That Funny Feeling (1965)

The only important thing now is to save a buck. New York City. Joan Howell (Sandra Dee) intends to be an actress but for now she’s working as a maid. On three different occasions, she and Tom Milford (Bobby Darin) – a successful publishing executive and womaniser – accidentally bump into each other. The third time, Tom asks her for a date. Embarrassed by her own modest rented apartment, which she shares with fellow aspiring-actress friend Audrey (Nita Talbot), Joan invites him to the lavish apartment of one of her clients whom she believes to be out of town for a couple of weeks pretending it’s hers. What she doesn’t know, because she and her employer have never met, is that the apartment is Tom’s. He shocked to find himself being welcomed to his own place but he plays along to see how far Joan’s prepared to go. He then moves in with his friend Harvey Granson (Donald O’Connor) who has his own concerns about Joan to do with his acrimonious divorce and property he’s ‘hiding’ from his wife at Tom’s place. As soon as Joan becomes aware of the truth, however, she figures out how she might get even, starting with getting rid of Tom’s beautiful English-tailored suits … You know I’ve got the funniest feeling somebody’s trying to tell us something. Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee were a seemingly golden couple and this was the third time they were paired together in starring roles. It’s a mild comedy and a silly premise but it’s played for all it’s worth by a nice cast. The screenplay by David R. Schwartz from a story by Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore quickly pits our lovely couple together in a meet-cute scenario that’s the conclusion of a voiced montage about how all kinds of creatures collide: the key takeaway being, Bobby and Sandra can’t miss! How they keep coming back together is the whole show. The zipper’s stuck. Leo G. Carroll plays the heavily Oirish-accented pawnbroker Mr O’Shee, which provides the start of a running gag; Reta Shaw is one of the women who find Tom half-naked in a phone booth and Don Haggerty does a Zasu Pitts as the policeman who cannot believe his eyes on more than one occasion especially when a line of extravagantly garbed prostitutes shows up on his beat. There’s more eyerolling from the reliable Robert (Stalag 17) Strauss and Ben Lessy as bartenders who observe the ups and downs of the romance with pleasantly predictable cynicism. Could be he IS an interior decorator. O’Connor is given little to do which is surprising but Larry Storch does a good job as thespian Luther, ready to give the girls advice on the acting biz. How the knotty but lovely and loved-up pair of midcentury blond gods figure out their essential problem – mutual deception – as they constantly mistake the other’s line of work is fairly fun but it’s the ensemble that really make this PG sex comedy a decent watch. Naturally the title song over the weird (astronomy) titles and credits is written and performed by the redoubtable Darin. Directed by Richard Thorpe. Have you never seen a naked man in a phone booth?

