Last night in the pub we realised that there has never been a good Robin Williams film. People professed to soft spots for The Fisher King, Aladdin and even Hook* but the general consensus was that Williams is the worst thing in these movies, and his[…]

No. That is really its (Western) name. Drifted in and out of the ICA last year as possibly the most niche film ever, if reviews were to be believed. Reviews are not to be believed, 2002 is not just a Wong Kar Wai parody (though there is much of that […]

Pandas: The Great Leap Forward, a documentary my wife taped off Sky Travel, is chock full of marvellous giant panda footage from a big Chinese nature sanctuary. The programme is Chinese-made, or so we guessed from the footage recorded in the 1980s an[…]

In a world populated by overblown blockbusters, the simplicity and directness of Wes Craven’s Red-Eye…
No. We cannot praise a film merely for cutting out what might be called the extraneous fat of the standard Hollywood film. It is instru[…]

I spent much of Saturday with my brilliant friend Sharon, and one of the subjects we covered at length was different ways of looking at art forms. One of the interesting areas, for me, was an idea of regarding the physical skills of many screen perfo[…]

Though it’s always nice to see Steve Buscemi again, the real surprise is the reappearance, in the film’s best and biggest joke, of an indie character actor (verging on leading man) who’s not been seen for some time now. My respect f[…]

All the things that made the trailer to The Island so great, make the film of The Island so rubbish. Mainly the plot. You seem the film of the Island takes about half an hour until the viewer realises that this does not take place in a contaminated w[…]

BBC News 24 Interviewer to David Attenborough in story about decline in numbers of mountain gorilla:
“So, what were they like to work with?”
They were actors in gorilla suits all along![…]

In 1997 I went up to Edinburgh to sample the Fringe. It was the year that the League of Gentlemen won the Perrier, and I saw their show. Matt Lucas was in the audience laughing his arse off, but i didn’t get much of a kick out of it. Mark Gatis[…]

Look at all the Sea Minerals!!!!
And no dandruff either![…]