Film

I was so pleased that a further series of The Directors was being run by SKY. I happened to see listed under SKY Documentaries a documentary on Don Siegel, most famous for the Dirty Harry films with Clint Eastwood. In pushing the “Record all” button I saw there were further programmes on John [...]

This classic – which I watched on the Talking Pictures channel yesterday – passed with flying colours the Rosen test of excellence, namely initially deciding to watch the first few minutes of a film I have seen many times and staying with it right to its end. It’s known for the [...]

I set the Discovering (great film actors on SKY ARTS) on series mode for recording. Most recorded I have already seen but last week I caught up with four on Julie Christie, Peter Lorre, Peter Finch and Anthony Hopkins. Of this notable quartet my two favourites are the Peters. Film goers have [...]

I participated in a list of non-English speaking movies and my Scandinavian contribution was Force Majeure, a Swedish drama that begins in a ski resort which  a rich young family visit. An avalanche descends and the wife decides that her husband’s main concern is to save his skin. This gnaws [...]

I watched this film yesterday.  Although a traditional war movie in terms of cast, you can see it was made 18 years after the event as, especially at the beginning, there was much and merited criticism of the hapless British military initiative resulting in the rescue of  some  338,000 of the [...]

This is a Norwegian film reflecting Skandi noir at its best and most gory. The story is relatively simple. A noble citizen Nils Dickman (Stellan Skarsgard), who clears the snow with his snow plough , receiving a civic award for his work ,  has his son shot as he is mistakenly assumed to have [...]

Ang Lee is now an international director of renown ( Brokeback Mounatin) but the Taiwan cineaste  plied his trade with Far Eastern movies which I prefer to his more commercial works like Hidden Tiger, Crouching Tiger . One such I watched for the third time yesterday, namely Lust, Caution. Some [...]