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

Aka Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios. Women aren’t dangerous if you know how to handle them. Television actress Pepa Marcos (Carmen Maura) is depressed because her boyfriend fellow actor Iván (Fernando Guillen) has left her. They dub foreign films, notably Johnny Guitar starring Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden and she has missed their morning recording because she took a sleeping pill. Iván’s sweet-talking voice is the same one he uses in his work. About to leave on a trip, he has asked Pepa to pack his things in a suitcase he will pick up later. Pepa returns home to her apartment to find her answering machine filled with frantic messages from her friend Candela (Maria Barranco) a model. She rips out the phone and throws it out the window onto the balcony of her penthouse where dozens of her animal friends live including a pair of ducks. Candela arrives but before she can explain her situation Carlos (Antonio Banderas) Iván’s son with his wife Lucía (Julieta Serrano) arrives with his snobbish fiancée Marisa (Rossy de Palma). They are apartment-hunting and have been sent by an agency to tour the apartment. Carlos and Pepa figure out each other’s relationship to Iván – they had already met at the phone booth outside Carlos’ home the previous evening. Pepa wants to know where Iván is, but Carlos does not know. Candela tries to kill herself by jumping off the balcony. A bored Marisa decides to drink gazpacho from the fridge, unaware that it has been spiked with sleeping pills. Candela explains that she had an affair with an Arab who later visited her with some friends. Unbeknownst to her, they are a Shi’ite terrorist cell. When the terrorists leave, Candela flees to Pepa’s place; she fears that the police are after her. Pepa goes to see a lawyer whom Carlos has recommended. The lawyer, Paulina Morales (Kiti Manver) behaves strangely and has tickets to travel to Stockholm. Candela tells Carlos that the terrorists plan to hijack a flight to Stockholm that evening and divert it to Beirut to demand the release of an incarcerated friend. Carlos fixes the phone, calls the police, hangs up before (he believes) they can trace the call and kisses Candela. Pepa returns; Lucía calls and says that she is coming over to confront her about Iván. Carlos says that Lucía has recently been released from a mental hospital. Pepa, tired of Iván, throws his suitcase out (barely missing him); he leaves Pepa a message. Pepa returns to her apartment and hears Carlos playing the Lola Beltran song Soy Infeliz. She throws the record out the window, and it hits Paulina. Pepa hears Iván’s message, rips out the phone and throws the answering machine out of the window. Lucía arrives with the telephone repairman and the police, who traced Carlos’ call. Candela panics, but Carlos serves the spiked gazpacho. The policemen and repairman are knocked out, and Carlos and Candela fall asleep on the sofa; Lucía aims a policeman’s gun at Pepa, who figures out that Iván is going to Stockholm with Paulina and their flight is the one the terrorists are planning to hijack … Weird things happen all of a sudden. Enfant terrible Pedro Almodovar’s international breakthrough, this was a smash hit from its initial release in Spain and became the biggest grossing foreign film in the US since Fellini’s 8 1/2 – which is just one of the many ironies proliferating in this story because it’s the first homage in a meta referential narrative centering on film, recording, dubbing and projection. Ludicrous coincidences, general hysteria, a suitcase that keeps changing hands, repeatedly pulling the phone and answering machine out of the wall, using prescription meds to control every situation, a mambo taxi stocked to the gills with every magazine, music genre and toiletry known to humanity that shows up every time Pepa needs a lift, all life is here in the most confident expression yet of Almodovar’s art. For once Maura is suited and booted in great tailoring in a setting that’s colour coded to the max with red the ultimate flashpoint for this sincerely crazy tribute to melodrama, with Joan Crawford providing the film within a film. I thought this sort of thing only happened in films! A vivid, nutty melodramatic farce, this is simply unforgettable. Released 25th March 1988, that means it’s time to wish Women a very happy birthday! What an insane story!

The Holdovers (2023)

The world doesn’t make sense anymore. I mean, it’s on fire. The rich don’t give a shit. Poor kids are cannon fodder. Integrity is a punch line. Trust is just a name on a bank. December 1970 in New England. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is a classics teacher at Barton Academy, a boarding school he once attended on scholarship. His students and fellow teachers despise him for his strict grading and stubborn personality. Dr. Hardy Woodrup (Andrew Garman) Barton’s headmaster and Hunham’s former student, scolds Hunham for costing the academy money by flunking the son of an important donor (a senator), causing Princeton University to withdraw his offer of a place. As punishment, Hunham is forced to supervise five students left on campus during the holiday break, including troublemaker Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) whose mother cancelled a family trip to St Kitts to honeymoon with her new husband. Also staying behind is cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) whose son Curtis attended Barton and joined the military to pay for college but has been killed in the Vietnam. To the students’ chagrin, Hunham forces them to study and exercise on their break. After six days, the wealthy father of one of the students arrives by helicopter and agrees to take all five students on the family’s ski trip with their parents’ permission. Angus, who is unable to reach his parents for permission, is left alone at Barton with Hunham and Mary. When Hunham catches Angus trying to book a hotel room, the two argue about Hunham’s disciplinarian policies. Angus impulsively runs through the school halls and defiantly leaps into a pile of gym equipment, dislocating his shoulder. Hunham takes Angus to the hospital; to protect Hunham from blame, Angus lies to the doctors about the circumstances of his injury. At a restaurant, Hunham and Angus encounter Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston), Woodrup’s assistant. Hunham flirts with Lydia, who invites the pair to her Christmas party. Angus, Hunham, Mary and Barton’s janitor Danny (Naheem Garcia) attend Lydia’s party. Angus successfully flirts with Lydia’s niece Elise (Darby Lily Lee-Stack). Hunham is disappointed to discover that Lydia has a boyfriend and Mary gets drunk and has an emotional breakdown over Curtis’s death. Hunham insists on leaving early. Hunham and Angus argue; when Hunham references Angus’s father, Angus says his father is dead. Mary scolds Hunham for his unsympathetic attitude. Feeling remorseful for his actions, Hunham arranges his own small Christmas celebration … There’s nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion, but man’s every impulse and appetite from the disgusting to the sublime is on display right here all around you. So, before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see, history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present. Director Alexander Payne’s campus dramedy is set in the early 1970s so the mind turns to those wintry Love Story moments and the political satires of the era and even casts itself as a gnarly riposte to Dead Poets Society: this boasts none of those tropes or inclinations. Instead it’s about the accidental forming of an alternative family with Giamatti in the best performance he’s created since the last time he worked with Payne in the estimable and beloved Sideways. Their collaborations create nuanced portraits of masculinity in a continuum observed in Payne’s other work but somehow come off best when they’re together. At least pretend to be a human being. Please. It’s Christmas! Here he’s essentially Scrooge on the path to redemption as the seasonal setting and quasi paternal function require. I have known you since you were a boy, so I think I have the requisite experience and insight to aver that you are and always have been penis cancer in human form. Newcomers Randolph and Sessa are impressive indeed in their debut film roles. The backdrop of course is Vietnam and it’s foregrounded with the loss of Randolph’s son reminding us that it’s offscreen drama which informs a lot of on the nose exchanges in an often cliched character study that paradoxically ignores the contemporary politics in the main, lending its focus instead to the politics of the school. Twisted fucker orphaned that glove on purpose. Left you with one so the loss would sting that much more. If there’s a flaw in construction it’s in the absurd overlength at 133 minutes – something that definitely could not be thrown at the films it wants to retrospectively join in the pantheon. Those chilly scenes of Winter 1970 are authentically captured by cinematographer Eigil Bryld who perhaps surprisingly was shooting digitally. Written by David Hemingson, very loosely adapting Marcel Pagnol’s Merlusse to create a quasi-autobiographical tale, this is bracingly performed. Not for ourselves alone are we born

