A Left-Handed Form of Human Endeavour

I’ve been very busy reviewing things for DVD Times recently and my latest piece is on Tim Burton’s rather wonderful Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. You can read my thoughts on the UK R2 Disc - due out tomorrow- here.

One of the merits of The Boys From Brazil is that it remains one of the very few watchable films churned out by Sir Lew Grade in the seventies. Lew, now no longer with us, was an old-style entrepreneur whose idea of film production was to spend forty percent of the budget on stars, forty […]

I haven’t written in this blog for the best part of six months and I thought it was about time to come back and try and define what I want the blog to be. There are many blogs on Film Journal which cover various niches and it’s not easy to try and make one of […]

Barbara Streisand was always a long way from being beautiful but she can, given careful lighting, be striking and memorable; not just for that amazing nose but for her eyes which frequently express more than the dialogue allows. In The Way We Were, she’s quite radiant, and superbly expressive - there is a lovely moment […]

I have a strange relationship with Michael Winner - or maybe I should rephrase that. I have a strange relationship with his films. Most of his work is in the realm between disastrous and hilarious, with the exception of his alleged comedies which are simply painful. I defy anyone to watch Parting Shots and feel […]

Eddie Anderson (Kirk Douglas) is a successful advertising executive who has everything but he’s still not happy. So one day, on his way to work, he deliberately crashes his car in an effort to get himself out of a rut which, he feels, is killing him.
This is the beginning of Elia Kazan’s 1969 film The […]

This piece is about six years old but I’m quite pleased with it so I present it here. It will, with some revisions, form the basis of an upcoming DVD Times review.
John Boorman is a master of visual style and his films are full of images which
are hard to forget. Unfortunately, he has often […]

I’ve been trying to decide, as you do, whether The Deep is intentionally racist or whether that’s just an accidental impression created by some very crass plotting and characterisation.
I should perhaps explain. This isn’t merely an idle speculation brought on by too much free time (free time? ha!) but the result of two hours spent […]

A few things have always baffled me about Earthquake.
1. Why does nobody in authority believed anyone who says that an earthquake is imminent even when they are very well aware that they live in a part of the world which is particularly prone to such a disaster.
2. Why is Ava Gardner, still beautiful in the […]

I watched “Monster-In-Law” the other day for reasons I won’t go into here and, painfully awful as most of it was, it made me wish that Jane Fonda hadn’t spent fifteen years away from movies. In what is little but a pile of sentimental, toothless shite, she displays enough grace and charisma to blow J-Lo […]