These introductions were all written by the person who recommended the film to the group, from their memory of watching it before and liking it, plus some cursory research, but before watching it again or discussing it in the group. The recommender is usually myself. If it’s someone else I will nearly always have done some editing of what they wrote.
After each intro there are two ratings out of five stars. These are based on what we thought of the film after watching it for the discussion.
My rating is on the left. This closely corresponds to the film’s place in my constantly updated list of favourite films, as follows: 5 stars = position 1-100; 4.5 stars = 101-300; 4 stars = 301-700. Lower ratings = not amongst my favourites.
The other members’ aggregate rating is on the right. 5 stars means everyone liked or loved it. If everyone loved it except one strong dissenter that would be 4.5 stars. This could also be everyone liking it but only one or two praising it strongly. 4 stars is still preponderantly favourable opinion but somewhat more indifference or dislike balanced against the praise. 3.5 is just on the positive side overall, while 3 is middling and lower scores represent a negative balance of opinion. These ratings are all of course based on my interpretation of the discussion and any other feedback.
The Marriage of Maria Braun – 18/12/25
In the German Film Awards for 1979 The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun) won best film, best direction, best design and best performances by an actress in a leading and in a supporting role. Enfant terrible of the new wave Rainer Werner Fassbinder reached a pinnacle of commercial and critical success with this absorbing drama that charts the struggles of a young war widow (husband presumed killed in action) to make a life for herself among the ruins of a defeated nation. Fassbinder’s long-standing protegée Hanna Schygulla achieved worldwide adulation for her bravura central performance as Maria Braun, whose head and heart are severely tried and tested over the course of ten years. Fassbinder’s recognisably stylish handling of intimate relations, here developing over time against a shifting economic background, made this his biggest hit with me too (apart from the epic TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz). I look forward to renewing my acquaintance with his indefatigable heroine and her coping mechanisms in the dire straits of the immediate post-war period.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079095/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_marriage_of_maria_braun
Miracle on 34th Street – 18/12/25
Miracle on 34th Street (1947), directed by George Seaton, was one of the impending treats that I used to circle in childhood or even teenage years on its regular appearance in the double Christmas edition of the Radio Times. The actual viewing somehow stirred me with a frisson of anticipation for the big day more than any other offering. As the present-buying frenzy builds up in New York the Macy’s department store Santa comes out with the preposterous claim that he is the real McCoy. The ensuing drama, far from a frothy confection, is a conflict of ideas, and not black versus white but complex, with protagonists “Kris Kringle”, the child Susan, her mother Doris, their neighbour Fred, the store owners and the municipal authorities, all taking up and evolving their positions in a battle of words and tactics that becomes a serious matter for the kindly deluded old man. Half a century later I’m hungry to devour this surprisingly sophisticated seasonal fare again.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039628/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/miracle_on_34th_street
My Life as a Dog – 27/11/25
I found it disappointing to read in Wikipedia that My Life as a Dog (Mitt Liv som Hund) (1985) “was well-received by critics.” Well-received? It’s as if a sports commentator were to observe that Björn Borg “did well” to win five Wimbledon championships in a row. A no less spectacular achievement I think is that of his compatriot Lasse Hallström in directing this searing, startling, hilarious memoir of an extraordinarily eventful childhood. He was tremendously well-served of course by author Reidar Jönsson’s book and help in the adaptation, as well as by the phenomenal performance of Anton Glanzelius in the central role of 12-year-old Ingemar, amongst a wonderful cast encompassing all generations. Small-town Sweden in the late 50s seems to be populated by a host of surprisingly eccentric characters, not least Ingemar himself, who after a year of upheavals and adventures, pushes his adopted persona of a dog to an outrageous extreme. This episode is typical of a film in which almost everything that happens is both authentic and unexpected, often in a shocking or delightful way. To think that I only discovered this gem three years ago!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089606/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/my_life_as_a_dog
Gosford Park – 27/11/25
A murder mystery set against the backdrop of a 1930s English country estate, Gosford Park (2001) is an intricately crafted exploration of class and social hierarchy between the two world wars. Directed by Robert Altman from an Oscar-winning screenplay by Julian Fellowes, the film brings together a large and talented ensemble of actors to portray the wealthy guests upstairs and the servants downstairs. It slickly captures the invisible yet rigid boundaries between these two worlds. Every interaction—whether polite conversation or quiet act of service—reveals the deep-rooted power dynamics that define the characters’ often desperate lives. Through its sharp social and psychological observation, interlaced with humour and humanity, showing individuals on both sides of the class divide constrained by their roles, even as they depend on one another, this meticulous production becomes much more than a whodunnit or period piece. The themes of privilege, inequality, and the performances required to maintain them were subsequently picked up and integrated by Fellowes into the hugely successful television series Downton Abbey.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280707
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gosford_park
Fallen Leaves – 06/11/2025
Expatriate Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is probably not a great favourite with the tourist board in his country of origin, returning frequently as he does to Helsinki for the backdrop of his quirky downbeat dramas about individuals teetering on the edge of the scrap-heap. Industrial premises, tatty cafés and supermarkets, meagre living quarters and tawdry nightspots predominate in the picture he paints of the capital, albeit in evocative rich colours. But for the aficionado there is a delicious pleasure in revisiting these familiar settings in which generally taciturn characters struggle with varying degrees of success and persistence to bond with each other or better themselves. We are soon deeply involved in the awkward budding romance of Ansa and Holappa in Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet Lehdet) (2023), sharing their desperate hopes and dreads. An advocate of short running times, Kaurismäki devotes a spare 76 minutes to this touching, comical, maddening human drama – a quintessential work that won wide critical acclaim including the Jury Prize at Cannes.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21027780/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fallen_leaves
Something’s Gotta Give – 06/11/25
I still can’t quite believe that Diane Keaton, the much-loved American actress and director, Oscar-winning star of Annie Hall (1977) and countless other movies right up until last year, has passed away, aged 79. Something’s Gotta Give (2004) is a quirky romantic comedy with Keaton especially chosen by director Nancy Meyers to play the 50-something divorcee Erica Barry. She gives a delightful performance as the neurotic playwright beset with unexpected entanglements, earning a nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the Oscars and winning the award at the Golden Globes. Also starring are the inimitable Nicholson as – surprise, surprise – a 60-something Lothario, alongside Keanu Reeves, Frances McDormand and Paul Michael Glaser. Keaton’s friend and contemporary Hollywood star Jane Fonda said after her death, “She was always a spark of life and light, constantly laughing at her own weaknesses, showing boundless creativity … in her acting, her wardrobe, her books, her friends, her homes, her library, her vision of the world.” Amongst her portfolio this effervescent romcom for grownups is a film that particularly showcases the endearing traits and comic talent she was known for.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337741/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/somethings_gotta_give
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – 16/10/25
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is one of the great “family films” of my childhood – enjoyed by both parents and kids in equal measure and I think for much the same reasons – as well as the expected vistas and action set pieces of a big budget Western there was the illicit thrill of being in the outlaws’ camp, quickly won over by the charisma of Newman and Redford, the light-hearted tone and banter leavening but not undermining the essentially tough tale of criminals forever on the run, hold-ups their only reliable meal-ticket. The holiday interlude in New York with the Kid’s sweetheart Etta Place, played by Katharine Ross, and the subsequent attempt to go straight in Bolivia all added up to a film of epic proportions in my memory, so that I was amazed more recently to see it all packed into an hour and three quarters. I found the closing sequence a truly staggering piece of film-making by director George Roy Hill and his crew. The final exit of Butch and Sundance is how I like to remember Paul Newman and his perfectly matched screen buddy Robert Redford, who died last month.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064115/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1003318-butch_cassidy_and_the_sundance_kid
Black Narcissus – 16/10/25
The convent high on a cliff-top in the Indian Himalayas is a forlorn, precarious establishment. Deborah Kerr is the new Sister Superior aiming to be a rock of stability amid conflicting forces represented by Flora Robson as the conservative older Sister Phillipa, Kathleen Byron the barely trained, untamed Sister Ruth, David Farrar as the British agent, the nuns’ vital link to the outside world, offering his practical help with a mixture of charm and disparagement, and all around the indigenous, mysterious local community and culture. In Black Narcissus (1947) Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger ventured beyond familiar territory to paint their vivid scenes in a magnificent, exotic setting. The intriguing characters are closeted together, breeding conflict in this far-flung shaky outpost of the Anglican mission where institutional constraints are less effective than back home. The by now seasoned directing duo bring all the bold inventiveness of their original screenplays to this adaptation of a novel by Rumer Godden, while the drama reaches a new peak of intensity. I look forward to being captivated by it again.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039192/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/black_narcissus
The Rebel – 02/10/25
There are not many successful graduations of a British sitcom star to the big screen, but Tony Hancock’s outing in The Rebel (1961) is an absolute delight, all the more to be cherished since nothing comparable came after it. The comedy writing partnership of Galton and Simpson also scored a rare hit outside their TV and radio comfort zone. I happened to come across this pertinent yet amiable satire as an indolent youngster in the weekday matinee slot on the BBC and when I caught it for a second time as a perhaps still immature adult I relished the absurdity but also the poignant undertones once again. The unruly comic legend plays himself in name as well as character, an unappreciated artist forsaking philistine London for bohemian Paris, while a host of well-known faces play their parts with a panache and sincerity that makes this much more than the one-joke farce it might seem to be on paper. Arguably it is Hancock’s finest hour and three-quarters, and probably that of director Robert Day as well.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055361/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_rebel_1961
The Edge of Love – 02/10/25
A pop video veteran, director John Maybury’s primary concern in film-making is evidently with visual composition rather than narrative arc or dramatic impact. This is a stumbling block for many reviewers of The Edge of Love (2008). Surprisingly, I found the aesthetic artistry in the presentation of even the mundane domestic scenes more than made up for any sluggishness or indiscipline in the storyline that others bemoaned. In fact the somewhat eccentric relationships between the principles – the poet Dylan Thomas, his wife Caitlin, the other woman Vera and another man – were full of interest, especially once the setting shifted from the London blitz to an ostensibly simple life on the Welsh coast. Another surprise was the terrific performance of Sienna Miller as Caitlin, by no means a second fiddle to Keira Knightly’s Vera. The shifting sands of their rivalry as well as the poet’s ambiguous position within the local community held plenty to engage the attention beyond the period detail and virtuoso camerawork.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819714/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/edge_of_love
Casablanca – 04/09/25
Is there another film of such quality in which so many different genres vie for supremacy as in Casablanca (1942)? The drama centred on Rick’s Café in the seedy Moroccan city on the periphery of World War II skips seamlessly between romance, comedy, thriller, war and psychodrama. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were born to play Rick and Ilsa, riveting the attention whether suppressing or giving in to their emotions, as their past involvement rocks the present and imperils the future. I remember a televised masterclass by a Hollywood guru who plundered scene after scene from this movie to illustrate film-making craft. For director Michael Curtiz it was probably just another job in his 30 year career up until then, little expecting that this particular star vehicle would secure such a high place amongst the all-time classics. But it was no fluke. Amongst his huge portfolio all the twelve films that I’ve seen have a satisfying dramatic impulse, and five, including this one of course, are among my own official favourites.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1003707-casablanca
August: Osage County – 04/09/25
At the matriarchal home in Osage County, Oklahoma the disparate family members gather, some with trepidation, seeking just to survive and get away as soon as possible, others prepared to rattle skeletons in the cupboard. This stylish and hugely enjoyable stage play adaptation benefits from a pedigree cast headed by Meryl Streep as the domineering but brittle Violet Weston, with Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor and Benedict Cumberbatch playing some of her cowed or insubordinate relatives. Some reviewers have criticised August: Osage County (2013) for the unpleasantness of the family relations depicted, others for the excess of acting talent on show. I had no such qualms. This contemporary update by writer Tracy Letts and director John Wells on the southern gothic tradition of Tennessee Williams et al, shifted westwards across the Mississippi and injected with humour, was right up my street.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1322269/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/august_osage_county
Heat – 14/08/25
It could have been hubris on the part of writer/director Michael Mann to entitle his epic 1995 crime drama Heat, to cast Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as the chief protagonists on opposite sides of the law and to keep the audience in their seats for a running-time of two and three quarter hours, as if to say “this is the definitive cops and robbers cinema spectacle of our time”. In the event, the boldness pays off spectacularly. The two supreme icons of gangster movies over the previous 20 years are at their awesome best, incarnating the meticulous but ruthless professional criminal on the one hand, and the beleaguered but relentless law enforcer on the other. The script, no doubt honed over the 15 years that elapsed until the film could get made, and the choreography of the set pieces are of an equally high calibre. If you have any tolerance at all for the genre this is indeed a “must-see”.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113277/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/heat_1995
Frances Ha – 14/08/25
In Frances Ha (2012) director Noah Baumbach and leading actor Greta Gerwig, who wrote the script together, focus forensically on the milieu they know so well of the aspiring but impecunious young urbanite committed to the arts, a life of enviable coolness and fun, but possibly leading nowhere. Gerwig plays the twenty-something New Yorker Frances Halladay living the Bohemian lifestyle to the full and larking around with her best friend from college while nursing high ambitions in the world of dance. The delights of her offbeat personality outweighed the irritations and I found myself increasingly taking her side as she bumps up against the harsh realities of life. This is an original and amusing film which takes its protagonist on a surprisingly painful and poignant journey, all filmed in exquisitely arty black and white.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2347569/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frances_ha
Roman Holiday – 24/07/25
Surprisingly I did not see Roman Holiday (1953) until I was about 50, imagining it to be slightly ponderous, so I had the extreme pleasure of belatedly uncovering a dazzling gem. In fact the ceremonious protocol that lingers in the background as the incognito princess and the American correspondent in Rome embark on a delicious and dangerous romance adds an extra piquancy to their escapades. For looks, personality and chemistry Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in the first full flush of their stardom are the all-time dream couple. There is a touching charm in their initial meetings and a genuine anguish in the threat of their separation. And what better backdrop for their antics and burgeoning affection than the sights and atmosphere of the ancient imperial capital overlaid with the bustling street life of the 1950s? My admiration for this perfectly achieved entertainment was underlined when I saw it was directed by William Wyler – the now relatively unheralded name that for me signals a touch of class, something richer, more fully rounded than the norm, and in the case of two other films that I’ve seen along with this one – a masterpiece.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046250/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/roman_holiday
Wildlife – 24/07/25
I remember seeing Wildlife in my local independent cinema when it came out in 2018. It was the actor Paul Dano’s directorial debut, with a screenplay by Dano and his partner Zoe Kazan, adapted from the 1990 novel by Richard Ford. Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal (who co-produced the movie) are the leading actors in this low-budget indie film that paints a memorable picture of small-town, working-class American life, warts and all. The brooding atmosphere and the theme of forest fires that has since become a scarily commonplace phenomenon in many countries, made a strong impression on me. I have almost completely forgotten the plot, but embedded in my memory is the sense of a relationship under threat of destruction by devastating external factors too strong to be overcome. The extremely sensitive acting and directing, cinematography and score all contribute to a very moving portrait of a dysfunctional family in Montana in 1960 that resonates beyond its time and place. This confident, mature work for a first-time director has received many prize nominations at film festivals around the world and was very popular with critics and arthouse cinema audiences.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5929754/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wildlife_2018
Falling Down – 19/06/25
A slightly flabby bespectacled fortyish man in a white shirt and tie, with a briefcase in one hand and an umbrella – no, some kind of rifle or machine gun in the other – stands half bemused, half poised for action. This is the evocative poster for Falling Down (1993) – “the adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world”. As the irritations pile up on a sweltering day divorced unemployed engineer William “D-Fens” Foster reaches breaking point in a brilliant performance by Michael Douglas, which he rates as his own personal favourite. Barbara Hershey plays his ex-wife and Robert Duvall the police sergeant faced with an unusual crisis. Director Joel Schumacher and the cast make the most of an imaginative, plausible script by Ebbe Roe Smith in this hard to pigeonhole film – a psychological study, a social commentary, an off-beat thriller about a lone rebel at large in the urban jungle. It drew me in from the start and remained convincing and gripping to the end.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/falling_down
Pride and Prejudice – 19/06/25
The 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen seems like a good time to revisit Pride and Prejudice (2005), the second adaptation for the cinema of her most famous novel. I found it far more entertaining than the 1940 version starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. Under Joe Wright’s direction the central relationship between Lizzie and Darcy, with its complex development from dislike to true love, is beautifully played out by Keira Knightly, who won a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and Matthew MacFadyen. All the main themes of the novel are there – snobbery, sexism, money and property, sexual escapades and religion. The fantastic cast is bursting with actors whom I admire and like to follow – Judi Dench, Carey Mulligan, Rosamund Pike, Donald Sutherland (miscast as Mr Bennett, I think) and my favourite, the brilliant Tom Hollander whose turn as the pompous young clergyman Mr. Collins, trying to ingratiate himself with the Bennett family, gives us the funniest scenes in the film. This sharply observed romantic comedy drama is faithful to the spirit rather than the letter of Austen’s classic and is highly successful in its own right.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414387/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1153077-1153077-pride_and_prejudice
Kolya – 29/05/25
I have very vague but warm memories of Kolya (Kolja) (1996), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign language film that year. The central character is Louka, a musician with the Prague Philharmonic orchestra, enjoying a dream bachelor lifestyle based around music and assignations with girlfriends in his seductively arty apartment. Some errors of judgement however leave him short of funds and landed in charge of the five year old Kolya. Will he need to change his ways in order to cope with this unwanted responsibility? I look forward to finding out again. The son and father Sverák partnership – director Jan and leading actor Zdenek – take us on an engrossing personal journey, with a captivating performance by Andrey Khalimon as the boy, and an interesting array of characters amongst the supporting roles. This Czech production with British and French input has all the sophistication and entertaining emotional interplay of a smart American comedy drama, with the added interest of its Prague setting and insight into Czech society during the last months of Soviet rule.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116790/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kolya
Fish Tank – 29/05/25
Fish Tank (2009), written and directed by Andrea Arnold, is a film that caught me unawares. The story of a disaffected and rather aimless family living in the London/Essex borderlands is reminiscent of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, but it avoids Loach’s polemicism and the temptation to romanticise or cast its subjects as heroes or victims. Like the American hillbillies in the film Winter’s Bone (2010) which I saw recently, they are never patronised, and I found myself totally immersed in their lives, rooting for them to find or achieve something (redemption?). The lead character is played by Katie Jarvis, whose early years seem to have several parallels with Arnold’s own childhood. She was actually spotted by the casting agent having a row with her boyfriend on Tilbury Station! Jarvis won the BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer award for her stunning debut here as 15 year old Mia and had quite a successful mini career, but couldn’t hold it together. See Wikipedia for more details! My partner and I both think this is a strangely memorable film, well deserving of its tremendous reviews and many awards, including the Jury Prize at Cannes.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232776/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fish_tank
