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CHAPTER HEADINGS IN THE CINEMA: A SLIGHT CASE OF SUBTITLE ENVY?
Valhalla Rising (2009) In The Brothers Bloom, writer-director Rian Johnson bends over backwards to let us know how literary he is, not just with that Joycean title, but with flagrant references to...
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VERSE CASE SCENARIO: POETRY IN THE MOVIES
Remember Me: Ralph Meeker and Gaby Rodgers in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is named after a poem by William Ernest Henley, who wrote it in 1875 to jiff up his spirits after his leg...
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12 OLDER FILMS I SAW AT THE CINEMA IN FEBRUARY & MARCH 2016
Once again I made a list of all the older films I saw on the big screen. (Does not include DVDs, streaming or television.) These are not so much coherent film reviews as notes on and impressions of the...
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PHOTOGRAPHERS IN THE MOVIES: A DYING BREED?
Finding Vivian Maier is a fascinating documentary about a recently discovered “street photographer” that raises as many questions as it answers. But it’s not just the story of the nanny whose...
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BREAST MAN: A CONVERSATION WITH RUSS MEYER
Russ Meyer revolutionized the sex film industry. With his first feature, The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) he added humor and a story (albeit of a rudimentary kind) to softcore nudity, earning himself the...
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THE ART OF THE MOVIE POSTER
Russian-born Boris Bilinsky designed this Constructivist-inspired poster for the French release of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) Are beautiful movie posters a thing of the past? Of the 100 exquisite,...
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THE AWESOMENESS OF EVA GREEN
Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (2014) There are few experiences in modern cinema quite as intoxicating as watching Eva Green behaving badly. Whether she’s an American housewife on the verge of a nervous...
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WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE GWYNETH PALTROW?
Mortdecai (2015) What do we mean when we say we hate Gwyneth Paltrow? When I write “we”, I mean me and the people behind the five million hits I got when I googled the words “hate Gwyneth Paltrow,” of...
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WHERE HAVE ALL THE EVERYMAN ACTION HEROES GONE?
Macon Blair in Blue Ruin (2013) What makes Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin stand out from other revenge thrillers is its hero – if you can call him that. Dwight, played by Macon Blair, is an average guy,...
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RICHARD E. GRANT: THE 1991 INTERVIEW
Richard E. Grant as Darwin Mayflower in Hudson Hawk. In 1991, GQ magazine sent me to interview Richard E. Grant, to tie in with the British release of Hudson Hawk and possibly also something to do with...
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HORROR: THE GENRE WHERE MEN DON’T HAVE ALL THE FUN
Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976) It’s that time of the year again – Halloween, when articles like Top Ten Ghosts, The Spookiest Movies Ever Made and Why Do We Enjoy Being Scared? start crawling out of the...
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CATS ON FILM
What is a Catguffin? Which type of cat would be more likely to rip your throat out in a movie – a Catzilla or a Pussilla? What is the difference between a Catagonist and a Heropuss? And what exactly...
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LAV STORY: TOILETS IN THE MOVIES
At the Cannes film festival in 2014, Julianne Moore won the Best Actress award for her performance as an ageing Hollywood actress in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. Amid the astonishing display...
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THE MONSTER MASH-UP: SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT UNIVERSAL’S “DARK UNIVERSE”
First, the good news. Universal Pictures is reviving its classic monsters, those terrifying creatures that first stalked the screen in the glorious black and white horror movies of the 1930s and early...
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RETURN TO PARADISE PLAZA: A BELATED CONSIDERATION OF THE FILMS OF 2016
2016 was such a clusterfuck of a year that I spent most of it seeking refuge in films. After a brilliant Christopher Lee retrospective at the Brussels Cinematek, a fantastic season of Ozu at Flagey...
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MY FAVOURITE FILMS OF THE 1980s
From September 1989 to November 1990, I was film critic of a British newspaper called The Sunday Correspondent, which was a nice, civilised, intelligent paper until the Independent launched the...
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DRUM ROLES IN THE MOVIES
Miles Teller and J. K. Simmons in Whiplash (2014) Whiplash is about a jazz drummer who drums till his fingers bleed. His connection to the kit he pounds so obsessively is echoed by his abusive...
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THE ORIGIN FAIL: TIME FOR A MORATORIUM ON ORIGIN STORIES?
With the announcement that Emma Stone is set to play 101 Dalmatians villainess Cruella De Vil in “an origin story, set in the early 80s with a punk vibe”, I thought it was time to repost this piece...
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THE DOG IT WAS THAT DIED (OR NOT): DOGS ON FILM
What do you get when you pair Tom Hardy with a dog called Rocco? Screen magic! Only cynophobics and Hardy haters will be able to resist the combination of Brando-esque shambling and puppy-nuzzling...
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CATS ON FILM: THE BUDGET PAPERBACK IS NOW AVAILABLE
A reminder that the budget paperback version of CATS ON FILM is now available from all the evil amazons. It always bothered me that the full colour paperback was so expensive, even when I shaved my...
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