Stephen Arnell

Mr President, as you settle down for an extended seasonal vacation at the little seaside cottage you and your retainers call the ‘Winter White House’, may I, as your sommelier of visual entertainments, recommend a few seasonally suitable amusements for the Mar-a-Lago screening room? You being you, the sort of movie you might find admirable may not exactly square with popular feeling regarding the season of good-will to all men — and, as you recently said, ‘women too, to be politically correct’. If goodwill isn’t to your taste, perhaps the presidential palate will enjoy some ill will, with a side order of bile? Submitted for your approval, Jon Landis’s classic comedy Trading Places (1983).

As the fourth version of A Star is Born packs them in, Mel Gibson is threatening to remake Sam Peckinpah’s classic 1969 Western The Wild Bunch. Film fans are rightly alarmed, but remakes are a reliable way for Hollywood to score at the box office, despite often being wholly pointless. Unfortunately, Gibson has previous convictions in this area. See, if you really insist, his unnecessary and 1999 refurbishment of John Boorman's classic Point Blank, a retread so wretched that it accidentally justified its title, Payback. Boorman’s comment on Gibson’s effort wasn’t exactly diplomatic: Lee [Marvin] finally said to me, ‘OK, I'll do this picture with you on one condition.’ ‘What?

TV networks will be waiting with baited breath to see how the Roseanne spin-off and sequel The Conners — why does the ‘e’ in the name irritate me? — performs this evening for ABC. No doubt there’ll be considerable rubber-necking interest, which will see a healthy audience for the first episode. But that will be because of the void left by the absence of Roseanne Barr. Like Banquo’s ghost to Macbeth, Barr’s non-corporeal presence will be difficult to ignore. The manner of her departure will be in many viewers’ minds, too. This isn’t the first time that the sudden loss of a lead actor in a hit series has resulted in broadcasters or platforms having to consider whether to carry on or call it a day.

The events of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and the relish President Donald J. Trump displayed in his consequent pushback at the #MeToo movement elicit a Proustian response among those who’ve seen Jack Lemmon’s 1965 comedy How to Murder Your Wife.If Mr Trump was in any way a cinephile, it might indeed figure as one of his all-time favourite films. If not, the movie still possesses a particular relevance in today’s highly charged political environment.How so? Without recounting the plot in detail, the hook centres around Lemmon’s wealthy New York bachelor, cartoonist Stanley Ford.