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Center Stage is a remarkable film. It is based on the life of the famous Chinese actress, Ruan Lingyu. The film covers her rise to fame in Shanghai during the 1930s, before ending with her suicide aged 24. The way director Stanley Kwan mixes beautifully lit recreations of films since lost; with production talks between director Kwan, Maggie Cheung, and co-star Carina Lau; interviews of witnesses who knew Ruan, and extracts from Ruan's original films including her final two films The Goddess and New Women.

I'm not sure the flash-forward meta scenes work, but everything else is stunning. Cheung, Kwan and Lau seem somewhat callow in the production meetings, and perhaps that is the point? But put against the artistry they put on screen through recreations and the delicately filmed biographical details, they seem somewhat out of nowhere.

However, this is a churlish complaint, when considering Center Stage as a whole. The luminous Maggie Cheung gives one of the great performances, and Carina Lau isn't far behind her. The flickers of distraught emotion which Cheung filters through the first two acts is incredible, particularly when consider a lot of the cinematic recreations are told in what amounts to close-ups solely on Cheung's face.

Stanley Kwan made some great, great films. This is perhaps his best. He films colour like it should be black and white, with high contrast and sharpness divergence, and directs everything with utter precision.

Center Stage isn't an easy film. It isn't an easy subject matter. It isn't told in a formally straightforward manner. It is a long and precise 155 minutes, but it really is quietly devastating by the end.

The V-cinema sweet-spot between Duel and Taxi Driver, with Yûko Natori as Kiriko, who now works as a night shift taxi driver after serving time for bank fraud. Soon, her peace is interrupted by a relentless stalker in a Land Cruiser tracking her across the least glamorous streets of Tokyo. The day-time offers no respite, with a over-friendly colleague popping up everywhere, and an endless amount of men pissing her off.

This is probably the most serious and mature V-cinema film I've seen. No nudity here, very little dialogue, and a rather good thriller plot conceit. The film is pretty flatly shot, with its televisual framing and lighting, but otherwise Stranger really works. It has a great central performance, and some genuine tension running across the neon cityscape.

A really solid thriller.

I had a very good time with The Monster of London City.

A series of Jack the Ripper-style murders take place in contemporary London, leaving Scotland Yard baffled. Coincidentally, a new play about Jack the Ripper is opening in London at the time, and the lead actor who plays Jack becomes a suspect in the real-life killings

The perfect set-up for a Krimi. Or any film to be honest. Ultimately, as with any Krimi I have ever seen, the twist is so easy to guess I don't think you could call it a reveal. But, everything else works.

The Jack the Ripper play, the behind the scenes of the theatre, an implicated MP, and a romance between a woman and two men, who looks basically identical. Revolving around brutal murders in foggy old London town, where everyone is speaking the King's German.

Probably the most fun I've had with a Krimi.

The Mad Executioners is an early 1960s Krimi that marries to plots together into a quite enjoyable ending. In the driving plot, a group of hooded vigilantes hang wrong-doers with a rope stolen from Scotland Yard’s Black Museum; and in the background a series of sex murders are happening. The German production has rather good production values, though the acting isn't quite as good as I'd like. Other than Maria Perschy, who brings glamour, to a rather solid procedural. You can see the small step from Krimi to Giallo quite vividly with The Mad Executioners.

Lured starts as a 1940s Sea of Love with Lucille Ball in the Al Pacino role, ends a lot less interesting.

The first act is great. There is a serial killer, the Poet Killer, who is murdering women using the personal ads to lure them into meeting him. Ball is a taxi dancer whose best friend goes missing. Scotland Yard only have one clue, that the killer is influenced by Baudelaire, and decide to ask Ball to go undercover. The secondary plot is that Ball wants to get a job with George Sanders. Sanders is a shagger and cad, who becomes infatuated with Ball.

Just a tremendous set-up.

And, then, not much happens. For ages. As you move through the film the twist becomes very easy to guess. The story stutters and shudders, and I have no idea how he stretched out the ending to last 30 minutes. It should all be wrapped up, but Douglas Sirk insists in dragging it out.

The film looks great. Sirk has all the talent in the world. But he doesn't quite manage to work this film for the full 100 minutes. However, the cast is brilliant and worth watching on their own. Sanders and Ball, are ed by Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Coburn, and Boris Karloff.

A great first act, that kind of drifts away by the end. But I enjoyed that opening enough to recommend it.

I didn't know going into the cinema that The Phoenician Scheme was Wes Anderson's Mr Arkadin (aka Confidential Report). A comic take on the Orson Welles near-classic.

Benicio Del Toro channels Welles rather well. A performance of bluster, lies, and charisma. It is a thrill to watch Del Toro dominate a film but with a sense of humour rather than one of his more brooding turns. He makes everyone around him better. Mia Threapleton is deadpan and gets a lot of the best lines (she is the Zero of this film); Michael Cera starts rather annoyingly before becoming a very funny addition.

The usual Wes Anderson ensemble of great actors turn up for a line or two and always give the film a shot in the arm (though, I'm not sure about Benedict Cumberbatch as one of the newer additions to Anderson's rolodex.)

The Phoenician Scheme has a pleasing literary structure. It has a scheme and chapters for each element of scheme represented by a list of characters. I wasn't necessarily convinced by the flashes of Heaven, nor its place within the story. It might work better on second viewing, or it might just be a joke to have Bill Murray as God.

I just had a great time at the cinema. It is a pure comedy, with a very wry sense of humour. Mocking industrialists and Communists; scenes with quicksand and airplane crashes. It is broad, but very particular with its overly precise dialogue all told in flat cadence. Wes Anderson is veering preciously close of David Mamet territory, with his dialogue and obsession with con-men.

The most fun I've had at the cinema this year.

Messianic Moonraker.

Married couple Peggy Cummins and Donald Sinden inherit £30,000 and a huge house from Cummins' late and quite odd Aunt Christabelle. The couple have
no money, and due to the oddity of the will, the only way to gain the money is to divorce. Instead of immediately following the template of a classic American screwball comedy and getting to Reno, these Brits decide to take in lodgers. Obviously, the lodgers turn out to be strange or/and foreign (or in the case of Barbara Steele impossibly alluring for Sinden), and comedy ensues.

The film is a light farce with a lot of fairly broad slapstick. There are a lot of scenes of people falling down some uneven broken stair carpet. Every scene with Steele is great, and I cannot dislike anything Cummins does (this was released one year before Cummins retirement from film), but Your Money or Your Wife isn't a classic by any means.

17 years after Your Money or Your Wife Anthony Simmons remarkably directed Black Joy, which I wouldn't have guessed for 30,000 pounds.

Noose for a Gunman is a pretty good B-Western. 70 minutes of punchy action, a bit of a mystery, and some fairly solid dialogue.

It has a good set-up - Though wanted for murder, gunslinger Case Britton (Jim Davis) returns home to Rock Valley when he learns that the stagecoach carrying his fiancée is being targeted by bandit Jack Cantrell (Ted de Corsia). - and despite its sharp runtime, it allows for quite a lot of satisfying set-up as Davis marches around town with purpose. Everyone has a history together, and the film tries to exist beyond the edges of its frame.