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – 08/05/25
I imagine that up and down the country there were scenes similar to those in my local Odeon that Saturday night 50 years ago when a packed audience thrilled to the antics of Jack Nicholson in his career-defining role as inmate R.P. McMurphy, rebelling against the rigid protocols of the Oregon mental institution that seemed designed to keep the patients in their place rather than help them. His battles with Nurse Ratched and Co had us openly cheering him on at key moments of this classic struggle between arbitrary authority and the spontaneous individual who dares to not only question the rules but take subversive action when the answer is unsatisfactory. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) won best picture, best director for Milos Forman, best actor and actress for Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, and best screenplay. Only two other films in history have made a clean sweep of the five big Oscars. Needless to say, watching it in full in its fiftieth anniversary year for the first time since that memorable occasion as a teenager is quite a proposition to relish.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one_flew_over_the_cuckoos_nest
One Fine Morning – 08/05/25
I would be hard pushed to name a more consistent 21st century film director than Mia Hansen-Løve, in terms of the quality, subject and style of her output – intimate dramas in the best French tradition, often set in Paris, focusing on the families and romantic relationships of generally sympathetic educated people. One Fine Morning (Un Beau Matin) (2022) is a further example of how a simple story line makes for compulsive viewing when the authenticity of character and situation shines through. Sandra Kienzler, a professional interpreter, widowed with a young child, daughter of a retired professor suffering a debilitating degenerative disease, seems to be trundling along okay amid these responsibilities when her equilibrium is challenged by the re-appearance of a married male friend, cosmochemist Clément, after a gap of several years. The remarkable Léa Seydoux excels in the central role, supported by a superb cast encompassing four generations.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13482828/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one_fine_morning_2022
Compartment Number 6 – 17/04/25
If the “rail movie” were a recognized genre, as exemplified by Compartment Number 6 (Hytti Nro 6), I would contrast it sharply with its more widespread, free-wheeling road-based cousin. The would-be adventurer loses her autonomy as she steps on board into the narrow, confining world of her designated carriage, the dining car and the corridor in between. Grinding ever further northward at the mercy of the Russian railway network Finnish student Laura begins to regret her hasty decision to leave Moscow in pursuit of a snow-covered hieroglyphic legend when she finds herself sharing a compartment with the fellow passenger from hell. Director Juho Kuosmanen exacts superb performances from the leading actors in a terrific film that combines tense drama and surprising twists with wistfulness and subtle characterisation. This eventful journey to the frozen wastes of Murmansk Oblast in the arctic circle should top any list of cinematic train rides.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10262648/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/compartment_no_6
Shooting Dogs – 17/04/25
Rwanda 1994. There is a sense of authenticity in Shooting Dogs (2005) that comes from filming in the exact location that some horrific events of April that year took place, with survivors among the cast. Director Michael Caton-Jones sets the scene and conveys the growing menace with consummate skill. Every anguished moment of stark decision is etched on the face of John Hurt as the priest in charge of a Catholic school that becomes a fragile sanctuary. He and his recently arrived young assistant, together with an adventurous female reporter, the pupils and other Tutsis facing slaughter as well as a contingent of the UN peacekeeping force are all trapped inside the gates in this trenchant drama based on the experiences of BBC news producer David Belton.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420901/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beyond_the_gates
Elizabeth – 27/03/25
Forget the limp follow-up Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). Director Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998), concerning our first great female monarch’s fraught childhood and early years on the throne, is a masterly evocation of those torrid Tudor times. Cate Blanchett looks the part and plays it with her accustomed aplomb, maturing quickly amid the plotting and intrigue in which a wrong move can send the highest-ranking nobleman to the Tower and the executioner’s block. Amongst the acting nobility enlisted to play out this dangerous game are Joseph Fiennes, Christopher Eccleston and Geoffrey Rush, as well as Kathy Burke and Fanny Ardant, memorably malevolent in their portraits of Bloody Mary and Mary of Guise respectively. Whether historically accurate or not, it all adds up to a powerful brew, tempered by scenes in which the young Queen escapes the dark dealings and duties of state, spreading her wings as a woman and tasting romance. I welcomed those interludes of well-earned respite in this occasionally gruesome, always compelling historical biopic.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127536/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1084153-elizabeth
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House – 27/03/25
Half a century before our British TV screens became saturated with shows about couples discovering a dilapidated country retreat with bags of potential and investing themselves up to the eyeballs in a massive renovation Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) had already covered every aspect of this theme to glorious comic effect. The reliable director of amiable comedies H.C.Potter made the most of two past masters in the art of witty domestic squabbling – Cary Grant as the jaded New York ad-man and Myrna Loy as the spouse with ideas of her own, while Melvyn Douglas was equally well-practised in his role as the suave, sceptical and potentially wife-stealing best friend. The Blandings’ ambitious project in the Connecticut hinterland becomes a distraction to the Madison Avenue career that’s bankrolling the dream, as things go increasingly pear-shaped in this salutary tale of city folks nurturing over-sized bucolic aspirations.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040613/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mr-blandings-builds-his-dream-house
Crimes and Misdemeanors – 06/03/25
By the mid-1980s the New York-based factory of exquisite romantic and satirical comedies that was Woody Allen had only to whistle, and a platoon of top-class actors would queue up for a juicy role in his latest inspired creation. Thus in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) we have the pleasure of Martin Landau as an ophthalmologist whose public esteem is threatened by the mess he’s got into with his wife and his mistress, played by Claire Bloom and Anjelica Huston respectively, while Alan Alda dazzles and repels as a comedy superstar with dictatorial tendencies. While these performances and others keep us immensely entertained, Allen’s script explores the dark side more explicitly perhaps than ever before. The shadows of Hitchcock and Dostoevsky falling on the crystalline surface of urban high society make for an unsettling experience, and by that very token a richer film than many in the output of this prolific writer/director. I place it without hesitation in the top drawer.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097123/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/crimes_and_misdemeanors
The Elephant Man – 06/03/25
After shocking audiences with his early horror film Eraserhead (1977), the ground-breaking director David Lynch, who died this January, moved on to a milder but still disturbing project with The Elephant Man (1980). This atmospheric black and white film is based on the true story of Joseph Merrick, condemned by his gross disfigurement to a miserable existence as a Victorian “freak show” until discovered by the surgeon Frederick Treves. A cruel circus man called Bytes locks Merrick in a cage with apes and encourages the crowds to mock him. Even Treves has to overcome the crude assumptions and prejudices that Victorian society projects onto poor Merrick, who is strangely both kind-hearted and feared. Among a galaxy of much loved stars, John Hurt, wearing a horrendous proboscis on his face throughout, and Anthony Hopkins inhabit their respective lead characters spectacularly well. The poignancy and tenderness in this portrayal of the Elephant Man, together with the grotesque elements, makes for a viewing experience which is impossible to forget.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080678/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1006527-elephant_man
The Lives of Others – 13/02/25
A film of both style and substance, The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) (2006) played to full houses week after week on its release in London the following year. I know this because I was in two of those audiences, and I became even more wrapped up in the fate of the principal characters the second time around. Playwright Georg Dreyman, a leading light in a bohemian circle in 1980s East Berlin, is a key target of Stasi surveillance, along with Christa-Maria Sieland, his glamorous but unstable leading lady and girlfriend. The icily efficient Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler is assigned to their case by his disarmingly chummy superior Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz. An intensive spying campaign begins, with unforeseeable consequences. The evocation of time and place seems authentic to the last detail, not least in the performances of Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Ulrich Tukur and indeed all the supporting cast. Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s political thriller of unusual psychological depth and emotional pull has rightly been showered with plaudits and praise.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lives_of_others
Enchanted April – 13/02/25
Four English women of diverse ages, disenchanted with their lives after the First World War, grasp the prospect of a holiday together in a beautiful villa in Italy. National Treasure Dame Joan Plowright, who died last month, was nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Supporting Role as Mrs Fisher in Enchanted April (1991). Apparently about 20 years earlier she and her good friend and colleague, the late Dame Maggie Smith had planned to adapt the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim into a film in which they would play the roles of Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot. By now they were too old for the parts, which went to Josie Lawrence and Miranda Richardson respectively. Under the direction of Mike Newell the star-studded cast, including Alfred Molina as Mellersh Wilkins and Jim Broadbent as Frederick Arbuthnot, could hardly be bettered, as the background shifts from dismal London to the ravishing Italian riviera. The latter scenes were reportedly filmed at Castello Brown in Portofino where von Arnim stayed in the 1920s. With a lovely score by Richard Rodney Bennett this is ideal midwinter escapism.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101811/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/enchanted_april
All About Eve – 23/01/25
All About Eve (1950), set in the theatre world of New York, is a supreme example of Hollywood cinema at its best. From the surface glitz to the sweaty underbelly of theatrical life our guide is the formidable critic Addison DeWitt, the maker or breaker of reputations, an Oscar-winning performance in a supporting role by George Sanders. His framing commentary lends an epic quality to the powerful passions, the loyalties and the betrayal involving the renowned but fragile star Margo Channing and her close circle, which the mysterious new arrival Eve Harrington so desires to be part of. The two lead actresses Bette Davis and Anne Baxter were both nominated for the Academy award, along with both the actresses in the major supporting roles. This gives some idea of the dramatic emphasis in this absorbing spectacle that won the Oscar for best film amongst six in total, including best director and best screenplay for Joseph L. Mankiewicz. After a gap of ten years or so I’m excited about watching it for a fourth time.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042192/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1000626-all_about_eve
The Italian Job – 23/01/25
The Italian Job (1969) is an upbeat, fast-paced action movie that celebrates classic cars, especially the UK’s pride and joy, the Mini, against a backdrop of stunning Italian architecture and scenery. Michael Caine stars as a dashing young East End gangster in one of his most famous early roles, supported by a host of charismatic actors from the era including Noel Coward, Benny Hill, Rossano Brazzi and John Le Mesurier. There are some unforgettable scenes in this now nostalgic comic thriller, directed by Peter Collinson, like the car chase down the ancient stone steps in Turin. They don’t make movies like this anymore, as they couldn’t get away with it – the glorifying of the criminal underworld, the outdated attitudes towards women, the illegal driving! But it was fun while it lasted. Unbelievable, to see the tricks a stunt driver could do in the original Mini. And of course there are the two glorious moments for which this spectacular caper will always be remembered – Caine’s immortal line “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” and the literal cliff-hanger at the end.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064505/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1038613-italian_job
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom – 05/12/24
Bhutanese director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s first feature Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) opened the season at my local film society the other year. I expected or hoped to be awed by the mountainous scenery and intrigued, perhaps charmed by the unfamiliar customs of a remote culture. All this promise was richly fulfilled. But I wasn’t expecting such a compelling cinematic achievement, demonstrating perfect judgement in the storytelling, and an expertise in the filming and editing to rival any top European or American film-maker and production team. Sherab Dorji plays a young teacher wanting to break away from his pre-ordained career path, but not in the manner that transpires. To accompany him on his journey of discovery to Lunana, a world unto itself where a yak in the classroom is par for the course, is an unmissable treat.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10189300/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lunana_a_yak_in_the_classroom
Six Degrees of Separation – 05/12/24
In Six Degrees of Separation (1993) a smart, highly educated young black man enters the lives of an equally sophisticated middle-aged couple in swanky Manhattan, dazzling them with an ingenious disquisition on J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye amongst other delightful patter. However, the charmed cocoon of Ouisa and Flan Kittredge is dangerously compromised by a subsequent incident. Star of the stage version Stockard Channing shines again in the central role, Will Smith is dynamite as the well-spoken interloper and Donald Sutherland, who sadly died earlier this year, plies his understated craft as the successful art dealer plucked out of his comfort zone. For me the director Fred Schepisi, the writer John Guare and a top-notch cast have transformed GuAre’s unsettling comedy of manners from a play that I felt ran out of steam when I saw it in the West End into an exhilarating film.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108149/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/six_degrees_of_separation
Unforgiven – 14/11/24
The poster for Unforgiven (1992) shows the names and faces of Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris framing a scene of three horse riders approaching a silhouetted figure with a pistol clasped behind his back. But this is a Western to challenge your expectations. The characters played by these rugged stars are no classic heroes or villains, but ordinary men of limited abilities aiming for heroics beyond their reach as the hostilities escalate. The Wyoming weather is harsh, the bullets fired by reclusive farmer Will Munny miss their target. As director and leading actor, winning the Oscar for both, Clint Eastwood evokes huge sympathy for this lonely character, a far cry from the infallible gunslinger of his earlier hits. The combination of gritty realism and gallows humour went down well with both critics and fans. I was one of the latter and appreciated the remark of a journalist some months later who reported on a rare conjunction: “This year at the Academy Awards the Oscar for Best Film went to … the year’s best film.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1041911-unforgiven
The Deep Blue Sea – 14/11/24
Like other plays by Terence Rattigan that have translated impressively to the screen The Deep Blue Sea (2011) explores the perennial conflicts of mid twentieth century middle class England, such as love versus duty and expression versus repression. The drama covers a period of only 24 hours but includes many flashbacks (which take a while to get used to). Hester (Rachel Weisz), has been in a passionless marriage with the drily rational lawyer Sir William (Simon Russell Beale), and tormented by an affair with the attractive but troubled Freddie (Tom Hiddleston). As in many of his notable films the director Terence Davies takes us back to a time of simple pleasures and private sufferings, guilty secrets and occasional revelatory moments. The atmosphere of post war London – with its ruined houses, brown interiors and crowded pubs – is expertly re-created. The script is consistently witty and telling, with the psychological scars of the Second World War illustrated strongly, especially in the character of Freddie. The costume and scene design, choices of external locations and music, and above all the performances, all contribute to an outstanding production and for me a deeply satisfying experience.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1700844/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_deep_blue_sea
Newsfront – 24/10/24
Newsfront (1978) swept the board with four of the top awards and a total of eight at the Australian Film Institute that year, and had a modest success on the arthouse circuit abroad. Thanks to a glowing review I went along to see it and was not disappointed. I’m impressed by the maturity of Philip Noyce’s second feature as director at twenty-eight and indeed my own positive response at twenty to a film in which solid realism is the guiding principle. It covers eight years of change, conflict and occasional crisis, both national and personal, centred on the work of an intrepid cinema newsreel team. The interspersed archive footage enhances the authenticity and historical interest of the narrative. The film itself transitions from black and white to colour in line with the advance of technology over the period. It’s now all but forgotten, and I’ve forgotten everything except the unshakeable integrity of the lead cameraman played by Bill Hunter and a hazardous assignment he undertook with his junior colleague to record the devastation in a flooded town. I think it’s high time for another viewing.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077986/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/newsfront
The Lady in the Van 24/10/24
The award-winning star of stage and screen Maggie Smith, who died last month, did not baulk at playing grungier roles, such as the rough-living Miss Shepherd in The Lady in the Van (2015). The opinionated old woman who camped in her dilapidated vehicle outside the front steps of Alan Bennett’s terraced house in Camden Town in 1974 was a thorn in his side for 16 years but a gift to his comic art. For three of those years I was living around the corner, unaware of these goings-on, but the story resonates with my perception of this neighbourhood where the successful literati lived cheek by jowl with the homeless and destitute. Bennett turned his memoir of the experience into a hit West End play in 1999, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with Smith in the title role. The film brought the winning combination back together with equally fine results. Alex Jennings has fun playing the two warring sides of the author’s personality, while the character of Miss Shepherd, who reveals glimpses of a fascinating hinterland before she ended up in the van, brings out a top-notch performance from a much-loved acting legend.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3722070/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lady_in_the_van
The Truman Show – 10/10/24
Jim Carrey radiates a charming boyish enthusiasm as Truman Burbank, the unwitting subject of a long-running TV soap opera set in a small town which only he believes is real. Even his nearest and dearest are professional actors pulling the wool over his eyes under the overall direction of the broadcasting guru Christof, played with elegant conviction by Ed Harris. The skill of the media maestro in orchestrating this beautiful, shocking fiction is matched in our own real world by Peter Weir in directing Andrew Niccol’s conceit The Truman Show (1998). From the first seed of doubt in Truman’s mind his struggle to discover the truth in the face of a co-ordinated effort to keep him from puncturing the perfect bubble that attracts millions of viewers makes for a riveting drama.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/truman_show
Respect – 10/10/24
Fortunately Respect (2021) devotes a generous two and a quarter hours to the life and career of Aretha Franklin because it takes a while to get going. I found the childhood and teenage story somewhat underdeveloped, but I was quickly won over once the dazzling Jennifer Hudson stepped up to re-enact some of the legendary Soul Queen’s most memorable performances. The dramatic developments between the songs also gained momentum, with the inevitable personal traumas punctuating and threatening to derail the artistic journey. One particular scene of delicious irony, when the black girl from Detroit is living the high life in California, stuck in my mind, otherwise I just remember a warm glow of satisfaction at the end of this tantalising biopic with ravishing musical set pieces directed by Liesl Tommy.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2452150/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/respect_2021
Psycho – 19/09/24
Psycho (1960) is surely the darkest of all Alfred Hitchcock’s well-known films. Its pivotal shocking moment could be the most famous in all of cinema, and yet if you blink you miss it, as millions of scared viewers have deliberately done, their nerves already shredded by secretary Marion Crane’s clumsy, hectic bid to escape the scene of an earlier brazen crime. Nail-biting suspense becomes macabre mystery as the awkwardly decent manager of the Bates Motel and a mild-mannered but tenacious visitor prowl around the precincts of the gloomy establishment. The outstanding performances of Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins and Martin Balsam help raise this noir tour de force to the highest level. On my second viewing I joined the ranks of those who consider it the maestro’s masterpiece.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/psycho
Primary Colors – 19/09/24
A successful 1960s comedy duo were re-united in the making of Primary Colors (1998). Elaine May adapted the novel about a Southern state governor’s presidential campaign into a sharp script with plenty of humour, drama and political insight, and Mike Nichols directed with rediscovered flair. John Travolta’s portrayal of a Clintonesque charmer with a big ego and bigger sex drive is disconcertingly real. A roster of great character actors get their teeth into the thorny conflicts that play out over the hundred and thirty minutes’ screen time, with Kathy Bates singled out for special praise as the foul-mouthed fixer. The film did poorly at the box office partly because real-life White House shenanigans had recently eclipsed the fictional events, but to me that is a testament to its authenticity.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119942/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/primary_colors
