film

For the first time, in 2023, I kept a list of the films I watched. I discovered that most of what I want from movies is to be silly and fun and usually short – I watched maybe three disposable films for every one film I thought might be really good. And you know what, I’m ok with that. I also thought I’d watch maybe 20-25 films in a year – and somehow I watched 117. Most weren’t from 2023, of course.

But among the silliness were some films I thought were brilliant, so I thought I’d put together my top ten. I know a lot less about movies than I do about books, so I don’t feel on the steadiest ground – but, as with my books list, it’s more about how much I enjoyed them than how objectively good I thought they were. So all manner of awards winners and contenders didn’t make the list.

Anyway, enough caveats – here’s the list:

10. Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong (2015)

Heavily influenced by Richard Linklater’s superlative Before series, the natural chemistry between real-life couple Bryan Greenberg and Jamie Chung make this funny, moving and compelling. I wish it were longer, and I almost never say that about films (or books).

9. Round and Round (2023)

Ok, I watched this Hallmark Hanukkah timeloop movie as a joke – but it turned it out to be one of the best romcoms I’ve seen in years. Bryan Greenberg makes his second and final appearance on the list, and is paired with Leighton Meester. The writing is so tight, the leads have great chemistry, and it deserves a much wider audience than it’s likely to get.

8. Aftersun (2022)

A gently profound film about a young father taking his 11-year-old daughter on holiday. Director Charlotte Wells and stars Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio have been deservedly feted.

7. Rye Lane (2023)

Like Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong, a lot of this film is about two strangers meeting and walking and talking – but with the added bonus of being slightly wacky (fish-eye lens comes out to play) and very, very British. But I think my favourite thing about it was how the central couple’s ex-partners were both fully developed, very funny characters rather than one-note targets.

6. Befikre (2016)

I loved this energetic Hindi romcom set in Paris. We go back & forth between Shyra and Dharam getting together – and splitting up a year later, and what comes next. Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor are so watchable, and the songs are a clever blend of Indian & French styles. I’ve been listening to Je T’aime and Ude Dil Befikre a lot ever since – rather than a trailer, here’s Je T’aime (also the most inventive musical section of the movie).

5. Of An Age (2022)

It’s another strangers-getting-to-know-each-other movie, this time an Australian film about a young man getting to know his friend’s brother on a car journey – and what happens afterwards. Beautifully written and directed by Goran Stolevski, and with a particularly soulful and restrained performance from Thom Green.

4. Freshman Year (2020)

Amazingly, this lovely, naturalistic film about an emotional first year at uni was made for only $15,000. Cooper Raiff wrote, directed, produced, and starred – usually an ominous sign, but he is obviously one to watch. (Released as Sh!thouse in US.)

3. Ustad Hotel (2012)

I watched a lot of films with the wonderful Dulquer Salmaan in them this year – Malayalam movie Ustad Hotel was one of his early films and often mentioned as among his best, and I can see why. Faizal leaves home after a dispute and works as a chef with his grandad (Thilakan, extraordinary in one of his final roles). The movie has a beautiful tone and message, and shows what a star Salmaan would become.

2. Grey Gardens (1975)

I’ve long meant to watch this documentary about an eccentric elderly mother and daughter living in chaotic poverty in a mansion. Completely without guile or artifice, this is an extraordinary portrait of resentment, dependency, regret, and love. I don’t know if you’d be able to find people this unguarded and genuine on camera anymore – or at least not people like Big Edie and Little Edie.

1. O Kadhal Kanmani (2015)

The first film I watched in 2023 was also my favourite – a Tamil film in which Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen are a couple who decide to ‘live-in’ rather than marry (a common story in contemporary Indian cinema). As they try to be modern, they also grow to know and care for an elderly, old-fashioned couple nearby dealing with the woman’s dementia. It’s a beautiful, sweet, charming film – the sort of thoughtful, open-hearted romcom that has been disappearing from Western cinema in recent years but still very much made in India, thankfully.

I go through periods where I watch a lot of movies, and other periods where the idea of watching something for about two hours seems like a colossal amount of time. I could read half a book in that time!