Davis is really good as the no-nonsense gunman. I've seen him in a few B-westerns and I quite like his straightforward style. The rest of the cast do fairly well, working with sketches of characters - the sheriff, the dodgy town businessman, the good woman etc.

It isn't an ambitious film, but it works well for what it is.

(If you want to read a really great review - read this one by Andy Review, no-one writes better about Westerns on this site)

I see a lot of kid's films at the cinema these days. Any excuse to take my daughter to something. Some of the best reviewed children's films fall a bit flat with an actual 5 year old (she was a bit nonplussed by The Wild Robot, and actively hated Flow with every minute), but this one she loved. I see that the general reviews are a bit sniffy (the one in the Guardian by a critic called Jesse Hassenger is particularly scathing) but I can't really see why.

The film is a delightful emotional family comedy. It knows its ET lineage, and mixes it with an anarchic sensibility. Stitch remains a malevolent presence until his third act redemption. And here is pared with an adorable performance by Maia Kealoha. They are such good fun together that the film would be better if it dispensed with the alien chase that the plot is hung on. Still, any scene with them and Sydney Agudong just really works.

A big sentimental kids comedy. An American Paddington.

It basically works as the dark cousin of Paddington. An anarchic figure imposes himself on a family structure and redefines it. But here the family aren't perfect, and have more to lose.

Made me laugh beginning to end, and more importantly, flipped my kid out completely with how much she loved it.

Frank Sinatra is a tough New York city cop on the trail of organised crime in Contract on Cherry Street; Bobby Kennedy would have been pleased how Frank had turned his life around when it came to the mob.

The first hour of this 150 minute TV movie is really compelling. It follows Sinatra as he gets frustrated with the police, with the mob, with his wife (the great Verna Bloom). He looks like a perennially annoyed 62 year old, nearing retirement with a hairline that had already moved to Florida. A great performance, in other words. Other than the scene where he doles out words of wisdom about men and women being equal to Verna Bloom in bed. Young enough to be his daughter, sure, but old enough to not have to listen to that.

He follows the mob around, and along with his colleagues (driven by a driven Martin Balsam) decides that they need to be taken out. The first hour or so (presumably the first episode) is Sinatra mixing up French Connection, Bullitt and Dirty Harry in his own style. Rat-a-tat ring-a-ding-ding dialogue exists at the edges but Sinatra mostly plays it straight. Backhanding mob enforcers with the confidence of a man who has been a star for 35 years.

The twist at the end of the first episode caught me off guard (though, in retrospect it is obvious), and that leads to Contract on Cherry Street to broadening out and Sinatra taking a backseat for long stretches. I think the film loses its way a bit and it becomes a little dull, though the ing cast - Jay Black, Verna Bloom, Joe De Santis, Martin Gabel, Harry Guardino, James Luisi, Michael Nouri, Marco St. John, Henry Silva, Richard Ward, Lenny Montana, and Johnny Barne - kept my interest.

A really solid TV movie. It reminded me a bit The Blue Knight. Fighting crime was tough in the 1970s, at least according to TV.

(As an aside - I think Contract on Cherry Street sounds like a Ryan Adams song title)

Gothic krimi thriller from Harald Reinl starring future James Bond and Alfred Hitchcock actress Karin Dor. She is an heiress to Blackmoor Castle, which comes with a dodgy uncle, a lord in a kilt and, stolen diamonds.

A mysterious masked criminal is also about strangling people, branding M's on their forehead, and decapitating them.

The story is pretty good, with its mix of Wilkie Collins and Edgar Wallace, and direction is decent, with its attempt at gothic mist on the castle grounds, but the atmosphere is severely let-down by a terrible Oskar Sala score.

Somehow Mabuse has returned.

The previously deceased Dr Mabuse is back. As is Peter Van Eyck, this time playing a German James Bond and not the lowly detective he was in the last film. The film dispenses with the pulp crime aesthetic of the previous five 1960s films and leans into a new espionage outlook. Der Bond vs the Death Ray.

There isn't enough death ray action, but the new James Bond slant means that a lot of the run time has been set aside for a variety of young German women lounging for Van Eyck's roving eye.

The main weapon of attack for Van Eyck is a shovel. Or his loud shirt in act two.

Glad I don't own any more Mabuse films to watch. As this was more Thunderball than From Russia With Love. Fun, but you know, a slog.

Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse has a rather good cast for the fifth film in a reboot series. The trio of police officers trying to stop the (now deceased, but spiritually inclined) Doctor are Peter Van Eyck, Klaus Kinski, and Werner Peters. Three fairly serious, proper actors give this instalment a shot in the arm which allows it to overcome the increasingly tenuous supernatural links to Fritz Lang's Mabuse. Van Eyck is particularly good, it was made the year after Station Six-Sahara and a couple of years before The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

The Testament of Dr Mabuse (not sure why Letterboxd has it down as The Terror of Doctor Mabuse) is the fourth film in the 1960s re-boot Mabuse series, and the remake of the second Fritz Lang of the same name from the 1930s.

The general consensus seems to be that it is a drop-off from the previous 1960s films, and completely inferior to Lang's film. I agree that is clearly not as good as the atmospheric and striking Lang film. But, I think it is perhaps the best 1960s film so far.

Basically is solves my Mabuse problem. It explains itself. The other films from the 1960s have the air of "lads, it's Mabuse" and don't really set-up themselves up. The Testament of Dr Mabuse has a exposition scene. He's a hypnotist, he's in jail, here's some crime. Gert Fröbe is back as the long-suffering policeman. And the film comes in under 90 minutes.

I enjoyed this one.

There isn't an actor better at playing characters you'd leave a pub to avoid than Richard Widmark. He has such a relentlessly nippy quality. Every sentence he utters is an argument. Every final word ends in an aggressive question. Here, he plays the villain of the piece, so it works. When he plays a hero, it also works, it just makes the film rather agitated.

The lead, the Jake Wade, is played by Robert Taylor. A slightly stolid actor who moves slowly across the West. He has a good talking voice, and his words do a lot of walking for him. Putting them together isn't quite as perfect as 3:10 to Yuma, but you do get a similar frisson.

John Sturges is a favourite director of mine. The Great Escape and The Magnificent 7 were key films that got me obsessed with film. Bad Day at Black Rock is a masterpiece. I've seen Ice Station Zebra only slightly fewer times than Howard Hughes. And there is another fifteen to twenty films that I have a lot of fondness for - from Sinatra's Never So Few, to Gunfight at the OK Corrall, Last Train from Gun Hill.

The Law and Jake Wade is a perfectly paced 90 minute Western. The film was shot on location in California's High Sierra mountain range, and it really looks spectacular. It was shot in Metrocolor and Cinemascope, and has everything to recommend about it.

I like the lack of moral complexity to the film. Rather it is about Taylor's internal sense of what is right and wrong, and Widmark's obsession with him. Taylor always makes the wrong decision, and Widmark is insidious in trying to make him worse. Sturges just lets it unfold.

