Mar 27th  
Oh, Mr. Porter!***    
(GB 1937)                     

A seedy eccentric takes charge at a run-down railway station on the Irish border where the haunted line is being used as a front by gunrunners.
Vintage Hay vehicle, on of his best for integrating with his supporting players in a sleepy railway setting (with borrowings of The Ghost Train.) A beautifully paced comedy, with barely a trace of wastage, and a speedy climax even if back projection work dominates.

Written by: J.O.C. Orton, Marriott Edgar, Val Guest, from a story by Frank Launder.
Producer: Edward Black.
Director: Marcel Varnel.
Starring: Will Hay, Moore Marriott, Graham Moffatt, Dave O'Toole, Dennis Wyndham, Percy Walsh, Sebastian Smith, Agnes Lauchlan, Frederick Piper.
Photography: Arthur Crabtree.
Musical Direction: Louis Levy.

100 Favourite Films: Oh Mr Porter!

Preceded by:
What Have They Done to Our Town?*
(GB 1978. 9m.; Initially ponderous but later haunting and extensively filmed record of Colchester in transition during the 70s.; d, narr: Bernard Polley.)

Mar 20th  
The Games*       
(GB 1969)                             

Rival international athletes push themselves too far in training for the Rome Olympic Marathon.
The climactic race is made to seem more like a sprint than a marathon (with a compelling finale), in what is a self-consciously fast paced sports drama done with abrasive 60s style. Chariots of Fire covered similar material in less cynical fashion.

Written by: Erich Segal, from the novel by Hugh Atkinson.
Producer: Lester Linsk.
Director: Michael Winner.
Starring: Michael Crawford, Stanley Baker, Ryan O'Neal, Charles Aznavour, Athol Compton, Jeremy Kemp, Sam Elliott, Elaine Taylor, Stephanie Beacham, Ron Pickering, Rafe Johnson.
Photography: Robert Paynter.
Music: Francis Lai.

Mar 17th  
(Firstsite, Colchester)  
All is True** (12A)               
(GB 2018)                 

The historically speculative later years of William Shakespeare (after the Globe Theatre fire during his production of King Henry VIII), beautifully acted and photographed, with Branagh in experimental European mood, with his scriptwriter taking a change of pace but still not without some of his trademark excesses.

Written by: Ben Elton.
Producers: Tamar Thomas, Ted Gagliano, Kenneth Branagh.
Director: Kenneth Branagh.
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Kathryn Wilder, Lydia Wilson, Sam Ellis,
Photography: Zac Nicholson.
Music: Patrick Doyle.
Production design: James Merifield.

Mar 11th  
Midnight in Paris**   
(US/Spa/Fra 2011)                                   

A California scriptwriter on vacation in Paris drifts away from his fiancee as he intermingles with figures from the city's literary past.
Woody on his European travels; a gentle Twilight Zone nostalgia comedy with a few familiar Allen stereotypes, and Paris evoked in picture postcard fashion, much like it was for Everyone Says I Love You.

Written and Directed by: Woody Allen.
Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Jaume Roures.
Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates (as Gertrude Stein), Tom Hiddleston (as F. Scott Fitzgerald), Corey Stoll (as Hemingway), Adrien Brody (as Salvador Dali), Lea Seydoux, Carla Bruni.
Photography: Darius Khondji.
Music: Stephane Wrembel, and others.

Where's the cinema gone?

I was very disheartened to read recently from friends

that they had stopped going to the cinema, due to anti-social behaviour by fellow patrons as well as the general high prices.

Economics and antisocial behaviour aside, it is a general reflection on a medium that still has the ability  to thrill and entertain (and inform). but in a progressively smaller environment. What seems especially depressing is that these same people are the audience to whom modern cinema had recently targeted.  This blogpage has charted in previous years how the fantasy blockbuster has gradually taken over movie production, and cerebral or "quality" films  at the top production level are now extremely selective. Films like Gone with the Wind or Gandhi are practically impossible to mount - except perhaps, on television, now that that medium had upped its game, and has in effect colonized many of the quality subjects that would otherwise have been perfect for film.

The so-called "franchise" films meanwhile have their brief run in all the multiplexes, squashing out variety for those 2-3 weeks. then transfer to DVD (or downloads) within a couple of months, before the next blockbuster comes along like the next scheduled service in the timetable. The fact that many of these films don't seem to be stand-alone stories with a traditional beginning, a middle and an end seems lost on most followers - whom, as already mentioned, have stopped going to the cinema in the first place anyway.

So as movies gradually dissolve to the level of a TV video game, the theatrical experience of sitting in a major venue in front of a big screen now becomes a more select activity (significantly, many cinemas now show live theatre or concerts in cinemas as much as movies), with many former mass seater venues now turned into glorified living rooms. The regular cinemagoers, if there are any left, are usually either in the teens or the seniors; the latter offers some hope, as in time those same teenagers will become seniors themselves to appreciate the sort of movies they liked to see when they were younger. If, God willing, there is still a cinema to go to. We watch, and wait.

Mar 7th  
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City**  
(US 2016)

Documentary about the remarkable writer and activist Jane Jacobs who campaigned against the brutalism of modern urban planning in post-WWII US cities, in particular against the well-meaning but morally flawed Robert Moses.
A little short on biographical details about its two main figures, and in between the usual expert interviews, the film evolves into a series of images of giant tower blocks for a good deal of the time, with one striking montage of these monoliths being dynamited years later, and consistently interesting as a subject.

Director: Matt Tyrnauer.
featuring voices of Marisa Tomei, Vincent D'Onofrio.
Photography: Chris Dapkins, Nick Morris, Nick Higgins.
Music: Jane Antonia Cornish.
Editing: Daniel Morfesis.