But, anyway, here is the good, the bad, and the frothy from the past couple of months… as you’ll see, it has been a Bollywood-heavy period. Most of those films are on Netflix, and is a major reason I keep subscribing.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Based on the real-life story of disgraced televanglist Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) and his wife Tammy Faye Bakker (Jessica Chastain), this goes from Tammy Faye’s early life through their rise to fame and to the eventual catastrophe when Jim’s fraud and possible affairs come to light.

Jessica Chastain is brilliant in this role – she disappears completely, and the performance of sincerity and naivety in Tammy Faye was incredible. I also loved that her faith and her relationship with God are not laughed at – she is absolutely sincere about those too, and they are separate from any misdeeds by fellow believers. Lots of other Christians don’t fare so well in the film, which is par for the course for media, but that central character and performance is extraordinary. It’s no surprise that she won an Oscar for it.

Dog

Channing Tatum plays an ex-soldier who has to drive a dog across the country to attend his friend’s funeral (his friend died at war). It’s absolute hokum, made weirder by the number of odd events along the way – including Tatum’s character pretending to be blind, getting drugged and tied to a chair, being imprisoned etc. It reminded me of the plot of 90s/00s schlock like Dude, Where’s My Car?, but with a far more sentimental dollops on top. Tatum is always a compelling actor, and the dog is impeccably trained, but this is very lightweight – and a box office smash, of course.

Along for the Ride

A sweet coming-of-age romcom – I could tell it was adapted from a novel when they went to a secret pie shop. What is that shop’s business model?? It’s all quite poignant and whimsical, with unrewarding roles for Andie MacDowell and Dermot Mulroney in the background – and a couple of good-looking 20-somethings masquerading as teens. I am too old to watch this film, but it’s a good version of the sort of thing it is.

Senior Year

Rebel Wilson wakes up from a coma after 20 years and decides to go back to high school. You already know exactly what this film is, and it doesn’t surprise – and it happens to be the sort of silliness I love sometimes.

Badrinath Ki Dulhania

Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt are two of Bollywood’s best-known and most enjoyable actors, reuniting here in a movie that isn’t a sequel to their Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, but is sort of a spiritual sequel. It’s a romance between a progressive woman and a traditional man, and there is a thread about the role of women – particularly whether or not it’s ok for women to work after their marriage. The movie lands on yes, but there are definitely aspects to this (otherwise fun) movie that wouldn’t make a Hollywood one – e.g. if a man angrily locks a woman in his car boot, he probably isn’t usually the good guy…

Karthik Calling Karthik

My first Indian thriller, and yep I was frightened. I also didn’t realise it was a thriller going in. Karthik is an unconfident man in a dead-end job, bullied by his landlord and his colleagues and not able to talk to women. One evening he starts getting phone calls from… himself. The other Karthik on the other end of the phone helps build his self-confidence, and soon he has a promotion, a girlfriend, and all the success he has dreamed off – but then ‘Karthik’ starts to turn nasty…

It’s a great concept for a film, and I definitely found it compelling – and much scarier than I’d imagined. It started off so sweetly!

The Zoya Factor

I think I watched more cricket in this film than in the rest of my life combined. A copywriter (my job! on film!) is sent to help with writing for adverts involving the Indian cricket team during the 2011 World Cup. She is told not to interact with them, particularly the captain (GUESS WHO SHE FALLS IN LOVE WITH).

Sonam Kapoor and Dulquer Salmaan are both very personable and captivating leads, and I bought into their love embarrassingly quickly. My only quibble is that Zoya doesn’t do a moment’s copywriting at any time, she just stands next to ads being filmed and causes accidents.

Judwaa 2

Varun Dhawan this time, playing twins who separated in infancy and now have sporadic powers where, if one moves, the other does too. It is absolutely abysmal. I’ve learned that Varun doesn’t say no to much…

Cobalt Blue

A really beautiful film, and I’m keen to read the book by Sachin Kundaikar now (he also directed and wrote the film). It’s a much gentler, slower Indian film than many I watch – it’s about a brother and sister who both fall in love with their male lodger. It is so stunningly shot and lit, and acted, and I found it mesmerising.

I’ve been watching still more movies, and it’s fun to write a little about each of them. Not least because I never seem to remember what I’ve seen if I don’t write it down. Don’t let that put you off these films, though, because I’ve watched some really good stuff recently.

