In Competition No. 3257, you were invited to summarise a film in limerick form.

A nod to Ezra Haber Glenn, American academic, film reviewer and inventor of the filmerick. Here’s his take on Chloé Zhao’s 2020 Nomadland.

They may think that you don’t have a plan,
When they see that you poop in a can,
But it’s them that did go mad,
You hard-working nomad:
You’ve a home on the road in your van.

In a large entry, it was pleasing to see so many unfamiliar names rubbing shoulders with the vets. Honourable mentions go to Hugh Keyte, Janine Beacham, Mike Greenhough, Philip Machin, Dorothy Pope and Philip Wilson. The winners pocket £9 each.

The Austrian scenes are aesthetic,
Von Trapp kids are cute but emetic,
There’s oodles and oodles
Of schnitzels and strudels –
Don’t watch it if you’re diabetic.
David Silverman/The Sound of Music

Dr Frankenstein had an idea:
To assemble a creature of fear.
The subhuman wreck
With that bolt through its neck
Looked like something he’d bought from Ikea.
Brian Allgar/Frankenstein

See Terence and Hugo and Guy
Take a bus trip together. But why?
After meanness and malice
They’re Red Hot in Alice
And then they wave gaily goodbye.
Ann Drysdale/The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert 

We learn through his canine narration,
That Pongo, a dogged dalmation,
Denies heiress Cruella
Her puppy paella
And prevents the proposed immolation.
Richard Spencer/101 Dalmations

Though seduced by Elaine’s sexy mother,
Ben loses his heart to none other
Than the cuter Elaine,
Which causes folks pain —
But they’ll manage one way or another.
Martin Elster/The Graduate

The plot’s a humdinger, yes ma’am!
Civil War and crossed lovers – wham, bam!
But did Scarlett love Rhett?
Aw, shucks, I forget
But, frankly, I don’t give a damn.
Ann Wooby/Gone With the Wind

I thought Dune was a thrill when I read it,
But then Lynch (aptly named) chose to shred it.
When tomatoes were flung,
Even Sting wound up stung.
Lynch himself tried denying all credit.
Susan McLean/Dune

Gunslinger by trade, not by look,
Helped settlers resist a sharp crook;
Faced a mob and a hotshot
And outshot the whole lot,
Then slung not his gun but his hook.
W.J. Webster/Shane

If… was subversively odd,
Teachers slain in a public school quad
By faux-dissident youth,
Upper-class and uncouth –
(None of that at your Secondary Mod.)
Mike Morrison/If

It begins with a fly in the eye
As the six o’clock train trundles by,
But their plans are derailed
Their coupling curtailed –
With a stiff upper lip, it’s ‘Goodbye’.
Sylvia Fairley/Brief Encounter

The unburied dead there’s no stopping
Despite all of our hacking and chopping.
To escape from them all
We holed up at the mall
But alas, the dead also go shopping.
Adrian Fry/Dawn of the Dead

The author, one Alain Robbe-Grillet,
Said ‘What’s it about? Ça fait chier!
I’ve thought since a lad
About Marienbad,
But what it all means still beats me, eh?’
A.R. Duncan-Jones/Last Year in Marienbad

Grief is taking its toll on Paul’s mind.
He wants sex, the anonymous kind.
Before Jeanne pulls her gun,
He has S&M fun
When he butters her up from behind.
Chris O’Carroll/Last Tango in Paris

It’s Penis-tone Crag, California:
No primrose path ever seemed thornier.
Says Larry to Merle
Think of Yorkshire, Deah Girl.
The love scenes have seldom been cornier.
Bill Greenwell/Wuthering Heights (1939)

After light-years, they came to a planet
As scenic as home, but apes ran it.
They possessed great acumen –
Far more than the human
Thinking: ‘This can’t be Earth. No! Or can it?’
John Nagel/Planet of the Apes

The Mayor is a miserable toad;
The Cop has an honourable code.
The Expert gets beaten,
The Captain gets eaten,
The Shark? Well, it gets to explode.
Paul Freeman/Jaws

No. 3260: Hidden agenda

You are invited to reveal the existence of a government department, hitherto unsuspected, by means of a speech by its minister,explaining its important policies. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 27 July.