And ends it with a gunfight.

Burning Dog is probably the most gleefully cruel V-cinema film I have watched. It really is an endless parade of assaults, misogyny, and pointless crimes. It is a heist gone wrong film, but it only really goes wrong to an extent and mostly driven by the endlessly hateful lead character. I can see quite a lot of people enjoying Burning Dog's malevolent nihilism, and on another day I think I could have been swayed, but I found it hard work this time around.

Well, that was something.

Half of Beach Red reminded me of Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. Visually and through the use of voiceover and flashes to memory, and the other half is a relentless B-movie cacophony.

The film is 103 minutes of endless gunfire and war horror, but heightened by every choice Cornel Wilde makes. A melodrama, perhaps, but not delivered like one. It has a real gonzo energy.

Sam Fuller wouldn't have made a Vietnam allegory, and Sam Peckinpah wouldn't have bothered with clichés. Wilde mixes both into a near horror. A fascinating director - The Naked Prey is also slightly demented (and great).

It might be a masterpiece and I am not sure I liked it, and this in equal measure. Properly stressed me out, and made me miserable.

A vision of the future glad in multi-colour diaphanous gowns and red leather suits. In the Dust of the Stars is more Flash Gordon than 2001 A Space Odyssey. Less hard sci-fi for this East German and Romanian co-production and more softcore.

This is my fourth East German sci-fi film in the last couple of weeks, and presumably my conclusion is that Romania brought the tits.

Of course, it is fun, if you like Star Trek TOS, psychedelic lighting, long stretches of chat, a woman taking the worst shower I have ever seen anyone take, and nudity.

I would pay money to hear what Andrei Tarkovsky thought about this film. It has a slightly demented imagination to go along with its superb title.

When I was a teenager I read a sci-fi book by Alastair Reynolds, and watching Eolomea gave me a similar sensation. The mixture of being really engaged, and drifting off into the ether as more and more dialogue scenes crashed into each other.

Eolomea has two distinct plotlines and the film has real trouble in keeping them both interesting until the final act. However, it comes together quite well.

It is a really good looking film, the East German visual style has very much entered the 1970s here, and the cinematography is very crisp, and no longer is it a lacquered colour saturated 1950s sci-fi style. This is all sunshine, talks on clifftops, and great clothes (particularly for our female lead the space professor). Hard sci-fi isn't really my thing (see Alastair Reynolds), but this is quite good for its 82 minute runtime.

I have seen four or five Dr Mabuse films now, and I still can't really get a handle on this master of crime. Here he's trying to become invisible, I guess, but a murder at a theatre puts the cops and the FBI on his case. Don't know why the FBI are involved in German crime. Don't really know why Mabuse wants to be invisible. Though, I did enjoy the chalk drawing of an eye and some lines to describe the science of invisibility. The film is a fun German 60s crime movie, with some sci-fi nonsense thrown in, but Mabuse remains elementally beyond my grasp as a character or entity.

I'm not sure the plot précis for Athena fully covers how strange it is - The film tells the story of an old-fashioned conservative lawyer who falls in love with a daughter from a family of fitness fanatics.

The film is definitely as above, with the charmless Edmund Purdom as the lawyer and the irrepressible Jane Powell as Athena. Athena is the oldest of seven sisters in a family of anti-smoking, vegetarian, teetotallers who follow astrology and numerology. Who I thought were supernatural incarnations for at least an hour before realising maybe they weren't...Powell's opening scene has her talking about helping Purdom mulch a peach tree in such way that I assumed it was about sex.

Vic Damone plays Purdom's war buddy and singing star, who is set-up with Athena's sister Minerva (Debbie Reynolds). They sing. They dance. It is in Eastman Color. It is MGM.

Oh yeah, also, I forgot, there is a substantial subplot when Louis Calhern (Athena's father) is training Richard DuBois and Steve Reeves for Mr Universe.

Ultimately, the film is a bit wacky and all over the place. But it opens with one of my favourite songs. The Girl Next Door. Vic Damone isn't Frank Sinatra, and this version isn't the one from All Alone (top five Frank album for me), but it is a great lilting song, with ridiculous lyrics, and I love it. And it put me in a great mood, and I drift through 95 minutes with a real smile on my face.

The Intruder is a deeply odd TV series. The series was based on the children's book of the same name by John Rowe Townsend, published in 1970. Released in 1972. Supposedly for children. From some of the same team that made The Owl Service. And I basically had the following thoughts while watching the eight episodes.

1. This is weird. The opening 5 minutes of episode one are a masterclass in English horror. The sea, the cold beach, children, and a man with an eye patch and mac has stolen your name. Dostoevsky's The Double is a breeze compared with this.
2. This is really unsettling. Every interaction has a fraught tension.
3. I can't believe this was for children and was showed weekly on a Sunday.
4. Episode one has a dream sequence that would have gotten under Ingmar Bergman's skin.
5. It feels like Northern Straw Dogs on a bad day. It is sparsely populated but every interior is cramped and rundown, and every exterior is windswept and elemental.
6. The more the plot is explained the more unsettling it becomes, as the otherworldly becomes the mundane.
7. The episodes are called The Stranger, Jane, Norma, Miss Binns, Peter, Jane Again, Mavis, and Me. All the horrors of the world hidden in these English names.

I don't want to oversell a kid's TV show from the 1972, but this creeped me the fuck out.

A must-see for fans of The Owl Service, Children of the Stones, MR James, The Wicker Man, Ghost Stories, Straw Dogs, English coastal towns, cold beach, mist, and Cumbria. I was delighted to discover it, and fittingly I cannot how I heard about it. It just appeared. Like an Intruder in my life for a week. And left me feeling uneasy.

I have a lot of time for the TV series that Michael J. Bird wrote. The Lotus Eaters (1972–1973) and Who Pays the Ferryman? (1977) were set in Crete, The Aphrodite Inheritance (1979) was set in Cyprus, and The Dark Side of the Sun (1983) took place on Rhodes. His final series for the BBC, Maelstrom (1985), was set in Norway.

Maelstrom is the outlier in of climate and tone. A slightly cooler prospect than the Mediterranean stories from Bird. It doesn't have the same interest in myth and marriages. Here we get a proto-Scandi noir. A 30 year old woman (Tusse Silberg) travels to Norway to claim an inheritance. She finds herself involved in the mysterious dealings of the family of her deceased benefactor—and that someone is out to kill her.

The series is atmospheric and slow. Slow in the way that only 1970s and 1980s TV can manage. Six episodes of Silberg swanning around Ålesund, trying to avoid danger and getting massively and rightly creeped out by a room of dolls. I really like Silberg's unruffled and resilient performance. She basically does what she wants and doesn't act like she's in a thriller.

The show isn't particularly subtle; the twists aren't hard to guess, or follow, but I do find it really compelling. This is the second time I've watched it, and it worked as well for me this time around.

