Sep 26th  
Key Largo***   
(US 1948)
Warner Bros. 101m. bw

A soldier returns to a Florida hotel that was home to his friend killed in action, but soon finds the place held under siege by a notorious gangster.
Explosive melodrama with exceptional talents in not quite exceptional form, working as best they can with slightly cliched and one-dimensional material. The last of Robinson's dynamic tough guys.

Written by: Richard Brooks, John Huston, based on the play by Maxwell Anderson.
Producer: Jerry Wald.
Director: John Huston.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor, Thomas Gomez, Marc Lawrence.
Photography: Karl Freund.
Music: Max Steiner.

KEY LARGO. After years of playing second fiddle to Edward G. Robinson (and James Cagney), Humphrey Bogart was more in the ascendancy in the post-war years with Lauren Bacall (and director John Huston), although Warners didn't give up some of their old traits: Robinson's name is slightly higher than Bogart's in the poster billing

Sep 21st   
Le Mepris*  
(Contempt)                        
(Fra/Ita 1963)   
Rome Paris films/Les Films Concordia. 103m. Franscope

A writer falls in and out of love with his wife after he agrees to help adapt a film of The Odyssey.
The parallel between the plot and that of Homer is rather vague, and generally forsaken for filming of the curvaceous Brigitte Bardot, in what is probably a deliberate satire by Godard, but also a rather laboured one at that. 

Written and Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard, from the novel by Alberto Moravia.
Producers: Georges de Beauregard, Carlo Ponti. Joseph E. Levine.
Starring: Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, Fritz Lang, Jean-Luc Godard, Raoul Coutard.
Photography: Raoul Coutard.
Music: Georges Delerue.

Sep 20th   
The Spy Who Dumped Me      
(US 2018)   
Lionsgate/Imagine/Hercules Bron Creative Partnership. 117m ws

Two young woman are embroiled in a spy adventure across Europe after one of them is seemingly jilted by a man who is undercover as a CIA agent.
Disappointingly witless action comedy (in a similar vein to Thelma and Louise, Beautiful Creatures, High Heels and Low Lifes, and others), with trendy language and editing barely giving any chance for characterisation.



w: Susanna Fogel, David Iserson
p: Brian Grazer, Erica Huggins
d: Susanna Fogel
s: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Justin Theroux, Sam Houghan, Hasan Minhaj, Gillian Anderson, Jane Curtin, James Fleet, Ivanna Sakhno
ph: Barry Peterson
m: Tyler Bates
ed: Jonathan Schwartz

Sep 14th
The Ship That Died of Shame*
(GB 1955)
Rank/Ealing. 95m. bw

A WWII gunboat captain returns to the vessel again after the war to use it for smuggling, but the goods become increasingly unsavoury.
Downbeat and not particularly likeable Ealing variation on The Cruel Sea, but quite stylishly moody in atmosphere, and a welcome antidote to the usual spate of stiff upper lip films of this type.

Written by: Basil Dearden, Michael Relph, Joan Whiting, based on the novel by Nicholas Monsorrat.
Producers: Basil Dearden, Michael Relph.
Director: Basil Dearden.
Starring: George Baker, Richard Attenborough, Virginia McKenna, Bill Owen, Roland Culver, Bernard Lee, Harold Goodwin, John Longden.
Photography: Gordon Dines.
Music: William Alwyn.

Sep 8th 
The Dressmaker*       
(Australia/GB 2015)
Screen Australia/Embankment/Film Art Media. 118m. ws

In 1951 a beautiful dressmaker returns to the hometown where as a child she was wrongfully accused of murder.
Richly photographed and played but ultimately over-the-top black comedy melodrama, a female revenge "Western" of sorts, where the 50s period details and costume have rather too strong a modern style about them.

Written by: Jocelyn Moorhouse, P.J. Hogan, from the novel by Rosalie Ham.
Producer: Sue Maslin.
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse.
Starring: Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Sarah Snook, Shane Bourne, Alison White, Caroline Goodall.
Photography: Donald McAlpine.
Music: Jill Bilcock.
Costume: Marion Boyce, Margot Wilson.

Preceded by:
Tom and Jerry in
Puss 'N' Toots**
(US 1942. 7m.; w, d: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera; p: Fred Quimby.)

Sep 2nd   
Jazz on a Summer's Day** (U)
(Firstsite, Colchester)

(US 1959)
Galaxy Attractions/New Yorker Films. 85m.

Filmed highlights of the 1958 Newport Jazz festival, interspersed by footage of the nearby America Cup trials, serving to symbolise how yachting is, like jazz, without any apparent rules of its own. As invaluable and genuine a record of the middle class jazz audience of the 1950s as of the musicians themselves, brought to vivid life in this 4K restoration.

w: Albert D'Annibale, Aramam Avakian;
p/ed: Aram Avakian;
d/ph: Bert Stern;
s: Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Thelonious Monk, Anita O'Day, Buck Clayton, George Shearing, Dinah Washington, Chuck Berry, and others

Sep 1st   
The Great Buster**
(US 2018) 102m,

Insightful and celebratory documentary compilation about the films of Buster Keaton, where Bogdanovich  leaves the most successful Keaton features in the 1920s for last - and neglects to mention that the majority of these films were made at his "worst" studio, MGM -  but the final days are just as interesting (eg. The Railrodder).

w, d, narr: Peter Bogdanovich
also with Dick van Dyke, James Karen, Richard Lewis, Carl Reiner, Quentin Tarantino, and others.