Lilting

I loved this moving film about a man (Ben Whishaw) whose boyfriend has died – the film sees him trying to connect with his boyfriend’s grieving mother (Cheng Pei-pei), who is Chinese and doesn’t speak much English. With the help of a translator, they try to connect (and Peter Bowles is in a supporting role!) If you speak Mandarin and English, it might be a bit annoying that every line is essentially repeated by the translator, but that was not an issue for me. A simple, beautiful, thoughtful film – and a brilliant performance by Whishaw.

Moonlight

It won the Best Film Oscar a couple of years ago – remember envelope-gate? – and I’d avoided watching it because I thought it had lots of drug-taking in it. Turns out, no. It shows three periods of one man’s life, from child to teenager to adult, as he deals with an abusive mother, his sexuality, and being bullied. If that sounds super dark, then fear not – the film is oddly lovely, even with all those elements, and that’s probably because of the way it’s shot. A worthy winner.

Paterson

I forget where I saw this recommended, but was pleased to see it on Amazon Prime. Adam Driver plays Paterson (who lives in Paterson) – a bus driver who also writes poetry. He lives with his creative, affectionate girlfriend and their dog, and the movie mostly sees him go about his ordinary, everyday life. It’s truly lovely. There are few momentous events, and those that seem momentous turn out not to be – it’s rare to see ordinary, contented people shown so well, and it’s another beautiful film to add to this list of beautiful films.

We the Animals

Speaking of, the cinematography in this film is mesmerising, and that’s not something I’d usually notice. It’s about three brothers who grow up with volatile parents in near-poverty – and about the confusion that can come about from the mix of love, angst, violence, affection, and the failure to fit in. It drags a little in places, but Raul Castillo’s performance is brilliant, and (again) the way it is shot and edited is stunning.

Isn’t it Romantic

And now a change of pace! I set aside my irritation that this title doesn’t have a question mark (why?!) to enjoy a sort of spoof rom-com that was made by Netflix. Rebel Wilson hits her head and wakes up in a world that resembles a rom-com – she lives in an enormous New York apartment, has a female nemesis at work, and Liam Hemsworth is in love with her. It’s certainly not groundbreaking, but Wilson is always very engaging to watch, and the whole thing is super fun.

I’ve written before about my love of A.A. Milne’s books, and how significant they were in my development as a reader and book collector (of sorts) – I still read him relatively often, and it was with eagerness that I awaited the release of the film Goodbye Christopher Robin. Mostly because I wasn’t sure how accurate it would be, and I was ANXIOUS, y’all. The anxiety was not helped by the release of the trailer…

Thankfully for me – though perhaps disquietingly for those expecting something else – the film was nothing like as twee as this trailer made it seem. Yes, it includes the development of the children’s books that we all associate with A.A. Milne, but they aren’t a panacea for the world’s ills, and this isn’t a fairytale.

The film shows the period between A.A. Milne leaving WW1 and Christopher Robin fighting in WW2. Domhall Gleeson looks remarkably like Milne, and there is a plausible narrative about PTSD being one of the reasons that he needs to move to the countryside, and affecting his relationship with his young son – Christopher Robin, known to the family as Billy Moon. Whether or not he had PTSD, I don’t remember – and I don’t imagine anything like it would have been diagnosed as such in the 1920s. But it gives the film a gritty coherence. Gleeson handles it very well, although the script is a little unsubtle about it at times; it is also more or less the only plotline, other than the simple movement through time, as Christopher Robin et al grow more and more famous.

The nanny (Kelly Macdonald) is also focal, with some of the more twee and/or impassioned scenes – and an extremely moving moment towards the end – and she, as with all the cast, works well with the exceptional Will Tilston, who plays the young Christopher. He is cherubic and wide-eyed, which the role calls for, but also gets the emotion of more difficult scenes.

Margot Robbie plays Daphne, Milne’s wife, and it was exciting for me to see somebody from my much-loved Neighbours who has made good. I know she’s a big star now, but this is the first film I’ve seen her in (except for a few scenes in About Time, also with Gleeson). Their marriage is a bit of a mystery, but the film is probably accurate in showing the cracks as they want very different things. Ann Thwaite wrote that Daphne was like AAM’s whimsical characters – the problem being that he wasn’t.

