Category: Films

I shall say right up front that I readily dislike remakes. If the film was good the first time, what possible reason, beyond monetary, gain can you have for remaking it? The list of poor remakes is endless, although as one of my favourite films of all time, I will admit to a massive contradiction…

Well thank you very much to The Mirror. In today’s paper for just 45p, they included a copy of Cabaret on DVD. And since I had nothing better to do (obviously a complete lie), I sat in and watched it. Now I’m not exactly a musical fan, but then I wouldn’t really class this as…

First a confession. I don’t think that I’ve ever sat through the whole of Spinal Tap. And I’ve never seen Best in Show despite my best efforts (no pun intented); one of these days, I’ll get hold of a cheap version of the DVD. But I was keen to see A Mighty Wind as I…

I didn’t get out to see this on the first day in the Odeon Leicester Square, as I did with The Fellowship of the Ring. But then I didn’t manage that with The Two Towers either. I guess that Christmas just isn’t a good time for squeezing in three and a half hour movies. Let’s…

In 1985 Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, a pair of young climbers, went to Peru to climb an unscaled face of a 21,000 ft Andean mountain, Siula Grande. The journey went horribly wrong on the descent, with the pair getting separated and Joe Simpson being left, quite probably dead. Now obviously he wasn’t because he…

The novels of Patrick O’Brian are the preferred reading of a significant part of the population – and previously I’ve thought them to be a type of Telegraph reader. Anyway, this film comes along, and despite what I thought was a quite dreadful trailer, I went along anyway. I have to say that I thoroughly…

Such a lot to catch up with! Anyhow, I saw Kill Bill finally last week, even though I do have a fundamental problem with what was originally one film, being broken into two. Twice the lucre then? Two DVDs followed by a limited edition boxset DVD with previously unreleased extras ad nauseum… And I had…

Finally got around to seeing the last part of the Matrix trilogy, although I’d argue that it was never going to be a trilogy in the first place. Anyway, this was better than I expected. I’m not sure that I went in with especially high expectations, but the story was better than the last, and…

I went to see In The Cut on a complete whim, as I’m not the world’s greatest Jane Campion fan. Holy Smoke was so-so, The Portrait of a Lady a little dull and The Piano – well the music really made The Piano. I haven’t seen it since the first time I watched it, but…

Well it’s been out a couple of weeks, and hasn’t exactly set the review world alight, but I simply have to see everything that the Coen brothers put out. Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones has everything going for it. It’s supposedly based on those fast talking screwball comedies of the thirties and…

Bright Young Things is Stephen Fry’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. If you hadn’t already realised, I absolutely love Evelyn Waugh’s novels – indeed all his books. It’s a while since I last read Vile Bodies, and needless to say that I’ll be rereading it fairly shortly. But this is about the film, which…

I sat down to watch this wonderful Sergio Leone epic on TV last night, and wake up to hear that Charles Bronson’s died! It’s a few years since I last watched this, and the first thing that strikes you is the long drawn out sequences – they’re wonderful. From the opening credit sequence as three…