Reviews

Well, there goes my theory that I could watch Cary Grant in anything, because, mark my words, this is a real stinker. They say never act with kids or pets and yet here he commits two crimes for the price of one in a totally sappy, ludicrously plotted and wholly uninvolving would-be fantasy feature.

Grant plays Jerry Flynn, a one-time big-shot theatre owner and impresario who's hit the skids after a run of flop shows. So, how to turn his fortunes around and chase the wolves from his door? - that's easy! You happen upon a street urchin who keeps a caterpillar in a shoebox and can make it dance by playing "Yes Sir That's My Baby" on his harmonica and before you can say Jiminy Cricket, he's tricked the kid into a partnership and sold the rights to his insect to Walt Disney, who actually makes an appearance, for big bucks. This naturally brings him into conflict with the kid and his protective old-enough-to-be-his-mother big sister, played by Janet Blair as well as his own sidekick "The Moak" (no, I don't know why either), played by James Gleason.

Rather like Curly the caterpillar, at least until the predictable ending, this one just doesn't fly at all reaching an absolute nadir when Cary actually smacks the kid across the face in a fit of pique.

Sorry, but even Cary can't carry this dead weight, it pains me to say.

I've finally started reading the source novels of Jim Butcher and I'm enjoying doing so so much that I decided to rewatch the to date only television adaptation of the adventures of his creation, the wizard Harry Dresden.

In this first episode, which although it shares the name of the first Butcher novel, has a completely different narrative, we get the first-hand narrative by Harry himself, as he tumbles into an adventure centring on the magical abilities of a floppy-haired young boy with special powers, the adopted son of a single parent mum. The boy is in demand, being sought by a villainous shape-shifter who's already brutally slain and taken the form of his school teacher and who turns up at the boy's door looking for him where thankfully a repellent spell cast by Harry keeps her at bay.

When the teacher - demon (there are two words I find surprisingly easy to juxtapose!) visits Harry in his apartment, we're introduced to Bob, a waspish old spirit with powers of his own who's encased in an old skull, but occasionally manifests himself in human form. We also get flashbacks to Harry's own youth when his magician father, knowing his son to be a true wizard, tries to protect him and keep him on the right path.

Finally we get to meet Murphy, the female cop who uses Harry's services whenever there's a suspected supernatural element to a crime in the city, which of course turns out to happen more often than you would think, although like in the books, their relationship can get a bit testy at times.

It naturally winds up in a big showdown between Harry and the demon, with our hero being pushed to his limits but naturally survives, to at least move onto the next episode.

I only got into the books now because I remember enjoying this 2007 series so much before, starring the likeable Paul Blackthorne in the titular role and this first episode was as good as I remembered it the first time I saw it.

It seems, rather like buses, you wait and wait for one airplane-set drama to arrive and then two arrive at once. Earlier this year I watched the Idris Elba-starring "Hijack" series and here we are, up in the air again, for this fast-moving, if fantastically-plotted political thriller.

It starts with a bang as we see Richard Armitage's Dr Nolan character, out in China with a bunch of friends and colleagues to attend a medical conference, obviously under the influence of something, crash his speeding car in the nighttime rain, but somehow still manage to escape the scene and get on the return flight to London. Unknown to him, he's been inveigled into a major political incident which means that on arrival back in London he's forced to return to Beijing to go on trial it would appear for the murder of the pretty Chinese lady who picked him up at the evening reception there. His colleagues are also sent back with him, presumably as witnesses and he also has as company a WPC Hana Li, played by Jing Lusi, into whose custody he's placed, requiring them to be handcuffed together on board.

On the ground, the WPC's younger half-sister, a budding reporter gets wind of the political high jinks and senses a breakthrough story, especially with her sis as the perfect inside-woman but MI5 are also on the case, under the watchful eye of Lesley Sharp's commander. The Magoffin in all this is a sensitive multi-billion pound contract with the Chinese for a new UK-based nuclear plant, which naturally attracts the interest of the CIA, whose own chief operative just happens to be romantically involved with Sharp. The scene is set then for a real rollercoaster of a plane journey as the body count mounts up, with no-one who they seem to be as Nolan and Li overcome their initial frostiness to put themselves in considerable danger as they try to get to the bottom of the mystery and save the country in the process.

Far-fetched it may inevitably have been, but this production kept injecting enough cliff-hanging twists and turns into the pacy narrative to keep me interested all the way through. Solidly acted by old-hands Armitage and Sharp with strong support from the new-to-me Lusi as the remarkably resourceful Li, this was one flight where it was best to engage autopilot and just go along for the sometimes bumpy ride until you come back to earth at journey's end.

With its confusing, un-related "screwball" title, I found myself surprised to be actually watching a major Golden Age Hollywood feature made by an A-list director Leo McCarey and starring two top stars in Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers which was so critical, so early, of Hitler's regime. America, after all, hadn't long entered the war but I straightaway have to commend the movie in particular for highlighting the treatment of Jews, but also for showing their cold-blooded killing of suspected spies and their reliance on twisted propaganda to further their megalomaniacal plans.

That said, the film does try to mix in comedy elements too, but for me, I think it would have worked far better as a straight drama as the humour is too clunky and unfunny to work. The romance angle between Grant and Rogers I can just about accept, but for example the early scene where Cary measures Ginger up for some clothes or a later one when Ginger impersonates her maid to escape from two dopey German guards or an even later one when he interrupts a ship's captain in a bridge game all just curl the toes rather than the edges of one's mouth.

I also didn't detect any great connection between the two leads and there are times when you can almost see them go into auto-pilot to get each other through certain scenes. Walter Slezak, in his first Hollywood movie, however, convinced for the most part as the duplicitous senior German, causing havoc wherever he goes.

I did like some things about the film, like Rogers' character's sympathetic self-sacrifice to enable her maid and her two young children to get out of the country and the calling out of the Norwegian traitor Quisling in a piece of dialogue, but on the whole I felt this was a well-intentioned, if ultimately awkward mix of humour, romance and drama.

My own personal politics are diametrically opposed to those of former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo so it was going to take something special to encourage me to watch any programme fronted by him. But credit to him, although he still offers his opinions on politically-themed programmes on satellite channels, he's also managed to reinvent himself as a genial and engaging travel show host. This series he did in 2023 on the Spanish region of Andalusia caught my attention as my wife and I have been living in that region for the last six years.