Ann Thwaite looms large in this adaptation, I am thrilled to say. She was historical advisor, and it is clear throughout that her biography of Milne was a great resource for the scriptwriters Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Simon Vaughan. Time and again, I recognised moments that could only have come from there, complemented (I imagine) by Christopher Milne’s excellent autobiographical series and A.A. Milne’s It’s Too Late Now.

I went expecting inaccuracies, but I only noticed a few (Tigger turns up too early; he was bought between the books. Christopher’s bear wasn’t actually the model for E.H. Shepard’s illustrations – those were Shepard’s own son’s bear; Peace With Honour is mentioned a long time before it existed) and a few misleading omissions (Peace With Honour flashes up at the end, but War With Honour – Milne’s corrective, as it were – isn’t mentioned; the four children’s books are more or less whipped into one, without any sense that Milne became a famous children’s writer before the Winnie the Pooh stories). Etc. etc. But it is only one film, and I couldn’t have expected them to do a roll call of all I know about Milne.

It’s a beautifully shot film, and it’s definitely a tearjerker. And I feel like I can brief a sigh of relief that, after all, AAM has been well served by Goodbye Christopher Robin.

In 2016, I saw three films at the cinema. Somehow, I’ve seen the same number in the past week – all of which have been great, albeit very different. Here is a quick round up, in the order I saw them…

Dunkirk

Probably the one that’s going to get the most accolades, but maybe my least favourite of these three – even though I still really liked it. I wasn’t sure I would. War films bore me, and Christopher Nolan is a very bombastic director – but somehow I was swept away. On paper, it shouldn’t work for the discerning cinema-goer: there’s no character development, no plot, and basically the whole thing is “people escape Dunkirk”. Which obviously is what happened, but there’s nothing more in the way of development. But it’s somehow great nonetheless. Harry Styles is much better than we had any right to expect, and it’s got the most shameless use of Elgar ever.

Kedi

Guys, this film is about CATS. It’s a documentary in Turkish (yes, I watched subtitles) about the stray cats in Istanbul. I went because I love cats so much, but it’s also a gentle, interesting story about the people who feed the stray cats – looking at those who find it restorative, or grudgingly enjoyable, or simply something that just seemed to happen to them. It’s also, in the background, about the changing landscape and lifestyle of Istanbul, as markets are torn down for tower blocks. But mostly it’s cats being their beautiful, characterful selves; I saw it in an independent cinema full of Cat People, and we awwwed and ahhhed together.

The Big Sick

A truly awful title – particularly for British audiences – but a really excellent film; my favourite of the three. It stars Kumail Nanjiani in a loosely altered version of himself (called, yes, Kumail) – he wrote it with his wife Emily Gordon, and it’s about their relationship. Kumail (both character and actor) is a Pakistani stand-up comedian, born in Pakistan and now living in America. He falls in love with Emily, a white American, while his parents continue to try to find a suitable Pakistani Muslim girl to be his arranged bride. Everything changes when Emily gets sick, and Kumail must convince her parents that he should stay in the picture. The film is very funny, very moving, and entirely successful at combining the two. Romcoms have a bad name now, and hardly any seem to be released anymore, but this is one not to miss.

I’ve been reading quite a lot of non-fiction at the moment – I’m in one of those moods where fiction isn’t working as well as it should be – and I decided to extend that to films too.

I haven’t watched a lot of documentaries, but one of my all-time favourite films is a documentary (Life in a Day, which I wrote about here), and I’ve really enjoyed others like Stories We Tell and The September Issue. So I looked through an article on the best documentaries available on Netflix in the UK (this article, since you ask) and settled on a couple: Catfish and Bill Cunningham New York. Both were well-worth watching, but I’m not sure I have all that much to say about Catfish. All of my thoughts about it would hinge on whether or not it’s fake, and the internet jury seems to have remained out on that one. If any of y’all know the answer, lemme know.

But I did want to bring Bill Cunningham New York to your attention, if you don’t know about it, because it turned out to be rather lovely. It came out in 2010, when Bill Cunningham was 81 and still working full-time as the photographer for two pages in the New York Times – ‘On the Street’ (street fashion) and ‘Evening Hours’ (charity social events). With admirable restraint on the part of the director, Richard Press, the film largely skews towards looking at the former – which gives rather less opportunity for gratuitous shots of socialites, but is clearly where Cunningham’s passion lies.

