too fast) then in the slowest mo - to really appreciate what went into it (some of Cameron's home movies, we guess).

If it doesn't have cult status it should have. Great soundtrack, of course, including one of Q's favourite Stones songs 'Heaven'.

Amenábar, quoted on 'The Uncool' website:

“When I learned, quite some time ago now, that Cameron Crowe was going to write and direct the film based on Open Your Eyes with Tom Cruise in the leading role, I felt honored. Now that I have seen Vanilla Sky, I couldn’t be more proud. Cameron has all my respect and admiration. Respect, for having plumbed the deepest meaning of the work. Admiration, for having sought new viewpoints and a fresh approach to the mise-en-scene, giving the film his own unmistakable touch. Vanilla Sky is as true the original spirit as it is irreverent towards its form, and that makes it a courageous, innovative work. I think I can say that, for me, the projects are like two very special brothers. They have the same concerns, but their personalities are quite different. In other words, they sing the same song but with quite different voices: one likes opera, and the other likes rock and roll.”

For a while, it's like watching a film on a slope, but it's absolutely stupendous.

Try and Get Me! / The Sound of Fury (1950 Cy Endfield)

A rare film noir - though of course it features in Eddie Muller's trove of that genre 'Dark City' - 'One of the most emotionally charged and bleakest of all noirs'. Film is unjustly forgotten and packs a punch in lynch mob finale. ("There are more films in this heaven and earth...")

Properly doomed, down on his luck anti-hero Frank Lovejoy (one of the ex-service / post-war depression / crime scenarios which it seems noir was capable of talking about) unluckily falls in with violent criminal Lloyd Bridges (who twirls things well) - a really nasty murder of a kidnap victim results and as Lovejoy falls apart with booze he accidentally confesses to Adele Jergens.

Meanwhile newspaperman Richard Carlson is getting a lesson in ethics from Renzo Cesana and Kathleen Ryan is left at home looking after the brat - I mean son.

Can't have been that low budget, with final mob scenes, really rather nicely put together throughout (OK too much camera tilt in nightclub scene, but you have to forgive these youngsters - actually he was 36 - their youthful excesses) and nicely shot by someone called Guy Roe (great shots from inside back of car oddly resemble similar material in same year's Gun Crazy). Jo Pagano adapted his own novel. Music Hugo Friedhofer.

Good print onto DVDR available from www.pressplayhouse.net. Try and find it elsewhere.

Once again this is an example of a film that enraged the HUAC for being 'un-American', causing Endfield (like Losey) to relocate to England, where his most famous film became Zulu.

Loved the waitress who gives the order for a steak sandwich as 'cow on a slab' and also has another such gem in her repertoire (which now I can't remember).

Let's Live a Little (1948 Richard Wallace)

Independently-produced (by star Robert Cummings) fluff is quite fun as nervous ad man falls for psychiatrist Hedy Lamarr (who always reminds me of a beautiful dog). Anna Sten is the odious client and Robert Shayne the rival love interest, and I thought that was Robert Greig as the butler but in Talking Picture TV's print, like looking through a fog, it was difficult to make out anything of Ernest Laszlo's original photography (it turns out to have been Billy Bevan).

Looking at reviews though it seems the US DVD release was even worse.

State of Play (2003 David Yates)

The original, six hour journalism/conspiracy thriller absolutely zips along without ever a single dull moment thanks to Paul Abbott's screenplay, Yates and editor Mark Day's presentation, and a fantastic ensemble cast. On the Herald we have John Simm, Kelly Macdonald, Bill Nighy (who provides most of the laughs), a young James McEvoy, Amelia Bullmore, Benedict Wong and Tom Burke.

David Morrissey is the PM, Polly Walker his wife. Philip Glenister and Sean Gilder represent the boys in blue and Marc Warren is way out of his depth (ultimately believably pathetic).

Day has accompanied Yates on everything and they're finishing Tarzan and the Harry Potter prequel.

Jigsaw (1962 Val Guest & scr)

Adaptation of Hillary Waugh's detective fiction 'Sleep Long My Love' (1959), which in turn had echoes of real life murder cases from Brighton involving disembodied murder victims. It's shot very dry, like a documentary in widescreen, with no music, and most of the members of the general public involved are bad-tempered and unhelpful. With Jack Warner, Roland Lewis and Yolande Donlan. Shot by Hammer's Arthur Grant (who appears to be playing with a new zoom lens).