Alice in the Cities – 22/08/24
A jaded German journalist abandons his assignment in the United States but inadvertently finds himself tasked with a more onerous mission, taking charge of a child separated from her family, with no idea where her home is. Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten) (1974) is a laid-back road movie that exhibits many of the trademarks of writer/director Wim Wenders, enhanced by the delightful central relationship between the troublesome young girl and her reluctant minder. The nine year-old Yella Rottländer and Wenders stalwart Rüdiger Vogler are superbly natural in their roles, and the scenario moves from one city to the next with a relaxed ease that suggests the director is enjoying every take of his own screenplay. I’m not surprised to learn that this crucial fourth feature by the now celebrated auteur was “a conscious attempt to make something only he could do”, and I don’t think there’s anything better in his oeuvre.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069687/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/alice_in_the_cities
Rear Window – 22/08/24
In this acclaimed classic directed by the master of suspense James Stewart plays L.B. Jefferies, known as “Jeff”, a photographer confined to his chair in a Greenwich Village flat after breaking his leg. Grace Kelly plays Lisa his girlfriend, a high flying woman about town who wears fantastic dresses throughout. Jeff spends a lot of time looking out of his window across a courtyard into the flats opposite. He makes up stories about the occupants, and becomes concerned about the behaviour of a couple whose level of conflict exceeds the norm. Hitchcock seduces the viewer into the cosy comfort of Jeff’s voyeurism, only to instil anxiety over his state of mind and fear for his safety as his obsession leads to reckless interference. In its crazy, narrow setting, Rear Window (1954) comes close to driving us all mad, in the most brilliant and enjoyable way.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1017289-rear_window
Tape – 01/08/24
Richard Linklater’s Tape (2001) is a real-time three-hander set entirely in one low-budget hotel room. Thanks to the twists and turns of the original play by Stephen Belber, the charisma of the three actors and the confident panache of a director who revels in this kind of self-imposed constraint I found it a thoroughly engrossing eighty-five minutes. Beneath the verbal and sometimes physical jousting in the enclosed, shabby space there seems to be some unresolved business between former high-school friends Vin, Jon and Amy, played with verve by Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman. As to what the issues are and who gets the last laugh I have long since forgotten and I look forward to this second viewing to find out.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275719/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tape
Rust and Bone – 01/08/24
Though set on the glamorous Côte d’Azur and billed as a romantic drama the atmosphere of Rust and Bone (De Rouille et d’Os) (2012), is one of gritty realism. Marion Cotillard has been highly praised for the naturalism of her performance as an ordinary girl with an unusual job as a whale trainer, who becomes involved with an unemployed single father, played by Matthias Schoenaerts. “Vibrant and messily unpredictable as life itself”, the film was very well received by critics and public alike, marking a highlight in the career of writer/director Jacques Audiard, as well as Cotillard, Schoenaerts and many others involved.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2053425/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/de_rouille_et_dos_2012
The Duke – 11/07/24
The subject of The Duke (2020) is a famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington that mysteriously disappeared one night in 1961 from the National Gallery in London. The protagonist is Kempton Bunton, a 60-year old Newcastle taxi driver who rails against the injustice of the BBC licence fee and seeks to avoid it, to the despair of his long-suffering wife Dorothy. Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren are a delight to watch as the impecunious northern couple in this poignant comedy directed by Roger Michell. There are some surprising twists and turns in the plot, as the family sink deeper into trouble, perhaps indicating that fact is indeed stranger than fiction. For me this is a rare recent addition to the glittering roster of light-hearted British gems about the foibles and ambitions of the underdog.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11204094/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_duke
Lust, Caution – 11/07/24
Lust, Caution (Se, Jie) (2007) is a haunting historical drama adapted for the screen by Taiwanese director Ang Lee from Eileen Chang’s novella, which combines a spy thriller with a tortuous romance. The film is beautifully shot, with a sumptuous score by French composer Alexandre Desplat. The period settings of Hong Kong in 1938 and Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1942 seem to me as important as the characters and narrative. The complex plot is based on an actual attempt by a group of Hong Kong University students to assassinate a special agent working for Shanghai’s puppet government by luring him with a ‘honey trap’. As well as the BAFTA for ‘Best Film in a Foreign Language’ this two and a half hour long labour of love won Ang Lee his second Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, following on from Brokeback Mountain.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808357/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lust_caution
The King of Comedy – 20/06/24
Directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro … the artistic partnership that gave us an unsurpassed string of all-time hard-boiled classics was at the top of its game with a more off-beat drama The King of Comedy (1982), or so I maintain, despite its box office failure. For me the portrayal of Rupert Pupkin, an apparent loser with a huge ego, still living at home with his off-screen mom and convinced of his imminent triumph as a glittering showbiz comedian, is the ultimate De Niro masterclass. He only needs a bit of a helping hand from the successful celebrity comic Jerry Langford, played by the now stocky, phlegmatic Jerry Lewis, once the goofy star of fifties slapstick capers. How far will Pupkin go to secure the favour? I’d run a mile from him in person, but I’ll be fascinated to revisit his disturbing act and self-promotional antics after a gap of forty-two years.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085794/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1011623-king_of_comedy
The Killers – 20/06/24
If I had to choose the quintessential Hollywood gangster film of the classic era it might be The Killers (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak. The hard-bitten realism seems ahead of its time, while Burt Lancaster on his big screen debut shows glimpses of the memorable performances to come. As the criminal with a conscience, nicknamed “The Swede”, he clashes with other gang members while falling for the glamorous Kitty Collins, played by the premiere femme fatale of the era, Ava Gardner. Based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, this is one of the few adaptations of his work that the author admired, and the quality is evident in the menacing opening scene. I remember little of the plot, only the swirling sense of doom that hangs over those who choose to live outside the law.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038669/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1080205-killers
Sex, Lies, and Videotape – 30/05/24
Director Steven Soderbergh’s first feature Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) strikes me as a seminal film that spawned a school of quirky, intimate dramas in the nineties and early noughties, tackling adult relationships with honesty and wit. It also seems to have been the first major role on the big screen for all three leads. And what a trio – Andie McDowell and Peter Gallagher play the beautiful, outwardly successful Louisiana couple, Ann and John, who receive a visit from John’s less well-off but perhaps even more beautiful friend Graham, played by James Spader. The quiet young man rents an apartment nearby, where he conducts sex-based research, to the appalled fascination of straight-laced Ann. Other characters get a look-in but all I remember is the tantalising dance of attraction, repulsion, suspicion and revelation between these three. The boxes of videotapes hoarded by the enigmatic visitor may now appear absurdly quaint, but will his cat and mouse conversations with the married southern belle still hold me transfixed?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098724/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sex_lies_and_videotape
The Shop on the High Street – 30/05/24
The Shop on the High Street (Obchod na korze) (1965) is a Czechoslovak film set in the First Slovak Republic, the puppet government which ruled what is now Slovakia from 1939 to 1945. Under President Josef Tiso the property of the nation’s Jews was expropriated and handed to Aryan families, a prelude to the later deportation of the Jewish population to Nazi concentration camps, where the vast majority met their ends. This is the grim backdrop to the story of the haberdasher’s shop, written by Ladislav Grosman and directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Kloswith with a daring mixture of black comedy and tragedy. A well-meaning if not very bright carpenter is made to take over the shop from the owner, an elderly Jewish woman who is generally oblivious to the outside world and doesn’t realise what is happening. The veteran Polish actress Ida Kamińska, who plays the elderly haberdasher, earned an Oscar nomination for best actress in this stunning film, one of the few in the Slovak language. It deservedly won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film that year.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059527/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_shop_on_main_street
Wadjda – 09/05/24
Wadjda (2012) was the first feature-length film made by a female Saudi director, and was the country’s first official submission to the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. Apparently Haifaa Al-Masour was not allowed to interact with her mostly male crew, so she directed the street scenes from a nearby van, watching through a monitor and giving instructions via walkie-talkie. The result is a rare gem, and an eye-opener for Western viewers who have not lived in the Middle East. The title character is a 10-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Riyadh who wants to have the freedom to run about, sing and ride a bicycle, like boys her age. Her mother is struggling to deal with her own problems, so Wadjda is left to her own devices to overcome the obstacles in her way. The tone is humorous but at the same time unflinching in its portrayal of life as lived by women and girls in Saudi Arabia. The acting and scenarios come across as very authentic, and there is an exciting edginess to the exploits of this precocious child rebel.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258858
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wadjda_2013
North By Northwest – 09/05/24
There is a small number of films that I am happy to watch almost annually. Two of these, The 39 Steps (1935) and North By Northwest (1959) are directed by Alfred Hitchcock and have some significant elements in common: jeopardy from a mysterious source aimed at an innocent victim, romance, comedy and a satisfying denouement. Cary Grant is perfectly cast in the later film, delivering his usual classy mixture of charm, flippancy and derring do. And the alluring Eva Marie Saint, no longer the innocent youngster of On the Waterfront (1954), is a well-matched co-star. Events unfold in a series of visually memorable set pieces, many of which you may be familiar with, even if you have not seen the whole film. It is sometimes highlighted as the precursor to the many cold war era thrillers that came after, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E and James Bond. There’s no need for in-depth analysis though to appreciate this immensely skilful piece of entertainment that delivers glamour, humour, menace, action and a bit of violence. Plus of course the obligatory Hitchcockian sexual innuendo!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053125
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/north-by-northwest
Here We Are – 18/04/24
Here We Are (Hine anachnu) (2020) is a marvellous recent example of the cinema verité technique, in which the camera and microphone seem to be recording the actual daily lives of their subjects rather than bringing a fictional narrative to the screen. During the opening sequence the odd behaviour of a young and an older man on a journey by train and bicycle becomes clear. The autistic Uri is under the protective wing of his father Aharon. Overly protective in the view of the mother Tamara. This parental disagreement is the kernel of all the subsequent drama that simmers and occasionally boils over during further trips by the inseparable pair to institutions, friends and family. A surprisingly serious crisis develops. The way that it builds up seamlessly out of the naturalistic scenes and dialogue is a testament to the skill of the writer and actors, and director Nir Bergman, whose other work over the course of twenty years must surely merit greater exposure.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8135564
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/here_we_are_2020
Pleasantville – 18/04/24
A particular cinematic sub-genre that holds great appeal for me – satire of comfortable, conformist American suburbia – seemed to reach its zenith in 1998, the year that Pleasantville came out. This first feature written and directed by Gary Ross sets out its stall in the very title, and whips up an entertaining mix of whimsy, fantasy, nostalgia and perceptive family drama along with the exuberant parody. A heated sibling conflict in the present day sparks a leap backwards in time to the heyday of the nuclear family in a pristine community where nothing bad ever happens. Until this untimely accident. Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon as the troublesome brother and sister, along with Joan Allen and William H. Macey as their increasingly troubled parents, live out their roles to the full in this smart comedy with a moral message or two to ponder.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120789
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pleasantville
Drifting Clouds – 28/03/24
I wonder if the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is a great admirer of the impressionist master Claude Monet, in particular his water lily series. He has the same love of bold, rich colours in his screen composition and he obsessively returns to the same place and subject with minor variations in film after film. In contrast to Giverny however modern day Helsinki is depicted as a harsh urban landscape where the inhabitants scratch a living in menial jobs, with only tawdry nightlife and drink for distraction. The glum-faced Kati Outinen often stars as a woman with a passive exterior that conceals an inner tenacity. In Drifting Clouds (Kauas Pilvet Karkaavat) (1996) she bravely sinks her hopes in a business venture with her out of work husband. The simple story of how they fare soon becomes utterly absorbing, full of excruciating moments until the very end. I’m always interested in Kaurismäki’s work but I still think this film is his very best.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116752
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/drifting_clouds
In the Name of the Father – 28/03/24
In choosing to turn the 1974 Guildford pub bombing and its fallout into a drama for the big screen the writer, director and producer Jim Sheridan took on a huge responsibility – to make a truthful film of course, but also a bloody good one that does justice to the seismic importance of the real-life events as they unfolded. I can safely say that In the Name of the Father (1993) passes the test with flying colours. The casting couldn’t be better, with Daniel-Day Lewis as the accused and convicted Gerry Conlon who proclaims his innocence, Pete Postlethwaite as his stoic father Giuseppe and Emma Thompson as the indefatigable campaigning lawyer Gareth Pierce. We follow Gerry from the riot-torn streets of Belfast to the bohemian squats of London, from police interrogation to the steel-lined corridors of a high-security prison in this powerful and intelligent dramatisation of an extraordinary and appalling episode in recent British history.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107207
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_the_name_of_the_father
About Schmidt – 07/03/24
In all four of the films directed by Alexander Payne that I’ve seen and thoroughly enjoyed there is a discernible common thread – a central character with a problem personality or beset with hang-ups goes on a journey, both literal and metaphorical. Retirement stretches ahead like a barren desert for Warren Schmidt on leaving his desk at the insurance office for the last time. For Jack Nicholson at 64 the invitation to portray the grumpy old protagonist of About Schmidt (2002) was a dream assignment, earning him an Oscar nomination, along with Kathy Bates in a supporting role as the bohemian prospective mother-in-law of Schmidt’s estranged daughter, played by Hope Davis. Watching these mismatched characters attempting to establish some connection after Schmidt’s uncharacteristically adventurous solo trip from his home town of Omaha, Nebraska to Denver is richly entertaining.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0257360/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/about_schmidt
Dead of Night – 07/03/24
Dead of Night (1945) is the only truly satisfying example of an anthology film that I can recall seeing. Keeping a routine appointment at a farmhouse, a middle-aged architect, played by stalwart character actor Mervyn Johns, stumbles upon a house party that has an eerie familiarity. He recognises everyone in the room and each of them has a disturbing story to tell. Directors Basil Dearden, Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer and Charles Crichton share between them this spooky framing narrative and the five supernatural tales, the mood of which ranges from a morbid melancholy to outrageous black humour and culminates in the chilling tragedy of the ventriloquist and his crowd-pleasing dummy. Michael Redgrave pulls out all the stops in this justly famous segment. The fate of the architect meanwhile is left hanging in the balance until the bitter end.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037635
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1005405-dead_of_night
The Winslow Boy – 15/02/24
In 1908 a 12 year old cadet turned up unexpectedly at home to face the undoubted wrath of his father after being expelled from the Royal Naval College for stealing a postal order. The Winslow Boy (1948) is a moving dramatisation of this incident and the tumultuous train of subsequent events that wrought havoc on a previously comfortable family. Anthony Asquith directs a fine cast headed by Robert Donat as the celebrated advocate Sir Robert Morton who gets involved as the case escalates to the highest court in the land. And what brilliant lines he is given by Terence Rattigan, who adapted his 1946 play for the screen. As testimony to his outstanding craft I’ve seen a stage production as well as a TV and two film versions including this one and I’m coming back for more. This time I must try and follow the exact train of argument in the crucial confrontation between Morton and the distraught young boy.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040970/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/winslow_boy
Maggie’s Plan – 15/02/24
From what seems a hackneyed premise – a young single woman with an established career deciding it’s time to have a baby – the writer/director Rebecca Miller developed a satirical off-beat romantic comedy that struck a chord with many critics but seemed to fare less well with the general public. I’m with the critics on this one. Greta Gerwig is sympathetic and amusing in the title role, while the older hands Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore relish their parts as prickly academics in the love-hate triangle that takes some surprising twists. Equally good scenes with friends and colleagues round out the picture of this arty New York milieu. After thin pickings for almost a decade Maggie’s Plan (2015) reassured me that the occasional gem of a smart, quirky American comedy could still make the journey from the festival circuit to at least a limited cinema release.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3471098/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/maggies_plan_2016
After the Thin Man – 25/01/24
The six film Thin Man series is a sumptuous binge for lovers of those traditional murder mysteries that culminate in a drawing-room gathering of all the suspects, at which the identity of the culprit is revealed. I think I’ve seen all of the first four, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, and on each occasion I revelled in the cleverness of the plot and the dénouement as well as the sparkling banter of the suave husband and wife sleuths Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. Their second case, After the Thin Man (1936), is my favourite, with the investigative trail taking in smart social gatherings and swanky jazz clubs, while a young James Stewart lights up the screen with star quality in his supporting role. This comedy whodunnit maintains the suspense and sparkle throughout its unusually long running-time for the genre and period of 112 minutes.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027260/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/after_the_thin_man
McCabe & Mrs. Miller – 25/01/24
Writer/director Robert Altman’s offbeat, unsentimental foray into the Western genre got very mixed reviews on release but later on appeared in many lists of America’s greatest films. Pauline Kael called it a “beautiful pipedream of a movie”. Altman “has made many great films” wrote Roger Ebert “but only one [McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971)] is perfect”. A dissenting voice, which I will leave unidentified, objected to the “mumbling”, “scowling” and “droning on” of Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Leonard Cohen respectively. This is one of the earlier films where Altman plays extensively with overlapping dialogue. It can be quite difficult to hear what is being said and by whom. Added to which, Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is deliberately murky, (as it often was). On my first viewing I was curious and somewhat moved. Each time I have seen it since it yields up a little more to me. This seems to reflect the pattern of critical assessments. On the basis of no knowledge whatsoever, I somehow respond to this bold “New Hollywood” take on the Wild West as the most faithful representation of frontier life that I’ve seen on screen.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067411/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mccabe_and_mrs_miller
A Late Quartet – 21/12/23
It’s a surprise that director Yaron Zilberman has had no comparable success before or after the polished and eminently watchable A Late Quartet (2012). The title refers to Beethoven’s opus number 131 in C minor, completed in the year before his death, but perhaps also signals mortality for the world renowned four-piece ensemble who choose it as the headline of their next concert tour. The long-standing incumbents on first and second violin, viola and cello are also the major players in an unfolding drama that threatens to bring a premature end to their professional collaboration while wreaking equal havoc in the personal domain. And what a great quartet of charismatic Hollywood professionals give it their all in front of the camera – Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mark Ivanir. The sumptuous score includes several other jewels in the classical string player’s repertoire.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226240/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_late_quartet
Taste of Cherry – 21/12/23