I hadn’t heard of Cunningham before seeing his name in this list, but he is so extraordinary that a novelist would have to event him if he didn’t exist. For decades he has cycled the streets of New York, taking photos of everyday women, men, and dogs, and bringing together pictorial features on a certain trend that he sees a lot of – whether that be a colour, a style, or even people walking gingerly through piles of snow. He doesn’t use a digital camera, and still takes his films into a shop to be developed. His old-fashioned nature extends to manners: he believes all the people he photographs to be beautiful, and is horrified at the idea of using street photography to criticise others – indeed, he has resigned from magazines when they re-wrote his copy to mock.

You might expect Cunningham to be an aesthete himself. No such thing. He wears the same style of blue smock everyday – a cheap workman’s outfit. His apartment, in Carnegie Hall at the time of filming, is filled with ugly filing cabinets, with a bed lying alongside them. Cunningham’s one joy is other people and the clothes they wear.

Press’ documentary is not quite a hagiography, but it is refreshingly willing to allows its subject to be good. Only one prurient moment, asking about Cunningham’s relationships (he has had none) feels out of kilter with the tone of the piece; most of the time, the film looks at Cunningham’s unique work and place in the fashion industry. Interviewees include Anna Wintour (fun fact for fact fans: I lived next door to her son at Magdalen), Iris Apfel (soon to get her own documentary), and lots of people I hadn’t heard of from the fashion industry. Oh, and his neighbour – Editta Sherman, then a 96 year old photographer (who has since died, at the age of 101), who spent most of her time of film putting on hats and pouting at the camera or complaining that the documentary wasn’t about her instead. And she definitely warranted one.

The film is certainly celebratory, and it is rare to see somebody so completely nice and contented on film. At the same time, he remains rather distant from most people, and his past is still something of a mystery that the film didn’t exert much energy into uncovering. We see one or two snapshots of his youth, but hear very little about father or mother, or even how he sustains himself considering he refuses to accept money for jobs: he has a horror of being ‘owned’. A sub-plot (as it were) about Carnegie Hall residents being evicted is intriguing, but not particularly concluded – and certainly isn’t exploited in the sensationalist way it might have been in some hands.

Yet, somehow, a documentary that isn’t invasively curious about its subject works unexpectedly well. Bill Cunningham New York is interested in the man’s legacy and contribution to fashion and photography, and in one moment in time. It is rather joyful to watch, with enough poignancy to avoid being mawkish. I’d heartily recommend it.

And, now I’m on a documentary spree, I’d love some more recommendations. I’m intending to watch Actress, Finding Vivian Maier, Dear Mr Watterson, and Life Itself at some point…

A while ago I blogged about the lovely book My Sister Eileen by Ruth McKenney, which I heartily recommend. And in the latest meet-up for Simon and Andrea’s Film Club, we watched the film – well, one of the films. It turns out this unassuming little collection of childhood and adolescent memories had quite an afterlife – although mostly focusing on the few chapters dealing with life in a New York basement.

All the posters I can find seem to think Janet Leigh’s legs are the star.

There was a play, a 1940s film, a stage musical (called Wonderful Town), and this film – from 1955. I think the script might be similar to the play and Wonderful Town, but they couldn’t get the rights to Leonard Bernstein’s music – and so new music was written (and, so the Wikipedia entry informs me, even had to appear at different stages of the narrative – so as to avoid possible suing.)

I thought it would be fun – but I hadn’t realised how great it would be. I really love this film!

The sisters are played by Janet Leigh and the remarkably Betty Garrett (Eileen and Ruth respectively); they do indeed live in a basement flat, just about the subway, and Ruth is trying to make it as a journalist. That’s about where the similarities with the book begin and end. (Oh, except for the introduction of the Brazilian Navy – which is quite out of keeping with the rest of the film, though still great fun, and seems too far-fetched, despite being true.) In the film, Ruth is the plain-Jane to Eileen’s beauty (and, while Betty Garrett is hilariously dry and feisty, in her early 20s she ain’t). They both meet eligible young men – one of whom is Jack Lemmon; the other of whom is choreographer Bob Fosse (who plays a complete sweetheart, in Frank Lippincott; Jack Lemmon’s character is rather creepier by modern standards, but is – I believe – intended to be romantically forceful in the ’50s.)