Over six episodes, Portillo, whose name I now know to pronounce in the Spanish way, journeys around a number of the interesting places here, frequently meeting up with locals where his command of the language serves him well. He and his researchers do a good job of seeking out these people and places, with Mikey wholeheartedly joining in on local occupations and crafts. He also gets to stay in some fine hotels, the likes of which are probably beyond the budget of you and me.

Malaga apart, he avoids the well-known Costa Del Sol resorts and among the other places he takes in are Ronda, Cordoba, Grenada, Cadiz, Jerez and Seville, with each place having its own cultural or historical tale to tell, before ending up back at his own home in the small town of Carmona where he holds a party for his local friends and neighbours.

I had no idea that his father was a prominent Nationalist poet who was caught up in the Spanish Civil War before emigrating to England where his right-wing motivated son was born and came to prominence. Putting politics aside however, my wife and I really enjoyed this informative and entertaining trek of his around this lovely part of southern Spain. We've yet to really spread our own wings and explore some of the neighbouring towns and cities, but thanks to this series, our appetites have definitely been whetted and I'm sure we'll be hitting the road to explore them for ourselves, hopefully enjoying some Portillo moments of our own along the way.

This long overdue film bio-pic of the great American athlete Jesse Owens naturally concentrates on the run-up to his golden year of 1936 when he was clearly the fastest man on earth who just happened to grow up in a country where he experienced extreme racism in his daily life and then went into history by winning four gold medals in a country where again his race was considered sub-human. That he did so with such humility and grace on and off the track is to his credit, although as the film makes clear, he was no angel.

In fact so much happened to him in such a short period of time that I freely admit to going in the web to fact-check so much of what is portrayed he and then being surprised to find most of it true, like his breaking three world records and equalling another at a track meet in the States, the cheating on his wife-to-be, with whom he'd already fathered a child, the dropping of two American Jewish runners from the U. S. 4 x 100 m sprint team and the remarkably sporting assistance he received from his main German rival in the long-jump. The only really questionable item I guess was whether Hitler did or didn't actually snub him after his victories although I'm happy to grant the director some dramatic licence here. In fact as Owens himself said, he cared more about the slight he felt at his own country's president not publicly acknowledging his feats

I personally would have preferred if the movie had stayed with the remarkable Owens as it's main focus. Instead it diverts its attention to seek to rehabilitate the reputations of two other controversial figures associated with the Games, American Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage and female German Nazi-sympathiser director Leni Riefenstahl who produced the undoubtedly iconic if imbalanced official film of the games "Olympiad".

The depiction of the period was well-renderef throughout with clever use of CGI to recreate the Olympic stadium itself and the actual competitions themselves. The acting too was good, even if lead Stephan James scarcely resembles Owen and I especially enjoyed film debutant, Bruce Willis lookalike Jason Sudeikis as his super-strict coach Larry Snyder.

Whilst some of the scenes were perhaps too obviously made-over Hollywood-style with attendant noble dialogue to match, this was nevertheless an enlightening and enjoyable retelling of the fantastic achievements of one of the greatest ever Olympians.

I wasn't aware of this particular scandal which happened some 20 years ago concerning the lurid life and untimely death of the extremely wealthy British nobleman Lord Shaftesbury but I certainly found his story to be a fascinating one, at least the way this Channel 5 documentary, the first in a new series, presented it.

The most famous in the line of past Lord Shaftesburys was the distinguished anti-slavery campaigner of Victorian times, but it soon became clear that when the 10th Lord took on the title over a hundred years later, greatness wasn't on the horizon. A hereditary peer of the United Kingdom House of Lords, it took him 24 years to make his maiden speech there and that a drunken ramble in opposition to Tony Blair's proposed reform of the Chamber.

A picture is painted of a shy man who unexpectedly inherited the title, land, grand house and wealth of the family dynasty and frankly didn't cope at all well with his new position and riches. Married and divorced twice, he soon fell into dissolute ways, spending most of his time and money in Cannes and on young female prostitutes.

It was his sorry fate to fall in with a pretty young French-born single-parent woman Jamila who'd taken to working as an escort girl around Cannes. As he often did, he fell hard for a younger woman, they quickly married and moved into a grand house in the area. Besides two young children however, she also had a temperamental brother who she brought into their household, but when the marriage quickly fell apart and Lord Shaftesbury mysteriously disappeared, suspicion fell on the siblings. When his body was discovered some time afterwards, it didn't take long for the French police to charge the brother and sister with his murder.

Jamila, having had her jail sentence reduced on appeal, is now out and about, proclaiming her innocence on camera although the evidence suggests she was complicit in Shaftesbury's pre-arranged death with her brother as the actual perpetrator. All contrition now, she even wants to apologise to her late husband's previous wife and family for the pain she's caused them, all this while her murderous brother continues to languish in prison for his crime.

This was a sad take on the life of an insecure, rather pathetic old man, unable to take on the responsibilities of his title and position and who instead sought solace in the bottle and attractive women. However he certainly didn't deserve to come to the sticky end he eventually did with his lifestyle splashed all over the tabloid press.

This documentary told the story in a rather formulaic style. With no input from anyone from the late Lord's family, it used stock images of Cannes as well as recycling the same pictures of Shaftesbury and his country estate, demonstrating a lack of depth never mind understanding in telling his sorry tale.

A cautionary tale on how the other half lives, I somehow felt after watching this that the vulnerable old man at the centre of this particular scandal deserved better representation than he got here.

My wife and I were both happy and sad to reach the end of "Schitt's Creek". Comprising six seasons, each seemingly better than the last, we certainly enjoyed getting to know the madcap characters of this crazy, crazy town to which the once super rich Rose family have descended.

Everyone will have their favourite character, from the Betty Boop-like Alexa, her highly strung but ever-hungry brother David, pragmatic, peaceable dad Johnny and his self-centred, language-mangling wife Moira and that's before you get into all the local townsfolk.

We'll also miss town mayor Roland's too-late-I've-already-said-it candour, his sassier-than-she-looks wife Jocelyn and tough little cookie, hotel receptionist Stevie.

It all ended up with all four members of the family finally finding a way out of Schitt's, if they choose to take it and David's marriage to his boyfriend Patrick. I actually thought there was going to be one more twist in the tale - what with Alexa garbed in a white dress on the day, we were sure that Ted would fly back in and see us off with a double wedding celebration, but it sadly wasn't to be.