The Pleasure Seekers (1964)

I know everything about Spain except Spanish. Twentysomething American Susie Higgins (Pamela Tiffin) arrives in the Spanish city of Madrid and moves in with her old college roommate secretary Maggie Williams (Carol Lynley) and Maggie’s roommate Fran Hobson (Ann-Margret). Still a virgin, Susie is surprised to find both of the other girls have active dating lives. Maggie has recently ended an affair and is now seeing her married boss newsman Paul Barton (Brian Keith) much to the dismay of Paul’s jealous wife Jane (Gene Tierney). At the same time, Maggie’s co-worker Pete McCoy (Gardner McKay) is in love with Maggie but she barely notices him and he’s thinking of going to the bureau in Paris. Fran, an aspiring actress, flamenco dancer and singer, eagerly pursues Spanish doctor Andres Brioñes (Andre Lawrence). While at the Prado Museum, in front of Las Meninas by Velazquez, Susie catches the eye of wealthy playboy Emilio Lacayo (Tony Franciosa) who adds her to his already large group of girlfriends and who is already familiar with Maggie. The three girls spend the summer attending various parties while pursuing and being pursued by the men in their lives including a weekend in Toledo where Susie pretends to fall for Emilio and faints at a bullfight … Life has aged us in a week. Essentially a transplanted musical remake of the previous decade’s Three Coins in the Fountain and helmed by the same director, Jean Negulesco once again for Fox, this moves the action to Madrid and suffers a little since only Ann-Margret among the young leading ladies can sing and dance. She gets a nice entrance from under the covers with the line, Gone native and then has a terrific meet-cute on the street with a scooter-riding medic. Tiffin’s romantic moment is when she’s found by Emilio weeping at the wonderful art in the Prado which she explains away as homesickness. He’s the most heartless corrupt inhuman man who ever lived, Maggie tells Susie. You’ve just been chosen as the next sacrificial lamb. Edith Sommer’s screenplay is also derived from John H. Secondari’s 1952 source novel Coins in the Fountain and it was the second time the screenwriter was attached to a film with Lynley after the controversial Blue Denim. More brittle in tone than its predecessor possibly due to the changing times yet still luxuriating in the surroundings with stunning exterior cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp around Madrid, Marbella, Toledo and Castile, these are not complemented by the obvious studio sets used for the interiors. There’s a bright (and very popular) score by Lionel Newman (and an uncredited Alexander Courage) and it’s a wonderful showcase for the country as well as the performers, not to mention the opportunity to learn about Spanish art. Watch out for Antonio Gades performing a flamenco. He would become famous for his dancing and choreography which are memorialised in Carlos Saura’s Blood Wedding and Carmen in the 1980s. Lynley is posited against Tierney when she becomes The Other (Younger) Woman and they’ve one great bitchy scene together. Sadly this was Tierney’s final feature credit. This is also the final film for veteran actress Isobel Elsom (as Emilio’s formidable mother Donya Teresa) and she also appeared in that year’s My Fair Lady: not a bad way to go out. Just don’t go round thinking that I’m easy because I was once. Lynley’s tussle with Keith is tender, tough and believable. Everybody in Spain dances the flamenco! The theme song performed by an uncredited Ann-Margret is written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. She bemoaned the film’s box office failure (it wasn’t the big hit anticipated but did okay) which she said could be attributed to audiences not wanting to see her grow up. Mother told me never to knock. She told me I’d meet more interesting people that way. Tiffin has fun toying with the affections of Franciosa. She had been lauded as the next Audrey Hepburn by Billy Wilder when she featured in One, Two, Three and she would later run away to Rome after shooting Harper with Paul Newman. That’s a hell of a career trajectory. Maybe she was pining for the city as it was in 1953 – like this probably is. We’d like to read Tom Lisanti’s biography of the lovely actress and talented comedienne who died in December 2020. That’s next on our reading list! Look out for Manola Moran as the traffic cop and Vito Scotti as the suave neighbour. The tart response to this film is probably Woody Allen’s decidedly twenty-first century Vicky Cristina Barcelona, an endlessly watchable sorbet revisiting this rather richer fare. The romantic trials and tribulations of twentysomethings with marriage on their minds never get old. The late Lynley was born 13th February 1942 and this is in her honour. Happy Galentine’s Day! All I did was fall in love