Alongside their sororal relationship is the bedrock of the film, it’s actually rather a lovely ensemble piece. Special mention must go to charming Dick York, their rugged, friendly neighbour, who pops in to do their ironing (although he won’t do sewing; ‘that’s woman’s work’) and protect them from unsuitable suitors. We spent the entire film thinking he was called Rick (in a Noo Yoik accent), but it turns out he actually is called the Wreck – his wrestling nickname. Sure, why not?

My favourite songs were the two frenetic, cheery ones – ‘I’m Great (But No One Knows It)’, and the superb ‘Give Me a Band And My Baby’, in which the four participating characters pretend to be playing various instruments. And the dancing! Leigh and Garrett aren’t terrible, but it’s Fosse and Tommy Rall who dazzle and amaze – particularly in a tap-dancing scene. Indeed, Rall’s character (a romantic rival for Frank L) seems to be there simply to give Fosse a dancing partner of equal talent, but I’m not complaining.

I don’t really know why a film as joyful, funny, engaging, and beautiful as My Sister Eileen – with great songs and exceptional dancers – ever fell out of favour, but I certainly hadn’t heard of it until lately. And is Betty Garrett known? Wikipedia tells me she was blacklisted in the US during MacCarthyism. She is so brilliant in this – delivering a withering line like nobody’s business, and remaining entirely sympathetic throughout.  Janet Leigh is also good fun, and an able comedian. It’s basically all a delight – which is fitting, given what a delight the book is.

Amusingly, Andrea and I spent some time musing on the fact that the song ‘Why-oh-why-oh-why did I leave Ohio’ (or whatever it’s called) would have been a good fit, and kept wondering if it would turn up – only to discover later that it’s in Wonderful Town, and thus would have been a very good fit!

Do track down the DVD – and enjoy this poor quality video of ‘Give Me A Band and My Baby’ as an introduction:

How do people feel about me writing film reviews? Is that something people would be in to? I tend just to post about the things I want to (witness: Song for a Sunday) and sometimes that turns into something unexpectedly popular (I never imagined anybody would want to read the Bake Off recaps, and now strangers – strangers plural, mind – come up to me at parties – party singular, actually – and tell me they like that.) But I guess the worlds of film and book review aren’t miles apart, only I would consider myself something of an expert about books (if anything at all) and wouldn’t about film.

Enough preamble. I’m going to write about My Name is Julia Ross, and we’ll take it from there. By the by, a nice man called John writes a very book blog called Pretty Sinister Books which has regular film reviews, and he has written about My Name is Julia Ross here. But I actually came across the film when scrolling through the IMDB page for Dame May Whitty, seeing what else she had made.

My Name is Julia Ross is from 1945, and I watched it with my friend Andrea as part of the aptly-named Simon and Andrea’s Film Club. The whole thing is available on YouTube (at the bottom of this post), although a DVD might still be available for all I know. It’s based on a novel called The Woman in Red by Anthony Gilbert, whom I’ve never heard of (have you?) and is about Julia Ross (Nina Foch) who takes on an appointment as a secretary, and is drugged and kidnapped. When she awakes, she is in a clifftop house, and people are calling her Marion Hughes, claiming she is the wife of Ralph Hughes. They have recently moved to the village, and all the villagers know that Ralph’s wife has suffered a breakdown, and doesn’t know what she’s saying…

The rest of the film documents Julia Ross’s attempts to escape from the house – attempts that are repeatedly foiled, of course – and the viewer slowly learns why Ralph and his mother (the mother being played by Dame May) have brought Julia there. In the background, back where Julia was living in penury, are the rather lacklustre romantic hero Dennis and the rather wonderfully snipey housemaid.

To the modern viewer – perhaps even to the 1940s viewer – the actual plot is something of a cliché. It is interesting to see a drama where nothing grimmer or more inventive is needed than repeated unsuccessful escape plans (notes thrown through gates, sneaking into the back of cars, etc.). I don’t know enough about film history to know how unusual this scenario would have been at the time, but it really isn’t all that important. Of course she isn’t going to escape half an hour into the film. What does matter is how it’s shot – and it’s really striking.

There are quite a few things in My Name is Julia Ross that make me think of Hitchcock – not least the looming out over the clifftop; the bedroom window is right on the edge. The setting is so stunning, and dramatic, and the film-maker (dir. Joseph H. Lewis) puts this to the best possible use.