I think of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami as the ultimate maverick auteur, seeming to gain inspiration from the constraints of working as an independent film-maker in post 1979 Iran. Close-Up (Nema-ye Nazdik) (1990) is possibly the most original film I’ve ever seen. His best-known work Taste of Cherry (Ta’m e Guilass) (1997) starts from a bleak premise and eschews all fancy camerawork and editing, yet somehow the scenario of a man searching for a paid assistant in his perverse objective becomes so compelling that the film won the Palme D’Or at Cannes and continues to attract critical acclaim. Most viewers report that it profoundly touches the emotions as well as the intellect, not to mention the funny bone judging by one particular excerpt I’ve sampled. This is a classic marmite movie that everyone must taste for themselves.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120265/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/taste_of_cherry
Hannah and Her Sisters – 30/11/23
The Guardian’s list of ten greatest screen performances by Michael Caine, published last month when he announced his retirement from acting, has Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) in the top spot. Portraying the apparently placid husband of eldest sister Hannah, played by Mia Farrow, he conceives a crush on the youngest, played by Barbara Hershey. The thrills and the agonies that beset the fiftyish re-awakened male are almost unbearably authentic. Writer/director Woody Allen assembled perhaps his most delectable cast to play the titular trio plus their friends, partners and lovers in this exquisite comedy-drama of inter-related romantic intrigues. I find that Allen’s most inspired works are set firmly in the real world and address the ever fascinating topic of love and its fragility amongst competing concerns with serious insight, leavened with his inimitable humour. This is one of those top-drawer delights.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091167/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hannah_and_her_sisters
Hilary and Jackie – 30/11/23
The life story of a prodigiously talented female cellist who died tragically young, as told by her sister – an intimate confidant and bitter rival – has such dramatic potential that the film script was written concurrently with the memoir A Genius in the Family by Hilary du Pré on which it was ostensibly based. With Emily Watson playing a blinder as the mercurial, tormented, sometimes monstrously misbehaving Jaqueline du Pré, director Anand Tucker can hardly go wrong in his second feature film, Hilary and Jackie (1998). The supporting cast, with Rachel Griffiths as the elder sister, and Charles Dance and Celia Imrie as the parents, is also excellent. I particularly remember the intrusion onto the scene and into Jackie’s heart of the equally gifted musician and uncompromising personality Daniel Barenboim, played by James Frain. This is a classy biopic with more than its fair share of fireworks, not to mention the painfully evocative recordings of du Pré’s performances on the soundtrack.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150915/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hilary_and_jackie
The Souvenir: Part II – 19/10/23
In The Souvenir: Part II (2021), writer/director Joanna Hogg picks up from where she left her proxy Julie, played by Honor Swinton, at the end of Part I, trying to get over the death of her controlling, needy boyfriend and make a fresh start in her chosen career. The two films seamlessly combine to chart the rocky journey of a naïve, innocent wannabe film director towards the threshold of success. Here again are the supportive family, the exuberant student colleagues and the mentors, good and bad. While still beset by personal anxieties and embarrassing mishaps Julie’s burgeoning creative style begins to figure more prominently. The extended sequences of her vision being realised on set make this a more “arty” film than its predecessor, in a good way. The juxtaposition between real life events and those staged for the camera is beautifully handled. Roll on part three!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6992978/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_souvenir_part_ii
Silver Linings Playbook – 19/10/23
Silver Linings Playbook (2012) is not just another movie about grown-ups with mental health issues; it’s all about keeping one’s eyes open for the occasional “silver linings” that can miraculously be found inside the clouds that overshadow us in life. It’s also a sparkling vehicle showcasing the acting talents of Jennifer Lawrence as the troubled Tiffany, and Bradley Cooper as her equally disturbed neighbour, Pat who moves back in with his parents after a stint in a mental institution. Robert de Niro stars adds further star quality as the disgruntled father, Pat senior. Director David O. Russell was drawn to tackle this difficult topic as his own son was bipolar and had OCD. More surprisingly, a film with two sufferers as the principal characters succeeds as a romantic comedy as well as drama, which perhaps would not even be attempted today. It garnered eight Academy Award nominations, of which Jennifer Lawrence deservedly won the Oscar for Best Actress. Her portrayal of a feisty young woman trying to overcome her internal struggles by expressing herself through the medium of dance is spell-binding, inspirational and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045658/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silver_linings_playbook
An Angel at My Table – 05/10/23
Eight years after winning the Palme D’Or in the short film category at Cannes the New Zealand director Jane Campion came to attention in the UK with the art-house hit An Angel at My Table (1990). This thoroughly engrossing adaptation of the heartfelt autobiography by compatriot Janet Frame, a misfit who became a renowned author, swept the board at the New Zealand Film Awards and won the Special Jury Prize at Venice but missed out on mainstream recognition. I can’t think of a life story more compellingly presented on screen. The two and a half hours’ running time is well used to evoke period and place as well as sympathetic insight into a traumatic young adulthood. Kerry Fox in a remarkable big-screen debut was one of three unknowns who poignantly portrayed Janet as child, teenager and adult from the 1930s to the 60s. The interludes of happiness and success, with the occasional dash of comedy as I recall, are as well earned by the film as they were by this fragile yet tenacious personality in real life.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099040/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/angel_at_my_table
Bicycle Thieves – 05/10/23
Directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1948 and lovingly shot on location only, Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette) tells a simple story about ordinary working-class people whose lives seem to be impossibly hard, reflecting the reality of the struggle to survive in impoverished, bomb-damaged post-WWII Italy. In this context a bicycle is a precious object, a lifeline that must be guarded from theft at all cost, or it could spell catastrophe for the family. Such is the premise that inspired this classic of early neorealist Italian cinema. It was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay was voted by the Academy as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States in 1949. It won numerous other awards around the world, including a BAFTA for Best Film from any source in 1950.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040522/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bicycle_thieves
Pride and Prejudice – 21/09/23
Witty dialogue that can be lifted in chunks from page to screen, along with intriguing twists and dramatic revelations of character that take place amid opulent settings, make the Jane Austen novels an enduring sure-fire bet for cinematic treatment. Casting of the lead roles is of paramount importance. In Pride and Prejudice (1940), directed by Robert Z. Leonard, Laurence Olivier revels in the role of Darcy that he was born to play, amongst others. He has the perfect sparring partner in Greer Garson, who exudes the sprightly vitality of Elizabeth Bennet despite being ostensibly too old for the part. The fun-poking at human foibles in the minor characters might miss the mark for today’s audience, but all in all this is a smart, engrossing, entertaining and reasonably faithful adaptation, which I feel sure would get the author’s posthumous stamp of approval.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090563/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1016698-pride_and_prejudice
The Wackness – 21/09/23
I discovered The Wackness (2008) when I worked at Revolver entertainment, which distributed this Sundance Festival award winning film. “Woody Allen meets Spike Lee” could have been my tagline if I’d been in charge of marketing. High School graduate Luke Shapiro spends the summer before college peddling dope on the mean streets of New York, attending psychoanalysis, nurturing a crush on the analyst’s stepdaughter, and indulging a passion for hip-hop, which reverberates on the soundtrack with contributions from The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan and my own favourite band in the genre A Tribe Called Quest. Otherwise I’m not such a big fan, but the 50th anniversary of hip-hop this year is a good excuse to listen again to the sounds that remind me of my own times in the 70s and 80s in the City that Never Sleeps, and watch the engaging performances of Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley and Olivia Thirlby in this little-known coming of age gem written and directed by Jonathan Levine.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1082886/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_wackness
Betty Blue – 02/09/23
Those of us of a certain age remember queuing up regularly in the 1980s to see the latest stylish movie from across the Channel, and our eager expectations were more than amply fulfilled in the case of Betty Blue (37°2 le Matin) (1986). Who can forget the crockery-smashing histrionics of newcomer Béatrice Dalle as the volatile Betty, dominating the screen from the first moment of her long and active film career? Jean-Hugues Anglade, also still going strong today, was equally watchable as the put-upon lover and would-be writer Zorg, condemned to a succession of menial jobs while the rejection slips piled up. I’ve only just found out that Jean-Jacques Beineix premiered a three-hour director’s cut in 2000, adding depth to the later years of the troubled relationship set in the sleepy town of Marvejols. Now I’m full of eagerness once again at the prospect of an extra hour of humour and heartbreak played with verve and passion by the iconic screen couple thirty-seven years ago and salvaged from the cutting room floor.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090563/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/betty_blue
Punch-Drunk Love – 02/09/23
Life is not exactly a barrel of laughs for hard-pressed small businessman Barry Egan, whom we first meet in the middle of a stressful phone call in the corner of an empty warehouse/office. Seemingly stitched irrevocably into a bright blue suit that does nothing for either his commercial or social fortunes, Adam Sandler is a revelation in this more serious than usual role. Punch-Drunk Love (2002) is a quirky and sometimes harsh character study blended with the charm of a romantic comedy, in which Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman also display their considerable talents to great effect. I can’t exactly say how, since I remember nothing of the plot, only that this modest gem written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson engaged my sympathies and excited my interest throughout.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/punchdrunk_love
Ghost World – 12/08/23
The poker-faced Thora Birch brings to vivid life the subversive comic strip character Enid, an artsy High School graduate with an uncompromising intellect and too much free time on her hands, in Ghost World (2001). Scarlett Johansson is her faithful accomplice Rebecca in escapades that lead to an ill-defined liaison with a reclusive man in perhaps his late thirties, played by Steve Buscemi. The interplay between the three leads is a delight to watch. Together with Enid’s pointed encounters with peers, parents and sundry representatives of mainstream attitudes and culture, it places the film firmly in the top drawer of those portraits of unconventional young people struggling to find a meaningful place in the modern world that was a particularly rich vein for American independent cinema at this time. Hats off to director Terry Zwigoff for tapping into it with such skill in his first fictional feature.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162346/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ghost_world
The Search – 12/08/23
The Search (1948) is a serious film about a serious subject – the mass displacement of civilian populations in the aftermath of the Second World War, focusing here on the children separated from parents who are seemingly untraceable, probably dead. The documentary style scene-setting narrows down to the story of one traumatised child and the adults working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the United States Army who try to help him. What could have been a sentimental tale is directed with gritty realism by Fred Zinnemann, while the intense sincerity of Montgomery Clift in his first big-screen performance is ideally suited to his role. This adventurous choice of material for Hollywood drama turned out to be an unusually moving experience for this viewer.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040765/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1037787-search
The Father of My Children – 29/07/23
The brilliance of The Father of My Children (Le Père de Mes Enfants) (2009) creeps up on you unawares, not unlike the hot water that film producer Grégoire Canvel, the ‘Father’ of the title, realises too late that he’s up to his neck in. Until this dose of unwelcome reality kicks in we’ve been vicariously living the dream life of a cool Parisian creative entrepreneur, equally fulfilled by his work and his happy domestic life. With a shock the focus changes and it’s down to Sylvia Canvel, the implicit ‘Me’, the mother, to deal with the aftermath and keep the show on the road for the family and firm. Directing her second feature film from her own script Mia Hansen-Løve has done an impeccable job of translating a true life tragic story into this subtle yet powerful drama.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1356928/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/father_of_my_children
To Catch a Thief – 29/07/23
To Catch a Thief (1955) is a heady mix of romance, thriller and high-speed drama set on the French Riviera and directed by the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant is the dashing John Robie, an American retired ‘cat burglar’ whose fingerprints seem to be all over a spate of recent copycat crimes. When he bumps into a glamorous and sassy young woman played by the alluring Grace Kelly they’re soon locking horns in a series of delicious and heated encounters amid stunning shots of the Côte d’Azur as Robie attempts to prove his innocence by the means that gives the film its title. An Oscar win for best cinematography along with five other Academy Award nominations testify to the all-round class and craft of this unmissable treat.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048728/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/to_catch_a_thief
Women in Love – 13/07/23
Oscar winner Glenda Jackson, who died last month, and Jennie Linden in practically her only feature film role, play the sprightly Brangwen sisters in Women in Love (1969) based on the 1920 novel by D.H. Lawrence. I found it a feast for the eyes as well as the ears, full of intriguing discussions and experimentations on the eternal theme of the title. The heroines’ male counterparts, played by the dashing Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, compete verbally over the picnic repast, and physically in the famous nude wrestling scene that provides a frisson of the lurid flamboyance associated with the director Ken Russell in his other works. The mix of artful cinematography, intellectual debate and romantic yearning was right up my street when I previously caught it on a late-night TV transmission. With Eleanor Bron in a supporting role a more glittering quintet is hard to imagine. I’m looking forward to becoming absorbed once again in the divergent destinies of Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen as they seek fulfilment amid the constraints of Midlands society in the 1910s.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066579/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/women_in_love
Purple Haze – 13/07/23
I thoroughly enjoyed Purple Haze (1982) for its evocation of American youth culture in the late sixties at the height of the war in Vietnam and the corresponding domestic conflict between the generations. Against this backdrop two friends under threat of the draft, exemplifying between them apathy and rebellion, turn from work and study to hedonistic indulgence, annoying elders and contemporaries alike as they lurch towards a probable fall. That’s about all I can hazily recall from my viewing forty years ago of a film that won the Grand Jury Prize at the Utah/US film festival, the precursor of Sundance, only to disappear without trace after a brief general release. It seemed to me that writer/director David Burton Morris painted a vivid portrait of the time, partly based on his experiences, while the leading actors got well stuck in to their first film roles. It’s an exciting, perhaps risky prospect to lift the lid on this long-lost drama and be taken back to my own early twenties when I saw it at the Screen on Baker Street and identified so warmly with the protagonists.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084553/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/purple-haze
The Browning Version – 29/06/23
There is no body of work I’ve enjoyed or admire more than the plays of Terence Rattigan. I’ve got to know most of them through a number of excellent film adaptations, and perhaps my favourite of all is The Browning Version (1951). Michael Redgrave is the crusty old classics master Crocker-Harris, for whom the imminent end-of-year prize-giving ceremony looms as a humiliating send-off. Fine performances all round under the sure direction of Anthony Asquith bring out all the subtlety, humour, intrigue and heartbreak in the awkward scenes that the once feared, now ridiculed “Croc” must endure with his pupils, colleagues, headmaster and most bitterly his wife. The title refers to a translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon by Robert Browning that stirs a fragile hope of inner revival as the professional and domestic crisis escalates.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043362/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1043923-browning_version
Shall We Dance? – 29/06/23
Shall We Dance? (Shall we Dansu?) (1996) is the story of a strait-laced Japanese businessman irresistibly pulled out of his comfort zone by the exotic allure of ballroom dancing. Suffice it to say, things do not go smoothly. The “Japanization” of a Western cultural tradition adds an almost baffling quirkiness to the comic situations and incidents in director Masayuki Suô’s affectionate portrait of a dancing school and its motley crew of customers. Before long I was seduced myself by the bright bubble of make-believe in which the aspirant dance champions seek refuge from their mundane urban lives. Their awkward progress won the hearts and minds of audiences in Japan and across the world. After twenty-five years I’m curious to rediscover the qualities that made this film such a surprising delight.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117615/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1078942-shall_we_dance
Reservoir Dogs – 08/06/23
Five years after a forgettable first feature the writer/director Quentin Tarantino arrived as a fully formed outrageous talent with the ground-breaking heist movie Reservoir Dogs (1992). Everything about it was original and intensely effective – the formal colour code names that protect the gangsters’ identities from each other – Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Orange – the quirky conversational digressions, unprecedented in a tough crime drama, the artful use of flashbacks and time-shifts to hike up the suspense. And then there is the violence. Squeamish viewers will have to turn away from the notorious torture incident, otherwise it is the escalating menace more than the actual spatterings of blood that will test your resilience. Harvey Keitel is towering as the mature hoodlum with heart, sharing the screen and the prospective loot with a new wave of anti-hero types in Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn and Michael Madsen. “Wow, that blew me away!” I announced on leaving the cinema, and my viewing companion agreed. Thirty years later it may do so again, or I could find it unbearable or anything in between.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105236/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/reservoir_dogs
Tea with Mussolini – 08/06/23
Tea With Mussolini (Un Tè con Mussolini) (1999) is a charming, comic, feel-good film although it is set in a dark era, in Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy in the years preceding and during World War II. In contrast to the sinister backdrop, the story is essentially about a cosy little group of expatriate English ladies, known as the ‘Scorpioni’, living in Florence, who take an orphan boy, Luca, under their wing in 1935. They even get to meet the dictator himself, hence the event of the title, but they still find themselves in danger when Italy declares war on Britain. Further complications arise with the re-appearance of the now grown-up Luca and the unorthodox behaviour of two brash American woman. This semi-autobiographical drama directed by Franco Zeffirelli has a star-studded cast, with Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, who won a BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Joan Plowright, Cher and Lily Tomlin. It also won awards for Best Costume Design and Best Drama. Adding to the allure of the film, many of the scenes are shot in the Tuscan town of San Gimignano with its distinctive medieval towers.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120857/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tea_with_mussolini
Annie Hall – 25/05/23
Annie Hall (1977) is generally hailed as the big leap forward in Woody Allen’s directorial career, combining the wit and playfulness of his “early funny” period with a stab at a more serious insight into this amazing and upsetting thing called love. The resulting heady brew went down a treat with the public as well as the Hollywood community, garnering four of the top Oscars in a surprising coup for the strictly New York based auteur. The magic ingredient is Diane Keaton’s performance in the title role opposite Allen’s self-portrait as divorced Jewish comedian Alvy Singer. Her funky apparel and self-deprecation during their first conversation not only wins Singer’s heart but sparked international trends in fashion and verbal behaviour. The rocky course of their subsequent relationship includes hilarious mishaps such as an unplanned lobster chase and a botched attempt to snort cocaine. That’s about all I can remember from my two viewings long ago, so the decks are cleared for me to savour the romance and sparkle of Allen and Keaton in full flow afresh.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/annie_hall
The American Friend – 25/05/23
Just as the notorious Tom Ripley leaves his calling card at the close of the murder and mayhem he has instigated and moves on to the next episode in his depraved criminal career so does German New Wave director Wim Wenders unequivocally announce his penchant for the dark side in The American Friend (1977), an intoxicating blend of arthouse sensibility and hard-boiled film noir. Bruno Ganz is the unassuming picture framer Jonathan Zimmermann whose urgent need of money draws him into Ripley’s Game in this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s fiendish novel, with Dennis Hopper as the eponymous villain swaggering his way through the international art market in a cowboy hat amongst a posse of other film directors in supporting roles. In common with some critics I eventually lost the plot amid a succession of stylish, gripping scenes, but it hardly mattered. I remember in particular a juddering train ride in which Zimmerman tries to fulfil his assignment. Highsmith praised that unbearably tense scene, as well as Hopper’s incarnation of Ripley after initially disliking the result delivered by Wenders her admiring fan.