The Unseen (1945)

Aka Her Heart Was In Her Throat. You’re my enemy! I hate you! An old homeless woman is murdered after seeing a light through the basement window of abandoned 11 Crescent Drive. Young Barney Fielding (Richard Lyon) witnesses the incident from his window next door at number 10. Elizabeth Howard (Gail Russell) arrives at the house to be governess to Barney and his impressionable sister Ellen (Nona Griffith) but is met with aggression from the boy who is unusually attached to their former governess, Maxine. Round here we call it the commodore’s folly. Elizabeth’s room overlooks the garden of the eerie house next door, and she finds a watch that belonged to the murdered old woman in her dressing table. Over the next few weeks, Marian Tygarth (Isobel Elsom), a widow who owns shuttered-up 11 Crescent Drive, returns to put the house up for sale. Elizabeth suspects someone is gaining access to the cellars and confides in David Fielding (Joel McCrea), the children’s widowed and secretive father but he dismisses her concerns. She turns to Dr. Charles Evans (Herbert Marshall) a neighbour and family friend who advises her not to call the police as David shouldn’t like it: Ellen doesn’t know it yet but David was once suspected of murdering his wife. The last one was pretty too. Ellen tells Elizabeth that Barney is the one who lets the lurking man into the house at night, on Maxine’s orders. The next day, the employment agency tells Elizabeth they cannot send anyone over that day. However, a new maid arrives at the house and Elizabeth eventually realises she is Maxine (Phyllis Brooks). David tries to throw Maxine out of the house and shortly afterwards she is found murdered outside the empty house. David is nowhere to be found so the police to consider him the prime suspect … It had been barred, locked and shuttered for twelve years. Devised as a way to capitalise on tragic Russell’s success in The Uninvited, this has a great pedigree. Produced by John Houseman for Paramount and directed by that film’s Lewis Allen (it was his feature debut) and photographed in luminous monochromes by the legendary John F. Seitz, it was adapted by Hagar Wilde and Ken Englund from Ethel Lina White’s novel Midnight House aka Her Heart in her Throat, with the final screenplay by Wilde and the one and only Chandler (who had a rather indifferent screenwriting history as various tomes attest). Narrated by an uncredited Ray Collins, this is a terrifically atmospheric murder mystery. I did hope you’d be a little more motherly. With a debt to both Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw, it’s an example of the era’s popular trope of the child witness. It’s suspenseful and filled with character detail, situated in a wonderfully overstuffed house redolent of the Gothic cycle. The nascent romance between Russell and McCrea plays with diffidence then humour: I like your smile. I like the way your hair falls out of place. I even like the way you carve. Russell has a lot of colours to play and does them sympathetically. It’s fun to see Brooks in a nice role as Maxine. It’s her final screen credit. She started out as a model and then did a number of B movies and at one time was engaged to marry Cary Grant. Instead she married JFK’s Harvard roommate Torbert Macdonald and lived out her days on the East coast where Macdonald served as a Congressman for Massachusetts and she was a renowned society hostess. Interestingly, the children here play with Disney comics and a Dumbo toy and see a Popeye cartoon at the cinema, reflective of what was popular then – and now. Longtime Welles and then Hitchcock associate Norman Lloyd has an amusing role as Jasper Goodwin. Sadly the gifted crime writer White (who had written The Wheel Spins, the basis for The Lady Vanishes) didn’t live to see this adaptation of her novel. Nor would she see Forties classic, The Spiral Staircase (1946), based on Some Must Watch. She died aged 68 in 1944. You’re nothing like twenty-five