Frank Sinatra is a Private Detective. Jill St John is playing a character self-nicknamed as slut. She is a walking talking movie crush in a blue bikini. It is the mid-1960s. Sinatra lives on a houseboat in Miami. He looks about 75. He really wants to sleep. Women really want him. You get Gena Rowlands, Sue Lyon, and uncredited Deanna Lund as a lesbian stripper. The film reminded me of Paul Newman's Harper, but with a run-down Sinatra playing hip rather than Paul Newman at his most Paul Newman playing exasperated. I love Private Eye movies and this one worked for me wholly, but your mileage may very much vary.

"Ann's like me, the atmosphere gets in your bones"

I heard about this a week ago (can't where), and I really liked it. In the same way as I like The Owl Service and Children of the Stones. Coastal folk horror for children, with its jolly hockey sticks BBC production put against a slightly more elemental wildness. The TV show is only 3 episodes long, 27 minutes per episode, so some of the character work is done at speed. But, it is really engaging.

Anne, a fairly posh teenager, is sent to spend the summer with her mother's old nanny in Cullercoats in the North East of England. While there she explores the old watch house and is troubled by a ghost. Or two.

The film has a pleasing mix of misty landscapes, a dusty old watch house, and teens having knickerbocker glories in fairly nondescript cafes. A children's show that tries to be both about a teen, and with some horror. You get friends arguing, teens having a laugh ice skating, and an attempted drowning, and a ghost haunting a ghost.

I don't want to overstate it - a 1988 TV production for kids is going to have its limitations - but I was quite taken with this.

The Secret of Roan Inish is the most purely beautiful-looking film of John Sayles career. He and Haskell Wexler give it a golden hue. It is close as a film has come to looking like Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill.

The film just makes me think of golden in the heydays of his eyes. Fern Hill comes to mind because this is the landscape I grew up in. This film like that poem is a paean to childhood. Though, I grew up in south-west Scotland rather than Ireland, or Thomas' Wales.

Roan Inish on the good days and Wicker Man on the bad guys. Crisp summer days colder than most countries' winters. But sunshine every hour of the day, fading into an attenuated gold.

A film of childhood that reminds me of mine. Selkies are big business in Scotland and rightfully so. Elemental horrors posing as fairy tales for children. Sayles captures the glory of the idea, leaving the horror for others.

A children's film with rare depth. Emotional but not sentimental. Another John Sayles triumph.

Dr Mabuse returns, Fritz Lang departs. This is more of a pulp B-movie than Lang's atmospheric films. It has more of a plot, and is less of a mood piece. A fun early 1960s crime film, with Gert Fröbe as a policeman who just wants to go fishing.

A V-cinema semi-sequel, remake of the original Female Prisoner Scorpion films is all right, if you like that kind of thing.

I have seen the first 3 or so, Female Prisoner Scorpion films, and Meiko Kaji is always good value. Iconic look, iconic exploitation actress.

Death Threat is from the early nineties and doesn't quite have the same level of intensity or wildness of the original films.

Though, I have to say, women in prison films are not my favourite exploitation sub-genre. I totally understand the enthusiasm (*coughs* fetish) some people have for them, but I find them a bit too squalid.

They are made to get off to the torturous nature of the first half before the comeuppance arrives. I prefer my sleaze a bit less dank, a bit less claustrophobic, and a lot more fun.

But, you know, it is all right - if you like this sort of thing. And by this sort of thing, you know exactly what I mean.

Not sure I can accept an astronaut (or cosmonaut, I suppose) called Terry.

Signals: A Space Adventure is an East German attempt at 2001. It plays more like a utopian Blake's 7 than anything else, but who wants a space adventure where everyone gets on. When they aren't on the visually striking spaceship, the crew are at a beach party flashback looking tanned, healthy, bikini clad - the very idea of the East German dream.

The film looks really good, with its 1970 design aesthetic, and sense of the future. But it has some really unnecessary and tedious moments - there is a really endless space walk sequence that I could have done without - and I am not sure I kept any interest in the plot after the first 20 minutes.

An interesting sci-fi diversion from the East German lads, with a cosmonaut called Terry.

Definitely the most serious and least explicit film I have watched from the Arrow V-cinema box set. It is a pretty straightforward crime film about two hitman. It has a long flashback or two, a moody tone, and some really well choreographed visuals. It gets a little repetitive, and I don't think the plot really hangs together in a satisfying way, but the film is still really watchable crime thriller from Japan.

The Hitman: Blood Smells Like Roses opens with a pretty prolonged attempted rape before you get to the plot - After his fiancée is killed in the crossfire of a yakuza turf war, a man on the edge remorselessly hunts down the gangsters responsible.

It is a V-cinema film so you expect violence and nudity. Blood Smells Like Roses delivers both. Particularly sex, which happens roughly every 4 minutes. This very much verges on a softcore yakuza film.

I really enjoyed it.

It wasn't too creepy (it was definitely creepy) and is directed with style by Teruo Ishii. Ishii is a cult favourite and this probably a decade or more past his best days, but it is no-nonsense sleaze.

A better film than the original Final Destination based solely on the log truck opening. The history of popular horror goes - don't shower, don't get in the sea, don't drive behind a log truck.

I saw Final Destination when it came out. I was 17. I bought the DVD when it was released. The best thing about the DVD was that it had a death predictor extra on it. You entered some info and it told you when you are going to die. That is my fondest memory of Final Destination.

Watching it again today: Everyone looks so young, except the teacher, who looks like no teacher who has ever taught. The names are all horror references, which is cute, and something I have seen in about 43 other films. The bus jump scare still works. The premise is still solid. The death scenes are still worthwhile. The film is slower than I ed, or films are just speeding and speeding up. 2000 looks about as far away as 1957, when it comes to dress sense, haircuts, and technology.

I don't think anyone is ever going to be nostalgic for the late 1990s. But if I ever was feeling that way inclined, I would watch Scream, The Faculty, Buffy TV series, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Roswell High, and, I guess, Final Destination.

I would dig out some nu-metal and then be fucking glad that I am now old.

I dunno, watching Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet made me think of it as a V-cinema Jim Jarmusch film. Stylish, kind of hilarious, oddly odd. I'm probably reaching, but it is a really fun yakuza film and not nearly as serious as you'd expect.

(Of course, it being V-cinema, there are a lot of focus on Chikako Aoyama's breasts - which may offer an alternative way in for those not taken by Jim Jarmusch)

Usually, when I rewatch a film, I just copy my previous review over. I only write for myself and to what films I've seen and when, and my opinion doesn't usually change too much between watches.

Inexplicably, though, my original review of Let's Get Lost from a decade ago is the most liked review of the film on Letterboxd. So, I figure on this rare occasion I might write something different.

My original review stands as my five star review of this really depressing masterpiece. This is just a list of my favourite six Chet Baker albums with a couple of words about them.

However, don't take the recommendations too seriously. For as many films as I've seen, I don't have any serious depth in music listening. They are basically an inverse ratio. So, anyone who is a real jazz fan, or Chet fan, or music fan, feel free to recommend an album - because I probably haven't heard it.