I understand that all four principal actors won Emmy's for their performances in this the final season and must say that they were all fully merited. Kudos too to the production company for quitting while they were ahead, even if it means the door closing permanently on the old Rosebud Motel.

This was definitely one of the best comedies that we have seen in many years and will certainly miss the wars of these particular Roses from our television screen.

I've read a collection of Damon Runyan short stories and must admit I enjoy entering his world of crazily-named, usually low-life but regularly loveable rogues, trying to eke out a living on the streets of Depression and Post-Depression Era New York. I was interested them to see him named as the actual producer of this movie. I've also been taking a deep dive of late into the life and career of Lucille Ball who acted in movies for some ten years before finally breaking through in the new medium of television. I believe she said that this was her favourite of the many films in which she acted and one of her few starring roles. She's also acting alongside a fine troupe of actors and is playing opposite Henry Fonda so there was a lot to intrigue me here.

The main problem I had with the film was just how unpleasant Ball's Gloria character was, who even before she is cruelly struck down and made a cripple by her jealous big-shot former boyfriend, lords it over the warm-hearted guyscand dolls who offer her to my mind undeserved support to the extent where they effectively become her drudges, so much so that she only deigns to answer to the name "Your Highness".

Chief amongst them is Fonda's lowly Hotel boy Pinkerton, nicknamed Little Pinks who is completely infatuated with her and so panders to her every wish and keeps coming back for more even when she insults him and makes it quite clear that she will never reciprocate his feelings for her.

It's to Ball's credit that she carries through her mean demeanour to the, as it turns out bitter end, but i probably enjoyed more seeing the likes of Eugene Pallette, Ray Collins and especially the wonderful Agnes Moorhead havibf fun with Runyon's rich characterisations and dialogue. Fonda as Pinks tries the viewer's patience with his meek submission to Gloria's petty tantrums but in the end he finds his spine and ingeniously gives Her Highness the send-off perhaps only he thinks she merits.

An interesting movie for lots of different reasons and an entertaining one too, it's interesting to think, amongst other things, what would have become of Ball's career if the film had in fact catapulted her to stardom then and there.

A heart-warming family entertainment starring Hilary Swank, "Ordinary Angels", based on a true story, is set in rural Louisville, Kentucky in the early 90's and centres around the family of Alan Ritchson's Ed character. Sadly, this is a family struck by tragedy as we quickly learn that after giving birth to two daughters, his wife dies only five years later. Even worse, their youngest daughter, has a life-threatening kidney disorder and because hard-working but hard-up family man Ed can't afford medical insurance, the bills for little Michelle's specialist treatment just keep piling up. His devoted mother pitches in to help but clearly the family is about to go under...

Which is where the town hairdresser, Hilary Swank's Sharon Stevens comes in. She too is a struggling single parent, although her apparent predilection for drink has estranged her from her teenage-musician son. It seems as if her life too is on a downward spiral until she crashes the family funeral and hooks up with Ed and his adorable daughters as a result of which she decides to help them out. This she promptly proceeds to do, beginning with a fund-raising haircut-drive in her shop. But she doesn't stop there and soon afterwards drops full-square into the family's lives and despite his initial resistance, uses her business head and sheer cussedness when it comes to negotiating deals to take charge of Ed and his finances to help them stay afloat.

But little Michelle's condition takes a turn for the worse to the extent that only a kidney transplant can save her life. It all ends up in a madcap race in terrible winter conditions to get the little girl to a hospital six hours away and will require the willing cooperation of a number of "ordinary angels", coralled together by Sharon, to hopefully save the day.

Even if one suspects that some of the action is ramped up to varying degrees for dramatic effect and I'll include in that the suspiciously contrived-looking sub-plot of Sharon's broken relationship with her own boy, you'd have to have a heart as cold as Kentucky snow not to be warmed by this tear-jerker as it reaches its nail-biting climax.

Swank is very good as the boozy Stevens who finds her own self through helping others and Ritchson too shines as the big man pushed to his limits but whose obvious love for his kids pulls him through.

All in all, despite perhaps over-stoking the fire at times, this feel-good movie will put a smile on your face even as you at times will doubtless dab a tear or two away from your eyes.

My wife's a fan of Scottish actor, "the wee man", Martin Compston, star of "Line of Duty" and we were recommended by friends towards this 6-part series where he tours our own native Scotland in the company of his friend Phil MacHugh. Phil who? You might be thinking and that's evidently what the show producers thought too, as the poor guy doesn't even garner a title credit despite this being the usual procedure in buddy-trip series like this, as he accompanies his more famous chum in all his travels here. The powers-that-be clearly thought it more important to get Martin Compston into the programme title than Martin and little-known Phil, effectively relegating the star's own best mate to "plus one" status.

I'll also say that these travel-lite shows can grate with me, where a celebrity gets paid for a jolly, getting to see places and do things I never will, but once I parked my inner Grinch, I quite enjoyed the duo's adventures as they traversed the length and breadth of old Caledonia, usually to the accompaniment of some cheesy tunes on their car stereo.

The two lads seem to get on well and pretty much throw themselves into everything put before them (apart from MacHugh opting out of a cramped climb up the inside of a wind turbine) before arriving back at Compston's hometown of Greenock for an emotional goodbye.

As this cheap and cheerful type of light entertainment goes, this was more enjoyable than most other programmes I've seen of this type, helped in that by both lads resolutely refusing to disguise their native accents.

The bromance in fact apparently continues as they've recently completed a similar tour of Norway, the neighbouring land across the water, which I'm pretty sure I'll take in soon enough.

I'm a sucker for the space-monster movies which landed in Hollywood in the early 50's and this one, helmed by specialist director Jack Arnold with a story devised by renowned sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, doesn't disappoint. The sub-genre was born out of two contemporary furores in America, one the reporting in the media of flying saucers and men from Mars and the other, more indirectly, the Red Scare which descended on Hollywood itself as Joe McCarthy and the HUAC grabbed the headlines with ever-more sensational claims of Communist infiltration into the entertainment industry.