Hide and Seek (1964)

Very clever the Russians, aren’t they. Cambridge University. Astrophysics professor David Garrett (Ian Carmichael) is working on tracking Russian rocket launches. He meets up with an old mentor and friend, Professor Frank Melnicker (George Pravda) who is playing multiple games of chess at a display of simultaneous play at a local temperance hall. Garrett is confused by the apparently secretive way that one player, Paul Richter (Kieron Morre) transfers the knight chess piece to Melnicker. When Melnicker notices two individuals enter the hall he is distracted and excuses himself for the lunch break. Garrett offers to drive Melnicker to his hotel. There are two men (James Houlihand and Leslie Crawford) waiting for Melnicker outside. When Garrett intimates that since they are in England that Melnicker could find safety, Melnicker cryptically tells Garrett that he should recall his seventh chess move. Garrett’s driver (Judy Parfitt) informs him that Major McPherson (Edward Chapman) wishes to meet with him. The Major tells Garrett that he must stop socialising with Melnicker since he is a known East German communist. Garrett arrives at the Ministry of Defence for a meeting, and while in the bathroom a box of chess pieces is dropped off to him that his driver believes he mistakenly left in the car. In fact, it was left by Melnicker. It contains the knight chess piece and a money belt containing a large amount of cash. Garrett takes the chess piece and money belt with him and leaves the building to return to the hall where the chess demonstration was happening. When he arrives at the hall he finds the display being torn down, with the demonstration cancelled due to Melnicker not returning after lunch. Garrett remembers the moves Melnicker had made and comes up with king’s square four. When he says this to a cabby, the man suggests they drive to King’s Square, an address in Chelsea, Garrett rings the doorbell and a young woman named Maggie (Janet Munro) calls to him from the second floor. She is apparently expecting him and throws down keys so he can let himself in. Others arrive, – there for a wedding reception. Garrett is starting to wonder if he’s in the right place, when he sees Maggie talking to Richter and finds a room upstairs with a chessboard that is missing the knight piece he has in his pocket. Garrett talks with Maggie and finds out she does know of Melnicker. Maggie then says she has to leave and Garrett leaves alone after copying down Maggie’s phone number. Outside Garrett realises two men are following him. A running chase happens, with Garrett escaping by hiding in a children’s sandbox in Royal Chelsea Gardens which is packed with nannies and their charges. He phones Maggie and says he must meet up with her so he can return the money to Melnicker. Maggie tells Garrett to meet her at the train station at Watford, where she convinces him to board the train with her. On the train, Garrett continues to ask Maggie where Melnicker is and where they are travelling to but they’re going through Grantham. Maggie seems to be avoiding committing to anything and Garrett resigns himself to continuing on the train for the time being. Sometime later Maggie goes out into the corridor to smoke a cigarette and notices two men she identifies as secret police that they must avoid. They are chased around in the train until Maggie pulls the emergency stop cord and she and Garrett jump off the train. After a series of mishaps they are picked up by a bargeman called Wilkins (Hugh Griffith) who’s travelling with a menagerie, escaping potential nuclear disaster to what he calls his Magical Island … I think the game would have turned out quite differently if you had realised the importance of my seventh move. A Cold War picaresque, you say? We have just the thing! This jaunty jape-filled English travelogue is replete with Noah’s Ark (on a barge), a pixie-like love interest who is just this short of manic dream girl, a scientist who can’t swim but manages to rig a bomb in a boat and sexier-than-thou Curt Jurgens posing political equivocations in a series of chess moves but manages to get himself checkmated. Carmichael is of course an unlikely romantic hero but in his early Sixties customary comic-satiric mode he’s quite the dashing Hannay-style wrong man protagonist in a film that owes probably as much to Hitchcock and Buchan as the source novel by Harold Greene, adapted for the screen by Robert Foshko and David Stone. When our (eventually) romantic couple goes walkabout and winds up being picked up by Wilkins on a barge which transpires is filled with pairs of animals and 136 bottles of Jamaican rum it’s a highly diverting interlude filled with references to Shakespeare as this former teacher bemoans the colleague who advised in case of nuclear armageddon, cover your head with a brown paper bag. Garrett is inclined to agree with his colleague. Rather amusingly, there’s a graphic of the H-bomb behind this prepper declaring Annihilation Imminent. After a spell hitchhiking and meeting their nemesis Richter which winds up in a literal cliffhanger and apparent death, things can only conclude by meeting the main man, Hubert Marek (Jurgens), at a fortress-like hostelry where mind games matter as much as chess before Garrett uses his own little grey cells after being confronted Poirot-like by every player in the story. Then he goes all Tintin (L’Ile Noire) and figures things out. It’s an ingenious plot that might have been a bit better handled but the constant trickery, chess moves, the toilet and sex references, the theatrical quotes and the sheer chutzpah of the twist are all to be cherished in a film that has a deceptive tone all its own. This is billed as (producer) Hal E. Chester’s Hide and Seek which is a bit of a cheek even in these days of possessory credits. Beautifully shot in black and white by Gilbert Taylor, this is directed by Cy Endfield and was made before Zulu but released months after that fabled film. This probably wasn’t his wheelhouse but he makes a pretty good fist of a tongue in cheek Cold War movie that is as far from Bond as we could imagine even if starts off with a stonking rocket launch. What is all this horseplay?

