Films of the Year 2015

Make Way for Tomorrow. Amazingly grown-up Hollywood film anticipates Tokyo Story.

What We Did on Our Holiday. Unique, fresh, laugh out loud funny.

Texasville. As good as the original.

She's Funny That Way. The master back at work, giving us films we really need, with a fantastic performance from Poots.

The Imitation Game. Superbly acted scandalous true story.

Sword of Honour. One of Will's most successful films.

St. Vincent. Sweet film with our beloved veteran Bill Murray. "It is what it is."

My Blueberry Nights. Stylish beyond description, with amazing performances that give the film real depth.

Wild. Reese fabulous in most involving (true) story.

The Theory of Everything. Manages not to be depressing, two equally good lead performances.

Life of Pi. Just jaw-droppingly creative.

Black Narcissus. It gets better each time, film is way out there!

Went the Day Well. Incredibly tough, hard-hitting, brilliant drama still after all these years.

Inherent Vice. Very seventies, very funny, Joaquin's growing hugely in our estimation.

Election. Revisiting early Payne is a joy.

Deconstructing Harry. Wonderfully different; enormously funny.

Un Flic. For its mood, and that amazing (and funny) train scene.

Lone Star. Just so interesting and totally unexpected.

La Belle et la Bête. Pure Cocteau magic, a unique experience in cinema.

That Uncertain Feeling / Trouble in Paradise. Lubitsch seems to get better with every viewing.  'Keeks!'

The 39 Steps. You forget just how good it is, one of the very best of the British years.

Broken / London Road. Rufus Norris knocks us over with impressive debut about kids, then hits us over the head with the most utterly original musical ever made. For a theatre director he's most interestingly cinematic.

Aloha / Vanilla Sky. Cameron's made another wonderful, humane, timeless classic, but the rediscovery of 'the one that got away' is fantastic too.

Mary and Max. Quite remarkable animation leaves strong impression.

Man Up. Very fresh date-movie.

This is England '90. Beautifully balanced between horror and sweetness, this semi-improvised series has lost none of its visceral power.

Magnolia / Punch-Drunk Love. Paul Thomas Anderson rediscovered in the gripping and unusual epic; but his Sandler 'comedy' is equally fascinating and original with bonkers music score,

McCabe and Mrs Miller. Sensational early Altman in his distinctive style, enriched by just amazing photography.

Bonnie and Clyde. Has lost absolutely none of its power and nimble energy, and a key film of American cinema.

Stranger on the Third Floor. Because it's just so damned different and interesting.

Four Lions. Astonishing in that it can make its terrifying subject matter so hilarious.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Totally cool in every way, funny, stylish, thought-provoking.

And of course the usual selection of Wilders, Leans and Hitchcocks, The Descendents (again), Up In the Air (again) etc.

Also, special mention to Gemma Chan in Humans.

Marvellous (2014 Julian Farino)

Written by Peter Bowker (Capital and Occupation), himself a former special needs teacher, apparently inspired by an article in The Guardian about Neil Baldwin, won the BAFTA.

Toby Jones leads (this is a real chuckler), Gemma Jones (who it seems has taken over our TVs lately) his mum, Tony Curran the manager, Nicholas Gleaves the priest and Greg McHugh (from Fresh Meat) the university friend.

Very amusing and charming. Photographed by David Odd.

Indiscreet (1958 Stanley Donen)

Norman Krasna adapted his own 1953 play for the screen, shifting the location from New York to London. It's apparently Cary Grant's favourite of all of his films (unsubstantiated) and he and Ingrid Bergman are jolly good (he was 54, in answer to my wife's question).

I love the fact there was so little traffic going through London Airport that you'd actually get to know the passport official. (Or is this just a film thing? Wikipedia tells me that passenger traffic for 1953 reached one million.)

And where's Cleopatra's needle?

Classy support from Phyllis Calvert, Cecil Parker, Megs Jenkins and David Kossof, shot by Freddie Young, edited by Jack Harris and scored by Richard Rodney Bennett.

Sabrina (1954 Billy Wilder)

When you need something top quality...

"There'll be an awful scandal and the market will go down."

Wilder claims not to know Audrey Hepburn and William Holden were allegedly having an affair.

Hepburn was very fresh - just after Roman Holiday. She has such a distinctive voice.