This movie, sure enough, begins in time-honoured fashion with a UFO falling to earth out in the desert, close to the town of Sand Rock. First on the scene are the local astronomer Richard Carlson and his girlfriend Barbara Rush. A true believer, he gets up close to the craft but after it's submerged by a landfall, struggles to convince the local authorities that this may indeed be a close encounter of the third kind and that it doesn't deserve to be blown to kingdom come.

In due course, alien creatures do emerge where we learn that they have the ability to shape-shift as they assume the form of innocent individuals who get in their way, although it's conveniently easy to spot the possessed humans from their resultant robotic movements and speech. It turns out that the newcomers from the stars don't actually mean us any harm, they only want to repair their ship and get back home, but can they do so before the baying mob of fearful and ignorant townfolk get to them first or will Carlson's pleas for tolerance and goodwill save the day for them?

I really enjoyed this rollicking adventure. The B-list cast play it for all it's worth with plenty of tension and excitement along the way. The special effects are fine especially showing the spaceship's initial crash-landing, even if the depiction of the aliens themselves as something resembling a big, soft TV screen, which of course may also have been deliberately symbolic of the times, was more amusing than amazing.

With a soundtrack featuring an early use of the theremin which soon become the trademark sound of anything other-worldly and some mildly risible attempts at 3D effects, the whole film is a real hoot, ending on a memorable closing line just for good measure.

My wife and I recently visited the Schindler Museum and Jewish Quarter while on a visit to Krakow with both of us having an abiding interest in the Holocaust. This heart-warming movie is about the man dubbed the "British Schindler" with Anthony Hopkins playing the title role as a young London stockbroker who, when he learns that the then British government of Neville Chamberlain, in seeking to appease Hitler, has waived through his plans to reclaim for Germany the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. Knowing full well the implications of this, in particular for the Jewish population, the young Winton, played by Johnny Flynn, takes leave of absence from his job to aid the refugee effort on the ground by traveling to Prague. He's immediately struck by the obvious plight of the many young children there and comes up with a plan to take them out of the inevitable harm's way to resettle as many of them as possible in Britain, putting them with willing temporary foster-parents on a hopefully temporary basis until they can be repatriated again.

To do this he's helped immeasurably on the ground by existing relief workers Toby Chadwick and Diane Warriner played by Alex Sharp and Romola Garai and at home by his formidable mother Babette, played by Helena Bonham-Carter who does her considerable thing in spreading the word and convincing Government officials to obtain the visas and permits to allow the children to travel. Of course, when Hitler later invades Poland and triggers World War 2, the Nazis toughen up their attitude to the Jews in particular with obvious implications for the escaping children and the brave individuals helping them in this.

This remarkable story didn't fully come to light until the late 80's when the now retired Mr. Winton, seeking to find a home for the memorabilia he's hoarded on the project ever since, puts his scrapbook in the hands of the wife of the now-disgraced millionaire press-baron Robert Maxwell which snowballs into an emotional appearance by Winton on the popular BBC consumer affairs TV programme "That's Life" presented by Esther Rantzen, in a moment which will likely recall that at the end of "Schindler's List".

Mr Winton, a naturally modest man who never publicised the story, is played with gravitas by Sir Anthony Hopkins. He is well supported in particular by Flynn as his determinedly idealistic younger self, Bonham-Carter as his mother who likewise takes no prisoners in bending senior civil servants to her will and Garai as Warriner, a real tough-cookie, pragmatic foot-soldier operating in the actual danger zone.

The movie, as it makes clear in a note over the end-titles, of course has universal relevance considering the various humanitarian crises displacing millions in different parts of the world today. Whilst it may lack the emotional heft of Spielberg's masterpiece, it nevertheless unfussily and persuasively relates a story we're all the better for knowing about.

I've been binging recently on the Desi Arnez / Lucille Ball story. I'm currently listening to an excellent TCM podcast on their lives and careers , Season 3 of "The Plot Thickens" if you want to look it up and have also just watched Amy Poehler's archival documentary "Lucy and Desi" so I guess it was inevitable that I would end up at Aaron Sorkin's movie which intertwines a key week for the couple at the height of their fame with a potted history of their time together and experiences in Hollywood.

It's 1952, they're at the height of their fame but Lucy and Desi are confronted with and have to face up to not one but three crucial events in their lives. Firstly, Lucy's fury at the widely-read "Confidential" magazine's front-page exposé of Desi's philandering lifestyle, then a potentially even more damaging revelation by coast-to-coast broadcaster Walter Winchell of Lucille's past sympathy with the Communist Party, this when the Red Scare in Hollywood was also peaking and finally the news that Lucy herself was pregnant again and the ramifications of this for their runaway success TV show "I Love Lucy".

My foreknowledge of events probably helped me to follow the action and I was thus able to recognise the sequence of events depicted even as I recognised in places the dramatic licence inevitably taken in some cases by Sorkin. Probably the most unusual plot-point he employs in the film is Lucy's insistence on effectively rewriting the next episode of the show, which while done to no doubt demonstrate Ball's intelligence and insight into how comedy works is also used to highlight her deflection of all the combined trauma of these potentially career-threatening incidents.

Try as I could, I just wasn't convinced by Nicole Kidman as Lucy. For me, she doesn't nail Ball's distinctive appearance or voice. Javier Bardem's Desi I felt was a better fit, his swarthy good looks and natural Latin-tinged accent worked better in his portrayal of Desi. J. K. Simmon's part as "I Love Lucy" co-star William Frawley on the other hand to be afforded over-prominence to me, do much so that it almost like a directorial sop to the actor himself. I also felt the recreated modern-day anecdotal interviews of the actual show's producer and writer to be distracting rather than helpful.

Sorkin's direction is stylish if prosaic at times as he carefully overlays his interlinked narratives. I also felt his dialogue sometimes came over as often unrealistic and stylised, with almost every line uttered by his characters straining for pith, wit and of course humour. I personally doubt that comedians and script-writers are always so erudite, a bit more mundanity would have made the characterisations more credible I felt.

I've been binging recently on the Desi Arnez / Lucille Ball story. I'm currently listening to an excellent TCM podcast on their lives and careers , Season 3 of "The Plot Thickens" if you want to look it up and have also just watched Amy Poehler's archival documentary "Lucy and Desi" so I guess it was inevitable that I would end up at Aaron Sorkin's movie which intertwines a key week for the couple at the height of their fame with a potted history of their time together and experiences in Hollywood.

