Films seen so far this year: 123
Films seen this week: What Happens In Vegas, Stop-Loss, Death Note, Made of Honour, Nim's Island, Summer Hours, Deception, Persepolis, Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?, The Tracey Fragments

Glossary: The Spallness Factor
Regular readers may have noticed that whenever I have to review a movie with Timothy Spall in it, I invariably make some comment about the Spallness Factor and whether it is high or low. It's not that I hate Timothy Spall (I thought he was excellent …

Films seen so far this year: 113

Screen Actors' Guild Negotiations: Here We Go Again…
This week the Screen Actors Guild began negotiations with the major studios, with the actors seeking a similar deal to the one granted to the Writers Guild, particularly in regard to proceeds from DVDs and internet downloads. Essentially, the current three-year contract expires on June 30th, so the union and the studios have until then to hammer out an acceptable deal and if they can't, we could be in for more strike action that would affect both film and television production almost immediately. What's worse is that the union itself seems to be divided, with the …

Films seen so far this year: 102

Grindhouse at the Curzon Soho
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Curzon Soho's Midnight Movie  screening of Grindhouse, the second in their ongoing series of late night cult movie events. As with Society the month before, it was a huge amount of fun. The atmosphere before the film was like a house party made up of dedicated film fanatics and even the goodie bags were better this time round. As for the film itself, the two films (Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and …

Films seen so far this year: 92

Dreading Indiana Jones: A Rant
Don't get me wrong - I love the Indiana Jones movies. If Lucas, Spielberg and Ford had made the fourth film three years after the last one, I'd be as excited as all hell. However, there are three big factors at work that are really making me dread the new one. 1) The trailer – see below. Try as I might, I just can't get excited about it. I'm not feeling the love. Yeah, sure, the hat, the theme tune, the whip, I …

Films seen so far this year: 83

The Talented Mr Minghella, RIP
Like many film fans, I was saddened by the death of director Anthony Minghella last week, aged just 54. He only made one film that I genuinely loved (The Talented Mr Ripley) but I always looked forward to seeing what he'd do next. As it turned out, his film of Alexander McCall Smith's The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (screened on BBC1 on Easter Sunday, the precursor to a forthcoming series) was a fitting final send-off: it was perfectly cast and it captured the laid back nature of the books beautifully, tying several different story …