1/14. I can’t remember the last time that a first-time watch of a classic film confounded my preconceptions as much as DODSWORTH (William Wyler, 1936), an extraordinarily mature and nuanced portrait of a marriage in crisis. See 🧵 for some reasons why you should try it, too.

My new favourite TV programme is the 3-part Japan’s Master of Restoration on BBC Four. It's a combination of watching paint dry and broken pots stick, but it's wholly compelling. Though I find some of the ethics of this kind of restoration a little uneasy.

JOB ALERT!.Bridport Arts Centre is looking for a marketing assistant to join its small team. The post holder will work across BAC, the Bridport Prize and From Page to Screen, Bridport’s film festival. Recruitment pack: Deadline: 5pm, Wed 27 Aug 2025.

8/8. You can watch it here (the transfer is first rate)

7/8. Makes an unexpected companion piece to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951). The final Tokyo fairground set piece is brilliantly staged and photographed. And we’re left wondering what exactly is Robert Stack’s hold on gang leader Robert Ryan? Is Ryan’s interest sexual?

6/8. The bath-tub shooting.

5/8. Fuller’s approach is wholly and very enjoyably hardboiled. Albeit undermined a little by a romance between Robert Stack and Shirley/Yoshiko Yamaguchi that feels like a Hollywood bolt-on.

4/8. Joe MacDonald’s CinemaScope photography. His use of widescreen is exemplary with framing that made me repeatedly freeze-frame to take it all in. The judicious use of pinpoints of colour against the grey is glorious. Great use of deep focus and camera movement, too.

3/8. Shot on location in Japan, the Tokyo street scenes are a particular pleasure. Love the way it captures post-War Japan with one foot in the past and the other striding into the future.

2/8. It’s somewhere between a hardboiled noir and a Sirk melodrama (though without the intense emotion).

1/8. See 🧵 for reasons to watch House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller, 1955) - and don’t be put off by the cliched ‘oriental’ titles.

RT @cinemattie: THIS ALSO CHANGES THE FOCUS! You've put the background in focus to make this "immersive" and now you've taken one of the mo….

#Gaza

Dear @BBCBreakfast - do the Lioness’s win against Italy and Ozzy Osborne’s death really merit being your top 2 headlines this morning? Many of us care more about the situation in Gaza and want to know what our government is doing about one of the worst atrocities of our time.

2/2. Aside from the magnificent landscape, it tells the compelling story of a polyandrously married woman’s (she’s married to a man + his two brothers) spiritual and physical journey across the remote Dolpo region near the Nepal/Tibet border. Looks spectacular on the big screen.

1/2. A shout-out for SHAMBHALA (Min Bahadur Bham, Nepal, 2024), showing @TheGardenCinema on 22 July and 10 Aug. This was one of the most rewarding films I watched last year, but I don't think it's had a UK release.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948) is not my favourite Preston Sturges film, but there's much to love. In particular, Rex Harrison as a Sir Thomas Beecham-like conductor giving a performance that feels like a dry run for Henry Higgins. And this shot - so good that Sturges used it 3 times.

5/5. You can watch the film here

4/5. - the lighting falling on faces or singling someone out in a crowd. - its surprisingly feminist narrative and the fantastic relationships between women (including a hint of sapphic subtext).

3/5. A few other reasons to love it: . - the mise-en-scène - I kept having stop the film to take in the compositions and positioning of colour. - the fluid camera movement. Every shot feels planned within an inch of its life.

2/5. Think Sirk and Minnelli (with a touch of Powell and Pressburger) making a melodrama set during a couple of decades of mid-20th century Chinese history.