Movie review - "The Roommate" (2011) *

Impressively dull rip off off Single White Female, with the same premise and even scenes (e.g. psycho helps defeat a sexual harrasser, psycho kills flatmate's pet, murdering an ex) but devoid of any thrills or atmosphere. Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester look alike - as in, really alike, I found it hard to tell who was who, you can't do it with acting. They are both exceptionally pretty but after a while the lip gloss performing got on the nerves. The setting is dull, the addition of characters to the psycho's background causes more questions than it answers. Poorly directed, written, everything. Boring more than anything else. There's one lesbian kiss but even that is slackly handled.

Radio review - Ford Theatre - Ep#40 "Madame Bovary" (1949) **

I've never been a big Marlene Dietrich fan but she's very animated here in the title role, believably youthful and silly, not at all like her film image. There's a strong support cast including Claude Rains and Van Heflin but it's not that gripping an adaptation. Then again the novel kind of leaves me cold. 

Oh, I'm being overly negative but I can't help it. This was the debut of the second season where Ford Theatre made a conscious effect to use more movie stars.

TV review - "Suits" (2011) ****

Occasionally the acting is a bit Days of Our Lives but it's brilliant, scintillating TV, with very clever writing and interesting characters - it fairly barrels along. Wonderful drama, a rebuke to stuff like Crownies.

Movie review - "A Man Could Get Killed" (1966) **

A spy spoof - yawn - about an American businessman who gets mistaken for an agent and is caught up in a diamond smuggling ring. He's played by James Garner, who was presumably thought to be too old to play Sandra Dee's love interest so hooks up with femme fettle-but-good Melinda Mecouri while Dee (investigating agent I think she's supposed to be) romances Tony Franciosa. Neither romantic team works, Garner is uncomfortable, Dee looks hot (tanned and blonde), there are too many British character actors for a film shot in Portugal. Dull.

Movie review - "One Day" (2011) ** (warning:spoilers)

For the most part a dreadful movie, which never really recovers from it's beginning. Anne Hathaway's accent is all over the shop (sometimes she sounds American) and Jim Sturgess' character immensely unappealing - he doesn't have much of a character to play (oh so brooding! doomed! boozy! sleeps with so many women!) but Sturgess can't make it likeable. Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally was very funny and his heart was broken by his first wife. No one in this film is funny and it badly needs laughs - or urst. 

Yet, still, there is one moment - when Hathaway is run over, and there's that scene of her lying on the road, eyes open, shaking... it's absolutely right, I've seen it, and that's what made my cry on a plane watching it. The film didn't deserve those tears! Especially as Sturgess should have been the one to be run over. 

The Yanks should remake it, get some skilled humour rewrite people on it, and you might have something good because the basic idea is strong.

Movie review - "Ill Met By Moonlight" (1957) **

Dull World War Two tale about the capture of a German general on Crete - an interesting enough real life story but here done without any atmosphere, or view of Cretian life, or exploration of the characters involved. It all seems like a jolly jape, very easy to do - they don't know Morse Code but someone turns up who does, a native boy seems as though he's going to turn traitor but doesn't. 

Marius Goring is another in Powell and Pressburger's long line of sympathetic Germans, Bogarde is like a head prefect, David Oxlade has a powerful voice. It isn't even in colour and was shot in France not Crete but has some okay music.

Movie review - "Piccadilly Incident" (1946) **1/2

Easy to mock but at the time people were getting married after knowing each other for two seconds, and being separated for long periods of time, and winding up on desert islands, and marrying other people. Lots of obsession with illegitimate children - that's what makes Anna Neagle give up Michael Wilding even though they love each other and gives this movie a weird coda from a judge. They are reunited but then she is killed by a dramatically convenient bomb. Anna does a big production number and gets to emote all over the place - flirting, being in love, washed up on a desert island, fending off a near rape from a horny sailor, sobbing a la Greer Garson in Random Harvest. Colour would have helped this one because of the island sequences - but maybe that would have made life on the island too attractive. Wilding's cool likeable aristocracy pairs well with Neagle and this helped establish them as a potent box office combination.