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KEANU REEVES, I’M SORRY I DOUBTED YOU
Keanu Reeves, I must apologise. For years, like other film critics, I cast aspersions on your acting talent, belittled your intellect, and cracked jokes about your name, which means “cool breeze over...
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GUILTY PLEASURE? OR YELLOW-BELLIED EUPHEMISM?
Critical clichés come and go. Twenty years ago, I noted that “an absolute gem”, “razor-sharp dialogue” and “reminiscent of the world of David Lynch” were all current, and I daresay those lines still...
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FILM AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AID
The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) My linguistic role model has long been the hitman hero of Trevanian’s wonderful 1979 novel Shibumi, who alleviates the boredom of solitary confinement in a Japanese...
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MY TOP TEN MOVIE SEQUELS
The Godfather is great, but The Godfather: Part II is greater. It’s that rare thing – a sequel that doesn’t just match but actually surpasses the original film. Not content with just recycling the...
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IMAGINE FILM FESTIVAL 2015
Eye (the white building shaped like a spaceship), as seen from my hotel room. This was my fourth visit to Amsterdam’s Imagine Film Festival, which now seems to have turned into an annual jaunt for me....
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MY TOP TEN KING ARTHUR MOVIES
Helen Mirren and Robert Addie in Excalibur (1981) Filming began last month on Knights of the Round Table: King Arthur, first in a projected six-film franchise based on the King Arthur legends. Even if...
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THE FATE OF LEE KHAN: A FILM WITH SIX GREAT ACTION ROLES FOR WOMEN
A Touch of Zen was the first of King Hu’s films to play in London cinemas, but The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) was the first King Hu film I watched – at the Electric Cinema in Portobello Road in 1975. The...
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PEDAL TO THE METAL: 15 OF THE BEST MOVIE CAR CHASES
Steve McQueen in Bullitt (1968) Like everyone else, I watched last year’s teaser trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road with a mixture of eagerness and trepidation. Eagerness, because hot damn, it looked...
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THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK: THE STORY YOU KNOW
The Assassination of JFK (artist unknown, found on The Kennedy Gallery) “The story you know”, says the trailer for Parkland, a 2013 movie about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. You can...
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PAUL RUDD IN TEN FILMS
Paul Rudd as Ant-Man. For years, Paul Rudd fans, of which I am one, always used to ask the same question. Why wasn’t he a bigger star? The man is funny, handsome, versatile and smart. He has long been...
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FILMSY: WHEN WHIMSY RUNS RIOT IN THE CINEMA
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet In Jean-Piere Jeunet’s The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, the 10 year-old boy inventor embarks on an epic solo journey from Montana to Washington DC, to collect...
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WESTWARD HO! THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE OF THE WESTERN
George Bancroft, John Wayne and Louise Platt in Stagecoach (1939) The Western is dead. Long live the Western. Observers have been predicting the genre’s demise for more than a hundred years. Edward...
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GONE WEST: THE WACKY WORLD OF NON-AMERICAN WESTERNS
The Salvation (2014) The Salvation has everything you expect from a western: guns, horses, vengeance, Ennio Morricone-esque music, squinty close-ups and untamed landscape with Monument Valley just...
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PARIS DECEMBER 2015
Le Rallye Dante, Rue Dante. As has been my habit for the past few years, I spent Christmas in Paris, where the festival is treated like any normal bank holiday. It’s traditional to pig out (usually on...
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OLDER FILMS I SAW AT THE CINEMA IN 2015
DVDs and Blu-Rays are all very well (and what on earth did we do before VHS?) but in 2015 I resolved to watch as many old films on the big screen as possible. I’d already seen some of these on video or...
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FIRST PERSON VIEWPOINT
Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960) The choice of viewpoint is one of their most important decisions a film-maker has to make, because it indicates not just whose story is being told but also, by extension,...
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HAMMER HORROR TITLES
Lately, while watching Hammer horror films on the big screen, I have been surprised and delighted by the credits, sometimes spelt out in striking gothic typefaces, often in scarlet but also...
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GREAT MIRROR MOMENTS IN THE MOVIES
“Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only,” wrote Samuel Butler. But he wrote that in 1872, when the movies were still no more than a twinkle in the eyes of the Lumière...
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HUGH GRANT: THE ART OF EFFORTLESSNESS
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Anyone who thinks Hugh Grant is not an accomplished actor is surely underestimating how difficult it is to do light comedy. It’s harder than drama, but the secret is...
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LA HORDE: CRITIQUE DE FILM
In 2010 a couple of French friends asked me if I would like to write a review of a zombie film for their new website, Tout ça (now sadly defunct). Since I had never had anything published or posted in...
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