Lock Up Your Daughters (1969) **
Worth seeing for all the wrong reasons, prime example being Christopher Plummer with a false nose and almost unrecognizable as an eighteenth century periwigged English dandy in a pure squalor of a coastal town. The best reason is the very realistic background, all mud, missing teeth, drunkenness, cockfighting, poverty, debtors strung up in baskets -…
Reminders of Him (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema
Author Colleen Hoover pulls a fast one on admirers of It Ends with Us (2024) and Regretting You (2025). Audiences had come to expect sophisticated romances that played to feminist mores. While there’s certainly romance involved, it’s more about ex-con Kenna (Maika Monroe) trying to re-connect with the daughter Diem (Zoe Kosovic) she lost after…
Penelope (1966) ***
Comedic twist on the heist movie with Natalie Wood (This Property Is Condemned, 1966) as a kleptomaniac. Given its origins in a tight little thriller by E.V. Cunningham, pseudonym of Howard Fast (Mirage, 1965), it’s an awful loose construction that seems to run around with little idea of where it wants to go. Wood, of…
The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) ***
“The Husband-Hunting Adventures of Moll Flanders” might have been a more accurate title and if you were seeking a template for a multi-character eighteenth-century Olde English picture majoring on sexual shenanigans here would be a very good place to start. Of course, Tom Jones (1963) was the precursor but told the story from the male…
Splitsville (2026) ** Seen at the Cinema
Might have worked back in the day when you could have enlisted the likes of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau whose grouchy sniping sparked The Odd Couple (1968) and Grumpy Old Men (1993). At a pinch might have stood a chance with Will Ferrell (Anchorman, 2004) and Vince Vaughn (The Wedding Crashers, 2005) and others…
The Ipcress File (1965) *****
Stylish take on the espionage genre when it was still in its infancy and could accommodate stylish directors like Sidney J. Furie (The Appaloosa, 1966). Eschewing the bombastic effects and villains of the James Bond series, relying more on intrigue and the elements of betrayal that other practitioners of the dark arts such as John…
The Strip Tease Murder (1961) ***
A treat in so many ways. A killer who could be the evil twin of Q, James Bond’s gadget supremo. A denouement worthy of Hercule Poirot. A femme fatale whose villainous boyfriend thinks he’s in charge until he learns, to his cost, she’s far smarter. A hero who’s just an ordinary bloke, derided for the…
The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966) ***
Surprisingly good fun for a flop. A horde of brilliant visual gags, some of considerably subtlety, keep the ball rolling on what must be the most deliriously barmy concept ever – though, you never know, it’s so ingenious someone in the espionage game might well have tried it out. The problem for audiences back then…
None but the Brave (1965) *****
Frank Sinatra’s sole stab at direction is an astonishing piece of work and deserves to be revisited in a more positive frame of mind than it encountered on original release. Maybe critical acclaim depends on your name, and most critics were already tearing into Ol’ Blue Eyes because his acting in the 1960s scarcely matched…
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The Magnificent 60s 