In no particular order, my favourite Chet Baker albums:

Chet Baker in Tokyo - Released only eleven months before his death, this live album is as good as the late years got. 8 minutes of Almost Blue. 13 minutes of My Funny Valentine. Stella By Starlight; Portrait in Black and White, and Seven Steps to Heaven. Plus, lots more. Baker sounds really good here. He occasionally goes faster than you expect, but it is the heart stopping eloquence of the ballads that make me come back to it again and again. I almost always follow listen to it by listening to Bill Evans You Must Believe In Spring, which is sadder than any music has any right to.

Chet - probably his most famous non-singing album? Released in 1959. The year where every great jazz album is; or every jazz album released is great. If anyone asks what kind of music I like, I'm just going to say 1959 jazz from now on. Poetic ballads, soft shimmering trumpet lines, melancholy beauty. Backed by the Chambers-Evans-Jones rhythm section, which means it sounds like album does in my memory but so rarely do when I press play.

(Chet Baker Sings) It Could Happen to You - released in November 1958. Which is basically 1959. He's 28 till he's 29, as they say. I like Chet's singing. That's why you know I am not a real music fan. He sounds great to me, always struggling just behind the music, before hitting a note perfect solo. The mix of struggle and ease. Mediocrity and genius in one sound. Though, to be fair, he doesn't play on this album. However, this album gets the push above the more famous Chet Baker Sings (also a five star album), because it has My Heart Stood Still on it - my absolute favourite Chet Baker singing song.

She Was Too Good to Me - another comeback album in a career of comeback. This one makes it because this version of Autumn Leaves. A perfect interpretation. Paul Desmond plays alto sax on it.

Playboys - as much as I love Chet Baker, I love Art Pepper just about the same. Winter Moon, that's my pick. Jazz with strings. Again you can tell I'm not a real jazz fan, I like all those albums with strings. Playboys is Baker and Pepper having some fun. The energy is high, the sound is clean, and the album cover is the worst I've ever seen. If anyone has read this rambling review this far - Google the album cover.

Blues for a Reason - faster and harsher than Baker usually sounds. Played with Warne Marsh. I don't have anything quippy to say about this, it is just a cracking album.

Amos: You know, the closed mind is the worst defense against the paranormal, Kylie. What are you gonna do against a hostile spirit? You just gonna crack jokes?

Kylie Bucknell: No, I am going to smash it in the face.

Amos: You cannot punch ectoplasm

Socialism at home and abroad. If abroad was Venus.

The Silent Star is a 1960 East German/Polish science fiction film based on the 1951 science fiction novel The Astronauts by Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem. It is drawn in vivid colours, more vivid Eastern bloc socialist messaging, and general sense that the East German utopia is just about to go supernova.

The film is really enjoyable. If you like the original series of Star Trek, the mid-50s American pulp sci-fi, and aren't too offended by the rather calmly hysterical socialist speeches.

I really liked the visuals, particularly Venus, and the story is a brilliantly constructed piece of sci-fi pondering.

Really solid film.

I can't think of an actor less suited to being an Alaskan "fish-pirate" than George Raft.

It is particularly hard-to-take when he stood next to Henry Fonda. Fonda always looks at ease, no matter the role.

However, this didn't completely stand in my way of enjoying Spawn of the North. Henry Hathaway directs with his usual skill, and the film has a good mix of action, intrigue, drama, and romance.

A proper 1938 fish smørrebrød.

(Slicker the seal steals the show - deserved the 1938 Best ing Actor Oscar - would have still left Walter Brennan with 2)

XX: Beautiful Hunter really comes alive when our co-lead, who looks like a Japanese Honkytonk Man, gives head to a hitwoman while she’s pointing a loaded gun directly at him. It is at the 30 minute mark and it marks the shift from crime thriller to something more towards a pinku eiga.

She is a killer for a religious cult and as such is a virgin, but when our leads fall together, the film comes alive. Or at least we get a lot of sex, some weird some not, in a short amount of time, between the murders.

A fun 90 minutes, for those inclined for such things.

A film so boring that I had to check twice to see if it was directed by Stanley Kramer.

See, the thing about Jacques Rivette is that I can't tell if he is a fifty year practical joke or not. A practical joke with one recipient in mind - me.

Who Knows?

I just can't tell. All the films are basically unwatchable and basically the same. They are insanely long, shot inside 3 rooms, and about a theatre troupe. They are nominally funny, if you are French; nominally romantic, if you are French; and nominally profound, if you are French.

(Obviously, there are loads of exceptions, Celine and Julie is great and it is outside, and we all love it)

Va Savoir is the story of the three couples in the film sometimes parallels the Pirandello play (yep, me neither, Wikipedia) in which the two principals, Camille and Ugo, are performing each night and follows the structure of a Goldoni comedy, in which couples undergo misunderstandings and attraction for others until the final resolution.

And, I guess it is exactly that. And the film is quite light, and watchable, and sometimes even fun. Except I watched the 224-minute director's cut version and apparently the extra 70 minutes from the theatrical cut is mainly made up of the play within the film being staged. What horrors!

There are some beautiful French women, a really great scene of roof-top walking, as the beautiful Jeanne Balibar goes Fred Dibnah on us, and generally a sense that Rivette is old by 2001/2 and doesn't have the time for the wailing and moaning and political theatre of Out 1.

I didn't think much of the incestuous angle, nor the male characters, nor the chat about Martin Heidegger.

But, it isn't the worst Rivette film. If anything, it is quite good. I'll watch the theatrical cut the next time, it will definitely be better (for me).

In the battle of man vs Rivette - this was a score draw.

Night School is surprisingly good!

I didn't know it was directed by Ken "The Small World of Sammy Lee" Hughes, but you can tell from the opening moments it is being made by a real director. It just looks really good, given the story and the budget.

Obviously, the main appeal of the film is either Leonard Mann, or Rachel Ward. Ward gets an obligatory shower scene, but Night School is interesting enough to make it something else and something quite odd at that.

The film has a quite an odd tone. It is very much an American Giallo, with its black gloves and odd killer. An easy to guess twist. I liked it a lot.

Barbara Loden and Badlands. A plaintive voiceover as much in the style of Willa Cather as 1994 Everglades. River of Grass got lumped in with post-Quentin Tarantino crime films for a while, but it is more in-keeping with Kelly Reichardt's later work than it isn't.

It is more explicitly funny than the bone-dry films to come, but it has the same sparse, flinty sense of the individual. I rather like the joke the film ends on, with its slightly nasty edge, but it is probably the opening voiceover and photo montage and jazz drumming that most suggests the genius that was to come.

It is rare that a film makes me lose the will to live, but this one is seriously heavy sledding.

I don't hate George Roy Hill, but I've never seen a film he's directed that I haven't thought would be better off made by someone else. He was obviously a huge figure from the mid-60s to the early-80s, but I find the films pretty hard-going. Butch Cassidy and The Sting are pretty decent, but certainly aren't flawless. The rest, I'm not sure you'd even argue decent.

Hawaii is just hard work. It is an interesting story. A genuinely epic, if pulp view of history (James A. Michener), but it is told through a character I wanted to toss into the sea before he even ended up on the boat. Max Von Sydow - one of the great actors - plays an unlikeable Calvinist reverend and he takes his role so seriously that the film is actually quite hard to watch. He dominates the film and I couldn't bear it.

