“The Taking of Pelham 123” is an action crime drama directed by Joseph Sargent, who seems to have mainly done television directing. Maybe that would have been useful as he would have been used to working on a low budget and making everything very tight and with minimal expense. It means that this film manages…
“Triangle” is a supernatural thriller, and follows Jess (Melissa George), a single mother of a disabled son, who accepts an invitation to go sailing with a friend and his other friends. After running into trouble at sea, they come across a huge steam ship and board it, only to find it (apparently) deserted. Characters are…
This film, directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Dane Dehaan and Jason Isaacs, has been labelled a horror movie. I didn’t really see it as such, and I would call it a fantasy/mystery. It’s also weird and quite atmospheric. Dehaan plays a young business executive called Lockhart, who is ordered by his company to go…
Never mind the Hallmark movies, if you want a great Christmas film, you can’t go wrong with this. Starring Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young, “The Bishop’s Wife” involves Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) who becomes obsessed with the idea of building a cathedral. This needs funds, and his main donor is a self-absorbed…
On the face of it, there’s nothing much to it. The run time is under half an hour, the animation is shoddy, and the voice actors mostly inexperienced. The plot is rudimentary at best. And yet … there’s something about Charlie Brown and his friends that appeals to people all over the world. They inhabit…
This film was released in 1950, and directed by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Ostensibly a murder mystery, it relates the tale of a samurai who has been found dead, his wife raped, and the enquiry into how this happened. The whole story is told in flashback. The framing device is that of three…
Take cold war fears of nuclear annihilation, and add in an intelligent super-computer gone amuk, and you have ”Colossus: The Forbin Project”. This was certainly not the first time a computer taking over had been depicted on film – both “2001 A Space Odyssey” and “Alphaville” predate this, for example. The idea also appeared in…
“Exterminating Angel” was directed by the Spanish Surrealist Luis Bunuel, but is a Mexican production as he was living there at this time. It’s about a group of rich people who gather together for a dinner, only to discover that for reasons unknown they can’t leave. Surrealism, whether it is in art, literature, or film,…
I do like a ghost story, and I am also a fan of director Guillermo Del Toro, so I was interested to see “Crimson Peak”. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain, it’s a gothic horror in the old style used by Hammer horror films of the fifties, sixties and seventies. A young American…
“Fantasia” is my idea of comfort watching. I’ll re-watch it when I’m feeling especially down or stressed, because it makes me smile, cheers me up. there’s so much in there – humour, drama, beauty, spookiness, beautiful music and beautiful animation. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” by Johann C Bach, was the piece for the…