Here is the All 4 link.
Here is the MUBI link.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075675/
Garden State – 11/05/23
The polished assurance of Garden State (2004) is a tribute to the talents of Zach Braff, directing his first feature film from his own script and playing the central character Andrew Largeman, one of three young friends who feel somewhat alienated in the bland New Jersey terrain of their upbringing. Braff, Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard form an endearing if troubled trio, counterpointed by the dour, authoritarian presence of Ian Holm as Mr. Largeman senior, mourning his wife’s death, which is the reason for his son’s return home. This is one of several quirky, independent American movies I enjoyed in the early noughties, with witty repartee between well-drawn characters and a pleasing balance between light and shade. The plot, if any, I’ve completely forgotten. It is the authentic evocation of the twenty-something experience that many reviewers remark on. I’m looking forward to savouring it again from my now even more distant vantage point.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0333766/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/garden_state
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence – 11/05/23
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) is a moving and faithful adaptation of the novel The Seed and the Sower based on the wartime experiences of the South African writer and explorer Sir Laurens van der Post as a prisoner of the Japanese in Java. The ground-breaking composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died of cancer on 28th March, won a BAFTA for the memorable score and also plays Yonoi, the commander of the prison camp. David Bowie stars as the fearless Major Jack Celliers, with Tom Conti as Lieutenant Colonel John Lawrence, Jack Thompson as the PoWs’ spokesman Group Captain Hicksley and Takeshi Kitano as Sergeant Gengo Hara, whom the Japanese-speaking Lawrence befriends. Director Nagisa Ôshima conjures up an almost mystical atmosphere in which the Allied officers conduct a battle of wills with their captors amid the brutal prison camp régime, ungoverned by the Geneva Convention.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the MUBI link.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085933/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/merry_christmas_mr_lawrence
Pain and Glory – 13/04/23
For his most explicitly autobiographical film the prolific auteur Pedro Almodóvar calls on a handsome star of his provocative work in the 80s and 90s, the now sixtyish Antonio Banderas, to play the film director Salvador Mallo, who relives key episodes from his past while trying to pull through a health crisis. A more recent stalwart, the glamorous Penélope Cruz, plays young Salvador’s mother in the nostalgic and traumatic childhood scenes set in a primitive whitewashed village. I remember little more about Pain and Glory (Dolor y Gloria) (2019) except the sensation of being in the hands of a maestro at the peak of his powers, the decades of technique knowingly applied to enhance your interest in the characters and their troubles. This is definitely one that you don’t have to be an Almodóvar fan to relish.
Here is the YouTube link.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8291806/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pain_and_glory
Wild Rose – 13/04/23
Wild Rose (2018) was directed by Tom Harper (War and Peace) and written by Nicole Taylor (Three Girls). On the face of it, it is another ‘Star is Born’ story. But the quality of the performances and the writing ensure it packs a memorable punch. The film is very much dominated by Jessie Buckley who plays an abrasive, selfish, charming and talented ex-con Glaswegian Country and Western singer. Her performance in this film did not come out of nowhere as she had already attracted a lot of attention, mainly as an actor. But she is also a great singer and has done a lot of recording and performing since. She is ably assisted by Sophie Okonedo and Julie Walters and, delightfully, Whispering Bob Harris. A little sentimental, a little feelgood, but with enough grit to balance it. And anyway, we all need a bit of sentimentality every now and then.
Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5117428/
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wild_rose_2019
Lawless Heart – 16/03/23
Lawless Heart (2001), written and directed by Tom Hunsinger and Neil Hunter, is one of those inspired low-budget comedy dramas that I was lucky enough to catch during a brief run on release before its undeserved consignment to obscurity. It was also my introduction to the now familiar and much-loved face and mannerisms of Bill Nighy on his belated rise to semi-stardom. He plays the husband who digs himself into a hilarious predicament in the first of three connected stories, set in a coastal Essex community. The mood becomes more serious but remains equally engrossing in the episodes starring Tom Hollander and Douglas Henshall. I’m particularly relishing seeing Nighy and Hollander doing their stuff again with the years rolled back. The female supporting roles are equally well written and acted in this authentic and entertaining slice of life from an unfashionable corner of the sceptred isle.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Raise the Red Lantern – 16/03/23
Zhang Yimou is one of China’s most talented film directors and Raise the Red Lantern (1991) is considered his masterpiece. It won the BAFTA for Best Film not in the English Language and a string of other awards. Based on a book called Wives and Concubines, the film was banned in China during the early 1990s. The simple story is set in the 1920s, though it could have easily taken place centuries ago. Gong Li stars as beautiful young Songlian, taken as the fourth wife of a wealthy, middle-aged lord and confined to his remote castle, a place of time-honoured ritual and desperate jockeying for power between the four captive consorts. The rich cinematography, tracking through the courtyards and bedchambers, and the symbolic lighting of the blood-red lanterns within the castle walls, raises the story to the level of a timeless fable. The stark images and the haunting wails of traditional Chinese music tell a story more dramatically than words ever can.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Three Kings – 02/03/23
Three Kings (1999), pulls off the dangerous and difficult feat of using an actual recent war as the setting for an adventure romp that succeeds brilliantly as entertainment while educating the viewer with some unexpected political insight. The script by director David O. Russell brings the first Gulf War down from the skies where it seemed to be largely and clinically fought, to the desert terrain where a Major in the Special Forces stumbles upon an opportunity to profit from the power vacuum in the complex aftermath of hostilities. The crucial ingredients for me were the realism of the nail-biting scenes when guns threatened to go off or did so, and the barnstorming charisma of George Clooney as Major Archie Gates, inspiring his supporting actors Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonz to excel themselves in turn as the soldiers recruited into his informal unit with a mission to lay its hands on a cache of stolen treasure. Are they the good guys or just mercenaries out for a killing?
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool – 02/ 03/23
Director Paul McGuigan’s most recent feature film Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017), is a well crafted, poignant adaptation of the memoir published thirty years earlier by the actor Peter Turner about himself and Gloria Grahame subtitled A True Love Story. I found the relationship between the raw young drama student and the Hollywood star with a waning career but an abiding zest for life as intriguing and exciting as the participants obviously did themselves. The two leads Annette Bening and Jamie Bell give a terrific performance across the whole range of emotions, ably supported by Julie Walters, a shoo-in as Peter’s mum, amongst others. The contrast between the old-fashioned terraced house in drizzly Merseyside and the stunning California oceanside is a key background element in this mature and entertaining drama.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Random Harvest – 16/02/23
An amnesia victim wanders helplessly amongst the crowds raucously celebrating the end of the Great War, until taken under the wing of a kind-hearted dancer. Thus begins the romantic melodrama Random Harvest (1942), one of the guilty pleasures amongst my favourite Hollywood films. Director Mervyn LeRoy pulls out all the stops in this glossy production, contrasting the tumbledown country cottage where love blossoms with the prestigious drawing rooms and offices where it fades. Contemporary critics baulked at improbabilities in the plot and an excess of sentiment while audiences were swept along regardless by the chemistry between thirties heart-throb Ronald Colman and Greer Garson at her peak. I’m with the people on this one all the way.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Shiva Baby – 16/02/23
In Shiva Baby (2020) writer/director Emma Seligman displays the exuberant recklessness of youth combined with a controlled artistry that maintains your intense interest in the extraordinary central character throughout the rollicking seventy-seven minutes’ running time. Chickens come home to roost for college student Danielle at a determinedly upmarket Shiva, where her behaviour is anything but funereal. Your heart is sometimes in your mouth as she either instigates or flees from a stream of clinches and clashes with an assortment of family, friends, enemies and lovers. Rachel Sennott is a livewire sensation as the resourceful misfit who lives by her wits and her body, keeping disaster one step away in this agonisingly sharp comedy drama.
Here is the All 4 link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Ice Cold in Alex – 02/02/23
I didn’t get to see Ice Cold in Alex (1958) until ten years ago, but I found it as gripping and exciting as I might have done in my teenage years. The demons that haunt Captain Anson, an unusually dark role for John Mills, provide an extra dimension to the dangerous, almost foolhardy mission he undertakes. A glass of chilled beer in Alexandria is the reward if he can successfully get an ambulance, its personnel and supplies, through 600 miles of Nazi-occupied Sahara. The action sequences are superbly choreographed but it is the way they are integrated with the mounting tensions and passions of the ill-matched characters on board, including Anthony Quayle as Captain van der Poel and Sylvia Syms as Sister Diana Murdoch, that makes for a memorable ride in this epic desert adventure, directed by J. Lee Thompson.
Here is the All 4 link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Inside Llewyn Davis – 02/02/23
The fraternal screenwriting and directing partnership of Ethan and Joel Coen has amassed a substantial body of consistently thought-provoking, edgy and entertaining films in which quirky, sometimes violent characters pursue their dreams and schemes amid an uneasy landscape full of dark surprises. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) is on the face of it a quieter exercise, a sincere, partly sombre study of a struggling singer songwriter during one week in the winter of 1961, featuring consummate performances by Oscar Isaac in the title role and Carey Mulligan as a fellow aspiring performer who regrets their recent fling. The constant sense of unease bubbles up into occasional eruptions such as the alarming conversation of jazz musician Roland Turner, played by John Goodman, with whom Llewyn finds himself trapped on a desperate road trip, reminding you that you are still firmly in Coen brothers territory. For me it is perhaps their most wholly satisfying work.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Goodfellas – 19/01/23
The confessions of real-life mobster Henry Hill are the basis of the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi and its screen adaptation Goodfellas (1990), director Martin Scorsese’s supreme achievement in his beloved New York gangster genre. Ray Liotta plays the impressionable young buck born into the Mafia dynasty and seduced by the thrill of ill-gotten gains, yet coming to fear his violent, unpredictable criminal mentors as much as capture by the police. It was above all the character of Tommy de Vito and his expletive-ridden verbal diarrhoea that astounded me on my one previous viewing and earned a best supporting actor Oscar for Joe Pesci, who combines with Robert de Niro as the ruthless Jimmy Conway in an unforgettable hoodlum double-act, a template much imitated since, rarely with such inspiration.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Woman in a Dressing Gown – 19/01/23
Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) is a gritty, realist domestic drama that evokes huge sympathy for all three of the participants in a tortuous love triangle, thanks to a mature, intelligent script and stirring performances by Yvonne Mitchell, Anthony Quayle and Sylvia Syms as, respectively, the wife cooped up fretfully at home, the husband with a seemingly excessive workload at the office and the female colleague who helpfully shares it. Directed by J. Lee Thompson, this small-scale British gem seems to have been completely forgotten, perhaps because of its focus on a married woman suffering a mid-life crisis rather than an “angry young man”, the typical protagonist of the “kitchen sink” dramas that dominated British cinema during the following decade. I would like to nominate it as the first and one of the best films in that school.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
In the Bleak Midwinter – 08/12/22
A sparkling curiosity, a joyful discovery for fans of director Kenneth Branagh’s stunning Shakespeare adaptations, In the Bleak Midwinter (1995) presents the bard’s work from another angle – behind the scenes at rehearsals in a draughty church for a Christmas production of Hamlet. For this quirky, low-budget labour of love Branagh gathered together a magnificent roster of British comedy and character actors to portray the highly strung producer/director Joe Harper and his motley troupe of clashing personalities as they try to swallow their differences and pull something together under ridiculous temporal and budgetary constraints. As the characters begin to warm to each other so do we in this entertaining take on luvviedom that glides seamlessly between comic and poignant moments.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
In My Father’s Den – 08/12/22
In My Father’s Den (2004), is a well executed, satisfying mix of psychological drama and mystery thriller, directed by Brad McGann. The key to its hold is the sympathy evoked in the viewer by Matthew Macfadyen as the central character Paul Prior, a New Zealand émigré to the UK who has returned to his home town to attend his father’s funeral and then finds difficulty getting away, amid local hostility connected with the “den” and a growing attachment to a teenage girl, Celia, an amazing performance by Emily Barclay. It all leads up to a shocking revelation that I have thankfully forgotten the details of, so I am looking forward to tagging along with Prior once again as he delves into family secrets in a small community amid the natural beauty of Otago.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Now, Voyager – 24/11/22
Bette Davis fought hard for the part of Charlotte Vale, the repressed ugly duckling transformed into elegant swan in the swirling, sumptuous melodrama Now, Voyager (1942), and her persistence paid off with glorious results. Emotions run high in a string of memorable scenes between the leading lady and her excellent co-stars – Gladys Cooper as the authoritarian mother, Claude Rains, the suave, sympathetic psychiatrist and Paul Henreid, the traveller with whom she develops a passionate rapport. The chemistry between Davis and Henreid during Charlotte’s first flush of freedom on board a luxury liner represents for me the high watermark of Hollywood glamour. Based on a partly autobiographical novel by Olive Higgins Prouty published the previous year and directed by Irving Rapper, this is surely one of the most romantic movies of all time.
Here is the download link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Life is Sweet – 24/11/22
Coming at around the mid-point of writer/director Mike Leigh’s inimitable series of cruelly intimate but affectionate studies of ordinary people with alarming eccentricities, Life is Sweet (1990) is perhaps the pinnacle of this decades-long endeavour. The down to earth realism that flirts with tragedy and farce is an open invitation for a fabulous cast of well-known faces to display both their comic and serious acting credentials. Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent as the good-humoured working-class mum and dad, Timothy Spall and Stephen Rea the unreliable family friends, Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks the twin but very disparate daughters, and David Thewlis the enigmatic boyfriend are all a joy to watch in this idiosyncratic take on cherished aspirations that threaten to end in catastrophe.
Here is the All 4 link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Animal Kingdom 03/11/22
Animal Kingdom (2010) is an amazingly assured first feature by writer/director David Michôd set in the mean streets of a Melbourne very different from the sedate image I previously had of the Victoria state capital. On the death of his mother teenager “J” Cody, played by James Frecheville begins a new phase of life in the bosom of his extended family, a hard-core criminal gang presided over by matriarch “Smurf” Cody, played with seductive malevolence by Jacki Weaver. Will he survive and if so only by emulating the thuggery of his uncles? The sense of danger is palpable from the off in this study of power, suspicion and fear, with an upward curve of violence as police detective Nathan Leckie, played with reassuring solidity by Guy Pearce, struggles to get the evidence that will put the psychopathic “Pope”, played with bristling menace by Ben Mendelsohn, behind bars.
Here is the All 4 link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Little Miss Sunshine 03/11/22
A hilarious, quirky road movie directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine (2006) portrays the anguish and antics of a dysfunctional family held together only by the dream of success for the youngest member in a prestigious faraway talent contest. Despite the realism of some strong language and drug use the keynote is humour in an entertaining ride for all ages. The generations are represented by a standout cast – a talented child star in Abigail Breslin, a young Paul Dano playing the mute teenager, Greg Kinnear as the depressed father, Toni Collette as the mother trying desperately to keep the show on the road, not to mention Alan Arkin as the sweary grandfather and Steve Carell as the suicidal uncle. The film deservedly won a string of awards, including the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay, two BAFTAs, the BFCA Critics’ Choice Award for Best Young Actor and France’s Cesar for Best Foreign Film.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Class 20/10/22
You could be forgiven for thinking that The Class (Entre les Murs) (2008) is a documentary, so naturalistically does it portray the everyday events in the year of a Parisian secondary school, focusing on one particular new teacher and his class. This thoroughgoing exercise in cinema verité, by the specialist director of gripping workplace-based scenarios Laurent Cantet, is an adaptation of a novel by François Bégaudeau, who collaborated with Cantet on the screenplay and stepped up from his writing desk to play the lead role with a charismatic conviction that no professional teacher or acting luminary could have bettered. I found the development of the characters and their stories as compelling as in any more conventional drama, with the added bonus of fascinating insights into educational customs and practice across the Channel.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Gods and Monsters 20/10/22
I remember very little about Gods and Monsters (1998) except that it was much better than the average review and rating had led me to expect. Ian McKellen revels in the role of the dapper, gay former horror movie director James Whale, sparring with his housekeeper, played by Lynn Redgrave, and taking under his wing the musclebound gardener with more to him than meets the eye, played by Brendan Fraser. All the actors make the most of an Oscar-winning script by the director Bill Condon based on the novel Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram. This is an elegant chamber piece with a sparkling surface and a dark underbelly.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Red Shoes 29/09/22
Of all the films I have ever seen perhaps the most ravishing to the eye is The Red Shoes (1948). I wallowed in the sheer richness of colour saturating the talk scenes, let alone the sumptuous ballet sequences, when I belatedly caught a screening of this beloved classic around 20 years ago. But there is nothing slow or sedate about this story of a prodigiously talented ballerina, played by Moira Shearer, who becomes torn between the opposed forces of romantic love and artistic ambition when she falls for the company’s equally gifted young composer, played by Marius Goring. This threatens the plans of the fanatically driven ballet director, played with a repressed intensity by Anton Walbrook in another outstanding performance for directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, operating here at their peak.
