The Thin Man Goes Home (1944)

A couple of weeks on this cider and I’ll be a new man. Retired private detective Nick Charles (William Powell) and his wife Nora (Myrna Loy) visit Nick’s parents (Harry Davenport and Lucile Watson) in Nick’s quiet New England hometown of Sycamore Springs. The residents are convinced that Nick is in town on an investigation, despite his repeated denials. However, when aircraft factory employee Peter Berton (Ralph Brooks) seeks out Nick and is shot dead before he can reveal anything, Nick is on the case. An old childhood friend, Dr. Bruce Clayworth (Lloyd Corrigan) performs the autopsy and extracts a pistol bullet. When Nick searches Berton’s room for clues, he is knocked unconscious by local eccentric Crazy Mary (Anne Revere). When Nora shows Nick the painting she’s bought for his birthday it brings back unpleasant memories for him, so she donates it to a charity bazaar. When Edgar Draque (Leon Ames) offers Nora a large sum of money for the painting, Nick wonders why it is so valuable … I really shouldn’t give him a birthday present at all – sneaking off like that, getting drunk, without me. Running into an old sweetheart. If all his old sweethearts were laid end-to-end, you could use them as a sidewalk. The fifth in the series had a change of team following the death by suicide of regular director W.S. Van Dyke. Everett Riskin produced and his acclaimed screenwriter brother Robert took over the screenplay duties along with Dwight Taylor, from a story by Riskin and Harry Kurnitz, based as ever on Dashiell Hammett’s characters. Given the privations of war with liquor rationing, drinking is no longer the staple gag, replaced with a quest for the demon spirit instead in this new smalltown setting which has the Charles family living in the Andy Hardy house. Small towns were Robert Riskin’s Capraesque bailiwick but the kind of zippy humour previously evinced in the series is hardly on the same level as previous outings. Nonetheless in the slide from urbane to suburban the formula still retains some of the zip and quippiness of its predecessors and Powell and Loy have the zest characterising their onscreen pairings in their twelfth outing together albeit it’s minus much of the drunkenness if not quite cold turkey. Nick, you have to do something – and that’s not it! This was the only film Loy shot during World War 2 due to her work for the Red Cross and production was delayed by two years when she married the Hertz Rent A Car heir. A suggestion that she be replaced by Irene Dunne had been met with an outcry from the series’ fans. Asta however has been replaced by Asta Jr so at least it’s all in the family. No word on the whereabouts of Nick Jr who’s missing in action – perhaps you need to be boggle-eyed with gargle to be a parent after all. The father-son diad is a generation older as Nora tries to persuade her doctor father-in-law that Nick has achieved great things in a wholly different profession. It’s an atypical entry because of the fish out of water situation for our martini-guzzling city slickers but despite its comparative lack of pace it has its moments and has some of that brand of chipper charm the series oozes as well as light commentary about the strangeness of people in the ‘burbs familiar from other forties films. Directed by Richard Thorpe with uncredited scenes helmed by Norman Taurog when Thorpe moved onto his next film. Just imagine, four murders, all strangulations, no fingerprints, no clues. The police were baffled. All they had were four bodies. So what do they do? They dump the whole thing in Nick’s lap

Rafael Nadal is 21 Today!

Our favourite tennis player makes history winning the Australian Open by a whisker against an extraordinary Daniil Medvedev in a 5 hour 24 minute epic that had everything. We laughed. We gasped. We hurled. And then we cried. Because now 35-year old Rafa enters the history books as the legend who has won 21 Grand Slams in his career, the first man to reach that level, edging ahead of Djokovic and Federer. We are so fortunate to exist in this exalted time of sporting greatness. Respect. Va Rafa!

Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)

