I am not a man who generally pines for the past. You’ll rarely hear me tell of things were better way back when. I think we’re genuinely lucky to be around at a time when so much choice and exciting new artists, representing previously unseen cultures and ideas, are abundant. I will however freely admit…
Why is Ryan Gosling so good at everything? Remember a few years ago, when this film was doing the rounds? Remember the hype around this film that had somehow come out of nowhere and made movie musicals fresh and new again? Remember when Warren Beatty called it out by accident as that year’s Best Picture?…
I have, in the past, stated my grief at the passing of Robin Williams. As a performer, he brought great personal joy into millions of lives, whether as an eccentric alien in Mork and Mindy, or in his more serious roles like Dead Poets Society, or indeed Good Will Hunting, he was a unique and…
These past few weeks, the films I’ve looked at have had a rather ‘cult’ feel to them. First there was Little Shop of Horrors which boasts the kind of camp cult features, A Fish Called Wanda provided us with irreverent cult comedy, and now there’s Withnail & I, which is… a lot more difficult to categorise. It’s a…
This past weekend, in one of my Monty Python reviews, I offhandedly mentioned the Pythons’ film careers after their work in the troupe, and it may surprise you to know that I haven’t actually seen much post-Python work from most of them. Aside from Fawlty Towers, there isn’t any Python-heavy property I’ve seen a lot…
In my last book, I reviewed the first John Wick, and earlier in this book, I reviewed the third chapter, so here I am closing the circle. The John Wick series is a classic example of a franchise growing in scale with each instalment. The first film was one man looking for revenge after his…
This is one of those films that gets more interesting the more you learn about it. I was reading an article on the upcoming third instalment of this franchise recently, and it detailed the origins of John Wick as a film, and it made for very interesting reading. The apparent aim was to make a…
There might not be a more highly-regarded composer and songwriter in modern Hollywood than Alan Menken. For many people my age, his songs in Disney films were the soundtrack to our childhoods, and the late-80’s revival of Disney’s fortunes owes a lot of its success to Menken’s songwriting. Of course, he didn’t do this alone,…
Like a lot of people, I love Monty Python. Despite them being several decades before my time, I still discovered them in my mid-teens when my sense of humour was taking shape (dark, surreal and musical for me, please and thank you) and Python was a revelation to me. I couldn’t believe the things these…
Many people have one film they can watch over and over again, without getting bored of it. For many people, this will be the film they watch when they’re feeling down or had a difficult day, and for me that is The Holy Grail. Now, I’m a massive Python fan, even though they’re much before…
