In my top 5 favourite films of all time.
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Up is a great film. Must watch it again sometime. If I remember correctly the extras on the dvd include some great little back story clips for the dog
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Purists may scoff. Carry on Columbus. 1992
Perhaps their biggest budget movie.
Everyone you can imagine being onboard a reboot at this time. Only a flop at the box office.
No worse than the old worse ones and somewhat better than the best ones.
I don’t think I have ever seen it broadcast on the telly.
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Parasite on Amazon Prime.
What a movie, quite possibly a 10/10.
I thought TFOTR was a damned good film, with the exception of that damned moth. I even liked the change in the younger hobbits sacrificing themselves to protect Frodo.
TTT was unforgivable in its portrayal of The Ents. HOW could Treebeard NOT know what was happening in his forest? They removed the knowing sacrifice the Ents did in their march on Isengard.
TROTK, mmmmmmmm.
BUT, all three so much better than the tripe served up under the name of The Hobbit.
Having black people in these dramas is obviously historic bunkum. Is it right to do this to historically based dramas? One point of view is that such representation may be a balm on societal issues. Personally I think I can live with it on new drama. I do balk when historic figures are represented as what they were NOT, or classic novels are misrepresented on the alter of modern orthodoxy.
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Sorry, I think you’ve hit the damned predictive text “damned moth” ???
There was one clever bit that I did like in TTT and TROTK and that was the arrival of the elves (or semi elves) which part of TROTK was cut into TTT.
As for Treebeard and the Ents - how the hell was Treebeard not supposed to know? It was a crucial bit of the book
Sorry for the rant
Hi Ian,
The Moth that somehow flew to get Gwaihir AND was able to fly back at the same speed.
Yes, I liked the arrival of the Elves at Helms Deep. Although they were quickly mown down, whilst Legolas continued with his spectacular feats.
No rant. Glad someone else sees the same faults I do!
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I didn’t like it at first but after some thought decided that it was entirely acceptable.
My daughter is in that as an extra-on a bus and in a cafe. I’ve still not watched it though 
OK Tim,
I’ll have a gander and come back to you.
M
From 1983
Up-and-coming Houston oil executive “Mac” MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) gets more than he bargained for when a seemingly simple business trip to Scotland changes his outlook on life. Sent by his colorful boss (Burt Lancaster) to the small village of Ferness, Mac is looking to quickly buy out the townspeople so his company can build a new refinery. But after a taste of country life Mac begins to question whether he is on the right side of this transaction.
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One of my favourite movies. And soundtracks 
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This brings back memories for me on two counts.
Someone who had played alongside me in my school football team and who later went on to become a reasonably well known actor, had a small breakthrough part in ‘Local Hero’. However, my main memory and a big regret ever since then relates to Burt Lancaster.
When the film was being made and while I was at University, I used to work on vacations and weekends as a part time distribution driver with the car rental firm Hertz. On one occasion, I was about to drive a large estate car from Glasgow Airport to Aberdeen when I was asked to divert to Prestwick Airport, where I was to pick up 2 people and their golf clubs and drive them to Turnberry golf course. It turned out that the two people were Burt Lancaster and his friend, and that Hertz did not have any large enough vehicles for them and their golf gear at Prestwick.
It probably took me around 30 minutes to reach Prestwick Airport. Unfortunately, when I arrived I was told that a customer had just returned a large estate car and that I had missed Burt Lancaster by about 5 minutes. So unfortunately, I never did get to meet him.
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After the silliness of Moonraker, 007 took a grittier, more realistic turn with 1981’s For Your Eyes Only (well, as far as a Roger Moore Bond can be described as “gritty” or “realistic”). The megalomaniac master criminal trope is jettisoned in favour of a good old fashioned espionage story revolving around the theft of an advanced transmitter for launching Polaris submarines. Julian Glover is a good villain, Topol is Bond’s helper and Carole Bouquet is the Bond babe.
It’s an enjoyable romp, a welcome break from the vquip/gadget/FX overload that was starting to take over the series. The only real downer isthe music. The theme song, sung by Sheena Easton, is fine, but Bill Conti’s score is an atrocity.
As Alan Partridge might say: “Stop getting Bond music wrong!”
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This Martin The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Ritt-directed picture was a box-office bomb when it came out in 1970. Odd, really, because it has an awful lot going for it: meaty roles for Sean Connery and Richard Harris; sumptuous photography by the legendary James Wong Howe; a Henry Mancini score; a great supporting cast and fantastic art direction.
The tale of the brutally hard lives of Irish miners and their families in 1870s Pennsylvania, the cruelty of the mineowners and their hired police thugs and the miners’ attempts to get their own back via the secret society of the title, it’s also a story of treachery (Harris is an undercover Pinkerton agent who infiltrates the Mollys) and of the terrible costs of capitalism run rampant. The film runs more than 10 minutes before a line of dialogue is uttered, so confident is Ritt of the visual strengths of the script.
Recommended.
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Well that was a complete waste of time. The first half hour or so of this movie is boring and incomprehensible, the rest is just silly and pretentious. It’d have been so much better if they’d just camped it up, like the Lynda Carter TV show of the 1970s. But the people involved decided to take it seriously and introduce (allegedly) some sort of feminist subtext.
Gal Gadot is an embarrassingly bad actress – she has a pretty face but zero charisma, and for a so-called “feminist” film, I am at a loss as to why a hypersexualised superheroine needs to fight on the Great War battlefields dressed in a fetish costume and metal bra.
Epic fail, as people younger than me are wont to say.
Agree Kev. This was on FTA TV a week or so back (ITV?) and it came across as some kind of B-movie woke morality tale.
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