Julie Andrews and Richard Harris are both pretty good and are in a better film, but there isn't really any drama to Hawaii. I just found it so hard going.

I am surprised I finished it, to be honest.

I didn't think it was bad enough to be interesting, and it certainly isn't good enough to be good.

Hong Kong, Hong Kong is an irable gritty melodrama about Mainland Chinese illegal immigrants in Hong Kong in 1983. It mixes a Rocky-style story about kickboxing, with a more naturalistic view of Hong Kong as a city. It is very interested in the broken streets, the down-and-out, and the poverty of the early 1980s. There isn't much of the steel and glass city of the future that Hong Kong cinema likes to present as its very of the city.

There is also an unusual sensuality to the film. Cherie Chung's Man Si Sun is the centre of a kind of love triangle between a young kickboxer and an older carpenter who might be able to offer her a way to legal status in the country if she has his child. She falls for his youth, which is probably against her best interests; and you can tell it isn't going end happily for anyone.

There are some striking scenes and sequences, and Clifford Choi directs with real assurance. Chung is really great in the lead role. Her retirement at 31 or so, in the early 1990s was a big loss.

The film has a remarkably downbeat and pessimistic ending, and it really throws a sharp spoke into any sense of a romantic city film. As the camera glides out in the final shot, it shows the slightly rundown skyscrapers of 1983 and you are left with a feeling of desolation and a terrible sense how badly illegal immigrants are treated by everyone. And, their alternative, deported back to where they originated is, for them, an even worse fate.

Not a cheery afternoon's viewing.

A collection of 8 episodes. Takeaway was the highlight, and remains one of the great episodes of TV. Though, Pavlova runs it close - Bonjour! My kid has seen every episode loads of times but still loved it.

There isn't much better than Bluey.

The trailers were a mixed bag. My daughter can't wait for Lilo & Stitch; has less than zero interest in Elio (she told me I could see that by myself if I wanted to go...), she was keen to see Smurfs, but wasn't happy with The Bad Guys 2.

Never go full Terrence Malick.

Though, Terry and Paolo really understand the brilliance of Exodus composed by Wojciech Kilar, if nothing else. It is used here every 15 minutes, as it was in Knight of Cups.

Sorrentino has absorbed a Malickian appetite for beautiful young women falling backwards into water, and long aimless floating scenes of pseduo-poetic meandering.

The major difference between Parthenope and the Malick Weightless trilogy is the speed of editing. Malick's films move. Sorrentino's move at a more leisurely Italian pace.

Parthenope is languid, sensual, glacial, and almost without point. Picaresque without any build. It has ten to fifteen fantastic scenes - mainly around how stunningly beautiful Celeste Dalla Porta is and how great her outfits are - but by the end it has nothing.

None of it hangs together. The scenes about Parthenope's education and anthropology are by themselves interesting; as is her relationship with her brother and lover, as is every scene with the miracle in San Genaro in act three. All good. All pointless.

I would probably be more favourable to the film if it hadn't had the sequence with the Professor's son. I was aghast at what a terrible choice Sorrentino made!

The film is beautiful. Celeste Dalla Porta is stunning. Is it enough? Probably not. But it couldn't be more Italian. Wonderfully so.

It could only be more Neopolitan if it was a novel by Elena Ferrante about Scott McTominay.

Melody Club, a one hour comedy-mystery, is a pretty underwhelming film. Except, Terry-Thomas calls Gwynneth Vaughan a "smashing piece of crackling" in the first 10 minutes, in such a funny way that it put me in a good mood for the rest of the film. The film has a few songs, it has Terry-Thomas dres in a variety of disguises - he is playing an inept private investigator who is investigating robberies which are occurring while the people are at the Melody Club - and a general sense of not taking its construction too seriously. Obviously, not good - but we all like Terry-Thomas and his molar acting.

1. The Brutalist
2. The Phoenician Scheme
3. A Real Pain
4. Presence
5. Here
6. A Complete Unknown
7. Sinners
8. Lilo & Stitch
9. Black Bag
10. Parthenope

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranked by me!

1. Sideways
2. The Holdovers
3. The Descendants
4. Downsizing
5. Election
6. Nebraska
7. About Schmidt
8. Citizen Ruth

If your favourite isn't on my list, then it is one of the few I haven't yet seen. Maybe I will try to finish his filmography in 2025.

(I feel like The Ghost and Mrs Muir should be higher)

1. A Letter to Three Wives
2. All About Eve
3. Dragonwyck
4. The Barefoot Contessa
5. People Will Talk
6. Cleopatra
7. Sleuth
8. Suddenly, Last Summer
9. Guys and Dolls
10. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My 10 favourite films from 1995. If I have missed your favourite film from 1995 it is because I forgot it. Unless it was by Richard Linklater, in that case, I just don't like it.

1. Maborosi
2. Fallen Angels
3. Cyclo
4. Whisper of the Heart
5. Apollo 13
6. Devil in a Blue Dress
7. The Bridges of Madison County
8. The Flower of My Secret
9. Clockers
10. The Crossing Guard

1. Strangers When We Meet
2. The Zone of Interest
3. Elegant Beast
4. The Trial
5. Perfect Days
6. La Chimera
7. Juror #2
8. The Taste of Things
9. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
10. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My ranking of Clooney's film as director

1. Good Night, and Good Luck.
2. The Boys in the Boat
3. The Tender Bar
4. The Ides of March
5. The Monuments Men
6. Suburbicon
7. The Midnight Sky
8. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
9. Leatherheads

1. Blade Runner
2. The Counselor
3. The Martian
4. The Last Duel
5. The Duellists
6. Gladiator
7. Kingdom of Heaven
8. Napoleon
9. Alien
10. Thelma & Louise

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I have searched my memory and I am pretty sure I haven't seen Fast Company.

1. Crash
2. Videodrome
3. Crimes of the Future
4. Eastern Promises
5. A History of Violence
6. Maps to the Stars
7. Cosmopolis
8. The Brood
9. Shivers
10. The Fly

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Strangers When We Meet
2. Ace in the Hole
3. The Bad and the Beautiful
4. Paths of Glory
5. Seven Days in May
6. Lonely Are the Brave
7. In Harm's Way
8. Out of the Past
9. Last Train from Gun Hill
10. Champion

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My choice for Best Director each year from 1939.

There are only two rules. The Director had to be either one of the nominees, or from a nomination for Best Picture.

The winners in Wilson's Oscars - Hitchcock (x2), Lean (x5), Wilder (x3), Kubrick (x2), Lynch (x3!), Spielberg (x4), PTA (x2), Bergman (x2), Scorsese (x2), Allen (x2). Plus, Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Wes Anderson and Akira Kurosawa all getting theirs. And, remarkably Ron Howard still manages to win one.

The losers - Mexico.

1. Stagecoach
2. Rebecca
3. Citizen Kane
4. Mrs. Miniver
5. Casablanca
6. Double Indemnity
7. Mildred Pierce
8. The Best Years of Our Lives
9. Great Expectations
10. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

...plus 75 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My choice for Best Actress each year from 1939.