It's 1952 and they're at the height of their fame but Lucy and Desi are confronted with and have to face up to not one but three crucial events in their lives. Firstly, Lucy's fury at the widely-read "Confidential" magazine's front-page exposé of Desi's philandering lifestyle, then a potentially even more damaging revelation by coast-to-coast broadcaster Walter Winchell of Lucille's past sympathy with the Communist Party, this when the Red Scare in Hollywood was also peaking and finally the news that Lucy herself was pregnant again and the ramifications of this for their runaway success TV show "I Love Lucy".

My foreknowledge of events probably helped me to follow the action and I was thus able to recognise the sequence of events depicted even as I recognised in places the dramatic licence inevitably taken in some cases by Sorkin. Probably the most unusual plot-point he employs in the film is Lucy's insistence on effectively rewriting the next episode of the show, which while done to no doubt demonstrate Ball's intelligence and insight into how comedy works is also used to highlight her deflection of all the combined trauma of these potentially career-threatening incidents.

Try as I could, I just wasn't convinced by Nicole Kidman as Lucy. For me, she doesn't nail Ball's distinctive appearance or voice. Javier Bardem's Desi I felt was a better fit, his swarthy good looks and natural Latin-tinged accent worked better in his portrayal of Desi. J. K. Simmon's part as "I Love Lucy" co-star William Frawley on the other hand to be afforded over-prominence to me, do much so that it almost like a directorial sop to the actor himself. I also felt the recreated modern-day anecdotal interviews of the actual show's producer and writer to be distracting rather than helpful.

Sorkin's direction is stylish if prosaic at times as he carefully overlays his interlinked narratives. I also felt his dialogue sometimes came over as often unrealistic and stylised, with almost every line uttered by his characters straining for pith, wit and of course humour. I personally doubt that comedians and script-writers are always so erudite, a bit more mundanity would have made the characterisations more credible I felt.

Nevertheless, he brings all his elements to a suitably dramatic conclusion ending on a final shot which somehow reminded of one used by Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane's" opera scene. Interesting to watch as it was, in the end however, I'd have to conclude by saying that I liked rather than loved this portrayal of Lucy.

Nevertheless, he brings all his elements to a suitably dramatic conclusion ending on a final shot which somehow reminded of one used by Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane's" opera scene. Interesting to watch as it was, in the end however, I'd have to conclude by saying that I liked rather than loved this portrayal of Lucy.

I came to this movie after watching the excellent 2016 "De Palma" documentary, even if it was only allocated some five minutes discussion time and more pertinently, the recommended podcast "The Plot Thickens" series two, devoted to "The Devil's Candy", journalist Julie Salomon's best-selling account of how this big-budget blockbuster tanked so badly at the box-office.

Based on Tom Wolff's best-selling novel, which I've not read, reportedly a scabrous takedown of the shakers and movers in the overheated New York money-markets, what I saw instead was a rather crude farce filled with rather detestable people in mostly un-comedic situations with a tagged-on morality-stoking ending.

Like the scenes where Melanie Griffith's character's ancient, cuckolded husband literally talks himself to death in a swanky restaurant or when an old flame of Bruce Willis's gonzo-journalist wants to pass to him a piece of hot gossip but feels the need to do so by first photocopying her bare behind in front of him. What's the saying, laugh i nearly cried or died, either works in this case.

Tom Hanks plays the hot-shot bond-trader who's day goes from bad to worse when after he accidentally reveals to his wife that he has a mistress, then ends up in the Bronx in the wee small hours where, to escape a car-jacking by two young black youths, Griffith drives his car over one of their attackers, who later dies from his injuries.

The point is made, forcibly, that money is the root of all evil as everyone and his mom, piles into this bottom-of-page-5 story to magnify it for their own gain, most notably Willis's washed-up journalist, but also the local black religious leader, the conveniently up-for-re-election D. A. and yes, even the dead boy's mother. The narrative slithers along until Morgan Freeman's almighty judge gets to tie everything up in a big bow with his "let's all be nice" grandstanding speech at the end which, given all that's gone before feels like an almost Capra-esque attempt to right all the previous wrongs and send movie-goers home in a better mood but it's akin to taking a swig of mouthwash after gorging on a triple-hamburger, you're never going to get rid of that nasty aftertaste so easily.

It wouldn't be a De Palma movie without some cool visuals and camera set-ups but really the movie is all glitz and no grit, all harsh and no heart and ultimately all smoke and no fire.

Tellingly, this documentary on the career in pictures of Brian De Palma began with an excerpt from Hitchcock's "Vertigo". Hitch is my favourite director, especially due to his visual mastery and as De Palma says himself near the end, he appears to be the only subsequent director to continue the dark practices of the Master.

He hasn't directed a feature since this filmed interview took place in 2015, which gives the piece an almost valedictory feel to it. Of course, he came through in the early mid-70's with his New Hollywood contemporaries and often good friends Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola and even if his films rarely achieved either the box-office, critical acclaim or Academy recognition that theirs did, I know whose name I'd prefer to see behind a film by any of them.

The idea here is simple and effective. Sit the subject down and encourage him to talk about all the movies he's made from start to finish. Back his conversation up with judiciously selected clips from his own movies and also those which inspired him and for a cine-buff like me, it's like the perfect "An Audience with..." only you're the whole audience. So, no irritating interviewer going off at tangents, no talking-head analysis by "experts" or even wheeled-out anecdotes from past collaborators, just De Palma talking about his movies, what a simple concept.

Funnily enough, the pared-back format reminds me most of the famous Hitchcock - Truffaut interview filmed in the 60's. With loads of insights into his craft, candid opinions on other actors and directors, all delivered in a manner-of-fact style, he owns up to enjoying filming women, often in a state of undress, even as he accepts that he often treated them terribly in his films.

I've seen a lot of his movies but was reminded here of a few that I haven't which came as a bonus to me and which you can bet I will go some way towards rectifying in the near future.

As for the makers of this film, wouldn't it be good if they could get the likes of Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese et. Al to talk us through their own back pages the way De Palma did so entertainingly here.

As I watched "Dune Part One", I found myself wondering if there were any other people out there like me who were completely unaware of the whole Duniverse. I'd never read the Frank Herbert novel nor had I seen the David Lynch movie adaptation in 1982. So, if that was you too, you have my sympathy, especially the way we were thrown into it without any kind of background story or explanation as to how we got here. Even "Star Wars" had its "Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." prologue. I felt like I was playing catch-up from about ten laps back.