Audrey Hepburn Estate Collection

It's a marvellous jewel of a film, photographic-wise. Every shot looks like it's from Vogue magazine.

Wilder: Charles Lang was very good. He's still very, very strong. Lang sort of walked around, always, with the same look on his face: squinting, filled with thought, as if he were looking at the world, not just the movie, and thinking "What kind of exposure is this? What exposure is the world?" He was in the upper class of photographers, along with LaShelle. He was on time, a wonderful collaborator, and I loved him.

Crowe: Any advice for shooting a picture in black-and-white?

Wilder: Get yourself an ageing master cinematographer.

'Conversations with Wilder', Cameron Crowe, 1999.

Charles Lang in 1936

Scenes with Marcel Hillaire are hilaire.

Walk the Line (2005 James Mangold)

So, the long anticipated Walk the Line - not a very cinematic or interesting film, best perhaps when it's tightly showing Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon on stage. Weirdly the film to me doesn't really seem to come alive until the last twenty minutes (the performance in jail, followed by their last duet where he proposes). I love Reese, but I'm not sure her performance was Oscar-worthy (she was up against Judi Dench in Mrs Henderson Presents, Felicity Huffman in Transamerica and Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice); in fact I'd have to particularly praise Ginnifer Goodwin as the first Mrs Cash.

Didn't find Michael McCusker's nominated editing that exciting either, nor Phedon Papamichael's widescreen cinematography, so all in all it was a bit of a disappointment. Also the sound is mixed so badly that you can't hear what Joaquin is mumbling / whispering, then the music hits you like a force ten quail.

It also seemed to go on for ever.

The sign visible at an early concert - "Ring in Case of Fire" - is I guess a little subtle reference.

El Espirítu de la Colmena / The Spirit of the Beehive (1973 Victor Erice & scr)

Fabulous, mesmerizing study of the mysterious world of children, particularly one girl (the amazingly natural Ana Torent) who becomes fixated with Frankenstein after being shown it in their village in Castile in 1940.

Seriously beautifully shot by Luis Cuadrado, giving us white skies and a burned out landscape, with gorgeous lighting from candles, fires, sun and moon. And you can in fact see the light changing, which I love.

With: Fernando Ferán Gómez, Teresa Gimpera, Isabel Telleria (the other girl). The kids are great.

Music by Luis de Pablo.

Double Indemnity (1944 Billy Wilder)

Wilder on Stanwyck: ""She was just an extraordinary woman. She took the script, loved it, right from the word go...she knew the script, everybody's lines..Never a fault, never a mistake."

And MacMurray ..he said "I can't do that." And I said "Why can't you?" He said "It requires acting!"

MacMurray in the gas chamber was the last scene filmed.. But he decided the film didn't need it. The quieter ending is better - you don't know if it's an ambulance or police siren you're hearing.

'Conversations with Wilder', Cameron Crowe, 1999.

"When Billy and I discussed the music, he had the idea of using a restless string figure (as in the opening of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony) to reflect the conspiratorial aspect of the two lovers against the husband; it was a good idea and I happily accepted it as a basis to work on... we understood each other completely. Enter now the figure of the Musical Director who, when the time of the recording came, made no secret of the fact that he disliked the music intensely. Wilder finally turned to him and snapped, 'You may be surprised to hear that I love it. O.K.?' At this point the musical director disappeared and we didn't see him at the sessions again..."
(The score was one of seven Oscar nominations.)

'Double Life', Miklós Rózsa, 1982.

The Tall T (1956, release 1957 Budd Boetticher)

Very simple story (could easily have been a silent), filmed simply, in California, from Elmore Leonard, adapted by Burt Kennedy. Randolph Scott starts off by smiling a lot, does less so when friend and son are down the bottom of the well, murdered by Richard Boone, Henry Silva and Skip Homeier. Maureen O'Sullivan is hastily widowed, but ex-husband for a day John Hubbard is a spineless fortune-hunter anyway.

Photographed by Charles Lawton. My first Boetticher, I think, at least recently. I didn't think 'wow!' but I'd watch another.

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940 Boris Ingster)

There's something about this predecessor to film noir I really like; in fact there's a good argument it is one (a tortured, violent central character for one thing, and moody night settings, moodily lit).

