Alan Arkin

Little Murders

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Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd in a car

1971’s Little Murders gets the jump on Annie Hall by a handful of years. Woody Allen’s 1977 film was originally going to be called Anhedonia (an echo remains in his ultimate title) and was about a guy who couldn’t feel anything, which is what the condition of anhedonia is. Little Murders takes the same idea in a different direction – bleaker, less digressive and only funny in a weird way. Originally Jean-Luc Godard was going to direct but instead Alan Arkin ended up behind the camera, honouring Godard with a New Wave-style approach to the material – fast edits, scenes crashed into and out of, nothing too fancy in terms of lighting, as if … Read more

Argo

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John Goodman and Alan Arkin in Argo

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 April John McCarthy kidnapped, 1986 On this day in 1986, the British journalist John McCarthy was taken hostage in Lebanon. Like most of the hostages taken during the so-called Lebanon hostage crisis, which continued from 1982 to 1992, McCarthy was chosen not because of any particular political affiliation but because of the country he came from and because, as a journalist, he was easy to target. Aged 29 when it happened, he was working for WTN news when he was grabbed by Islamic Jihad, and spent the next five and a half years locked up. Every time the location of … Read more

A Slight Case of Murder

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William H Macy in A Slight Case of Murder

One of those feelgood made-for-TV films that’s somehow managed to net a great cast as they were commuting between better paying jobs. I suspect that that’s because William H Macy is involved, David Mamet’s favourite actor being the star and the adapter of Donald Westlake’s novel about a film critic who kills his girlfriend by accident and then uses his film buffery to cover up the crime. It’s a neat conceit obviously designed to appeal to film lovers, who get double helpings when the cop on the accidental killer’s tail (Adam Arkin) also turns out to be a film buff himself. Comic noir is the prevailing tone, once the film’s initial skittishness has … Read more