Here is the iPlayer link and the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The 400 Blows 29/09/22
The 400 Blows is a literal mis-translation of the original French title Les Quatre Cents Coups, an idiom that means ‘Raising Merry Hell’ and refers to the provocative, anti-authoritarian behaviour of the young protagonist. Released in 1959, this French ‘new wave’ masterpiece won several awards and was director François Truffaut’s most successful film at the box office in France. It is his heartfelt account of a troubled boyhood, based on his own early life growing up in a dysfunctional family in Paris. Jean-Pierre Léaud is unforgettable as the young Antoine Doinel, in the first of five films in which he becomes the director’s alter-ego, the real-life actor growing up alongside the fictional character over the next two decades. Jean-Pierre/Antoine wins the hearts of the viewers more often than not, as the story is told principally from his point of view. The film includes a voiceover by the late Jean-Luc Godard who died this month, Truffaut’s friend and occasional collaborator at the time.
Here is the download link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 15/09/22
In the final instalment of his legendary “dollars” trilogy director Sergio Leone makes his most stunning use yet of two priceless assets – Ennio Morricone’s inventively instrumented, ravishing score and Clint Eastwood’s statuesque allure as the “good” gunslinger enmeshed in a long-running battle of wits and machismo with the “bad” and the “ugly”, as incarnated by Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is the crème de la crème of the Spaghetti Western sub-genre, with a look and feel way beyond its budget yet retaining an edgy rawness with its post-synched dialogue, including 16 minutes added to the American version in 2002 to bring it up to the full three hours of the Italian release. I was awed by the spectacle, the menace, the bursts of violence, the cross and double-cross of this timeless epic, but I think there is a magic extra ingredient, a kind of wry humour that raises it above its rivals as the all-time favourite amongst its legions of fans.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Three Cornered Moon 15/09/22
The background to this delightfully irreverent comedy is the Great Depression, a systemic shock to the fatherless Rimplegar family that has surprising and entertaining consequences. The star of the show is of course Claudette Colbert, at her most dazzling as the high-spirited daughter attempting to marshal her inept brothers, and keeping us guessing as to the relative merits of her chalk and cheese suitors until the end. Three Cornered Moon (1933), directed by Elliott Nugent, is a charming, witty time-capsule that confronts serious issues and moral dilemmas obliquely without any interruption to the fun and games. Since I unearthed this long forgotten gem nine years ago we have entered a new crisis period. I think a second viewing will now be a refreshing antidote to the more modern style of bleating and blaming in response to misfortune.
Here is the download link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Empire of the Sun 01/09/22
Taking an inspired break from science fiction J.G. Ballard gained a whole new readership in 1984 with his autobiographical novel about a middle class English boy caught up in the 1941 Japanese occupation of Shanghai. It quickly caught Steven Spielberg’s eye, resulting in the epic but faithful adaptation, Empire of the Sun (1987). The intense identification with a child’s point of view – so moving in Close Encounters and ET – is remarkable again – with 12 year old Christian Bale launching his stellar career in the role of Jim. We follow the boy’s adventures with awe; his innocence seems like a strength as he takes every new threat in his stride. The mature Spielberg delivers an education as much as an entertainment about this previously neglected corner of the Second World War, as concerned to portray the culture clashes in 1940s Shanghai as the aerial battles and the terror that lies in store for Jim and his newly found friend from the sky.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
She’s the One 01/09/22
Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz and John Mahoney add star appeal to New York independent film-maker Ed Burns’ second feature She’s the One (1996). The core of this fizzing romantic comedy is the vituperative rivalry between chalk and cheese brothers Mickey and Francis Fitzpatrick, played by Burns and Michael McGlone. Every traded insult in their relentless spats made me and my viewing partner titter or laugh out loud at the Odeon when it came out, to the annoyance of the people in front of us, who just didn’t seem to “get” it. Nor apparently do many reviewers. I came away smiling and uplifted by the acid humour of the protagonists, leavened by an underlying affection for (most of) the characters portrayed. Will the alchemy still hold sway on a second viewing?
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Summertime 18/08/22
I was pleasantly surprised to discover a completely different Katharine Hepburn, all trace of feistiness removed, in the sad but sympathetic character of secretary Jane Hudson, who finally makes the trip from Akron, Ohio to Venice to fulfil her life-long dream. Awkward encounters with fellow American tourists are eclipsed by an unexpected chance of romance, and further awkwardness, when she meets antiques dealer Renato de Rossi. Summertime (1955) is a beautifully nuanced, quietly engrossing chamber piece, with the added attractions of the city itself showcased by director David Lean in his last film before launching into the series of epics that made him a household name.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Talented Mr. Ripley 18/08/22
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) brought together a host of talented actors enjoying their first flush of stardom to re-create the tense, ambiguous relationships and shifting alliances between rich American college kids on the Italian riviera in this second great adaptation of a ground-breaking crime novel. Matt Damon plays the seemingly straight-laced nerd who becomes obsessed with errant playboy Dickie Greenleaf and his girlfriend Marge, played by Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Cate Blanchett provides light relief as the unsuspecting friend who turns up at key moments in the ever darkening plot. I enjoyed this richly-layered thriller far more than director Anthony Minghella’s previous and heavily Oscar-laden feature The English Patient.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Two for the Road 04/08/22
Two for the Road (1967), directed by Stanley Donen, is a bittersweet romantic comedy, charting the ups and downs of Joanna and Mark, who meet in northern France while trying to get to the Mediterranean on a budget. In subsequent years the budget increases, while the naïve fun and games become overlaid by more mature realities. Seeing it on TV was a highlight of a stay-at-home summer during my unadventurous youth. I can’t wait to be transported again to the ambience of the 1960s and relive the chemistry of Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney on their scenic, seductive road trips.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
High Sierra 04/08/22
High Sierra (1941) is a tough, tense, action-packed Bogie classic directed by gangster film supremo Raoul Walsh. I’ve seen it only once on telly a long time ago so I can only really remember the climactic ending in which I was rooting with all my heart for desperado Roy Earle to escape the long arm of the law. I note that Humphrey Bogart’s opposite number is the fascinating Ida Lupino, often cast as the tainted girl with hidden depths, who went on to direct her own off-beat brand of film noir.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Jean de Florette 23/06/22
Jean de Florette (1986) was perhaps the most revered film of the decade in my London milieu at the time. It had the barnstorming presence of Gérard Depardieu as the heroically persistent hunchback from the city, battling against all the odds to make a go of his inherited Provence farm. It was my introduction to the talents of both Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil, playing members of the landed gentry gone to seed and looking for a fast track back to prosperity. And it made me sigh with longing for the beautiful rolling landscape in which this gripping story is set, consummately brought to the screen by director Claude Berri. A second viewing is long overdue.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Desperately Seeking Susan 23/06/22
The big selling point of Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) was the casting of the recently emerged pop phenomenon Madonna as the eponymous free-wheeling spirit who can only be got hold of through the placement of a personal ad in the paper. I was suitably wowed by the character’s ultra-cool persona, indifferent to the opinion of others, yet infallibly trend-setting nonetheless. I shared the tremulous excitement of bored suburbanite Roberta Glass, played by Rosanna Arquette, who strays far from her comfort zone into the dangerous orbit of her idealised role model. Thirty-seven years on, will I again enjoy the twists and turns of this deceptively charming urban romp directed by Susan Seidelman, almost a classic period farce transposed to the arty New York loft scene of the 1980s?
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Queen 09/06/22
Director Stephen Frears, a gifted specialist in classy, knowing representations of both contemporary British society and period courtly intrigue, has the ideal pedigree to take on the tragic culmination of the Charles-Diana rift and its traumatic aftermath that drives the narrative of The Queen (2006). Helen Mirren and Michael Sheen are equally born to play the firmly embedded monarch and the newly minted Prime Minister Tony Blair, representing traditional dignified restraint versus the new mood of overt emotional display in the national crisis over the demise of the People’s Princess. Any imaginative embellishments and departures from strict historical accuracy in Peter Morgan’s screenplay I would maintain are entirely justified by the dramatic and entertaining impact of the end result.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Kundun 09/06/22
The world’s foremost director of visceral gangster thrillers proves once again that he can turn his hand to any subject and genre with this quietly engrossing biopic of the world’s foremost living advertisement for peace. The title itself of Kundun (1997) heralds the ambition to sincerely evoke the Dalai Lama’s world and its contemplative sensibility, yet also made me apprehensive that the two plus hours of screen time might be less than riveting. I soon forgot any misgivings, intrigued by the insight into Tibetan life and customs, awed by the mountainous grandeur, ravished by the sumptuous pageantry and thoroughly caught up in the trauma of the Chinese invasion and its political aftermath. All credit to Martin Scorsese for taking a risk and delivering this serious account of a complex personality and enigmatic public figure that is also highly watchable.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Best Years of Our Lives 26/05/22
Since making nearly a clean sweep of the most prestigious Oscars for 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives has lapsed into relative obscurity, at least in the UK, compared to some other 1940s Hollywood classics. Perhaps the rocky return to civvy street of three demobbed servicemen who become buddies despite their differing ranks, ages and social circumstances is considered too modest a story for the epic running time of 2 hours 50 minutes. Or perhaps it’s that William Wyler, who time and again has turned out to be the director of one of my favourite films, is not a household name, nor are any of the leading players. All the more pleasure then is to be had in this utterly absorbing journey, from raucous revelry through domestic unease, troubled romance and alienation in the workplace, as the returning trio follow their individual and shared paths of adjustment and reintegration. The parts of the wives, daughter and fiancée are endowed with as much personality and agency as those of the men.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 26/05/22
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (a ground-breaking title when it came out) is the film that first thrust director Pedro Almodóvar into the international spotlight, becoming the highest-ever grossing Spanish film at the time in both Spain and the USA. He subsequently went on to direct a string of films in his own inimitable style which became international box office successes. Made in 1988, it is quintessential Almodóvar – vibrant, pacey, colourful, flamboyant, farcical, excessive, and as always, some highly emotional women take centre stage. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film that year and won five Goya Awards, including Best Film and Best Actress in a Leading Role for Carmen Maura, who reappeared in many of his later movies. I don’t remember much about the plot but I can’t wait to watch it again, if only to see whether it survives the test of time.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Remains of the Day 12/05/22
The Remains of the Day (1993), directed by James Ivory, is a faithful and wholly successful translation of the Booker prize-winning novel by Kazuo Ishiguro to the screen. Oscar nominees Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson exquisitely render the growing familiarity between butler Stevens and housekeeper Kenton in all its agonising fragility, while their master plays host to Nazi sympathisers in the drawing room. The lavish packaging of a top-drawer Merchant Ivory production is perfectly suited to this heady mix of stilted manners, romantic yearning and political intrigue laced with a dash of Wodehouseian comedy featuring a sparkling Hugh Grant as a foppish house guest.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Glenn Miller Story 12/05/22
James Stewart delivers a convincing portrayal of the impassioned young trombonist dreaming of a radically different sound who became the iconic composer and bandleader of the Swing era, pumping out one stylish hit after another against the backdrop of the Second World War. June Allyson is equally well cast as the stalwart sweetheart and wife. The Glenn Miller Story (1954), is both a satisfying biopic and a lavish musical tribute. Director Anthony Mann allows plenty of time for crowd-pleasing performances of all the famous numbers, including dazzling guest appearances by Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa.
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The Birds 14/04/22
Translating this chilling Daphne du Maurier story to the screen was a bold move that taxed the directorial technique and creativity of even the great Alfred Hitchcock. The setting, the characters, everything is changed apart from the essential mystery in The Birds (1963). Why do they gather so ominously at the foreshore? Can the increasingly hostile avian attacks be explained away, or is there a supernatural malevolence at work? Glamorous stars Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor have their cool composure stripped away, seemingly targeted by the dark mass of winged avengers in this legendary slow-burning horror thriller.
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La Belle Époque 14/04/22
The line between reality and fantasy is crossed and re-crossed to both comic and dramatic effect in La Belle Époque (2019), the fiendishly clever brainchild of writer/director Nicolas Bedos. The familiar now well-worn faces of Daniel Auteuil and Fanny Ardant bring depth to their roles as the estranged husband and wife Victor and Marianne Drumond, whose romantic days back in the seventies are but a hollow memory, that is until cutting-edge media company director Antoine, played by the equally impressive Guillaume Canet, invites Victor to re-live the experience. This is a rare contemporary example of stylish, perceptive, intellectually stimulating French cinema that fulfils its promise – with some surprising punches along the way.
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American Beauty 24/03/22
American Beauty (1999) is that cinematic rarity – a purely domestic drama of warts and all ordinary life that found favour with the crowds as much as the critics. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening star as Lester and Carolyn Burnham, the long-married couple drifting apart behind a successful suburban façade, nursing resentments and falling prey to the attractions, respectively, of their daughter’s provocative schoolfriend and the rapacious local estate agent. Both comic and painfully real, this anatomy of a family in disarray was a spectacular feature film debut by Sam Mendes, who collected the award for best director amongst five of the big six Oscars.
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The Third Man 24/03/22
An American pulp novelist Holly Martins comes to Vienna soon after the Second World War at the invitation of his old friend Harry Lime. Instead of the promised job he finds himself following a murder trail through the dark, divided, dilapidated city. Directed by Carol Reed from a screenplay by Graham Greene, The Third Man (1949) is famed for the spellbinding mood and atmosphere conjured up by the expressionist cinematography and the eerily jaunty theme tune composed by Anton Karas. Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles give bravura performances in a film noir which has truly stood the test of time.
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The Soft Skin 03/03/22
Less well-known than his more playful flirtations with film noir, The Soft Skin (La Peau Douce) (1964) is a neglected gem in the portfolio of French New Wave auteur François Truffaut. Middle-aged author and publisher Pierre Lachenay entangles himself in a web of deception from the moment he seeks to combine business with pleasure on an extra-marital escapade. The build-up of tension and moody atmosphere is combined with sophisticated psychological interplay in this exquisite riff on a familiar salutary tale.
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In the Heat of the Night 03/03/22
It is for In the Heat of the Night (1967) and his role as the Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs, who comes up against the full force of racism in the deep south while attempting to solve a murder case, that Sidney Poitier is best remembered. The leading actor award, amongst four other Oscars including best picture, ironically went to Rod Steiger for his portrait of the racist police chief forced to collaborate with Tibbs. Their fascinating duel is the core of this accomplished crime thriller in which director Norman Jewison’s risky depiction of race relations paid dividends.
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Pillow Talk 17/02/22
Slick, superficial and hugely enjoyable, Pillow Talk (1959) was the romantic comedy sensation of the year. Director Michael Gordon’s early experience at the helm of fast-paced crime B-movies stood him in good stead for shooting the snappy exchanges and plot twists that decorate and dog the relationship between Rock Hudson and Doris Day, from bitter squabbling over the use of a telephone party line through to the final soft landing. Tony Randall’s slightly camp panache as the wryly observant friend / rival / spare wheel was integral to the winning formula that powered a further two successful vehicles for the same trio in similar roles.
Here is the IMDb link for further information.
The Souvenir 17/02/22
Acclaimed independent film-maker Joanna Hogg’s commitment to authenticity has Tilda Swinton and her real-life daughter re-creating that relationship in The Souvenir (2019), a typically unsettling drama based on the director’s years as a film student in 1980s London. Honor Swinton Byrne portrays the determined yet haplessly vulnerable young Julie, struggling to develop an identity of her own while getting into very deep water with Anthony, a charming but feckless civil servant, played with gusto by Tom Burke. The volatile entanglement contrasts with beautifully observed and often very funny debates at film school and at the posh family home. Richard Ayoade in a delicious cameo threatens to steal the show.
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Miracle in Milan 03/02/22
The desperate plight of a shanty town community on the outskirts of Milan in bleak midwinter develops into an increasingly lively series of skirmishes with city officials and land-grabbers in Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano) (1951). There is more going on than meets the eye in this artful adaptation by director Vittorio De Sica of a whimsical novel by his frequent collaborator Cesare Zavattini. The result is a unique and exhilarating comedy with its feet still firmly planted in the stark hinterland of Italian neo-realism.
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The Imitation Game 03/02/22
The story of computing pioneer Alan Turing’s involvement in the code-breaking programme at Bletchley Park and its shocking coda is so full of intrigue, excitement and personal tragedy that it has spawned several dramatic representations over the years. The Imitation Game (2014), directed by Morten Tyldum, aims to do full justice to the complex character whose genius tipped the odds in the Allies’ favour at the height of the war. Benedict Cumberbatch digs deep to deliver a sublime portrayal of both the socially challenged maths prodigy leading the decryption effort and the isolated cynic of later years, while among the excellent supporting cast Alex Lawther as Turing’s hyper-sensitive schoolboy self is equally riveting.
