There's a mole, right at the top of the Circus.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

(2011)

The Alec Guinness TV version is one of the pinnacles of BBC drama, so it's all-the-more gratifying that this manages to excise large chunks of the story but not feel like its shortchanging you.

Rather it comes up with it's own little, distinctive details (the party flashback scene, invented for the film, is quite superb). The cast is fantastic from the top down. Oldman occasionally echoes Guinness a little too much in his quiet reserve, but that is the character. Stand-outs were two of the younger thesps, Benedict Cumberhatch (given the most suspenseful scene in the film) and Tom Hardy. But a mention too for Mark Strong, finally given a role where he isn't the heavy.

If there's a weak note it might be Colin Firth, perhaps as he's the only actor in the bunch where I kept returning to the original actor playing the character (Ian Richardson). Superbly directed Tomas Alfredson, it drips with '70s drabness and orange wallpaper. Film of the year so far.

*****

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How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

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He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

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But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

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You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

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No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

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What do they do, sing madrigals?

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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