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Munich (Edge of War) 2022

The critics generally liked this film – which I saw on Netflix – but I was underwhelmed. Why? The central relationship between Neville Chamberlain’s PPS Hugh Legat (George Mackay) and Paul von Hartmann (Janis Niewohner) stretched credulity. They were at Oxford together, both were [...]

January 25, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Aftermath (2019)

I found the films over the festive period disappointing. There is a reason for this and that reason is Netflix. Netflix, whose annual subscription is less than the BBC licence fee, are broadcasting films shortly after their cinema general  release. So BBC and ITV are reduced to showing their stock [...]

January 6, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Great Train Robbery (2013 two part film)

Yesterday over lunch I discussed with a friend roughly my age the seismic events of out lifetime: the assassination of President Kennedy, the landing on the moon, the killing of John Lennon, the death of Princess Diana and the Great Train Robbery. The sheer audacity of the gang, who on August 8th [...]

December 24, 2021 // 0 Comments

Operation Finale

Operation Finale is a Netflix production based on the abduction and trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann in 1960. The first part – being the planning and kidnapping of Eichmann – was a largely accurate but the second part takes considerable dramatic licence with the facts. Eichmann was the [...]

December 23, 2021 // 0 Comments

Steven Spielberg at 75

In the week I watched Mark Kermode interview Steven Spielberg, whose birthday falls today. It’s in the nature of such things that, if you interview arguably the most celebrated film director of our lifetime, you do not ask too many aggressive questions. Although Spielberg was not given a rough [...]

December 18, 2021 // 0 Comments

West Side Story (2021)

Not many directors would risk remaking such a celebrated musical on stage and screen as West Side Story but Steven Spielberg has the chutzpah so to do. Does he pull it off? Yes and no. Yes, he is brilliant film maker and sensibly sticks to  the original. No, because the original score and [...]

December 15, 2021 // 0 Comments

Modern life (Part 37)

Completely by chance, the other day I found myself ruminating upon which was the exact moment at which I began “falling off the pace” of modern life. This was against a background in which, in casual conversations over past decades, I have long used 1985 at my answer to this question because [...]

December 11, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Magician/Colm Toibin

One of the interesting aspects of biography is the attitude – often better described as the relationship – between the writer and his/her subject. Gitta Sereny wrote an excellent biography of Albert von Speer but seemed to be in thrall of him. Tristram Hunt wrote a detailed account of [...]

October 29, 2021 // 0 Comments

Ridley Road, Paris 1900, Paul Verhoeven revisited & The Directors

Ridley Road  finished last Sunday and by and large I was impressed. Without in any way denigrating the Black cause that has suffered such discrimination in my lifetime it’s good that in the anti-racism platform the BBC gives expression to anti-semitism too. Ridley Road was set in 1962 when [...]

October 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

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