I really had a lovely weepy time with "About Time", might have something to do with the year we've lived through - oh, look, they are hugging people they love, ahhhh...(sobs)

Haha! Yes I get that. I didn’t get there but can understand. Richard Curtis is great at making emotive scenes accessible.

Watched ‘The Upside’ starring Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart at the weekend. It was fun, not too serious but still very entertaining. Cranston plays a very rich man who is paralysed from the neck down and he hires ex-con played by Hart as his live in assistant. Heart warming and fun script. I enjoyed it a lot.

"The Boys From Brazil"

(1978) Lawrence Olivier as the Nazi hunter, Gregory Peck as the Nazi organising a comeback The Fourth Reich with the help fo science fiction, and mysterious events. This is a B-Movie horror with an A-Class cast putting in some melodramatic performances, hard to know whether it good or not but I enjoyed it. Watch it for Halloween as it was made by The Omen gang.

A v young Steve Guttenburg very convincing, but a wasted James Mason, fabulous James Mason, sinful.

https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/james-mason-the-boys-from-brazil

I've always liked it, and it makes a double feature in my mind with "Marathon Man", Olivier again, this time as the Nazi.

I agree though - James Mason is playing a part that could have been handled by anyone.

The Boys From Brazil is very much on my list!

I’ve continued to watch films at pace.

Yesterday watching ‘Whiplash’ by Damien Chazelle for the first time. I was really surprised by how good it was. It’s about a young drummer who is taken under the wing of a teacher who uses bullying methods to try to get the best out of his student. Fantastic. It’s sublimely shot, loads of dolly zooms and interesting blocking. The music is jazz, Chazelle’s unashamed forte. It’s just the right length, the final scene is masterfully done. J.K. Simmons caught the role of his life there. I highly recommend it.

I guess this one counts as a movie - the 2014 San Francisco Opera presentation of "Show Boat".

The singing was great, the acting not quite so much.... I know Captain Andy is a comic character, but honestly he looked more like he suffered from some sort of neurological disorder - throwing your arms and legs around randomly isn't really "funny". Although he was the worst, this was a drawback of all the comic characters. The leads weren't much better - there was not really that much difference between their performances and the mock melodramatic performing in the show-within-a-show "The Parson's Bride", which we are supposed to laugh at for its stiffness and over the top ham. The only performances that really felt natural were Joe and Queenie.

This is a controversial show, and if someone wants to tell me they find it racist, I'm not going to argue - it can certainly be seen that way. It falls into the category of "really very enlightened for the time, but still steeped in the attitudes of the time" - art that is making a social statement that the world has moved beyond.

I put Rudyard Kipling in the same category - he was so much less racist than anyone else of his time and place, but he was still a Victorian Englishman, which means he was racist, can't help it. Same here - the source material is nearly 100 years old, and a look at racial injustice written entirely by white people living in a deeply racist society is going to have some blind spots.

All that said, it's still a pretty good show. And "Old Man River", beautifully sung here, pays for a lot.

"Driveways" 2019

Brian Dennehy's last movie, he died not long after.

What a good movie. It's small, not much happens, but you like everybody so much. And it doesn't do some of the things that you expect a movie like this to do, which I really appreciated. Asian kid and an old white man, but this is no Gran Torino, not even a little bit.

"1985" 2018

Quiet subtle heartbreaker, here. Beautifully filmed in black and white, beautifully acted. I'm not going to say anything about what happens, it takes a little while to figure it out. No action, no big dramatic moments, just humanity.

"Barefoot in the Park" 1967

Well you can see why it was a big hit, but honestly it hasn't aged that well. Mildred Natwick as Corrie's mother is probably the best part.

"Red Rock West" 1993

Not at all bad. Nicholas Cage is a decent guy down on his luck, gets mistaken for a hit man, decides to grab the advance payment and get out of town - and things just keep on going wrong.

JT Walsh plays JT Walsh, which is always just fine. Dennis Hopper is happily chewing scenery as the real hit man. And Cage is just a man having a really bad day.

"Chariots of Fire" 1981

It's taken me a long time to see this one, and it's a movie everyone should probably see at least once, if only to catch all the times it is referenced and parodied. It's beautiful, and moving, but, for me at least, it's still a sports movie and I think I must be missing the sports appreciation gene. I just can't get too excited about who wins the race.

