I joined Netflix against my better judgment. People kept telling me I was missing out on a lot, that it had anything and everything. Maybe, I thought to myself, that’s the problem. I was accused of being snobbish when I said it reminded me of the cinematic equivalent of Woolworth’s. That was my first impression.…

Compartment No. 6: We don’t hear much about glasnost or perestroika since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine but they’re applicable to this. It explores the friendship between a Finnish woman (Seidi Haarla) and a Russian man (Yuriy Borisov) on board a train bound for the Arctic Circle in the late 1990s. Directed by Juho…

The Hollywood Academy likes to ‘big up’ a given film each year. People are saying Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is going to sweep the boards this year. Will Smith is expected to win best actor for King Richard but let’s remember what happened to Chadwick Boseman last year. He was unbeatable and…

Denial, as they say, isn’t just a river in Egypt. A comet is heading for Earth that’s due to blow us all to smithereens in six months. Two low level astronauts are aware of it. But nobody in the corridors of power wants to know. They think it’s Trumpian “fake news.” The “boy who cried…

Nice to see that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have got back together again but does the news deserve the buzz it’s been getting from the tabloids? They were a joke last time they were together, around the time they made Gigli. Now the prospect of them going up the aisle has got the paparazzi…

February 2 was the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses. You might be interested in seeing the film version if you haven’t done so already. It was directed by Joseph Strick in 1967. Ten years later, Strick directed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce’s earlier novel. Opinions differ on…

The neo-noir thriller Nightmare Alley is a remake of a 1947 film starring Tyrone Power in one of his favourite roles. This version is directed by Guillermo del Toro – of The Shape of Water fame. Leonardo DiCaprio was initially cast in the power role but dropped out amidst financial squabbles. He’s replaced by another…

When you cut off sound, everything you hear afterwards becomes more precious. Maybe that’s why A Quiet Place resonated with so many people. Or why we laughed so much when mime artist Marcel Marceau spoke the only line of dialogue in Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie. Tilda Swinton has all but cornered the market on quirky…

Film Review 2021 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For the first half of the year, Covid-19 had us under house arrest. Starved of cinemas we found sustenance in mini-series, box-sets, the occasional gem from streaming platforms. The Oscar ceremonies went ahead in February in the kind of funereal…

Ernest Hemingway died 60 years ago this year. I recently watched the film of his famous novel A Farewell to Arms which was based on his wounding on an Italian battlefield during World War I. “I felt my soul leaving my body,” was how he described the incident. Hemingway was in love with Pauline Pfeiffer,…