I can't honestly say I did catch up with it but I will say I hung on in there as best I could. This isn't one of your flashy, all-out action-based sci-fi blockbusters, it's much more "Lord of the Rings" than "Harry Potter" in that respect, although it too is centred around a young protagonist.

Timotheè Chalomet it is who plays Paul, the son of the ruling Duke, devoted to, but still independent of his father and with a slightly testy relationship with his mother. He seems to have hidden powers including that of precognition through his dreams and is suspected of being a long-awaited Messiah-type figure. Their race of the Atreides has been allocated by the almighty Emperor Shaddam the planet of Arrakis to colonise and hopefully prosper from the manufacture of its highly valuable Spice artefact. However, this won't be easy, for one thing, the naturally unhappy dispossessed former occupants the Fremen have left the place in a parlous, run-down state and secondly, there's danger in the desert, not least from the enormous worms which rise up from beneath the sands to wreak havoc on the interlopers. Worse than that, the planet is coveted by the hulking race of the Harkonnens, setting the scene for treachery, murder and war, with David and his mother the Lady Jessica at the centre of the action. And just who is the young woman who appears in his dreams and wants to lead them on a further journey.

I must admit when the dream-girl Zendaya manifests into reality right at the end and says "This is only the beginning...", my heart sank. Not that I wasn't impressed by the set design with its evocation of the desert, the monumental buidings, the thrilling flying machines which it seems can land on a sixpence and especially the terrifyingly massive worms but as I struggled at times even to decipher what was being said never mind what was actually going on, I think this is one big-budget franchise I'll leave to the avids.

An empty, meaningless title for what I found to be an empty meaningless movie - and this is only part one?!

I grew up watching as a boy the original TV series but have long ago accepted that this cinematic "Cruise-controlled" version bears almost no relation to what was originally a tightly-scripted, plot-led and character-driven show. Yes, there are still nods to the source with the use of the theme music, dizzying pre-highlights reel and the masks, my God the masks, but these are perfunctory and what we have now is a pumped-up beyond all recognition stunt-fest staged in exotic locations - this time around say hello to Rome, Venice and the Orient Express.

Here, Ethan and his team are racing around daft trying to track down a new invention called "The Entity" which naturally guarantees world domination to its eventual owner. Cue much mayhem as one unlikely action set-piece is piled onto another, including the obligatory crazy motorbike / car-chase, this time around Rome, a frantic on-foot pursuit through the side-streets of Venice and culminating in mayhem on the Orient Express, with Cruise literally crash-landing to the rescue before the celebrated train goes literally off the rails and down in instalments at the supposed cliff-hanging ending.

For me, it was all way too much and just came across as a massive ego-trip for Cruise determined to prove he can still run like the wind (and yes, he gets to run a lot as ever) and personally carry out every other out-there stunt imaginable. In the end, I felt jaded rather than exhilarated by a movie which just didn't know when to stop. The next impossible mission it seems to me, should he decide to accept it, will be when Tom, like the MCU and DCU, has to face up to the realisation that times have changed and that audiences are now fatigued by over-the-top action features like this.

More really is less in this case.

So this is obviously where the phrase comes from. The thing is though that you have to wait until the last minute to hear it and to get there you have to wade through a strange, awkward movie which seeks to combine a detective thriller with sci-fi.

Charlton Heston is yet again the out-of-time main character as he plays a police detective Thorn who lives in near-penury with his old chum, forensic investigator Sol, played by Edward G Robinson, in what sadly proved to be his final movie role. It's 2022, the population has clearly boomed with New York now containing 40 million inhabitants and it and everywhere else is in an ecological crisis with abnormally high temperatures and good and water shortages. I almost expected appear to tuck Chaplin-style into a pair of old boots at one point.

Thorn is assigned a murder case of a prominent individual named Simonson played by Joseph Cotten, which is linked to the production of the mass-made artificial food known as Soylent with its new flavour Soylent Green having recently been launched on the public. Cotten lives in relative luxury with a young live-in mistress / concubine, Leigh Taylor-Young's Shirl, it seems that all the best apartments have one. These women are quite literally part of the furniture. Also on the scene is Chuck Connors Fielding bodyguard, who Thorn suspects as the inside man on the job.

Anyway his and Sol's investigation leads them literally up the food chain to a revolting truth which is only revealed at the enigmatic conclusion of what was for me, a rather weird abd confusing viewing experience. There are some interesting predictions in the narrative which are now having their day, such as global warming and assisted suicide, but the idea of women being relegated to a property add-on fit only one purpose is certainly a distasteful one, especially considering that women's liberation was picking up speed at the time the film was made.

I found the direction to be a little stilted throughout and would have welcomed a little more exposition at times. Heston, Robinson and Cotten do their best with this unusual material but in the end I just found the film to be literally too distasteful for my palate.

Just a wee bit of exaggeration in the title to this documentary, methinks. The night in question related to the date in early 1985 when effectively the American version of "Live Aid" was recorded, at a studio in L. A. featuring some of the best known popular music acts past and present Stateside.

Presented by the main driving source behind the enterprise, Lionel Richie, this was a sometimes sentimental, sometimes hyperbolic and if I'm being honest, often quite boring reminiscence of how the hit song "We are the World" came to be recorded. Bruce Springsteen, one of the major participants, makes the retrospective point, diplomatically you feel, that while the song itself might not be to everyone's taste, including his own you suspect, at least it did a lot of good with the substantial funds it raised to help feed the hungry in Africa.

As documentaries go, there's really not much to see here. Richie talks about writing the song with Michael Jackson, interestingly after Stevie Wonder was given first refusal and then corralling one of the top musical agents of the day, a guy called Ken Kragen to bring on board other big-name acts, including Quincy Jones as producer, to make it effectively an all-star affair.

Only of course it wasn't quite an all-star affair with no Madonna or Prince, two of the biggest stars of the day, despite the latter being invited. Still, they managed to enlist some genuine legends like Harry Belafonte, Ray Charles and Smokey Robinson who are put together alongside the young Turks of the day like Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Loggins and Huey Lewis, none of him, I think it's fair to say, will ever be called legends.