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Buffalo ’66 20/01/22
The title of Buffalo ’66 (1998) refers to the coincidence of protagonist Billy Brown’s birth on the day that the city’s football team last won the national championship, the root cause indeed of his errant youth, culminating in a prison term from which he has just emerged. Writer/director Vincent Gallo weaves a magic spell in his first feature, also playing the anti-hero of this immensely original drama with heartfelt bravura. Christina Ricci provides a perfect counterbalance as the girl he forcibly picks up during his first frenzied hours of freedom, while older hands Anjelica Huston, Ben Gazzara and Mickey Rourke vie for the prize of worst role model as mother, father and mobster.
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Judy 20/01/22
Cementing her own status as a supranational treasure Renée Zellwegger performs the miracle asked of her in Judy (2019), re-incarnating for a 21st century audience the legendary actress and entertainer in all her brittle brilliance. This unflinching biopic directed by Rupert Goold is an intensely watchable drama, from the harsh exploitation of a teenage talent, through the vagaries of fame without fortune to the London comeback of 1968 and the last tumultuous act of an all too human and vulnerable showbiz superstar.
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Captain Blood 09/12/21
Captain Blood (1935) is the definitive Hollywood swashbuckler in which all the ingredients of the genre came together, not least the romantic pairing of second choice leads Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, who were catapulted to stardom. The cruel injustice that befell Dr Peter Blood in the aftermath of a West Country uprising of 1685 and his subsequent career as a stateless buccaneer is expertly woven into the political events of the time in the historical novel by Rafael Sabatini and condensed into two hours of gripping cinema by director Michael Curtiz.
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Close-Up 09/12/21
Close-Up (1990), directed by the legendary innovator of the second Iranian new wave, Abbas Kiarostami, is apparently an extended re-enactment of an actual crime caper in which the key people involved relive their part in the events. Viewer beware, nothing should be taken for granted in this soul-searching mockumentary that has earned not only critical acclaim, but the praise of fellow trail-blazing film auteurs, from Godard to Tarantino.
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Don’t Look Now 25/11/21
Ambitiously conceived and meticulously directed by Nicholas Roeg, Don’t Look Now (1973) brings to the screen all the feelings of regret, hope, excitement, foreboding, disorientation and shock in the Daphne Du Maurier short story, and then some. Starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a bereaved couple unduly affected by an encounter with a creepy old spinster in out of season Venice, this stylish and provocative drama is both emblematic of its period and a timeless classic of dark, disturbing suspense.
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Ninotchka 25/11/21
In her penultimate picture Hollywood’s legendary ice maiden Greta Garbo was practically a comedy virgin, as uncomfortable with the genre as her character, a Soviet fixer on a delicate assignment to Paris, so pointedly was with the decadent ambience of the Western capital. The politically-tinged shenanigans served up by Ernst Lubitsch in Ninotchka (1939) proved an ideal change of pace for the choosy star, and the seasoned exponent of debonair charm Melvyn Douglas a perfect foil as the wily representative of capitalist temptation Count Leon.
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Brazil 11/11/21
“Somewhere in the 20th century”, according to the opening title, a young bureaucrat begins to resent his humdrum impotence as a cog in a dubious machine, escaping into literal flights of fancy, rose-tinted with the promise of romantic fulfilment. Never has a dystopian world been more lovingly crafted or a clutch of conformists and rebels more entertainingly assembled than in Brazil (1985), starring Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Ian Holm and Michael Palin, with a delicious cameo by Robert de Niro as a rogue heating engineer. Director Terry Gilliam harnesses his astounding visuals to the driving satirical conceit in this pulsating and engrossing epic of sci-fi black comedy.
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The Old Maid 11/11/21
The Old Maid (1939) is an unashamed weepie that portrays the pathos of repressed passion in the stifling moral climate of 19th century polite society. Bette Davis radiates to perfection the sweetness and sourness of Charlotte Lovell’s transformation across two decades of heartache. Miriam Hopkins describes an equal and opposite arc from grasping to motherly as her symbiotic rival, though stopping short of the open warfare she conducted with her co-star off-screen. The supporting roles are equally well cast in this sincere and polished production, directed with composure amid the hostilities by Edmund Goulding.
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Mr Deeds Goes to Town 28/10/21
The prolific career of director Frank Capra encompasses not only the dazzling comedy classics, but a series of whimsical fables in which the humour is secondary to the moral struggles of an innocent at large in a rapacious world. The relatively overlooked but charming and moving Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) stars Gary Cooper as the unsuspecting heir to a fortune that proves a poisoned chalice. Amid the grasping hordes he chances upon one trustworthy soul in the shape of Jean Arthur. Their moments together are all too brief as a decisive court battle looms.
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The Children Act 28/10/21
A legal dispute over a dying boy’s fate spills over into the private life of the presiding judge in The Children Act (2017), directed by Richard Eyre. The ever-watchable Emma Thompson brings out every nuance of conflicted emotion in the role of Justice Fiona Maye, unable to juggle the demands of her marriage and career, and now risking an unseemly entanglement that threatens both. Neglected husband Stanley Tucci and problem teenager Fionn Whitehead vie for her attentions in this finely judged adaptation of a typically slippery novel by Ian McEwan.
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The Graduate 14/10/21
The Graduate (1967) still exudes bags of class, more than 50 years after it surprisingly picked up only one Oscar, a thoroughly deserved best director award for Mike Nichols. Dustin Hoffman is Ben Braddock the recent college big-shot thrust back into the charmless mediocrity of the real world, who becomes locked in a lust-love-hate triangle with two female Robinsons, a cynical, world-weary temptress in the alluring shape of Anne Bancroft and her as yet inexperienced daughter, played by Katharine Ross. All three are utterly convincing in their enduringly iconic roles.
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A Kind of Loving 14/10/21
John Schlesinger’s first full-length feature A Kind of Loving (1962) is a brilliant depiction of Northern working-class life circa 1960. Within the narrow confines of the grimy town, amid the sneers and mockery of co-workers and despite the warnings of parents a romance blossoms between Vic and Ingrid, played by the always charismatic Alan Bates and the equally good unknown June Ritchie. But it seems that only domestic squabbling is in store, as Vic clashes with Ingrid’s hard-bitten mother, played by the inimitable Thora Hird.
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Autumn Leaves 30/09/21
The melancholy title song of Autumn Leaves (1956) is the soundtrack to the solitary life of freelance typist Millicent Wetherby until an encounter with an awkward young man in a restaurant revives long-buried hopes of happiness. Joan Crawford and Cliff Robertson generate an almost visible electric charge across the 17-year age gap in Robert Aldrich’s romantic film noir, in which the theme of mental disturbance provides a foretaste of his later gothic melodramas.
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Force Majeure 30/09/21
An incident in a first-class ski resort in the French Alps opens up a can of worms for a family of Swedish holidaymakers in Ruben Östlund’s uncategorisable Force Majeure (Turist) (2014). Lashings of dark humour punctuate the thickening plot of this award-winning production with involvement from half a dozen Scandinavian and Alpine countries. The awesome mountain scenery and the strains of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are the backdrop to Tomas and Ebba’s disintegrating relationship in a hotel that affords no privacy.
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The Shawshank Redemption 16/09/21
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is the best possible counter-example to the wistful refrain “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore”. First-time feature director Frank Barabont remains true to the genre in this modern big production treatment of the classic prison drama. Andy Dufresne, unjustly sentenced for murder, calls on all his brains and spirit to survive the rigours of the notorious Eastern State Penitentiary, alarming even the hardened contraband smuggler Ellis Redding with his audacity. The chemistry of co-stars Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman as the conspiratorial inmates is the magical extra ingredient in this legendary audience favourite.
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Cold War 16/09/21
Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s follow-up to the award-winning Ida is a continuing masterclass in the evocation of time and place through exquisite black and white composition. The 4:3 screen aspect ratio in common use during the 1950s and early 60s again adds to the period feel of Cold War (2018), the story of an intense, volatile yet seemingly unbreakable relationship between a jazz musician and singer who follow their art and their hearts across the iron curtain from the stony ground of Poland to the bohemian chic of Paris and back again. For originality, style and unflinching confrontation of tough themes, this is another automatic entry into the canon of art-house classics.
Here is the All 4 link.
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High Society 02/09/21
Newport, Rhode Island is the affluent, sun-kissed setting for a transmogrification of The Philadelphia Story into the musical High Society (1956), directed by Charles Walters. In one corner of the love quadrangle is outgoing Hollywood goddess Grace Kelly, bouncing between ex-, current and possible future lovers Bing Crosby, John Lund and Frank Sinatra. There’s still plenty of witty dialogue, but the pivotal contest is shifted to crooning ability, with Crosby and Sinatra plying their trade over a delicious Cole Porter score, backed up by jazz supremo Louis Armstrong and his band. The sheer panache of the starry line-up is infectious and makes for a very enjoyable ride.
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Night and the City 02/09/21
Known for his portrayals of ruthless crooks in the American film noir, Richard Widmark slips seamlessly into the chequered suit of a wide boy on the grubby streets of post-war London in Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950). From underworld pub to high-voltage wrestling arena to the grimy banks of the Thames, small-time operator Harry Fabian twists and turns to escape the nemesis that his lust for a bigger slice of the action has unleashed. Amongst the grafters and grifters helping the troubled anti-hero on his way Francis Sullivan and Googie Withers as the husband and wife publicans are particularly memorable.
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The Hustler 19/08/21
Amongst a full set of major Oscar nominations it is the black and white cinematography and art direction that won the awards for The Hustler (1961). Downtown dives, seedy back-streets, and an opulent mansion of ill-gotten gains provide the atmospheric back-drop to a powerhouse performance by Paul Newman in the title role, facing off against Jackie Gleason in the pool hall and Piper Laurie in the bedroom. Director Robert Rossen gives the acting talent its head in an absorbing drama, both powerful and intimate.
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Lady Bird 19/08/21
Lady Bird (2017), written and directed by Greta Gerwig, stars Saoirse Ronan as the eponymous 17-year-old heroine in a particularly poignant, funny and authentic coming-of-age tale set in Sacramento, California. The central mother-daughter relationship is riveting from the word go, with both Ronan and Laurie Metcalf receiving Oscar nominations, along with two for Gerwig and one for best picture. Timothée Chalamet and Lucas Hedges also shine as two very different brands of boyfriend material.
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Unfaithfully Yours 29/07/21
Unfaithfully Yours (1948) represents a fascinating development in the career of writer/director Preston Sturges, known for a string of screwball comedies in the early part of the decade. The wit and comic invention is finely honed, but pressed into service of an intense psychological drama. Rex Harrison excels in the role of a celebrated orchestral conductor beset by dread suspicions concerning his wife that send him spinning into a dark night of the soul before, during and after a much-anticipated performance.
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Frenzy 29/07/21
London-born director Alfred Hitchcock makes a stealthy return home in his penultimate feature, Frenzy (1972). Despite seemingly modest ambitions and no big stars in the cast other than the great city itself, the master’s touch is evident in a tense and intriguing thriller. From the opening sequence in which a pleasant-looking young man is seen wearing the same pattern of tie as that used in a headline murder case the viewer is compelled to participate in the increasingly fraught predicament of the unfortunate victim of circumstance, or so he would have us believe.
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The Women 15/07/21
As in the original stage play the lavish sets of The Women (1939) are the exclusive arena of the “fair” sex, where its representatives joust and jostle for romantic and material supremacy under the knowing direction of George Cukor. The two top-billed Hollywood glamour queens carry the show. Joan Crawford is resplendently reptilian as the odious other woman while the radiant Norma Shearer is poignantly expressive as the unsuspecting wife, her happy world poisoned by an unholy imbroglio that heads inexorably West to a resolution in Reno, divorce capital USA.
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Simple Men 15/07/21
Bill and Dennis McCabe, the protagonists of Simple Men (1992) seem on the contrary burdened with complexity as they set off on an abortive road-trip, each obsessed with their own unfinished emotional business. An extended stop-off in a sleepy Long Island town provides for a series of tricky encounters with the local inhabitants, while the brothers continue to spar and jab in their own problematic relationship. The humour is satisfyingly character-driven in this quirky comedy drama written and directed by acknowledged specialist in the genre, Hal Hartley.
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Genevieve 24/06/21
The London to Brighton vintage car rally becomes personal in Genevieve (1953) when two rival enthusiasts determine to settle a score. Kenneth More as the arrogant alpha male and John Gregson, his more plodding, long-suffering chum, drag their lady companions, played by Kay Kendall and Dinah Sheridan, into the fray. The sparks fly in this much-loved comedy directed by Henry Cornelius, featuring a heroic performance by a 1904 Darracq 12-HP as the eponymous car.
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Days and Nights in the Forest 24/06/21
Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) chronicles a jaunt in the wilderness by four young office buddies with disparate personalities, eager to loosen the shackles of civilisation but not sure how to go about it, especially when the women they encounter have their own ideas. Director Satyajit Ray serves up a heady brew, as powerful as that which the adventurers quaff in the local village bar, a seemingly light-hearted froth giving way to dark undercurrents of soul-searching and moral ambiguity.
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Breathless 10/06/21
The screenplay for Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) (1960) is a pure François Truffaut confection. A charismatic thief on the run hooks up with an arty, liberated American student who gives as good as as she gets in a series of capers and arguments among the streets and hideaways of Paris. Director Jean-Luc Godard, more enfant than terrible at the outset of his 60 year career to date, points the camera at icons of cool Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg as they test the boundaries of rebellion and captures the mood of the time on the threshold of the swinging sixties.
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Manchester by the Sea 10/06/21
Manchester by the Sea (2016), is a grittily realistic drama directed by Kenneth Lonergan from his own Oscar-winning screenplay. Lonely Massachusetts janitor Lee Chandler hears that his brother is dying and travels up coast to the eponymous port to take care of his adolescent nephew. His ex-wife makes an awkward re-appearance and Lee is forced to come out of his shell and confront his past, his own shortcomings and his many losses. The naturalistic performances of the cast, led by best actor award winner Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges and Michelle Williams, bring out the tragedy and the black humour in this beautifully crafted story of ordinary lives.
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Burnt by the Sun 27/05/21
An academy award winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Burnt by the Sun (Utomlennye solntsem)(1994) takes place over an idyllic summer in the country house and grounds of a well-heeled family headed by larger-than-life patriarch Colonel Koto. Director Nikita Mikhalkov seduces the viewer with a sun-kissed bubble of innocent fun and games while the authorities close in on a former war hero recast as an enemy of the state.
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Orchestra Wives 27/05/21
Orchestra Wives (1942), directed by Archie Mayo, follows the fortunes and internal squabblings of an ambitious jazz band as it travels across the country with more than its fair share of emotional baggage on board. The bitchy behind-the-scenes back-stabbing is entertaining, but the stand-out scenes are the musical numbers themselves, with the great Glenn Miller, alias Gene Morrison, and his orchestra wowing the crowd with that irresistible swing.
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Getrud 13/05/21
Gertrud Kanning, a former opera singer, finds herself in the all too familiar predicament of a materially comfortable but emotionally unsatisfying marriage, ripe for a re-awakening of her artistic interests and youthful passions. Elegant restraint vies with hedonistic idealism in Gertrud (1964), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. This adaptation of a 1906 stage play by Hjalmar Söderberg is a smart, sophisticated swansong by one of the greats whose career stretched from the silent era to the sixties.
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Edward Scissorhands 13/05/21
Edward Scissorhands (1990) is a unique take on the age-old theme of a peaceful, humdrum community challenged by the arrival of a dark mysterious interloper. Under Tim Burton’s direction the stylised suburban landscape and its residents have an eeriness at least equal to that exuded by the wild-haired, black-clad protagonist with scissors for hands. The incarnation of a modern-day misunderstood Frankenstein monster propelled Johnny Depp to stardom and a glittering succession of weird and wonderful roles.
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Singin’ in the Rain 15/04/21
Few musicals can match the sparkle and verve that Singin’ in the Rain (1952) sustains throughout its running time, not just in the glorious dance routines of Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds and Cyd Charisse, but in the rollicking story that knits the capers together about the arrival of talking pictures and its impact on studios of the silent era. Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen cleverly juggle with cinematic genres and styles to satirise Hollywood stardom and its portrayal of romantic love, while the genuine article blossoms behind the scenes.
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The Crucible 15/04/21
The Crucible (1996), directed by Nicholas Hytner, is a faithful and full-blooded adaptation of Arthur Miller’s powerful allegorical play, in which the McCarthy era persecutions are evoked by revisiting the Salem witch trials of 1692-3. The authentic re-creation of time and place and the sprinkling of stardust, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder heading the sterling cast, contribute to making this an ideal production for anyone who has previously shied away from this complex, feverish drama.
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Apocalypse Now 01/04/21
The director, cast and crew of Apocalypse Now (1979), grappled with their own personal demons as they sought to re-create on location in the Philippines the mind-bending miasma that was the Vietnam War. Its continued subsequent hold over Francis Ford Coppola has resulted in two later versions. This one appears to be the final cut minus the closing credits, 40 years on from the original and expanded to 171 minutes of brooding menace punctuated by the awesome set pieces that set a new standard in cinematic spectacle. Prepare to re-enter the heart of darkness.
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Wild Strawberries 01/04/21
Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) (1957) is a wholly satisfying blend of Ingmar Bergman’s trademark soul-searching angst with the casual serendipity of a road movie. The traveller in question is a crusty old professor belatedly plagued by doubts about his life and career, whose journey to collect an honorary award at his alma mater evokes key episodes from his past. An unexpected warmth that shines through the fog of disillusion combines with glorious photography to make this one of Bergman’s more accessible acknowledged masterpieces.
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Day for Night 18/03/21
Director François Truffaut was so enamoured of the process and ambience of film-making that he determined to share it with his audience in Day for Night (1973), the quintessential movie about making a movie. Truffaut himself takes centre stage as the director struggling with the whims and vagaries of his troupe, while his customary alter-ego Jean-Pierre Léaud is relegated to the supporting role of lead actor. Fellow new-wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard’s dismissal of the whole enterprise as inauthentic seems beside the point when the outcome is such an absorbing delight.