Nina Foch is a very likeable heroine, if a little over the top at times, but it is the eerie calmness of Dame May Whitty that makes the mystery at the heart of the film so tense – not so much ‘what will happen?’ but ‘why has it happened?’ It might have been a more psychologically complex film if we hadn’t seen the drugging – if we hadn’t known whether or not Julia was right; if she could, in fact, be Marion – but even without this element, it’s rather gripping.

I love watching films from this period – unsurprisingly, really – and it’s interesting to find a thriller to watch alongside the Brief Encounters and Mrs Minivers with which we’re already familiar.

First off, I should let you know that tomorrow I’ll be posting an exclusive Q&A with the scriptwriter of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, Mary Henely Magill – so, look forward to that!

I saw the film last week (incidentally, it is now available on DVD), and I’ll confess that I was a bit nervous before I went.  As quite a few of us said in the fab discussion we had here, the novel (novella?) felt quite unfilmable.  And the reviews weren’t all hugely positive… although mostly they seemed upset that it wasn’t Downton Abbey.  (Why on earth should it be?)  One even complained that it wasn’t very cheerful, and irony exploded.  Well, I’ve got to say – with one or two reservations, I thought it was really good.  I’d definitely recommend getting hold of the DVD, if you can’t get to a screening.

I’m going to assume I skip a synopsis, because you can just read the novel review above, if you don’t know what’s what.  So instead, because I don’t really know how to structure a film review without a synopsis, I’m going to give you my thoughts in bullet points… just below the film trailer.

1) As you can see from the trailer, the film is beautifully shot.  That’s usually a damn-with-faint-praise comment, but I don’t see why it should be.  Every frame was sumptuous, whether interior or exterior.  A golden, hazy spring day was as strikingly gorgeous as a sharp winter’s morning in a bedroom.  Even if the script and acting had been appalling (which they certainly weren’t), it would be a delicious film to watch.

2.) Felicity Jones was the Big Name for the film, and she was good, but I think the best people were Ellie Kendrick as Kitty, Elizabeth McGovern as Mrs. Thatcham, and Fenella Woolgar as Nancy.  Let’s look at them one by one…

3.) Ellie Kendrick was so wonderful as Anne Frank in a TV series about her a while ago, and she was equally wonderful here.  Her Kitty was precocious, spontaneous, affectionate, and witty.  The most engaging character on screen, for my money.

4.) We all know Elizabeth McGovern for her Downton performance nowadays, but she was signed up for Cheerful Weather for the Wedding first.  On the page, Mrs. Thatcham is unbelievably absent-minded.  McGovern brings that across, but also makes her realistically stern and single-minded.

5.) I don’t remember Nancy in the novel, but the dynamic between her and husband David were a wonderful part of the film.  Fenella Woolgar is so brilliant at the brisk barbed comment or sardonic murmur.  A total joy.

6.) From the main trio – James Norton’s Owen was as much a nonentity on screen as on the page, but that’s the way it should be.  Luke Treadaway was fantastic as Joseph, in both impassioned and frivolous scenes, and Felicity Jones put it in a thoughtful performance as bride-to-be Dolly.

7.) I loved how, from the opening notes of the score onwards, the film captured the hysterical madness of the narrative.  Especially in the first half, the frenetic, overlapping conversations and muddled characters was done really well – with the right level of detachment from genuine emotional concerns.

8.) The flip-side of this are the extended flashback scenes, and a deep-and-meaningful between Joseph and Dolly on the day of the wedding.  I know opinions differ on this, but for my money, the characters in Julia Strachey’s novel aren’t intended to be sympathetic.  It doesn’t really matter what they think and feel, because they’re all grotesques, and the point of the book is to be a madcap romp through events.  Which meant I didn’t buy the emotional scenes between Dolly and Joseph, which seemed to dilute the tone of the film.  You can’t really have your cake and eat it – either it’s a surreal comedy, or it’s a poignant one.  I think it would have been better to avoid making the characters at all sympathetic (same goes for the film of Angel), although I understand that that would make it harder to pitch or market.

9.) It *is* a really funny film.  The cinema was filled with laughter on many occasions.  The trailer goes a bit slapsticky, but the film itself isn’t, and most of the humour came from dialogue and facial expressions.