Amongst those lined up to look back today were Richie, Springsteen, who must be catching up with Rick Wakeman in the number of rockumentaries in which he's appeared, plus the afore-mentioned Lauper, Loggins and Lewis, as well as a bunch of technical guys who helped out on the session itself.

I'm not struck on the song personally although I likewise didn't care for "Do They Know It's Christmas" either, which reminds me that Bob Geldof makes a "no show without Punch" appearance very much as you would expect. Other moments of minor amusement occurred when Stevie Wonder tried to insert a line in Swahili, causing an obviously befuddled Waylon Jennings to promptly walk out - you just see his stetson disappearing into the foreground - Cyndi Lauper wearing about a million necklaces around her neck unaware they're causing sound interference every time she moves her head and best of all a completely out of place Bob Dylan who after Quincy tells them all not to sing if the key is too high, keeps his mouth firmly shut while all around him are emoting for Africa.

Like I said it was all for a good cause and maybe I'm being too critical but watching this bloated music video certainly wasn't the greatest night of my life.

Probably like most people outside of France, l knew and indeed still know little or nothing about the phenomenal long-term career enjoyed there by the singer Johnny Hallyday. I figured him as possibly a French equivalent to Britain's Cliff Richard, in other words a singer who started out as an Elvis copyist, but who somehow managed to maintain a successful, high-profile career almost sixty years later. But whereas Richard quickly converted himself to a bible-bashing, asexual family entertainer, Hallyday, at least from the evidence of this five-part Netflix series, went down a very different road. He did the whole sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle, attempting suicide at one point, getting through five, often much younger wives as well as a host of other short-term affairs plus generally going mad for the drink as well as the drugs along the way.

He achieved remarkable longevity in his career by carefully selecting songwriting collaborators to reflect changing musical tastes but most of all, seemed latterly to revel in imagining the sort of larger-than-life live-show extravaganzas more associated with the likes of the Rolling Stones or David Bowie at their most megalomaniacal. His fan-base is remarkably loyal, manifested when twenty-two p!ane loads of them flew over to see him in 1996 perform a self-aggrandising one-off gig in Vegas, in so doing of course, emulating his hero Elvis. When he died in 2017, he was awarded a state funeral and the procession along and beyond the Champs Elysses was estimated at over one million.

And yet, even though he was almost unknown outside his home country, I can't think of anyone else in entertainment who seemed to impact so much with his public than Halyday. I wasn't really able to form an opinion on his music which sounded rather derivative no matter the musical era, but he was undoubtedly a strong vocalist, an energetic and charismatic live performer and as the phrase goes, a helluva guy too.

I'm not likely to acquaint myself with any of this music but I really enjoyed this high-octane, warts and all documentary on his wild life and times.

Vive Johnny!

I rather enjoyed the first Aquaman movie, which I understand was a commercial success, but like some other big budget blockbusters in the last year or so, I see that this sequel failed at the box office.

I think this film demonstrates pretty well why hero-fatigue appears to have set in with the public. It was obviously expensively made with practically every shot containing some kind of special visual feature and like before, I was impressed by the depiction of the deep blue sea and its myriad inhabitants. However I felt there were less of those type of shots this time, with a much greater concentration on action sequences and really once you've seen one crash-bang-wallop set-piece you've pretty much seen them all.

In this one, Aquaman faces off against Black Manta, still carrying a grudge against the superhero for killing his dad last time out. The baddie then finds an enchanted trident which can unlock a phantom king of the past and thousands of his troops as exiled by the Sea King's father years before. To combat this imminent twin threat, Aquaman has to team up with his truculent younger brother Orm to save the seas and also seek to peacefully co-exist in the future with we land-lubbers above.

Like its predecessor, the movie is played less than seriously with much attempted humour centring on the Sea King struggling to change his infant son's nappy and his initially testy partnership with his reluctant sibling, so much so, that after some time it seems as if he's trying to win the day by punning his opponents to death.

While the camera set-ups often did look impressive, I didn't feel I saw anything in them I hadn't seen before last time out. Jason Momoa, for a big guy, I have to say, demonstrates considerable agility in the title part.

Otherwise I have to report that the film rather washed over me like the sea on the sand, leaving no discernible traces afterwards.

I thought it was interesting that there was no teaser trailer for a further sequel over the end titles which makes me wonder just how well the previews went. I personally think that expensive spectacles like this are on the way out and wonder how Hollywood will move on from here. It just seems like I'm watching the same comic-based movie every time, whether it be about a DC or Marvel character

Now there is a task for a budding superhero or two...

This was an interesting idea for a music documentary. Rather than the usual focus on a name act, the director invites us instead to look twenty feet or so behind the main attraction to witness the good work done by the backing singers, although it's something I like to think I always did anyway.

Focusing primarily, if not quite exclusively on black female singers, underlining that point with a snippet at the start from Lou Reed's classic "Walk on the Wild Side" and its famous " ...and the coloured (sic.) girls sing 'Doo Doo Doo...." line, it engages in an exercise of "Whatiffery" as we're introduced to a series of undoubtedly talented backing singers who both never made it as headline acts or garnered the appreciation they were due.

The queen of the scene appears to be the great Darlene Love, who with her two girlfriends comprised the Blossoms, much used by Phil Spector, more than once recording the actual lead vocal on hits like "He's a Rebel" (a U. S. no. 1) and ,"He's a Fine, Fine Boy" and yet seeing the label credit and no doubt artist royalties go to the Crystals. In fairness, mad Phil did give her a few solo-credits back in the mid-60's, most notably on the classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" but she did at least have another go at the limelight in the 70's although regrettably not with any appreciable success. She was at last more recently recognised in her own right by gaining admission to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if indeed that is an accolade, although it certainly seemed to mean a lot to her personally.

Some backing singers do push through to become successful solo artists, most noticeably the likes of Sheryl Crow and Luther Vandross, but they're obviously few and far between the defining factor here probably being that they also had the talent to write songs. I'd heard of some of the contributors here, like Lynn Mabry from having recently watched the Talking Heads feature "Stop Making Sense" and Merry Clayton for her other-worldly vocalising on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter", but meny others I have to say I didn't recognise such as Judith Hill, the Waters family of a brother and two sisters, Tata Vega and more.

