Apex (2026) ** – Seen on Netflix
Deliverance meets The Silence of the Lambs and that wouldn’t be an altogether bad elevator pitch except for constant interruptions from the Australian Tourist Board flogging adventure holidays. Takes forever to get going – and it’s only 95 minutes to begin with – and after a tight ten minutes somewhere around the one-hour work when…
Behind the Scenes: British Renaissance?
On a whim I looked up the box office of British-made The Magic Faraway Tree, assuming it was the usual sort of British dud we’ve become accustomed to. To my surprise it’s cast a spell to the tune of $23 million worldwide including $10 million in the UK and it’s still to open in most…
The Magic Faraway Tree (2026) *** – Seen at the Cinema
Watching just one movie on my weekly jaunt to the cinema seems such a dereliction of duty that occasionally I’ll throw in a picture which was not at all high – or completely absent – from my must-see list. The presence of either Andrew Garfield (After the Hunt, 2025) or Claire Foy (H is for…
Zee & Co / X Y & Zee (1972) ****
I’ve seen Elizabeth Tayor glide along the floor, I’ve seen her stomp and stamp, I’ve seen her bellow and hiss, but, except at the outset of her career, I’ve never seen her indulge in anything vaguely athletic. So it’s a bold opening here to witness the actress playing table tennis with some venom, virtually dancing…
Behind the Scenes: The Trade Magazines in the 1960s – Part Two – “Box Office”
Where the weekly Variety devoted maybe a quarter of its pages in the 1960s to the film industry, the weekly U.S. trade magazine Box Office (it didn’t also run a daily) wrote about nothing but. And not just what we term the “film business” – the making and marketing of films – but also the…
Behind the Scenes: The Trade Magazines in the 1960s – Part One – “Variety”
Perhaps the most famous logo in the history of newspapers. Unusually, I had a very slight connection to the magazine. When I was a journalist I worked for Reed Business Publishing which took over Variety in 1987 through its U.S. subsidiary Cahners and much later a colleague of mine Neil Stiles took over as publisher.…
Death Rides A Horse (1967/1969) ****
Although Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) is my all-time favorite western and although the first X-certificate movie I sneaked into as a teenager was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966/1968), I never had much interest in spaghetti westerns. For a start, by the time I started my serious cinemagoing –…
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) ***
The gimmick of stars in disguise isn’t enough to spark this routine whodunit and the extended sequences of fox-hunting might deter the contemporary viewer but oddly enough something else of considerable interest is going on and enough to keep you hooked. Given it’s an actor’s screen persona that tempts you to their movies, how are…
Behind the Scenes: Box Office Report, London March 2 1968
It’s impossible to imagine these days the impact of the roadshow. Yes, we’ve got Imax and the premium pricing that goes with it, and yes advance bookings can be awesome – witness Oppenheimer (2023) and the upcoming Dune: Part Three which has sold out signs up eight months in advance. But by 1960s standards these…
The Longest Day (1962) *****
When critics applauded the inspired use of a reaction shot via Omar Sharif to convey the horror of a massacre on the Mocow streets in Doctor Zhivago (1965), they omitted to mention that the technique had been used to similar stunning effect – and twice – in The Longest Day. The first comes when the…
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The Magnificent 60s 