Articles by Neil Rosen
I livened up Monday morning by watching this film, directed by Lewis Gilbert, on Film 4 yesterday. Dramas on service and class have always been popular. Think of Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey and Remains of the Day. In many ways the genre all started with the J.M. Barrie play and Lewis [...]
Bad week for the Beeb
It’s hardly been a great week for ‘Auntie’. The Reckoning was produced by ITV studios but broadcast on Mondays and Tuesdays on BBC 1. The final episode’s credits revealed that an investigation by Newsnight into Sir Jimmy Savile had been dropped. Next up was their coverage of the [...]
The Fabelmans (2022) – Sky Movie Greatest
When a great director reaches a certain age and status he/she can do pretty much what they like. Thus Steven Spielberg, probably the best ever director at making films for kids which their parents enjoy too, decided to make The Fabelmans, based on his own childhood and processing his feelings [...]
Haunting in Venice
John Malkovich has done it once unsatisfactorily, Peter Ustinov twice and now Kenneth Branagh three times. Albert Finney, Orson Welles and Alfred Molina had one go. None of them get as near to Hercule Poirot as David Suchet on ITV. He is Poirot. Yesterday I saw Haunting in Venice in which producer, [...]
Classic Cinema/The Third Man /Sky Arts
This was a tribute to the recently passed film critic Derek Malcolm – a keen admirer of Carol Reed’s 1949 classic. For most cinema buffs this would be high on the list of their favourite films, justifying the praise that – however many times you have seen it – you start watching [...]
Israel: A Twice Promised Land (PBS) and Land of our Father (BBC4)
There were two interesting documentaries on Israel on Tuesday night. The first on PBS supported my view that 1967 was a watershed in Israeli history. In that year Israel achieved a significant victory in just six days over their invading Arab neighbours. Up till then Israel had global sympathy as a [...]
Mephisto (1981)
This Hungarian/German production, directed by Istvan Szabo and based on a novel by Klaus Mann, launched the international film career of Klaus Maria Brandauer who was later to appear as lead villain in a Bond film. It’s story is of an ambitious but not especially talented German actor Henrik [...]
Jerusalem/Simon Sebag Montefiore
The biblical rights to Palestine so interested me that – after reading Israel – a concise history – I listened to an audio book version of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history of Jerusalem. Jerusalem lies at the heart of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs countries. It [...]
Israel/Daniel Gordis
I have just finished Daniel Gordis’ concise but thorough history of Israel from the time of Zionist Theodore Herzl to the present day. It’s written from the Israeli point of view but aware of the country’s failings and sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. The journey from Herzl to [...]
Military Wives
On Saturday evening I settled down without much initial anticipation to Military Wives, directed by Peter Carraneo, whose most successful movie to date was The Full Monty. This film is of the same genre: a group of diverse, same sex, people decided to form a choir at an army barracks whilst their [...]