10.) The socks weren’t emerald green!  My favourite bit!  But that is something I asked Mary… come back tomorrow to find out her answer to that and other questions…

I don’t love films in the way that I love books – I enjoy seeing them, but find my short attention span is usually a bit bored by the end, and it’s only the odd one or two that have give me the feelings I get from my favourite books. Usually these are adaptations of novels (I Capture the Castle) or films about authors (Finding Neverland) or both (The Hours). Occasionally a 1930s film will do it, but yesterday I watched a film that moved me and amused me and enthralled me in the way that my favourite novels do. And that film is Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh. The only other Mike Leigh films I’ve seen are Vera Drake, which I thought brilliant, and Abigail’s Party, which works better on stage. I know he uses the same actors many times, and picks those who excel at improvisation – whatever he’s doing, it works.

I saw the trailer a while ago, and thought it looked poignant and well-observed, and it is definitely both those things – but trailers rarely do justice to a film, and the one posted below is no exception. Having not seen it in November, when it was released, I was pleased to spot that it was showing at my favourite cinema in the world – the Ultimate Picture Palace. It’s a one-screen cinema from the 1960s or 1970s, and still very much has that feel. But it’s also incredibly friendly and quirky – they were selling mulled wine and mince pies last night, which were lovely – and shows interesting films, including older ones. Last year I saw Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes there, for example.

Another Year, like so many of the novels I love, is difficult to describe because not much happens. It shows a couple nearing retirement – Tom and Gerri (ho ho) played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen – going through a year of their life, and the lives of their friends. Gerri and Tom are a quietly contented married couple, happy and comfortable with each other, and I have never seen a more realistic portrayal of a normal marriage in film. Their lives are centred around work (Gerri is a counsellor [thanks David!]; Tom is a engineering geologist), the allotment, their son visiting at the weekends, their friends, and being together. There may be a rug waiting to be pulled from under my feet, and perhaps in many films they’d be shown up as smug or too middle class, but Mike Leigh seemed to have the sense simply to show them as they are.

In and out of their lives wander several friends, each slightly dysfunctional, but only in the way that people can be. Nothing unduly zany or far-fetched. Of these characters, although the film is indisputably an ensemble piece, one does stand out – in fact, she is in some ways the heart of the film. That is Mary, played brilliantly by Lesley Manville. She is a 40-something divorcee, lonely and clingy, only just self-aware enough to realise how unself-aware she is. Another Year is clever, though – at first Mary seems simply a chatty, flirty, slightly uncontrolled woman. Only as the film develops does her pain unravel, and manifest itself in bitterness or trying too hard to be the life and soul of a gathering. And yet she is a warm woman, and it is impossible to dislike her – but entirely possible to see how Gerri and Tom could grow weary of her.

Writing about Another Year is as difficult as writing about a finely-written novel, because every statement feels like a broad sweep, missing the subtlety of Mike Leigh’s writing and direction, or the acting of an astonishingly good cast. It felt so ‘real’ – not a euphemism for gritty or unpleasant, as the word ‘real’ is so often used, but naturalistic and vital. The relationships were all believable, sometimes painfully so. Only Mary occasionally went a little too far, a little too ‘drama’ rather than ‘life’, but this was so occasionally that it couldn’t mar a superb performance.

All this makes Another Year sound gloomy – and it is true that the lingering feeling is sadness. But whilst it was showing there were many moments where the cinema rang to the sound of audience laughter – some exceptional observational comedy – and some beautifully warm and touching moments. Like life, I suppose.

Oh, and you know when Judi Dench won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for a few minutes of screentime in Shakespeare in Love? Well, if there is any justice in the world, Imelda Staunton will win one for her part as a depressed insomniac patient of Gerri’s. Sadly, she only appears for a few minutes, in the first handful of scenes – but my friend and I both spent the rest of the film longing for her to reappear. Every tiny movement of her face was transfixing. Any aspiring actor should have to sit and watch her performance – so restrained, but so informative.

All in all, as you can see, I was very impressed! Do go and see it if you have the chance, although it’s probably not on in many places now. If you live near Oxford, you’ll be able to go to the Ultimate Picture Palace – otherwise pre-order the DVD!

Which other Mike Leigh films would you recommend? I’ve gone and ordered All or Nothing and Happy-Go-Lucky, which are now winging their way from Amazon…