• A Canterbury Tale

    A Canterbury Tale

    ★★★★

    Previous review

    Look, there are times in life when you feel that society is progressing too fast and we are all forgetting the important things, like the environment around us, history and our place in all of that. And it's at those times that you've just got to go out in the cover of darkness and use the premature ejaculation you've been blessed/cursed with to cum in young women's hair, OK?

    What do you mean "the Glueman" was only tossing…

  • Millions Like Us

    Millions Like Us

    ★★★

    Keep calm and carry on in this wartime propaganda from Gainsborough whose message is best summarised as we can all do our bit in a variety of different ways. There's good opportunities we'll seized by actresses Patricia Roc, Anne Crawford and Megs Jenkins in pivotal roles as a trio of factory girls building vital components for fighter planes, whilst Gordon Jackson and Eric Portman (using his authentic Yorkshire accent that always sounds put on given his multitude of clipped RP…

  • Murder in Reverse?

    Murder in Reverse?

    ★★★½

    British noirs invariably had to be something of a juggling act. They were never direct copies of their hardboiled American cousins; for every measure of comparable grit, they seemingly had to be leavened out with very homegrown concerns like social realism (good) and frightfully middle-class romances (not good).

    In 1945's Murder in Reverse? writer/director Montgomery Tully captures the noir flavour with the tale of a man, cheated by his wife and wrongly convicted of murder, released and out for revenge…

  • A Cottage on Dartmoor

    A Cottage on Dartmoor

    ★★★★★

    "Joe!"
    "What is it Sally?"

    I'll tell you what it is, it's one of the best cuts ever.

    Why no one talks about Asquith as much as they really should is beyond me. Based on this and Underground his silent period is truly innovative and artistic, making Hitchcock look positively inferior at times. Beautiful lighting and framing that could match anything German expressionism has to offer, an assured handling of energetic montage that rivals the Soviet school, Asquith never once…

  • Doctor Who: 60 Years of Secrets & Scandals

    Doctor Who: 60 Years of Secrets & Scandals

    ★★★

    Doctor Who: 60 Years of Secrets and Scandals is a typical Channel 5 documentary cash-in, full of errors, bog-standard scene setting of the eras (70s = economic crisis, 80s = Berlin Wall coming down) and snarky, faux jocular narration from the annoying Kate Robbins. What it doesn't actually have is any secrets or scandals.

    Poor Sophie Aldred. She seemed somewhat embarrassed and bored at having to trot out her near-death experience filming Battlefield when asked to recall it for the…

  • The Very Best of Peter Sellers

    The Very Best of Peter Sellers

    ★★★½

    A collection of clips from numerous Sellers movies. Frustratingly they don't credit where they are from. I've a soft spot for this, as my sister bought it on video for me as a gift from a trip to Brighton back in 1990 or '91.

  • Doctor Who: The Star Beast

    Doctor Who: The Star Beast

    ★★★

    Previous review

    I had to revisit, if only to try and make sense of the meta-crisis resolution. And, no. It's impossible. Because there's nothing to it. Zero logic. A gust of that "just let it go" wind would knock it down flat and the "a male presenting Time Lord" line that preceded it was just unnecessary snark given that the Doctor has literally been a woman for the last five years.

    But hang on, did RTD really just imply that…

  • Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

    Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

    ★★

    The one with Brother Cane on the soundtrack and sadly the last to feature Pleasence, so it gets a pass from me.

  • The Many Lives of Richard Attenborough

    The Many Lives of Richard Attenborough

    ★★★½

    It's a mark of how towering and important a figure in cinema that Richard Attenborough was thst this 2003 Arena documentary commemorating his 80th year barely touches the sides, despite having two hours to play with. Starring roles in movies such as In Which We Serve, The Great Escape and Jurassic Park aren't explored, and directorial efforts like A Bridge Too Far, A Chorus Line and Chaplin are also ignored by filmmaker Adam Low. But the documentary is somewhat invaluable…

  • Paradise Alley

    Paradise Alley

    ★★★

    For the first forty minutes of this, you might find yourself asking "why does no one talk about this movie?" But Stallone, as writer/director/star (he even sings the theme tune, despite Tom Waits and his brother Frank being in the cast), just can't last the distance and the film becomes a disjointed, uneven puzzler.

    The story of three Italian American brothers trying to survive in postwar Hell's Kitchen, Paradise Alley was a project Stallone had been working on before Rocky.…

  • A Haunting in Venice

    A Haunting in Venice

    ★★★

    Only Murders in the Belgian.

    In adapting a minor work and playing up to the macabre conventions, Branagh finally makes more of a mark as Poirot. This is tighter, more precise and looks great, but these are still far from indispensable additions to the Christie cinematic canon.

  • Doctor Who: The Star Beast

    Doctor Who: The Star Beast

    ★★★

    "A great day for Meepkind!"
    A great day for Tennant/Tate/RTD fans!
    A terrible day for Terfs!

    Parts of this worked. You forget how good Tennant is with RTD's light comedy and dialogue, and the nostalgia is effective even for those of us - like myself - less enamoured with the era of Who that's being revived here. I guess there's a lot to be said for hitting the ground running with a regeneration story and it's certainly refreshing to dispose…