Articles by Neil Rosen
Somehow I missed this “rom com for wrinklies” when it was released but it came on the radar in the Sky Arts Discovering Frances McDormand programme. The stars are Hollywood royalty Jack Nicholson, playing 63 year-old music mogul and superannuated lothario Harry Seaburn and Diane Keaton [...]
The Kreuzer Sonata (2008)
This film, an erotic, psychological thriller directed by Bernard Rose, was released in 2008 but I watched it for the first time last night. It is based on the banned novel of Leo Tolstoy and in brief is about a man consumed with jealousy that his beautiful classical pianist wife is unfaithful. The [...]
Grand Prix/1966
Sport and cinema do not mix. Quite simply a sport star is not an actor – nor an actor a sportsman or woman. There are exceptions – like Robert de Niro in Raging Bull and Richard Harris in This Sporting Life – but John Huston’s regrettable Escape to Victory with a pot-bellied [...]
The legend that is Marilyn Monroe
I do not like the word iconic but I cannot think of a better one to describe Marilyn Monroe. She was recently the subject of a podcast on Rest is History by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Better was the Discovering series in Sky Arts profiling her. In her time – the [...]
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
I had this DVD of this 2018 Mike Powell film lying around in my to-be-watched pile for some time. I was persuaded to watch it as its star Lily James features in the Sky Mobile ad and I like her smile, vivacity and vitality. The film is set in occupied Guernsey. There a book club was formed and the [...]
Le Mepris (Contempt)/1962
Partly out of respect to the recently passed Jean Luc Godard – and partly as there was little else to do or watch on Sunday afternoon – I took from the French section of my DVD library his Le Mepris starring Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Fritz Lang, Jack Palance and Georgia Moll. [...]
Claude Chabrol and Jean Luc Godard
For me, the two directors that are truly Masters of Suspense are Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol, from the New Wave of the 1950s, was avowedly French whilst Hitchcock, a master of British realism, studied under Fritz Lang at the UFA studio, Britain and Hollywood. Yesterday I watched [...]
In a Lonely Place
Normally I watch a film from my extensive library, rent it via Amazon, or watch one on Netflix more designed for the young viewer. Occasionally I am drawn by a film on television on one of the movie channels and this occasion was last week’s In a Lonely Place. I was influenced by a strong cast of [...]
Mercury Pictures Presents/Anthony Marra
I was disappointed by this book, which promised to be about a B-movie Hollywood studio in the late 1930s and early 1940s, a subject of great interest to me. In fact, but it was more about a film executive Maria Lagana, whose father – a Roman human rights lawyer – was exiled by [...]
adieu Bob Rafelson
I was saddened to learn of the death of Bob Rafelson. His movie career as a director was probably more down than up but he can lay claim to be the originator of the Indie in Easy Rider and making the career of one of its then unknown stars, Jack Nicholson. My favourite Rafelson film was Five Easy [...]