Archives for Film
There's something (crappy) about Borat... (November 12, 2006) A few weeks ago Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat film was released to the world and pretty much everyone loved it. Metacritic collated all the reviews and came to the conclusion that the whole enterprise deserved 89/100 and described this as...
An Inconvenient Truth... (September 16, 2006) My politics are pretty well known to people who read this site, I suspect - I'm basically economically centrist, believing in the the necessary efficiencies of a free market curbed from excesses and derailment by regulation at the extremes. I...
Some thoughts on Brokeback Mountain... (January 6, 2006) I went to see Brokeback Mountain this evening with a lovely group of people, and I think it made an impact on all of us. It really is what the hype says it is - an intelligent and sensitive film...
Kong! Kong! Kong! Kong! (December 15, 2005) There's a moment about a fifth of the way through King Kong (IMDB / Metacritic) when a young character who's reading a copy of Heart of Darkness suddenly twigs that he's not reading an adventure story. And then about thirty...
A review of Joss Whedon's "Serenity"... (August 25, 2005) Last night - eight hours after landing back in the UK - I went to see a very special movie. In fact I went to see a very special preview of a very special movie. I went to see...
On 'Batman Begins' and St. Pancras Station... (June 17, 2005) Last night - thanks to the intervention of my good friend Katy Lindemann - I was lucky enough to see a media screening of Batman Begins. I used to go to media screenings of things quite a lot when I...
On Alexander and Uncle Tom... (January 8, 2005) The other day I was watching BBC Breakfast and they got their film critic on to talk about the premiere of Oliver Stone's new film Alexander. Now Alexander has not got terribly good reviews and they showed a few clips...
Twenty years of Oscar nominees... (February 14, 2002) You start by trawling IMDB for the Oscar nominees for "Best Picture" over the last twenty years. Then you add together their user ratings and plot it on a graph. Hey presto - an instant pseudo-scientific discussion piece...
Harry Potter: a brief review... (November 12, 2001) As Cartman said so eloquently, "Yes I've seen the Terrence and Philip movie - who wants to touch me? I said who wants to fucking touch me?!" The good news first - there is very little bad news at all....
Antitrust Antivert... (May 13, 2001) Antitrust Antivert: As I said earlier I went to see Antitrust this evening. What I didn't say was that it actually was really quite poor. However, there were some incredibly (unintentionally) funny bits. By way of an affectionate tribute to...
Using IMDB to predict the 2001 Oscars... (January 7, 2001) Hypothesis: 1) The Oscars are essentially a populist enterprise that reflect the basic passions of the audience rather more than (perhaps) they should. 2) The IMDB is a similarly populist enterprise. 3) It might be plausible to compare the top...
On watching "The Patriot"... (November 7, 2000) In this - the first year of the new Millennium, there are a whole new batch of bad-guys to hate and fear - the people who may come along while you sleep and replace your children with crude duplicates carved out of root vegetables - the people who wear exotic clothing and move in an almost sinisterly stiff fashion - mindless drones of cruel masters, the menace is now ... British ...
On the world premiere of Snatch... (August 24, 2000) So I went to the world première of Snatch last night, and I can now give you the low down on the film and the event. Quick bit of preliminary guff first though - I wasn't actually looking forward to...
9. On playing games in the cinema... (August 15, 2000) 9 On playing games in the cinema: The period before the movie begins is possibly the most important part of the film-going experience. At least two-thirds of the fun of two-thirds of the films lies in their anticipation - in...
The Movie Therapist... (December 14, 1999) Listen very carefully, my friends, for this is the most important thing I have ever had to tell you. This concerns the wonders of Movie Therapy. For years I laboured under the misapprehension that when one was miserable one watched...