I was the victim of circumstances. The D.A. framed me, not knowin’ I was guilty. Ain’t that a coincidence?Policeman turned private eye Nick Charles (William Powell) and his socialite wife Nora (Myrna Loy) are looking forward to a relaxing day at a racetrack, but when a jockey called Golez apparently about to reveal the mob’s role in his throwing a race is found shot to death, Police Lieutenant Abrams (Sam Levene) requests Nick’s help. The request is initially rebuffed but then do-gooder state assemblyman Major Sculley (Henry O’Neill) persuades him to look into corruption and the role of organised crime in a race-rigging racket. The trail leads to a gambling syndicate that operates out of a wrestling arena, murdered investigative reporter Whitey Barrow (Alan Baxter) and pretty secretary Molly (Donna Reed) whose boyfriend investigative reporter Paul Clarke (Barry Nelson) has been framed. Along the way, Nick and Nora have to contend with a wild wrestling match, a dizzying day at a merry-go-round accompanied by Nick, Jr. (Dickie Hall), and a table-clearing restaurant brawl … And I haven’t killed a jockey in weeks – really. The fourth in the murder mystery comedy series derived from the characters created by Dashiell Hammett, who by this time was no longer directly involved in production. The storyline here is credited to Harry Kurnitz (although it was by Elliot Paul) with the screenplay by himself and Irving Brecher who together replaced screenwriting couple Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Fizzing with droll attitudes, witty lingo, a big dollop of humour and a precocious kid posing fatherhood issues for Nick, this is also brightened up by a well-handled central narrative line. The relationship between suave Nick and slinky Nora is as pleasingly spiky as ever: I tell you what, you go home, cold cream that lovely face, slip into an exciting negligee./ Yes./ And I’ll see you at breakfast. Renowned acting coach Stella Adler, in the second of her three rare screen roles, as duplicitous Claire Porter, the mob boss’ girlfriend. When her affected Britishness slips, Nick tells her, Don’t look now but your accent’s showing. As usual there’s a rich seam of laughs to be mined from high society bumping up against the lower orders and there’s a raucous assortment of character actors hamming it up as shady gangsters. Look at the screwy hat on the dame! As usual, even in this crowd, Asta steals the show not least because he starts a brawl in a restaurant. You have to look very quickly for Ava Gardner swanning around at the track while her future father-in-law Joe Yule also has an uncredited bit as the watchman. One of the wrestlers is Tor Johnson, later known for his work with the infamous Ed Wood. It’s a formula, to be sure, but it’s a charming one, as reliable as a stiff martini. Directed as ever by Major W.S. Van Dyke II, this is beautifully shot by Billy Daniels with art direction by Cedric Gibbons, or one of his talented minions. Well, gentlemen and ladies we have our murderer./Nicky, I can’t stand it! Was it me?

The Battle at Apache Pass (1952)

Life would be lonely without you by my side. 1862 in New Mexico Territory, far away from the Civil War raging in southeastern stages. Following Apache Chief Cochise (Jeff Chandler) who is attempting to keep peace with Major Jim Colton’s (John Lund) cavalry outfit at Fort Buchanan. Cochise is looking forward to the arrival of his first child with his wife Nona (Susan Cabot). Things begin to go awry when a stubborn Indian Affairs advisor Baylor (Bruce Cowling) comes west and with his nasty scout Mescal Jack (Jack Elam) stirs up hostilities between the soldiers and Cochise’s Chiricahuas with underhanded dealings involving renegade Mogollon Apache leader the hot-headed Geronimo (Jay Silverheels) who objects to resettlement and attacks a Tucson stagecoach killing women and children taking some captive including schoolteacher Mary Kearney (Beverly Tyler). Cochise bands together with Geronimo and other tribes. Colton abandons Fort Buchanan and heads for Fort Sheridan through Apache Pass … I’m curious to see this noble savage of yours. A vivid, stirring and exciting account of the rivalry between Cochise and Geronimo with Chandler reprising his role from the earlier Broken Arrow; and the devastating communications failures that can occur when a vicious bureaucrat decides to play both ends against the middle by breaking the peace with Geronimo’s help. Alongside the wonderfully managed action is the tender account of Cochise’s relationship with Nona, giving Cabot a lovely role which belies her later cult reputation as a bad ‘un and it wasn’t her first time to play an Indian, she had played a maiden opposite Van Heflin in Tomahawk. In the late Fifties she was the subject of much talk for her affair with King Hussein of Jordan who dumped her when he realised she was Jewish. (It appears this was the result of a CIA honeytrap – there’s a movie plot right there). Of course now we remember that she was murdered in her bed by her dwarf son Timothy in 1986. Who turned out to be her illegitimate son by Hussein! Cabot had concealed the facts of his paternity. The striking and impressive Tyler also has good moments with Lund. With Richard Egan as Sgt Brennan, a host of familiar faces including Regis Toomey, Hugh O’Brian and James Best makes this a memorably characterful cast, everyone given great scenes. It’s a Universal Technicolor production so it looks exquisite – amazing wide landscapes of red rock and hard blue skies, shot by Charles P. Boyle on location variously in Professor Valley; Ida Gulch, Moab; Courthouse Wash; Arches National Park; Colorado River; and Sand Flats, Utah. The finale is tremendous. All westerns should be this beautiful and lively. Written by Gerald Drayson Adams who combines two separate real-life incidents making this a kind of prequel to Broken Arrow. Directed by George Sherman. I understand white flag but does he?

