Aug 29th   
Heart of Stone      
(US 2023)     
Netflix/Skydance/Pilot Wave/Mockingbird Pictures. 122m. Panavision

An MI6 computer operative is secretly also a member of a global surveillance network known as Charter, from which another sinister agent is trying to steal its power.
Derivative hi-tech thriller, where the Tech itself seems to be the main raison d'etre, leaving most human sympathies high and dry after the first hour. 

Written by: Greg Rucka, Allison Schroeder. 
Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Gal Gadot, Jason Varsano, Bonnie Curtis, Julie Lynn.
Director: Tom Harper.
Starring: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighofer, Paul Ready, Jing Lusi, B.D. Wong, Glenn Close.
Photography: George Steel.
Music: Steven Price.
Editing: Mark Eckersley.

HEART OF STONE. In times' past the films advertised at Piccadilly Circus were being shown in nearby cinemas: this one was strictly Internet viewing only - appropriate for a film about computer technology.

Aug 22nd   
The Blue Parrot*   
(GB 1953)     
Monarch/ACT Films. 69m. bw

Scotland Yard detectives go undercover to investigate a murder involving a Soho nightclub. 
Routine but quite passable Scotland Yard style yarn, with some interesting familiar names.

w: Alan MacKinnon, from a story by Percy Hoskins
p: Stanley Haynes
d: John Harlow
s: Dermot Walsh, Jacqueline Haynes, Ballard Berkeley, Richard Pearson, John Le Mesurier (as the chief villain), Ferdy Mayne, Edwin Richfield, Victor Lucas, June Ashley, Valerie White
ph: Robert Navarro;
m: Eric Jupp

Preceded by:
All That Mighty Heart**
(GB 1962 British Transport Films. 23m.; Compilation day in the life of London Transport, and its suburbs, lyrical enough as a Humphrey Jennings-style film poem to the transitioning capital city.; p: Edgar Anstey; d: R.K. Neilson Baxter; ph: David Watkin; ed: John Legard.

THE BLUE PARROT. Ballard (Fawlty Towers) Berkeley versus John (Dad's Army) Le Mesurier! Richard Pearson in the background was also a noted TV and film character player

Aug 12th  
Oppenheimer** (15)   
(Electric Palace, Harwich)

(US/GB 2023) 
Universal/Syncopy/Atlas Entertainment. 180m. Panavision/IMAX bw

J. Robert Oppenheimer torments himself about being the inventor of the atomic bomb.
Stylish and pretentiously overblown from the get-go (long before it needed to be during its atomic research scenes), this otherwise well acted and reasonably well recorded account of historical events rather obsesses over Oppenheimer's Communist links and subsequent post-war investigations, and this sidelines the most significant aspect of the war against Japan. Enjoyable when the actors are allowed to be heard above the overbearing soundtrack; the essential point could have been told in half the length.

Written and Directed by: Christopher Nolan, based on the book "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin.
Producers: Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, Christopher Nolan.
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jnr, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Conti (as Einstein), Jefferson Hall, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Matthew Modine, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman (as President Truman), and others.
Photography: Hoyte van Hoytema.
Music: Ludwig Goransson.
Editing: Jennifer Lame.