Sammy Going South (1963)

Aka A Boy Ten Feet Tall. We’re not going south. Port Said, Egypt during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Ten-year old English boy Sammy Hartland (Fergus McClelland) lives with his ex-pat parents. When they are killed in a bombing while Sammy is playing by the canal, he flees the city in the ensuing panic. He sets out to reach his only living relative, Aunt Jane (Zena Walker) his mother’s sister whom he has never met and who lives 5,000 miles to the south in Durban, South Africa, the other end of the continent. Along his journey Sammy encounters a colourful array of characters. His first guide is an Arab peddler (Zia Mohyeddin) who takes him over the mountains and dies in a freak accident when a stone explodes in a fire and ruins his eyes. Sammy is then rescued in Luxor by wealthy tourist Gloria van Imhoff (Constance Cummings) who pays Spyros Dracandopoulos (Paul Stassino) to find him when Sammy runs off and takes a ferry along the Nile. He encounters a gruff old hunter and diamond smuggler, Cocky Wainwright (Edward G. Robinson) whose life is subsequently saved by the boy after Sammy shoots dead a leopard the old man is hunting. The news is out that the boy is missing and being sought. When the police search for Sammy, he pretends he never wanted him for anything except the money being offered as a reward for finding him. Then they arrest the old man, who has been a fugitive for years … Jumpin’ Jehosophat, don’t you think I’ve got eyes in my head?! Perhaps it’s a moot point as to whether director Alexander Mackendrick can be classed an auteur given the variability of his output and this is probably categorised at the lesser end of his films which included the masterpieces Sweet Smell of Success and The Ladykillers. This portrait of childhood is tough yet engaging, somewhere in the sphere of the later A High Wind in Jamaica yet very much moving to its own beat. This boy is tough, wary, diffident, trusting, smart, scared and engaging and newcomer McClelland is given a lot to do with a cast of different characters, most of whom appear to want something from him. He is basically worth a reward and he puts together his own worth. It starts when he loses his parents after he’s been playing down at the Suez Canal – we are placed in the major news event of the late 50s by dint of radio bulletins – and then narrowly avoids a beating by an Egyptian teenager. What follows is an amazing travelogue and his path is traced from Port Said to Luxor, the White Nile, the Sudan and finally Durban, all in different vehicles from donkeys and taxis to a ferry and a missed train and even a plane ride. The wallet he carries is from the rascal who gains his trust with the line, Don’t be frightened. I’m not Egyptian. I’m Syrian. I’m pro-British! That tallies with what was on the verge of being done to him on the streets of Port Said. When the man dies horrifically (we see his death from the child’s point of view) Sammy is smart enough to liberate his wallet which Gloria then finds and Spyros figures out it was stolen when he sees the photo of a sexpot tucked away in it. Adapted from the W. H. Canaway novel by Denis Cannan, this gains traction from the intertitles – starting in December 1956 and finishing March 1957, lending it a realism. But this is not a kid who spreads sweetness and light despite the blond hair and blue eyes – he’s tough as old boots and seems to leave disaster in his wake. When he is presented with the dead leopard’s offspring and Cocky tells the preternatual crack shot he just killed the animal’s mother there is genuine anguish in his eyes at putting the beautiful creature in the same situation as his own – that of an orphan. The moment passes - then he wears her skin – just like Tarzan, he declares. He gets over things but he has to do it on his own terms. The relationship with Cocky is that of a son and a father but Lem (Harry H. Corbett) tells Cocky if he wanted to do that he should have thought of it twenty years earlier. Cocky knows this boy’s heart and he lets him go with a lie which Sammy realises later on. Perhaps this isn’t a classic exactly but it’s determinedly unsentimental, relentlessly pitting this singleminded child on a path towards individuation and experience, come what may. Beautifully shot on location in Kenya (with some second unit shots done clandestinely in Egypt) in CinemaScope and Eastmancolor by the venerable Erwin Hillier, this received its premiere before Queen Elizabeth II 18th March 1963. He has to be left alone