Roma (2018)

No matter what they tell you, we women are always alone. Mexico City, 1970. Cleodegaria ‘Cleo’ Gutiérrez (Yalitza Aparicio) is a Mixteca (indigenous) live-in maid for a middle-class household in the Colonia Roma neighborhood. She and another maid Adela (Nancy Garcia) speak Mixtec when they are together but Spanish in the presence of the family: matriarch Sofía (Marina de Tavira); her doctor husband, Antonio (Fernando Grediaga); her mother Teresa (Veronica Garcia); and their four young children: Pepe (Marco Graf), Sofi (Daniela Demesa), Tono (Diego Cortina Autrey) and Paco (Carlos Peralta). When Antonio remains in Quebec after a conference, the problems in his and Sofia’s marriage become apparent. When Cleo tells her boyfriend Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) a member of government-trained right-wing paramilitary group Los Halcones that she might be pregnant, he abandons her at the Teatro Metropolitan cinema. Sofía takes her to the hospital, where they confirm her pregnancy. She then takes Cleo and the children to a family friend’s hacienda for New Year. Recent tensions over land in the area are revealed in a chatter, as a fire erupts in the forest, which was later extinguished. Back in the city, Cleo and Teresa see Antonio and his new, younger girlfriend at a cinema. Sofía tries to conceal her husband’s infidelity from the children, but her second son later learns the truth by eavesdropping. Fermín refuses to acknowledge that the baby is his, threatening Cleo to beat her and their child if they try to find him again … He misses the bookshelves. The first question we might ask is why a Mexican film has appropriated a Fellini title: not just a geographical happenstance, more a conscious tilt at a rather different windmill of time recollected and repackaged with the kind of bovine protagonist unlikely to feature centre stage in the maestro‘s oeuvre. Writer/director Alfonso Cuaron’s autobiographical project about his upbringing takes its time to unite the various seemingly banal narratives lines of domestic drudgery, backstreet romance and marital mess. It isn’t until about 85 minutes in (out of 135) that Cleo finds Antonio’s wedding band in a drawer beside a family photo, and then discovers in the mid of the Corpus Christi massacre during a student demonstration just what Fermin is up to, when her waters break as she’s shopping with Teresa. The familial and the political come together. That’s when it makes sense for the film to be shot in black and white (by Cuaron himself) with endless pans and tracks because it obtains the quality of a press document, a file photo, witness testimony. Now the long shots, the sense of observational distance, the empty frames make sense. Cleo’s dead baby stands for the desolation of a family and a kind of reliable decency. A family’s tragicomedy becomes a state of the nation commentary. That’s not to say there isn’t a touch of absurdist humour – the increasingly difficult attempts at fitting Doctor Antonio’s ludicrous Ford Galaxy into the narrow garage is a wonderful visual gag that seeps out into the story of the home that cannot contain him; the dog, Borras is always evacuating his bowels on the tiled corridors, requiring a big mop-up job; the wall of mounted pet dog heads; the paramilitary training camp. The seaside trip becomes a palate cleanser, putting a new kind of family together, different races and classes experiencing a similar loss, forever cleaning up after men who don’t take responsibility for their actions, sacrificing their identities, lost amid boisterous children. The carnivalesque allusion of the title is proven. We’ll have more adventures

Supernova (2020)