It comes from when John McGuire starts worrying after the court case and you hear all this great internal monologue "Why are these stairs so dark? Why don't they put in a better light" ... "I hate having to do this every night" which is very real and refreshing. And he starts looking all mad and paranoid, with angles and lighting to match - he's almost behaving like a character in a Cocteau. And then when he chases Lorre down the stairs, there's a moment when they both suddenly pause.. look at each other.. then the chase continues. I love it! And the weird dream sequence (I wonder who designed the montages? Probably not Don Seigel, who was at Warners - this is RKO.)

Talking of Peter Lorre, his performance is really creepy. He'd been in Hollywood since 1935, in quite a few Mr Moto films. Good tense ending (plus crowd-pleasing happy ending) - then you realise it's only 64 minutes later!

B movie favourite Nick Musuraca lights expressionistically (I don't know when those shadow patterns from blinds started, but this most be one of the earliest examples) ; those great sets (from which everyone seems to be peeking out of doorways) are by Van Nest Polglase, who went on to Citizen Kane.

Rest of cast: Margaret Tallichet, Elisha Wood Jr (of course), Cliff Clark, Charles Halton (the annoying neighbour).

Written by Hungarian Frank Partos.

He Said, She Said (1991 Ken Kwapis & Marisa Silver)

I rather liked this. Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins work. It's well shot (Stephen Burum) and the full width of the Panavision frame is used surprisingly well. It wears The Apartment on its sleeve, even rather cheekily (and uncredited) referencing the music (and that of Rhapsody in Blue). The he said / she said variations work well (Brian Hohlfeld wrote it). It even features up-and-comings Sharon Stone and Anthony LaPaglia.

The Belles of St Trinian's (1954 Frank Launder & co-scr)

Written with partner Sidney Gilliat, not as sharp as for example their early work for Hitchcock (though of course he and Alma enhanced it as uncredited collaborators), though picks up steam when plot turns to kidnapping of racehorse, which is neatly smuggled out through the device of a milk cart.

With Alistair Sim, George Cole, Joyce Grenfell, Renee Houston, Beryl Reid, Irene Handl, Joan Sims, Richard Wattis, Lloyd Lamble (the police chief), Sid James, Guy Middleton.

Shot by Stan Pavey with ebullient music by Malcolm Arnold.

The Girl in a Swing (1988 Gordon Hessler & scr)

No point even assessing the stupid plot in romantic-supernatural-thriller which is unspeakably badly written. You know you're in trouble when you hear lines like "You're not like the porcelain dolls I am used to dealing with at home".

Rupert Frazer is just awful delivering awful lines like this, but at least you can make out what he's saying, unlike Meg Tilly through indecipherable German accent, and who is impelled to take all her clothes off at any given opportunity. (As film was mainly shot in UK she must have been freezing.)

So bewildering and overwhelmed by Meg's needy/paranoiac character (the performance itself is difficult to assess) that it's not even in the 'so bad it's good' category.

All Good Things (2010 Andrew Jarecki)

Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst are of course good (the former latterly in good makeup supervised by Judy Chin) but inconclusive true story doesn't gave the audience anything to take away, nor anyone to empathise with (apart of course from the disappeared Dunst). Thus, why make it?

Michael Seresin's photography is nice and dark. With Frank Langella, Philip Baker Hall.

Four Lions (2010 Chris Morris)

Written by Morris with Peep Show's Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, film manages an amazing balancing act between Carry On and 7/7, and is sadly still most relevant. Really funny, yet doesn't pull its punches in the final minutes. Riz Ahmed and Kayvan Novak are splendid as the idealist and the idiot. Also complex - I loved the scene where Riz's brother won't enter the room because his wife Preeya Kalidas is in it (the brother who is then wrongly arrested) and they end up squirting waterpistols at him. Nigel Lindsay is the radicalised twit.

With Adeel Akhtar, who in an interview claimed the film was protected from criticism because it was 'so well researched' - indeed the inspiration - if I remember rightly - was genuine recorded telephone calls between really thick sounding would-be terrorists.

Plus - fleetingly - Kevin Eldon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Craig Parkinson.

Won the BAFTA for most promising newcomer. A good representative of why I love Chris Morris so much - the blackest of black humour.