There are only two rules. The Actress had to be either one of the nominees, or from a nomination for Best Picture.

The winners in Wilson's Oscars - Penelope Cruz will be happy with a couple. Glenn Close and Amy Adams both win.

The losers - Me, I have too many gaps in Best Actress films for this to be an exercise worth reading.
Meryl Streep, none. Sorry Meryl.

1. Ninotchka
2. Rebecca
3. Suspicion
4. Mrs. Miniver
5. Casablanca
6. Double Indemnity
7. Leave Her to Heaven
8. Brief Encounter
9. Possessed
10. The Red Shoes

...plus 75 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My choice for Best Actor each year from 1939.

There are only two rules. The Actor had to be either one of the nominees, or from a nomination for Best Picture.

The winners in Wilson's Oscars - Paul Newman ends up with 6 (six) Oscars! John Wayne gets three. Kevin Costner would be thrilled with his back to back Oscars. Pete O'Toole gets a couple, Richard Burton gets one, and Monty Clift gets two and probably deserved more. Peter Sellers and Tom Cruise get two as well.

Roy Scheider for Jaws. Instead of Jack Nicholson for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is probably the most controversial pick. But in my Oscars Jack already has two by 1975, and let's be honest One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is massively overrated...

The losers: Equality. The first non-white actor didn't appear till Denzel Washington in 1992! Sorry, Sidney Poitier. Diversity of choice: If you win one Oscar, you'll probably get a second.

A pointless exercise!

1. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
2. Yankee Doodle Dandy
3. Citizen Kane
4. Rebecca
5. Casablanca
6. Double Indemnity
7. The Lost Weekend
8. The Best Years of Our Lives
9. Body and Soul
10. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

...plus 75 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I thought it would be interesting to see what fifteen films, which I have rated as 4.5 stars, are the least seen.

1. Guns of Darkness
2. Assassin
3. Ray Meets Helen
4. Summerfield
5. The Black Marble
6. The Happiest Days of Your Life
7. Split Image
8. Heat and Dust
9. Aloha, Bobby and Rose
10. That Sinking Feeling

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I thought it would be interesting to see what fifteen films, which I have rated as 5 stars, are the least seen.

Not surprisingly a lot are British.

The one that does surprise me is Far From the Madding Crowd. That feels like a really big movie to me.

1. Private Road
2. The Rebel
3. The Reckoning
4. Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece
5. Witness in the City
6. A Month in the Country
7. Elegant Beast
8. Smash Palace
9. Asphalt
10. Goldstone

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

No actor has had a worse second half to his career.

1. Grosse Pointe Blank
2. Say Anything...
3. Eight Men Out
4. The Thin Red Line
5. Bullets Over Broadway
6. The Grifters
7. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
8. One Crazy Summer
9. High Fidelity
10. City Hall

1. Went the Day Well?
2. The End of the Affair
3. Brighton Rock
4. The Fallen Idol
5. Our Man in Havana
6. The Quiet American
7. The End of the Affair
8. Ministry of Fear
9. The Honorary Consul
10. The Heart of the Matter

I watched Shanghai Surprise and I felt I needed to remind myself that Sean Penn is a good actor. Occasionally great.

1. State of Grace
2. Sweet and Lowdown
3. Mystic River
4. Racing with the Moon
5. This Must Be the Place
6. Licorice Pizza
7. Casualties of War
8. At Close Range
9. Dead Man Walking
10. The Thin Red Line

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list idea stolen from the great Letterboxd Fint.

Of the nominees for the Best Picture Oscar each year, the one that I think should have won. Naturally I haven't seen every nominated picture; in fact I haven't seen anything from 1928/29.

I agree with the Academy:
1930s - 2 times
1940s - 4 times
1950s - 6 times
1960s - 4 times
1970s - 4 times
1980s - 1 time
1990s - 3 times
2000s - 1 time
2010s - 2 times
2020s - 2 times

1. Wings
2. All Quiet on the Western Front
3. The Front Page
4. Shanghai Express
5. 42nd Street
6. It Happened One Night
7. Top Hat
8. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
9. The Awful Truth
10. The Adventures of Robin Hood

...plus 85 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Master
2. Two Lovers
3. Napoleon
4. The Immigrant
5. We Own the Night
6. Gladiator
7. The Village
8. To Die For
9. Inherent Vice
10. Joker

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My ranking of Jim Jarmusch's films.

1. Paterson
2. Down by Law
3. Mystery Train
4. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
5. The Dead Don't Die
6. Broken Flowers
7. Night on Earth
8. Stranger Than Paradise
9. Coffee and Cigarettes
10. Dead Man

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Benediction
2. Oppenheimer
3. I'm Not There
4. Steve Jobs
5. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
6. Lincoln
7. Mr. Turner
8. Bright Star
9. A Hidden Life
10. A Quiet ion

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I have tried to create a list of my favourite Private Investigator (sometimes amateur detective) films, year by year. Turns out it was harder than I thought it would be and I have a lot of missing years. As below; all suggestions welcome, because I love nothing more than PI films.

(I cannot believe After the Storm was released the same year as The Nice Guys, considering how little there is the rest of the decade!).

I am missing films for:

1935
1937
1940
1949
1951
1952
1956
1957
1993
1997
2001
2002
2003
2004
2008
2012
2013
2021

• The Thin Man
• After the Thin Man
• There's Always a Woman
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• The Maltese Falcon
• Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
• Sherlock Holmes Faces Death
• Murder, My Sweet
• The House of Fear
• The Big Sleep

...plus 61 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Moneyball
2. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3. The Tree of Life
4. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
5. By the Sea
6. Ad Astra
7. The Counselor
8. Babylon
9. Killing Them Softly
10. Burn After Reading

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Since everyone is doing it.

1. Interstellar
2. Oppenheimer
3. Tenet
4. Dunkirk
5. The Prestige
6. Memento
7. Insomnia
8. Following
9. The Dark Knight Rises
10. Inception

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I'm not including The Decalogue. Nor any episodes of it.

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
2. Mystery Train
3. Crimes and Misdemeanors
4. Kiki's Delivery Service
5. A City of Sadness
6. The Woman in Black
7. For All Mankind
8. Casualties of War
9. Do the Right Thing
10. Field of Dreams

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I watched Lone Star and decided to make a list. Surprised by how few non-English films I loved from this year. Has to be the worst year for world cinema.

1. Crash
2. Lone Star
3. Fargo
4. Irma Vep
5. Drifting Clouds
6. Tin Cup
7. Hard Eight
8. Kansas City
9. Mission: Impossible
10. Mars Attacks!