I want to be remembered for who I was and not for who I’m about to become. Pianist Sam (Colin Firth) and novelist Tusker (Stanley Tucci), Sam and Tusker, partners for 20 years travel in in a camper van across England to the Lake District to reunited with family. Tusker has been diagnosed with early onset of dementia, with his illness putting strain on their relationship. At one pitstop he disappears with their dog Ruby and Sam finds him miles away. He is in the middle of writing a book, but he’s been refusing to show it to Sam. Sam prepares for a concert nearby. The pair arrive at Sam’s sister Lily’s (Pippa Haywood) house, where the rest of their family and friends meet them for a surprise birthday dinner for Sam which Tusker has organised. During subsequent conversation with one of their friends Tim (James Dreyfus), Sam finds out Tusker has been having difficulties writing. Sam heads into their camper van and discovers that Tusker’s writing has been declining steadily over time. He finds a vial of Pentobarbital and listens to a pre-recorded tape of farewell. The pair head to a leased cottage in the countryside. Sam confronts Tusker about his discovery and plays the tape to him, which reveals that Tusker plans to die by suicide before his dementia becomes too severe … You just sit there doing nothing, propping up the entire world. Wonderfully cast: can anyone imagine two more tastefully deadpan men playing this? They are just like any old married couple, squabbling, sharing jokes, getting tetchy with each other. This manages to be both subtle and intense, intimate and purposeful. The point at which intersecting lives must confront mortality is beautifully dramatised and paced as the diminishing returns and emotional toll is gauged and expressed. I’m fit as a fiddle. What’s your name again? This will remind viewers of Firth’s magnificent turn in A Single Man and in a way this is that character’s situation revisited albeit with more warning and a great deal of denial. How Tucci’s character must make him realise far quicker than he wants that life is going to change and if he has any decency he will go along with it and honour his wishes to go out with a semblance of dignity is sensitively managed. And there are reminders of both The Father and Still Alice but this is in something of a different key. Elegant, discreet and sober, just like its leading men, who wonderfully inhabit these bittersweet goodbyes as they act and react to the other’s fate, written in the stars where we are all made. Written and directed by Harry Macqueen. You’re not supposed to mourn someone while they’re still alive

Nobody (2021)

I’m a good man. I’m a family man. Most of all I’m not a man who deserves your gun in his face. Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is an ordinary joe working for his father-in-law Eddie (Michel Ironside) in a metal fabrication company who fails to defend himself or his family when two thieves, a man and a woman, break into his suburban home one night. The aftermath of the incident soon strikes a match to Hutch’s long-simmering rage. His teenage son Blake (Gage Munroe) is disdainful of his failure to take action. His wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) keeps her distance. He snaps when he realises the crims have taken little daughter Abby’s (Paisley Cadorath) kitty cat bracelet. He reacts full-on when thugs harass a young woman on a night bus. And far from being a useless suburban dad, it turns out Hutch was a government assassin – for all those three-letter agencies. In a barrage of fists, gunfire and squealing tires, Hutch must now save his family from a dangerous Russian adversary Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksei Serebryakov) and ensure that he will never be underestimated again … I just want something that’s mine. Odenkirk is the breakout star from now-legendary TV series Breaking Bad whose Better Call Saul prequel show has earned a cult following but we never really expected him to become a kind of Charles Bronson a la Death Wish crossed with – well, you know what, Home Alone and John Wick. But then this is written by Derek Kolstad, scripter of the John Wick films and David Leitch of the same parish is the producer. Instead of a missing dog we have a kitten, instead of a widower, we have an unprepossessing apparent failure with a successful wife and then there are the kids to think about too. And he has a dad! Christopher Lloyd plays David – a retired FBI agent who pops up with Hutch’s phone-a-friend brother-in-hiding Harry (RZA) for the action workout that forms the concluding sequence. Shorter than your usual genre outing at 83 minutes minus credits, this moves like the clappers, accomplishing a lot in little with many amusing montages chiefly to do with Hutch’s real auditing job and Mr Mom routine before he kicks ass starting at 24 minutes, just like they tell you in all the screenwriting manuals, when some superbly crafted action choreography amuses and impresses. Apparently this idea arose from Odenkirk following his own experience of a home invasion. Fun if a little sketchy but there are lots of household tips from what you can do with a straw to the real purpose of a fire extinguisher! A lean B-movie with attitude, humour and probably a sequel in the works. Directed by Ilya Naishuller. Everybody dies – some sooner than others

Mass (2021)

