Articles by Neil Rosen

About Neil Rosen

Neil went to the City of London School and Manchester University graduating with a 1st in economics. After a brief stint in accountancy, Neil emigrated to a kibbutz In Israel. His articles on the burgeoning Israeli film industry earned comparisons to Truffaut and Godard in Cahiers du Cinema. Now one of the world's leading film critics and moderators at film Festivals Neil has written definitively in his book Kosher Nostra on Jewish post war actors. Neil lives with his family in North London. More Posts

Annie Hall 1977

The Diane Keaton/Woody Allen season continues at the Rosen Multiplex with Annie Hall. I was particularly interested to see if it was now dated. It had not due to the humour of the lines and the vivacious Diana Keaton. After this film Woody Allen became more and more self-absorbed, showing his [...]

November 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Last week I watched an excellent portrait of actress Diane Keaton in the Sky Arts Discovering series. It was so good that I was inspired to view again Manhattan Murder Mystery and Godfather Part Two. Manhattan Murder Mystery works on many levels not least a murder investigation. Larry Lipman [...]

November 24, 2020 // 0 Comments

Mr Wilder & Me/Jonathan Coe

You do not have to read a biography by a film critic to appreciate a legendary director as this novel which I finished yesterday by audio book confirms. Jonathan Coe The narrator is a Greek girl called Calista who when she first meets Billy Wilder in the late 1970s has never heard of him. Later she [...]

November 20, 2020 // 0 Comments

Fedora/Billy Wilder

I am reading a novel by Jonathan Coe called Mr. Wilder and Me. The narrator works in the film world and in chapter two she recalls a dinner in Hollywood in the 70s with the renowned director Billy Wilder who knows the father of her travelling companion. Billy Wilder was making the film Fedora [...]

November 18, 2020 // 0 Comments

Rebecca/Netflix

If you have not seen the Alfred Hitchcock 1940 version with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, nor read Daphne du Maurier’s novel, you might enjoy this recent adaptation which director Ben Wheatley is anxious to point out is not a remake. The plot of two Mrs de Winters – one dying in a [...]

October 23, 2020 // 0 Comments

World War II and cinema

I very much enjoyed this Sky Arts 3 part series on cinema and World War Two. They assembled most of their usual film historians – Ian Nathan, Bonnie Greer, Derek Malcolm, but right wing columnist Simon Heffer also contributed. War films are a genre I like and believe underrated. At their best [...]

October 10, 2020 // 0 Comments

North by Northwest 1959

The other day a good friend told me he knew someone living on his own who derived much pleasure from Cary Grant films. For me the king of Romantic Comedy was at his peak with Alfred Hitchcock directing him in films like To Catch a Thief and North By Northwest. Yesterday in that fallow period of [...]

September 28, 2020 // 0 Comments

I stand corrected

I am grateful to a reader and friend for pointing out an error. In a recent piece I said that Winston Churchill was not a movie buff. In fact he loved the cinema and converted the dining room at Chartwell to a private cinema. His favourite film was Lady Hamilton starring Laurence Olivier and [...]

August 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

Mervyn LeRoy, Sean Connery and Nazi Titanic

Over the weekend I caught up with The Directors series on Mervyn Le Roy, watched a tribute to Sean Connery on his 85th birthday and a documentary on a Goebbels-backed film on the Titanic. I suspect that Mervyn LeRoy is a name with which you are unfamiliar. He made Little Caesar and Fugitive from [...]

August 23, 2020 // 0 Comments

Christopher Lee and cricket loving film stars

In May 1959 C.P. Snow delivered a lecture at Cambridge entitled The Two Cultures which subsequently became a book. It was about the ignorance of academics in the humanities on science and science on the arts. No such cultural separation exists at the Rust. We on the arts side pride ourselves on our [...]

August 11, 2020 // 0 Comments

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Leopard Creek

November 30, 2020 // 0 Comments

If you asked me to name my favourite golf course it would not be the great American ones like Augusta, Pebble Beach nor Sawgrass, nor the Scottish links St Andrews, [...]
Brighton 1 Liverpool 1

November 29, 2020 // 0 Comments

The furore over VAR has reached such a fever pitch that it is now the main discussion point of a match. That Brighton deserved a draw and held arguably the best team in the [...]
Newlands nostalgia

November 28, 2020 // 0 Comments

Watching England’s victory in the T20 yesterday brought back memories of my five trips to the Cape. I first went in 1995, the tour Mike Atherton captained. It’s [...]
Annie Hall 1977

November 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Diane Keaton/Woody Allen season continues at the Rosen Multiplex with Annie Hall. I was particularly interested to see if it was now dated. It had not due to the humour [...]
Keeping a perspective

November 27, 2020 // 0 Comments

As most Rusters will be only too well aware, we oldies often have to make difficult decisions in order to negotiate a careful balancing act between – on the one hand – [...]