Bonjour Tristesse (1958 Otto Preminger)

Saul Bass credits. Widescreen. On location Paris / Côte D'Azure. Seberg's short hair (just before A Bout de Souffle). David Niven (and Roland Culver, briefly). Georges Périnal reunited with Georges Auric 27 years after Cocteau's Sang d'un Poete. Auric writes like a mischievous elf - like Seberg. Deborah Kerr. Maids who are all interchangeable sisters. Colour coded costumes. Amazing hats. Mylène Demongeot. A trick cyclist.

Operation Crossbow (1965 Michael Anderson)

A mess, despite last-minute rewriting by 'Richard Imrie' (Pressburger). (Having earned just £500 for 'The Glass Pearls' he then accepted this job - £6000 for four weeks' work.) Bitty film isn't well constructed, has too many characters.

In London Richard Johnson leads intelligence team comprising John Mills & Trevor Howard (both wasted) and Moray Watson (Darling Bud's Brigadier). Over in Germany an initially promising story evolves featuring Paul Henreid and Barbara Rütting (good) testing experimental aircraft - this disappears. Our undercover engineers are Tom Courtenay, George Peppard (at the height of his popularity) and Jeremy Kemp (rather good). Lili Palmer and Sophia Loren feature in another side story. Anthony Quayle is a double-crosser, Sylvia Sims and Richard Wattis examine aerial photos.

Last section kills tension with attenuated bombing scenes, mixed up with crass-looking real footage plus a Bondian set which looks like (though isn't) one designed by Ken Adam, and Ron Goodwin's cheesy Boy's Adventure music is the final nail in the coffin.

Handsomely shot though, with nice deep focus, by Erwin Hillier in Panavision and Metrocolor.

The Affair (2014 Hagai Levi & Sarah Treem)

Some way through long-winded update of He Said, She Said, extremely well acted by Dominic West and Ruth Wilson. Though the differences between their versions of events seem a little false and distracting. As it's all in flashback we don't really know what's going on. Seem to only manage two episodes at a time, which is telling.

Montauk is a tourist destination on the tip of Long Island, not the location of Jaws (that was Martha's Vineyard).

The whole thing seems to have been shot on Steadicam (somewhat unnecessarily) and the night scenes are ridiculously overlit.

[On reaching the 'end']: After some eight hours it is rather unfair on the audience to leave them on an inconclusive cliffhanger. Also, as you can't necessarily trust either's point of view, it leaves us in something of a quandary. I don't think the creators really thought about the audience enough.

If you excised the (unerotic) sex scenes you'd have an 8-episode series rather than 10.

Young and Innocent (1937 Alfred Hitchcock)

Superb early Hitch, one of his funniest (particularly in treatment of police, who are virtually Keystone Cops in this). But also supremely well put together, extremely cinematic. The virtuoso track across the ballroom into a close-up of the guilty man's eyes is perfectly focused (Bernard Knowles on camera, apparently operated by Stephen Dade (also Secret Agent and Sabotage, grew up to shoot Zulu - source: BFI).

But what happened to the dog in the mine?

Mad Men: Season 7 (2015 Matthew Weiner)

Sequences in the last few episodes showing Don in his 'On the Road' phase make you long for The Further Adventures of Don Draper...

Fantastic finale to part one with Robert Morse performing 'The Best Things in Life Are Free'.

Loved the way the characters all change in fashion and appearance over the years (except Don). Fantastic attention to detail. Most interesting in its view of changing attitudes throughout; also in the way that creative ideas are developed (lots of booze).

Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Aaron Staton, Rich Sommer, Kiernan Shipka, Jessica Paré.

Unique in the way people talk to each other, frequently in clipped, sardonic, elliptical conversations:
"This conversation's over. I'm really not interested."
Don talks as little as The Man with No Name, and is him.

Dedicated to Mike Nichols, and spotted at least two Graduate references.

Head of McCanns on Don: "He just walked out halfway through a meeting."
Roger: "He does that."

Just Like Heaven (2005 Mark Waters)

Workaholic doctor Reese Witherspoon is dead; how come new tenant Mark Ruffalo can still see her in her/his San Francisco apartment (with great views and its own roof space)? The stars click.

Best not to dwell on the plot but enjoy this romantic fantasy nonsense, written by Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon from the novel "Et Ci C'etait Vrai" by Marc Levy (1999) (set in San Francisco in the original).

Music is by Rolfe Kent, ph Daryn Okada.