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On the Waterfront 18/03/21
Winner of Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and five other Oscars, On the Waterfront (1954) is a gritty example of serious Hollywood drama at its finest. Actors’ director Elia Kazan elicits another electrifying performance from Marlon Brando as the brawny dockworker caught between opposing forces and ideals, buffeted between dogged priest Karl Malden, tyrannical union boss Lee J. Cobb and other members of an awesome supporting cast, and stumbling unluckily into a dire moral dilemma.
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The Roaring Twenties 04/03/21
Prohibition and the underworld activity it spawned in the 1920s was a rich source of dramatic inspiration for the wave of gangster films spearheaded by Warner Brothers in the 1930s. It is as though it was all leading up to The Roaring Twenties (1939), a tumultuous tale of demobbed wartime buddies who strive to make it big by whatever means fair or foul over the course of the notorious decade. Director Raoul Walsh exceeds the usual spare running time and fires up two of the top screen bad guys, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, to vie for supremacy, winner take all in an epic classic of the genre.
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Four Nights of a Dreamer 04/03/21
Maverick director Robert Bresson, drawn as always to the bleaker side of life, transposes the Dostoevsky story White Nights to a contemporary Parisian setting in Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971). In a chance encounter an apparently aimless young artist seems to find his soulmate, but her own mournful passion is directed elsewhere. The look and feel of this rarely screened work is gentler, the scenario looser than the core output of this uncompromising auteur. Is it a relatively lightweight curiosity or an intriguing contribution to Bresson’s cinematic portraits of loners and obsessives?
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Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 16/02/21
In Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) The Woman From the City comes between The Man and The Wife in a lakeside village, a grubby affair that soon exerts a dreadful pall on the parties concerned. But this grim template of the eternal triangle is only the starting point of a surprising emotional journey towards the uplifting promise of the title. The transformation unfolds with an energy and technical accomplishment that triumphantly realises director F.W. Murnau’s ambition to tell a universal human tale.
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Here is the IMDb link for background information
The Bridges of Madison County 16/02/21
In The Bridges of Madison County (1995) the last wishes of a farmer’s wife disturb her children with hints of a hidden romantic liaison they cannot help delving further into. In the re-telling the viewer becomes almost as familiar with the Italian emigrée and the visiting National Geographic photographer as they do with each other over four days in which nothing else happens. Nor does it need to, such is the hypnotic chemistry of the two leads. Meryl Streep lives her part to the full as always, and actor/director Clint Eastwood proves to himself he can do words just as well as action.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Human Capital 02/02/21
The intertwined narratives of Human Capital (Il Capitale Umano) (2013), directed by Paolo Virzì, bring together individuals from the top, middle and bottom of the economic strata in a fiendish conjunction of transactions and events that threaten to end badly for all concerned. This adaptation of a little-known novel is both a fascinating exposé of modern lifestyles and behaviours and a tightly-knit drama that cranks up the tension as the protagonists rush towards their reckoning.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Beware of Pity 02/02/21
Directed by the hugely productive, now long-forgotten, Maurice Elvey, Beware of Pity (1946) is a cautionary tale set during the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. A young cavalry officer with time on his hands becomes ever more entangled in the affairs of a rich family whose friendliness conceals a deep sorrow. The feverish intensity of the first-person narrative may have been lost in adapting this gripping novel by Stefan Zweig for the screen but the ominous injunction of the title still resonates compellingly.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Godfather 19/01/21
In adapting and directing The Godfather (1972) Francis Ford Coppola transformed a borderline pulp novel into an in-depth portrayal of mafia culture throbbing with menace and suspense, while Marlon Brando landed the first role worthy of his awesome talent in ten years. After some debate James Caan, Al Pacino and Robet Duvall were selected as the key supporting actors, charged with maintaining the underworld supremacy of the Corleone family through a mixture of corrupt machinations and beautifully choreographed violence over the course of almost three hours’ screen time. The rest, as they say, is history.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
I Know Where I’m Going! 19/01/21
Wendy Hiller plays the determined young woman from the city, bound for a remote Scottish island to live happily ever after, but the unpredictable weather of the Hebrides proves an obstruction in I Know Where I’m Going! (1945). This typically thought-provoking feature contains some familiar elements in the work of directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, such as the clash between different cultures, the sense of an other world just out of sight and the familiar figure of Roger Livesey stirring things up as the lieutenant on leave and not at all upset to be stranded in the same port as the thwarted bride to be.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
All That Heaven Allows 08/12/20
In All That Heaven Allows (1955) director Douglas Sirk pits the independent free spirit embodied by the self-sufficient woodsman Rock Hudson against the narrow-minded conservatism of small-town America. Caught in the middle is Jane Wyman as the widow whose friends, neighbours and children know what’s best for her. A deft script seamlessly interweaves the romance and social critique, and it all plays out in glorious technicolor.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Innocents 08/12/20
It is with a slight sense of unease that the able and willing Miss Giddens travels north to take charge of two orphans at their uncle’s country estate. Director Jack Clayton brought in Truman Capote to restore the dreadful uncertainty about the apparitions in the Henry James source novella The Turn of the Screw to the script of The Innocents (1961). The iconic English rose Deborah Kerr wrings the heart as the dutiful governess haunted by the grim legacy of her predecessor.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Onegin 24/11/20
Onegin (1999), directed by Martha Fiennes, is an exemplary translation to the screen of Pushkin’s poignant novel written in rhyming iambic tetrameters. For Eugene Onegin, played with riveting conviction by Ralph Fiennes, the tranquillity of an idyllic country retreat is to be short-lived when he becomes unwillingly embroiled in the passions of his younger companions, Tatyana and Vladimir, played by Liv Tyler and Toby Stephens. All the cast shine in this engrossing study of flawed character and fate.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
To Be or Not to Be 24/11/20
A comedy about the 1939 invasion of Poland and its subsequent Nazi occupation. This extraordinary concept is fashioned by director Ernst Lubitsch into the sparkling Hollywood gem To Be or Not to Be (1942). Carole Lombard and Jack Benny star as the leading lights in a Shakespearean troupe, who engage the enemy in snowbound Warsaw armed only with their inventive wit and a talent for artful illusion worthy of the great bard himself.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Dark Star 10/11/20
The laughably low-budget sci-fi spoof Dark Star (1974), a pet project of first-time feature director John Carpenter, conjures up an unglamorous but amiable vision of space travel in 82 whimsical minutes. A distinctly spaced-out bearded crew are doomed to spend years in each other’s company on an absurd mission to far corners of the galaxy with only the occasional alien intruder or computer malfunction for distraction.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Diary of Anne Frank 10/11/20
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), directed by George Stevens, is a sincere homage to its source in evoking both the fear of a horrific fate hovering outside only a door’s width away and the interior life a young girl with all the normal yearnings and resentments, heightened in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the family’s self-imprisonment. We share their predicament over the course of 2 hours and 50 minutes, aided by an excellent cast, with newcomer Millie Perkins a natural in the title role.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Shadowlands 27/10/20
Comfortably ensconced in the academic and literary circles of Oxford in the 1950s the devout theologian and fantasy writer C S Lewis begins a correspondence with a creature more exotic than any to be found in Narnia – an American woman. Nor is the personal destiny about to unfold in Shadowlands (1993) less dramatic than that of his child protagonists. Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger beautifully evoke the emotional flowering of twin souls with striking surface disparities under the seasoned direction of Richard Attenborough.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Woman in the Window 27/10/20
The Woman in the Window (1944), is a gripping film noir in which the armchair musings of a middle-aged Professor of Psychology on the darker impulses come home to roost in a doom-laden swirl of events following a chance encounter with a mysterious woman. Director Fritz Lang ratchets up the tension by the minute as fate closes in on the unlucky pair. Edward G Robinson and Joan Bennett are all too convincing as the hapless academic and his unwitting nemesis, the classic femme fatale.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Brassed Off 13/10/20
Despite losing their livelihoods in the second wave of pit closures in the 1990s the citizens of Grimley are determined to keep the colliery brass band alive and with it their pride at whatever cost. Brassed Off (1996) directed by Mark Herman is a heart-warming comedy with an unusually tough edge. Pete Postlethwaite, Ewan McGregor and Tara Fitzgerald give it their all for Grimley amongst a host of familiar faces.
Here is the All 4 link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were destined to play the bickering University couple who wash their dirty linen in front of their guests in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), a full-blooded adaptation of the prize-winning play by Edward Albee. First-time feature director Mike Nichols and all four principal actors received Oscar nominations for bringing to the screen a booze-fuelled all-nighter that shatters the veneer of peace in the groves of academe.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Way to the Stars 29/09/20
With the war in Europe critically poised the RAF base at Halfpenny Field is well-stocked with fighting spirit in the shape of John Mills, Michael Redgrave and Trevor Howard, but the dramatic focus of The Way to the Stars (1945) is on the relationships of the servicemen with their sweethearts, families and the local villagers. Then the American pilots arrive to lend a hand. This distinctively domestic war drama is one of the brightest gems in the rich legacy of director Anthony Asquith.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis 29/09/20
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), directed by Vittorio De Sica, is based upon Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel set during the rise of fascism in Italy in the 1930s. When Jews are barred from the tennis clubs a group of young friends meet to play within the walled gardens of the Finzi-Contini family estate. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film this exquisite production was the first big showcase for actors Dominique Sanda and Helmut Berger as sister and brother Finzi-Contini, and Lino Capolicchio as the sister’s aspirant lover.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Prick Up Your Ears 15/09/20
Gary Oldman smoulders and sparkles as the hedonistic, law-breaking young playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987), a scintillating collaboration between director Stephen Frears and scriptwriter Alan Bennett. While making a name for himself in a 1960s London scene on the cusp of sexual liberation Orton is closeted in a tempestuous relationship with his older lover Kenneth Halliwell, portrayed with heart-breaking intensity by Alfred Molina.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Diary of a Lost Girl 15/09/20
A luminous late silent movie directed by G W Pabst, Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) chronicles the downward spiral of an unworldly girl in Weimar Germany from her comfortable home to harsh institutional life in a reform school. It stars the striking American actress Louise Brooks as the luckless heroine whose spirits are lifted when she befriends a lively and resourceful fellow inmate. This loving restoration is admirably served by a moody piano accompaniment.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 01/09/20
Maggie Smith brings to glorious life the charismatic schoolmistress created by novelist Muriel Spark in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), a consummate adaptation directed by Ronald Neame. At the Marcia Blane School for Girls in 1930s Edinburgh the opinionated champion of fine art, culture and fascist dictatorship holds sway over starry-eyed pupils and amorous male colleagues alike. Her unconventional antics exasperate the devoted choirmaster played by Gordon Jackson and cause friction with the school authorities.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Ida 01/09/20
Ida (2013), directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is the story of a young novice nun in 1960s Poland, who, with the help of a lawyer whom she meets along the way, discovers some shocking news about her past. The moody, atmospheric black and white cinematography and the old-fashioned 4:3 screen aspect ratio add to the evocation of time and place in this intriguing, Oscar-winning drama.
Here is the All 4 link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Dangerous Liaisons 18/08/20
The film of a play of an eighteenth century book, Dangerous Liaisons (1988) amply measures up to its illustrious antecedents. The Hollywood dream team of Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeifer magnificently fill the elegant costumes and assume the courtly character of leisured aristocrats locking horns in the deadly embrace of illicit romantic intrigue. This pinnacle in the career of director Stephen Frears repays repeated viewing.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Meet John Doe 18/08/20
Director Frank Capra paints a dark picture on a broad canvas of the American dream gone sour in Meet John Doe (1941), the story of a cooked-up publicity stunt that lurches out of control. Silver screen icons Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper lend glamour to the production but also grit to their respective roles, as the audacious reporter who invents “John Doe” and the downtrodden everyman hired to be him.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Early Summer 04/08/20
Are you kneeling comfortably on your zabuton? Then you are perfectly poised to appreciate Early Summer (1951), an exquisite portrait of a three-generation household in post-war Tokyo, directed by the prolific Yasujirô Ozu. Amid the domestic detail and sometimes humourous interactions between the engaging personalities a family drama develops hinging on the endemic tug of war between tradition and modernity.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Straight Story 04/08/20
In 1994 the 74 year-old Alvin Straight decided in the face of all opposition to take an unusual, and slow, mode of transport to visit his ailing brother 240 miles away. This is the simple plot of The Straight Story (1999), and its straightforward dramatisation, unexpectedly directed by the master of mind-bending weirdness David Lynch, creeps up on the viewer and becomes a surprisingly engrossing ride.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Topsy-Turvy 21/07/20
Roll up, roll up for the latest diverting spectacle brought to you by the famous Gilbert and Sullivan partnership! But is it a flop in the offing? Such is the intriguing subject of Topsy-Turvy (1999), an inspirational departure by director Mike Leigh, transporting his talent for painfully comic observation from the sitting-rooms of fictional but excruciatingly real contemporary families to the drawing rooms of late Victorian London and the stage of the Savoy Theatre. The historical detail is lovingly rendered, and the two and a half hours fly by in this “putting on a show” film with a difference.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Our Hospitality 21/07/20
Our Hospitality (1923) is a cracking tale in which the young heir to a Southern estate blunders into a remorseless family feud spanning the generations. In his second feature as star and co-director Buster Keaton’s po-faced innocent is already a class act, negotiating a perilous path in a dangerous world with the aid of ingenious visual gags and precarious stunts in this 75 minute outing.
Here is the YouTube link. The orchestral accompaniment is very atmospheric and the picture is clearer than the version on archive.org, which features a more modern soundtrack.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Knife in the Water 07/07/20
A well-to-do couple on the way to a quiet lake retreat give a lift to a young hitch-hiker who ends up joining them for a weekend of sun, sailing and psychological power-play to the accompaniment of a delirious jazz score. Knife in the Water (1962), the first feature directed by Roman Polanski, announces the arrival of a gifted auteur with a penchant for disturbing mind games.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Julieta 07/07/20
A chance discovery that her long-lost daughter is back in town incites the now middle-aged Julieta to reminiscence on the life-changing events that culminated in the estrangement. Directed by the evergreen Pedro Almodóvar, Julieta (2016) is less quirky than earlier films but just as inventive. The pangs of love and loss come through strongly in one of his most satisfying concoctions.
Here is the iPlayer link. This expired on Tuesday 30th June.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Lola 23/06/20
During a sultry summer in the port of Nantes an aimless young man bumps into an old flame from schooldays, the eponymous dancer played by Anouk Aimée. She is rather busier, looking after her child and entertaining American sailors, one in particular. Meanwhile a mysterious returnee to the town hovers on the periphery. Lola (1961), the little-known debut feature written and directed by Jacques Demy is a treat for any fan of the French New Wave.
Here is the YouTube link. Ignore the cyrillic characters on the splash screen. The film is in French with English sub-titles if you click Settings and take the appropriate option.
Here is the IMDb link for background information,
Educating Rita 23/06/20
Newcomer Julie Walters bursts into the University cloisters and onto celluloid in her feature film debut Educating Rita (1983) as the working class girl whose querulous eagerness for learning shakes up her jaded tutor, played by Michael Caine. Veteran director Lewis Gilbert captures the chemistry of the disparate duo in this acclaimed adaptation of the play by Willy Russell.
Here is the YouTube link but with Chinese and English subtitles.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Brief Encounter 09/06/20
The spark of romance ignites in a Kent Railway station café at the start of Brief Encounter (1945), and flares up dangerously, pitting passion against propriety. Adapted from a play by Noël Coward in serious mode, directed by David Lean and starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as the exquisitely tortured couple, this is both British and romantic cinema at their best.
Here is the iPlayer link.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Nowhere Boy 09/06/20
The assured first feature by Sam Taylor-Johnson, Nowhere Boy (2009) focuses on John Lennon’s troubled teenage years and the beginnings of the Beatles. Young Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the irresistible force in the title role and stalwart thespian Kristin Scott-Thomas as the immovable object in the shape of strict aunt Mimi are equally impressive.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 26/05/20
A two and three quarter hour epic charting the 40 year career of a British army officer, inter-weaved with his more intimate personal history. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is a landmark in the oeuvre of this famed directing duo. The big boots of the title role fit Roger Livesey to perfection, with Deborah Kerr leading the supporting cast.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Les Diaboliques 26/05/20
Squeeze yourself onto the hard bench between the knobbly knees and shoulders of your fidgety neighbours for Les Diaboliques (1955), a claustrophobic psychological thriller/horror set in a boys’ boarding school. Directed with customary panâche by Henri-Georges Clouzot it features Simone Signoret as the mis-treated schoolteacher whose bid to escape her hated oppressor goes horribly right.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Tillsammans (Together) 12/05/20
Plonk yourself on the bean bag and tune into Tillsammans (Together) (2000), directed by Lukas Moodysson, a zesty comedy/drama set in a household of young people trying to live the alternative dream in Stockholm in 1975. Family connections and neighbourly intrusions as well as internal tensions disrupt the communal harmony.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
My Best Girl 12/05/20
A little-known gem of a romantic comedy, My Best Girl (1927), directed by Sam Taylor, stars the legendary Mary Pickford bringing emotional depth to her last silent feature as the decent, hard-working shop girl who receives amorous attentions from across the social divide.
Here is the YouTube link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
Short Cuts 28/04/20
Book yourself onto the sofa for three hours and eight minutes to watch Short Cuts (1993), directed by Robert Altman and featuring an amazing ensemble cast. The multiple intertwined narratives of nine Raymond Carver short stories and a poem are transposed to a Los Angeles setting.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
The Lavender Hill Mob 28/04/20
Synchronise your watches for the comedy crime caper, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), directed by Charles Crichton and featuring a host of beloved comic character actors. This classic Ealing production brings home the goods in seventy-seven eventful minutes.
Here is the archive.org link.
Here is the IMDb link for background information.
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