Feeling the need for some re-watching, so "Witness for the Prosecution" 1957

Yes, yes, there is some very non standard courtroom procedure, and what is that knife doing just laying there on the table?! But still, for a twisty plot that holds together not at all badly, this can't be beat. Marlene Dietrich is stunning, and it's always nice to see Mr and Mrs Charles Laughton.

Definitely my weekend for re watching old favourites. "Desk Set" 1957

I think this is my favourite Tracy/ Hepburn pairing. Everything about it is perfect.

"Midnight Run" 1988

In honour of Charles Grodin, RIP.

This is not a big important movie, but it is an almost perfect one. Holds up real well, too. Apparently a lot of other people looked at the de Niro part, but while many of them would have handled the tough guy aspect, it would have been harder to bring the soft guy side of the character. And Grodin is 100% perfect for his part. He's warm and he's gentle, but he's also a pretty tough guy in his way.

If you've never seen this, do yourself a favour.

"The Ghost and Mrs Muir" 1942

Well, who among us would not fall in love with the Captain, after all?

An old fashioned romance, but I can't help falling under its spell.

"The Blues Brothers" 1980

All told, this holds up better than it has any right to. It has a nice balance of being simultaneously outrageously over the top, and having a light touch - lots of the jokes here are thrown away, and you either catch 'em or you don't. Please don't try to have the plot make sense.

"Hot Fuzz" 2007

Another one that holds up pretty well. Big long shootout at the end, though, which gets points taken off, for me - I find that kind of thing boring if it goes on for longer than about one minute.

"The Clock" 1945

Judy Garland and Robert Walker in an entirely sweet and charming wartime romance. Both incredibly likeable characters and you are cheering for them the whole time. The tone of the movie is set early on, when Walker's character, a serviceman on short leave in New York City before shipping out overseas, starts to walk up the stair in Grand Central Station. When he notices people beside him riding up in the escalator, he runs back down the steps, gets on the escalator, and rides up, with a huge grin on his face, clearly delighted by this novelty.

"Bram Stoker's Dracula" 1992

Well, it's kind of magnificent, but it's also kind of a mess. I do think Keanu Reeves works well as Jonathan Harker, despite what many critics said - in this version of the story, he needs to be bland and ineffectual, it's Mina who is strong.

Have to say, though - the opening bit reminded me of nothing so much as the Saturday afternoon matinee B movies I used to see as a kid -bloodier maybe, but the same in tone.

"What Every Woman Wants" 1954

Very small British film, looks like it was adapted from a play as it mostly takes place in one room in a working class Manchester family home. Prunella Scales has a small part, looks like she's about 16.

Oh, and apparently what every woman wants is her husband.

'Map to the Stars' 2014, It's directed by David Cronenberg. I'm not a fan and wouldn't have bothered with it had I been forewarned, but I turned on the TV, it was on and I watched it right through. It's a nasty movie about how horrible everybody is in Hollywood, but for some reason, I couldn't stop watching.

"Mr and Mrs Bridge" 1990

What a wonderful movie. Nothing happens in it, and that's kind of the point. Beautifully filmed and acted; it was apparently made on a small budget but you'd never know it, it's gorgeous. Both characters are trapped, in different ways and as much by their own inhibitions as by anything outward. Just amazing, but it's not for those who need plot and action in their films.

"Tea and Sympathy" 1956

This is an oddity. It's still not too bad a movie, but the falseness forced on it by the production code means that it's half what it could have been. If adultery must be punished, if homosexuality can't even be mentioned, well, hard to see through the haze to the real story.

The performance that really stands out to me, and that isn't too dated, is Edward Andrews' as Tom's father. We still see that exact kind of enforced gender roles, and they are still that damaging.

"The Hucksters" 1947

Deborah Kerr is so young, and so charming, in this. It's her first American movie. Very early in Ava Gardner's career too, and she's also charming, though in a very different way. The plot's fine, with Clark Gable ending up all idealistic. Sidney Greenstreet is our villain, basically a big-money version of Big Daddy.

"Separate Tables" 1958

Every time I see this, I like it better. Dreadful melodrama in many ways of course, but so good, somehow. Beautifully filmed, in addition to some amazing performances. David Niven, yes, but really everybody else, too.