They all undoubtedly have fabulous voices but the question remains as to why they failed to emerge from the background. Some of them appear to regret missing their chance of a life in the sun, while others are more sanguine about it, including one lady who's moved on with her life and now works as a Spanish language teacher.

Despite being talked up on-screen by some starry employers like Bruce Springsteen, Sting Mick Jagger and Stevie Wonder, I found it impossible to watch this documentary and not feel a little sad for them all even if one or two came across as a little bitter and self-pitying. A number of them did get to record solo albums and different excuses are laid out for their not breaking through, usually involving poor management or record label problems but sometimes it's just the breaks.

The documentary occasionally went unnecessarily off-subject into the subject of black politics, but on the whole made a compelling "What price fame" argument with one of their number saying that if she had indeed enjoyed solo super-stardom, she would likely have overdosed years ago.

Probably the biggest sadness is that like their fellow studio musicians, they would only have received session fees for their sometimes memorable input to a track (surely Merry deserved a co-credit for "Gimme Shelter"). But, in the end, harsh as it may sound, to paraphrase Sly Stone, not everybody is, or can be, a star.

Intrigued by its clever title and interested in the subject matter, I watched this documentary on the life and career of Rock Hudson with some anticipation. At the end, while I certainly knew more about the man than I did at the start, it seemed to me that the producers were far more interested in examining Hudson's legacy in relation to the LGBTQ+ movement than his artistic legacy as a popular actor on film and television for over thirty years.

Using as one of its principal devices the extraction of clips of Hudson in his movie roles in not the narrative here as if they were supposedly commenting on his own life, which must have taken hours of research, it has to be said that he did have to utter a lot of ambiguous statements which could have been interpreted as relating to his gay lifestyle, so much so that it made you wonder how many people in Hollywood were in on the secret. What's made clear is why he had to do so with the homophobia evident in an early 50's America, already whipped up to a frenzy by the House of Unnamerican Activities' Communist witch-hunt that it seemed to be as terrified of what they slightingly termed "pinkoes" as well as reds in the bed. Some of the things printed in the down-market magazines don't just border on hate-speech, they comprise a full-blown invasion.

With historic audio and occasionally video interviews with the main players in Hudson's life both inside and outside Hollywood, the wonder is that his secret was kept in the background for so long, right up until the headline-grabbing revelation that he'd contracted AIDS just before his death. As the first major celebrity afflicted by the terrible disease, the film then considers the impact of his going public with the news and in so doing "outing" himself as a gay man after years of playing the strong, masculine and what were presumed to be 100% heterosexual lead roles. There's the inevitable discussion as to whether he could or should have come out earlier but you only have to witness the trail of careers destroyed by doing so before to understand why he felt the need to cover his traces, even to the extent of going through with a sham marriage just before he turned thirty to pacify the gossip-mongers.

All this of course is fascinating in its way but for me, I found it imbalanced the film and would have appreciated if more consideration had been afforded to his acting ability and career in general. Yes, mention is made of the superb Douglas Sirk-directed films he graced in the 50's and also the remarkable John Frankenheimer movie "Accidents" which he made in 1966, but clearly the film-makers here had their own agenda in lining up a succession of his former boyfriends to relate their experiences with Hudson and even airing a privately taped telephone conversation with him actively procuring an obviously upcoming sexual encounter with a suitably qualified young male.

It's no surprise to learn that on-set Hudson garnered more sympathy and understanding from women than men, as witness the support received from the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day and Linda Gray. Much is made of him kissing the latter in an episode of "Dynasty" when he almost certainly knew he was carrying the AIDS infection, when he was at pains to do so closed-mouth. There probably wasn't time and it's unlikely in any case that Hudson felt the need to go completely public with a reveal-all interview, even as he surely knew he was dying. Could be have done more for the acceptance of homosexuality in society by so doing is the question this film wants to agonise over.

While I get the contemporary relevance of this, I personally prefer not to sit in judgement of the choices the man made in what must have been a difficult life and instead focus on the too-often underrated performances he gave in his long and distinguished career.

I'm not quite old enough to remember watching "I Love Lucy" or any of Lucille Ball's subsequent TV series but I am aware of how successful they were and how important a figure she was, especially as a trailblazing woman in the history of American television. Before that, she was a jobbing actress in Hollywood and as she honestly admits here, knew she was no beauty and basically took any part that was on offer. However, timing of course is everything and she was perfectly placed to play the goofy housewife for the new medium of television in early 50's America, which probably took her to their hearts and made the "I Love Lucy" sit-com the most popular programme in the medium.

Right there with her was her equally ambitious husband Desi Arnaz, a handsome young Cuban actor - musician she'd met in Hollywood. Finally able to spend some family time together, they made a busman's holiday out of the TV assignment to make "I Love Lucy", finally having a family-life together off screen and of course making a huge success of their fictional family life on screen.

This documentary on both their lives was directed by Amy Poehler, a successful female writer - comedienne from a different era. It has to be said it has something of the look and feel of an "authorised biography", as witness the substantial contribution to the narrative by their surviving daughter, who probably sees her job as protector of their joint legacy. More revealing are the spoken inserts from a stack of recorded audio tapes left behind by Lucille herself, which are appreciably more candid and less apocryphal, one suspects.

A big part of the story of course is how the couple came to be major power-brokers In the television world with the formation of their Desilu Production company which made a host of other iconic shows in the 60's, including two of the most long-lasting franchises still continuing to this day in "Star Trek" and "Mission: Impossible". It was Desi who took the presidential role in the company, a role he to which he in particular adapted with seeming ease, with Lucy as his vice-president.

Even though the marriage, broke up with both going on to other longer-lasting marriages with new partners, they continued as business partners and indeed stayed friends for the rest of their lives.

Filled throughout with contributions by the likes of Carole Burnett and Bette Midler, not to mention from the relatives of various contemporary contributors to the shows and dozens of clips from all of their joint film and TV ventures, you do get to see just how talented Ball was in particular. With her expressive face and penchant for physical comedy, it's easy to see why the nation loved her so much and for so long. I personally felt that more could have been said about her pioneering work in laying a future path for the likes of Mary Tyler-Moore, Roseanne Barr and of course Poehler herself, but that apart, this was still a very enjoyable if ultimately one suspects comfortable trip through the lives of one of the original Hollywood power-duos, way before that was even a thing.