I have had a mixed relationship with the music of Lana Del Rey since her sensational debut album, Born To Die in 2010. I loved that album, and played it a lot! I still do. But always felt like it wasn't really for me, yet I couldn't help replaying it and humming the tunes. I … Continue reading Norman Fucking Rockwell
Shown exclusively on BBC2, this evergreen show of consistent entertainment, childish chuckles and quite interesting but largely useless information, remains one of the few solid reasons to check the BBC iPlayer for something worth watching. I have been an avid fan since season 1, or the letter A, since 2003, and have not missed a … Continue reading QI: Series Q
It is an inevitability in life that eventually you will watch all the films in the Harry Potter world, whether you want to or not. Mostly, I want to, but do find them a little difficult to hold in my mind as separate entities. I remember that I saw each one and generally enjoyed the … Continue reading Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
If I was still 10 or 11 years old, this might be my favourite film of all time (for a few months). The 10 year old trapped inside me kinda thinks it is! At first I was sceptical that it could be any good at all, seeing it getting nominated in a lot of best … Continue reading Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Following up on my review of the stand alone feature length experiment that is Bandersnatch, I was inspired to go back through the back catalogue of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror, which now consists of 5 uneven series, since December 2011. Seasons 1 & 5 only have three episodes, season 2 has four and seasons 3 … Continue reading Black Mirror
Sunday night, or rather very early Monday morning in the UK, saw the climax of yet another long awards season for the movie industry. Oscar had decided to bring it forward a few weeks this year, meaning all the big awards were squashed into a shorter time frame, and the whole exhausting bandwagon had hurtled … Continue reading 92nd Academy Awards
As part of my project to compile a coffee table book called 21st Century cinema: 200 Unmissable Films, I have found it interesting, but not surprising, that almost 10% of the list since the year 2000 are animated features. It is an art form that Pixar and Disney especially, but many smaller studios, are excelling … Continue reading Coco
In the search for a way to watch the 92nd Academy Awards live from Hollywood tonight I was led to a subscription for Now TV, which is basically the online platform for Sky Cinema. And there I found all the missing films I had yet to see from last year that aren't available "free" on … Continue reading Bohemian Rhapsody
So, I am writing a coffee table book that selects the 200 top films of 2000 - 2019. Called, predictably, 21st Century Cinema: 200 Unmissable films. It uses a system of rating I devised called The Decinemal, which takes the ten categories by which a film can be rated (Direction, Script, Design, Lead Acting, Support … Continue reading 3 Idiots
Kirk Douglas 1916 - 2020 The dimple-chinned legend of silver screen that was Issur Danielovitch, aka Kirk Douglas, passed away on February 5th at the ripe old age of 103. After serving as a communications officer in the American Navy in WWII, he undertook a prestigious stage career in New York, before being picked up … Continue reading 12 of the Best… Kirk Douglas Films
The Wasteland 