The Last Rifleman (2023)

Who in their right mind would go back to that place? Northern Ireland, 2019. World War Two veteran Artie Crawford (Pierce Brosnan) is newly widowed and living in Lough Valley care home. On the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy against all advice to the contrary from his fellow inmate Tom Malcolmson (Ian McElhinney) he decides to secretly escape to France to pay tribute to the war dead. He embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey through Ireland and across to France to pay his final respects to his best friend Charlie Lennon (Joseph Loane) who never returned. They formed The Three Musketeers from East Belfast with Maggie (Ethlinn Rose), whom Artie married. He stows away in the back of a laundry van and makes his way to Dublin where he and fellow passenger Rory (Samuel Bottomley) listen to Ennio Morricone music and then hitch a lift in a lorry to the ferry port at Rosslare where he conceals himself in a caravan belonging to Juliette Bellamy (Clemence Poesy) and her family. Due to illness he is discovered by the crew: What am I going to get? Life? drawls the proud 92-and-three- quarter-year-old after they find his passport is 17 years out of date. When he reaches France he makes his way to where his best friend fell, befriending a former enemy, Friedrich Mueller (Juergen Prochnow) singing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, and shares a drink with fellow American vet Lincoln Jefferson Adams (John Amos). All the time he is unaware that he is being followed by Irish Journal reporter Tony McCann (Desmond Eastwood) ever since he absconded while the story is being broadcast nightly on the news and daughter Gloria (Ali White) and her family are cheering him back home on while the nursing home staff are aghast at the publicity … It’s a shock to learn you’ve lost the war. It’s a greater shock to discover you’ve been on the wrong side. It is a truism that a good film story will attract Jungian-style a number of writers and producers at the same time: something to do with the global consciousness. Or coincidence. Or just bad timing. So it is that the march was somewhat stolen on this by the near-simultaneous release of Michael Caine’s last film, The Great Escaper, also adapted from the real life story of Bernard Jordan, the English WW2 vet who slipped out of his home in 2014 to the commemorations in Normandy. The twist here is that the protagonist is Northern Irish (so the journey is longer, for starters) and played by an actor required to convincingly age up by twenty-plus years, with Brosnan playing the flashbacks from 1994 as himself, as it were, and Maggie Cronin as his beloved wife, already suffering memory loss as a harbinger of a life lived out in supervised care. The screenplay by Kevin Fitzpatrick understands the basic rule of the road movie – it’s an emotional journey! – and plays that aspect to the hilt. The vehicles, in order: laundry van, train, taxi, bus, lorry, caravan, ferry and finally, an army helicopter. Artie has a way with words (and a Norn Irish accent to boot) and the complexities of the trip, introducing a variety of characters to the ensemble to teach Artie how to survive (those diabetic attacks punctuate the story), how to get through pesky port controls and what to do when you meet a German veteran paying his own respects, lift the seriocomic drama above the mere recounting of a travelogue. His determination and righteousness give his character a nice flintiness. Effectively a story of survivor’s guilt, this is told and played with great charm with smart use of music to illustrate the dramatic highlights. Shot around Belfast in August 2022 with thirty credited producers in a cross-border co-production between Screen Ireland, RTE and Northern Ireland Screen, it’s a wonder this was made at all! Directed by Terry Loane. You know Artie – a man of mystery

Love Sarah (2020)