1. The Set-Up
2. The Naked Spur
3. The Wild Bunch
4. Crossfire
5. On Dangerous Ground
6. Day of the Outlaw
7. The Dirty Dozen
8. Bad Day at Black Rock
9. House of Bamboo
10. Odds Against Tomorrow

A top ten

1. Wild River
2. A Place in the Sun
3. From Here to Eternity
4. I Confess
5. Red River
6. The Misfits
7. The Heiress
8. Suddenly, Last Summer
9. Judgment at Nuremberg
10. Freud: The Secret ion

Favourite to least favourite

1. Distance
2. Maborosi
3. After Life
4. Our Little Sister
5. Still Walking
6. After the Storm
7. Broker
8. Air Doll
9. Shoplifters
10. Like Father, Like Son

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This is the list until Megalopolis comes out and forces its way into the top five.

1. Straight Time
2. Straw Dogs
3. All the President's Men
4. The Graduate
5. Ishtar
6. Marathon Man
7. Lenny
8. Midnight Cowboy
9. Papillon
10. Tootsie

According to me. A man who doesn't like Trainspotting.

1. Angels & Demons
2. Down with Love
3. Velvet Goldmine
4. Doctor Sleep
5. American Pastoral
6. Christopher Robin
7. Miles Ahead
8. Big Fish
9. Last Days in the Desert
10. Cassandra's Dream

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Extreme Prejudice
2. Affliction
3. New York Stories
4. North Dallas Forty
5. Afterglow
6. The Thin Red Line
7. Warrior
8. The Deep
9. U Turn
10. Cape Fear

85 years young today.

1. Chinatown
2. The Last Detail
3. The enger
4. Carnal Knowledge
5. Five Easy Pieces
6. The King of Marvin Gardens
7. The Pledge
8. The Crossing Guard
9. The Border
10. Easy Rider

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I haven't seen Gray's Anatomy, Kimi or Let Them All Talk

1. Out of Sight
2. The Limey
3. Solaris
4. Traffic
5. No Sudden Move
6. Haywire
7. Side Effects
8. Ocean's Eleven
9. Magic Mike
10. Unsane

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not really a director of classic films to be honest.

1. All Is True
2. Much Ado About Nothing
3. Belfast
4. Dead Again
5. Henry V
6. Hamlet
7. Murder on the Orient Express
8. Death on the Nile
9. Sleuth
10. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

My top ten of Bruce Dern.

t number 10 for no reason.

1. Black Sunday
2. Smile
3. The King of Marvin Gardens
4. Coming Home
5. The Driver
6. Nebraska
7. Family Plot
8. Silent Running
9. The Laughing Policeman
10. The 'Burbs

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

From best to worst, in my estimation.

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2. Bridge of Spies
3. Munich
4. Lincoln
5. The Adventures of Tintin
6. Catch Me If You Can
7. War Horse
8. The Terminal
9. The Post
10. War of the Worlds

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I need to see An Enemy of the People.

1. Junior Bonner
2. Bullitt
3. Love with the Proper Stranger
4. The Great Escape
5. The Getaway
6. The Hunter
7. Hell Is for Heroes
8. The Magnificent Seven
9. The Sand Pebbles
10. The Thomas Crown Affair

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The American actor with the best filmography. No-one made as many stonecold classics as he did. Here's my twenty favourite performances he ever gave.

1. Anatomy of a Murder
2. Vertigo
3. Harvey
4. Rear Window
5. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
6. The Shop Around the Corner
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
8. The Philadelphia Story
9. Destry Rides Again
10. Bend of the River

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I have spent a good chunk of the day listening to the impossibly brilliant The Secret History of Hollywood podcast on Cary Grant and I decided to make a top ten list of my favourite Grant films. It has been very, very difficult.

I don't like Bringing Up Baby. That's why it isn't included.

My Favourite Wife was number 11 and I wish I had included it.

1. His Girl Friday
2. Only Angels Have Wings
3. Notorious
4. The Awful Truth
5. The Philadelphia Story
6. Suspicion
7. North by Northwest
8. Arsenic and Old Lace
9. Charade
10. I Was a Male War Bride

My ten favourite Walter Matthau. A flawed list because when I started looking at his filmography I realised I had a lot to see. So it is a list best ignored.

1. Charley Varrick
2. A New Leaf
3. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
4. The Laughing Policeman
5. Cactus Flower
6. Hopscotch
7. Plaza Suite
8. The Fortune Cookie
9. The Bad News Bears
10. Pete 'n' Tillie

A tough, tough list to compile. A few notable films had to be left off and it took a lot of moving films up and down to make me happy with the final run-through.

1. Eyes Wide Shut
2. Jack Reacher
3. Collateral
4. Magnolia
5. Mission: Impossible
6. Minority Report
7. Jerry Maguire
8. The Color of Money
9. War of the Worlds
10. Born on the Fourth of July

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

By director:

1. Altman
2. Pollack
3. Coppola
4. Pakula
5. Schumacher
6. Fleder
7. Schumacher
8. Foley

1. The Gingerbread Man
2. The Firm
3. The Rainmaker
4. The Pelican Brief
5. A Time to Kill
6. Runaway Jury
7. The Client
8. The Chamber

Harder than I thought it was going to be initially, because he had quite a few more great ones than I ed before looking his filmography written down.

1. The Lighthouse
2. Light Sleeper
3. The Last Temptation of Christ
4. The Florida Project
5. Platoon
6. Clear and Present Danger
7. The Hunter
8. Shadow of the Vampire
9. Streets of Fire
10. Affliction

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Going to watch all of Spike Lee's feature films in chronological order. Ongoing ranking, best to worst.

Updated a few years on to take of his last three movies.

A further note - I have clearly underrated Bamboozled and I should revisit it.

• He Got Game
• Malcolm X
• Do the Right Thing
• Da 5 Bloods
• 25th Hour
• BlacKkKlansman
• Clockers
• Summer of Sam
• She's Gotta Have It
• Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

90 years young today. Here is my list of his 20 best films as director.

1. Unforgiven
2. Play Misty for Me
3. Gran Torino
4. The Outlaw Josey Wales
5. The Mule
6. Sully
7. Mystic River
8. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
9. Bird
10. Million Dollar Baby

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

90 years young. Here's Eastwood list, from his acting roles, from films he didn't direct.

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2. For a Few Dollars More
3. Dirty Harry
4. Where Eagles Dare
5. Escape from Alcatraz
6. Every Which Way but Loose
7. A Fistful of Dollars
8. In the Line of Fire
9. Kelly's Heroes
10. Coogan's Bluff

1. 25th Hour
2. Fight Club
3. Down in the Valley
4. Motherless Brooklyn
5. The Painted Veil
6. The Illusionist
7. Primal Fear
8. American History X
9. Keeping the Faith
10. Rounders

Inspired by recent viewings that has reignited my cinematic love for Ford. He made an incredibly high number of great movies.

1. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
2. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
3. My Darling Clementine
4. The Searchers
5. Fort Apache
6. The Quiet Man
7. Two Rode Together
8. The Long Gray Line
9. Wagon Master
10. Stagecoach

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Very much ranked. It wasn't a very good year. Frank couldn't have sung his song for 1983.

1. Videodrome
2. Eureka
3. The Right Stuff
4. Heat and Dust
5. El Sur
6. Project A
7. Psycho II
8. Nostalgia
9. Local Hero
10. Scarface

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.