I watched this again this weekend, inevitable now that I've been watching Tour de France and pootling around on my bicycle.

I first watched it a few years ago and reviewed it for my blog along with a few other 'cycling films'. I paste that review below.

What I will say is that I loved this film just as much the second time round. All the bits I remembered loving about it - and there are many, which float into…

Oof. What more can be said about the elegant beauty of Audrey Hepburn? She's one of the most archetypal manic pixie dream girls for sure, but with 60+ years separating me from this movie, there's a lot else that's equally fantastical and unreal about this film for it to all be okay. It's a fairy tale, a dream, and an escape from reality to a place that surely doesn't exist today, and probably never did anyway.

I love Irving's little…

I can't get over how beautiful this film looks. Every shot is a stunner, and some of the lighting effects and textures are so hyper-realistic. As a narrative it moves along at a fast clip, and as a sci-fi (ish) film, I only got confused like twice. The gravity of the allusion to the 2011 earthquake hit hard but was dealt with very carefully. And can we talk about the wonderful plot device of keeping diaries on a smartphone? I…

Quite hard to review a film like this objectively, but damn the scale of the thing is stunning. That being said, one thing that struck me as the helicopter clears the island, and the sheer size of the park and its infrastructure are fresh in your mind, is how relatively small the cast is - particularly when it comes to those running the park. And yet, it feels like the right scale for the film.

Anyway, all that aside, this…