If anyone can put her spirit into this it’s you. Twentysomething dancer Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet) wants to honour her late mother Sarah’s (Candice Brown) memory by opening the bakery she was about to open with childhood friend Isabella (Shelley Conn) when she was tragically killed while cycling to recce their new premises. Trouble is there isn’t enough money. She moves in with her estranged grandmother, former trapeze artist Mimi (Celia Imrie) who is reluctant but then the three women pitch their talents and her money together, attracting Sarah’s dishy Michelin-starred ex Matthew (Rupert Penry-Jones) as the chief baker – and he may or may not be Clarissa’s father. Neighour Felix Rosenbaum (Bill Paterson) is a surveillance fan whose fancy turns to Mimi just as the gang hit on an idea to attract more customers and a Time Out review suddenly beckons … Imagine her baking that for you every morning with bacon and eggs – and sex. A thoughtful and low key study of grief written by Jake Brunger from a story by Mahalia Rimmer and director Eliza Schroeder, this is a beautifully made film set in London’s Notting Hill. If it lacks a dynamic centre there are compensations – not least in the performances by Imrie, Conn and Tarbet, the joint protagonists. Imrie is always worth watching, a pinch of salt and an amused twinkle never far from her features – here she needs to reconnect with her late daughter in a concrete fashion and (the very talented TV actress) Conn needs to repurpose her life which is falling away with the death of her best friend. Tarbet’s story isn’t as well dramatised but it’s a delicate performance, the dope-smoking ballerina wannabe who can’t make a go of anything, even a relationship that fails and renders her homeless. If the back story isn’t exposed in the melodramatic style we might expect in such a maternal narrative, and it never gorges on itself in the way its spiritual sister Chocolat does (another film about creating your own community), the complications arising from past and current romances, paternity and the idea about baking yourself out of existential and actual depression are movingly articulated. And it’s a nice reference for fans of TV’s Great British Bake Off to have winner Brown as Sarah, glimpsed in the final scene. Shot by Aaron Reid and designed by Anna Papa. Directed by Eliza Schroeder and dedicated to Sonya Schroeder. We make our bakery a home from home

Last Christmas (2019)

I’m a part of you. Take care of my heart. Katarina ‘Kate’ Andrich (Emilia Clarke) an aspiring singer, works as an elf at a year-round Christmas shop in Central London where the humorless owner (Michelle Yeoh) calls herself ‘Santa’. Kate is homeless after being forced out by her flatmate for her typically unreasonable behaviour. While at work, she notices a man (Henry Golding) outside staring upwards. She talks with him, learning that his name is Tom. After an unsuccessful singing audition, Kate sees Tom again and they go for a walk, where he charms her with his unusual observations of London. Upon isolating herself from her oldest friend Jenna (Ritu Arya) who is pregnant by her boyfriend Rufus (Ansu Kabia) and who Kate has alienated with her carelessness, Kate is forced to return to her parents’ home where her Yugoslav immigrants, her mother, Petra (Emma Thompson) suffers from depression and her father, Ivan, a former lawyer, works as a minicab driver. Kate feels suffocated by her mother, who dotes on her while ignoring Kate’s sister, Marta (Lydia Leonard) a successful lawyer. Kate begins spending more time with Tom, who rides a bike and volunteers at a homeless shelter, which she initially mocks. Tom disappears for days at a time and Kate begins helping at the shelter in the hope of running into him, but finds that the staff have never met him. While celebrating Marta’s promotion, Kate spitefully outs Marta as Lesbian to their parents then she runs into Tom. She reveals that, a year earlier, she had to have heart transplant. She tries to initiate sex, but he declines and they part. She then sets about making amends to those she has wronged. After a few days she runs into Tom again and he says he has something important to tell her, but she presume he’s a commitment phobe and walks away. Finally, wanting to make amends with Tom, she returns to his apartment only to realise who he is …There’s no such thing as normal. It’s a stupid word. Does a lot of damage. Excruciating in that very special way that truly terrible films are, this is an unprecedented fail for the amazing Paul Feig who is the most female-centric filmmaker out there. Golding returns to work with him after the sublime Hitchcock pastiche A Simple Favor, while Clarke gurns her way through what is basically a turkey-flavoured multicultural comic tragedy – in every sense. With songs. That she sings. And there are awkward structural similarities to Frozen for which theatre production Kate fails her audition. She is having a quarter-life crisis with one-night stands, a lot of accidents and standoffs with friends and family. And a heart condition. George Michael must be turning in his grave if this is what he inspired co-writers Emma Thompson and her husband Greg Wise and Bryony Kimmings to create. Some lines sound as if Thompson had written them for herself: you can just hear her in them. Some scenes are so forced as to be physically difficult to endure. Mystifying and with a political subtext that is as subtle as a hammer, yet there are very pretty pictures of London including the narrowest alley, the most decorated council house and the oldest pub. Maybe. Up there with Love Actually for the distinction of most dreadful Christmas film ever. God rest ye all. I will nail you to my dick