I’m not ready yet. Jay (Jason Isaacs) and Gail Perry (Martha Plimpton) are parents grieving the death of their son Evan a victim of a school shooting. Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd) are the separated parents of Hayden the perpetrator. Six years after the tragedy, both couples agree to meet and talk in a church, organised by a go-between Kendra (Michelle N. Carter). They are both angry, both argumentative, there are tears. There are grievances. There are questions. There are explanations … He pleaded with us to let him be normal. This wrenching drama is incredibly powerful, drawing masterful and poignant appearances from the leads in a scenario that has unfortunately too many real-life examples in recent times. The main action – an unmediated talking shop – is bookended as the Episcopalian church is being readied for a choir practice. Four average suburban adults talking, unwillingly united by an obscenity involving two boys who never knew each other, shouldn’t really work but it’s dramatically and emotionally gripping. As each of the parents vents, cries, shares stories and justifications, deflects, excuses, gasps out years of inexpressible exhausting rage, gulps with sorrow, we hear of a lone boy, an unwanted addition to a one-son family who had no idea how to play, had no friends at middle school where he was bullied and had a ‘close’ friendship with a math teacher who left and couldn’t subsequently be located, played Call of Duty for endless hours in his bedroom and was failed by mental health agencies who couldn’t distinguish solitary teenage depression from homicidal mania despite his regular expression of a desire for murder. The topper from Dowd is just dreadful and it’s delivered after her ex-husband has hurried away when things have seemingly concluded. These are powerhouse performances. Each of the leads is given space to express their feelings and disquiet and each does so passionately and persuasively. The meaning of the word ‘mass’ has multiple applications in this narrative. It’s not high school, middle school, lonely, whatever – it’s him. Sixty minutes in comes the horrible revelation that Evan was alive after the main massacre and that six minutes later Hayden returned to that room and shot him as he was figuring out his escape. There is talk of the lines marking the bodies. The streaks of blood. The glass in kids’ faces. Evan is No. 1 on the list of dead children because his was the first body found, Hayden No. 11, in the library, killing himself five minutes later. Why do I want to know about your son? Because he killed mine. Every so often the camera cuts from the meeting to a ribbon waving in the breeze on a wire fence in what seems like a wilderness. In the end we see where that is. It gives us pause and allows for brief reflection, upon the impossibility of surviving intact and unchanged an atrocity as one of the bereaved. About the reducibility of parenting to a single moment when they let things slide, irreparably and even unfathomably with twenty-twenty hindsight. The camera moves and the shots change as the mood alters and thoughts are processed and people gesture. Every breath is felt. The big issues of gun control and ownership are merely mentioned in this human story. Alfred Hitchcock may not have wanted to make what he called pictures of people talking but this is an intimate and necessary work of great empathy and pain giving voice to the unspeakable. Living with the aftermath of violent death is not easy. We applaud the fact that this was made for under $300,000 and is another example of a film produced under the Sky Originals banner, even if we prefer to see our movies at the cinema where they belong but these days we’ll take what we can get. Written and directed by first-timer Fran Kranz. It’s not simple. It’s everything you cannot see

Gaspard Ulliel 25th November 1984 – 19th January 2022

The shocking death has taken place following a skiing accident of the extravagantly gifted French actor Gaspard Ulliel. Best known for Saint Laurent, Hannibal Rising, A Very Long Engagement and It’s Only the End of the World, his new TV series, Marvel’s Moon Knight debuted this week. Surely the most versatile performer of his generation, he was destined for greatness. Rest in peace.

Naked Singularity (2021)

I am a public defender. Ten days before the collapse. Casi (John Boyega) is a promising young New York City public defender whose idealism is beginning to crack under the daily injustices of the very justice system he’s trying to make right constantly beaten by Judge Cymbeline (Linda Lavin). Doubting all he has worked for and seeing signs of the universe collapsing all around him, with freaky temperatures on the courthouse clock and disaster promised by pothead neighbour Angus(Tim Blake Nelson), he is pulled into a dangerous, high-stakes drug heist by an unpredictable former client Lea (Olivia Cooke). She has been compromised by a one-night stand with Craig (Ed Skrein) who is seeking to retrieve a car from the police department pound where she works because drugs are hidden in the navigator. In an effort to beat the broken system at its own game Casi winds up staging a heist with scuzzy lawyer Dane (Bill Skarsgard) then he finds out the heroin is the property of a Mexican cartel … You don’t know what’s on the other side of sleep. Adapted from Sergio De La Pava’s 2013 novel by director Chase Palmer and David Matthews this tonally mismanaged black comedy/drama is structured as a countdown to apocalypse while Boyega goes from crusading lawyer to sword-wielding crim on behalf of Cooke who is endangered by her attraction to Skrein (and who wouldn’t be.) With Bill Skarsgard lining out to beat the system for a big payday this mixes sci-fi with courtroom to odd effect. By the time the contents of the car navigator are handed over to Hasidic Jews in a basement narrative confusion is paramount. Boyega turns into the Robin Hood of the courtroom at the conclusion, global disaster apparently averted. God knows because we don’t. It’s an attractive cast but Boyega’s disillusioned Colombian native gives incorrect line deliveries (eg You’re way in over your head) which unsettles the cosmic vibe or the intended Candide characterisation: If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? Ridley Scott and Dick Wolf are among the many Executive Producers of this Sky Original which presumably explains the Brit-heavy cast. In this world you have money or money has you