I looked at the running time before beginning to watch Martin Scorsese’s 2006 crime-drama and thought it might be too long. My girlfriend certainly thought so – she was asleep after half an hour and woke up with about forty minutes left. As I tried to bring her up to speed with what had happened, I found myself breathlessly retelling events without a pit-stop for oxygen or chance for her to really take it all in. When I finally said, ‘so that’s it, I’ll just pause it and go for a wee,’ I realised I was on the edge of my seat (an exceptionally comfortable sofa) and had been for the past hour and a half. As I relieved myself of half a bottle of wine I knew, as I reminisced about the film, I was experiencing Scorsese’s most polished and entertaining film since Goodfellas.

Most audiences today won’t have heard of the name John Landis. They would have heard of “Coming To America” and “The Blues Brothers” but it’s unlikely they recognise the talent behind the lens. That’s because Landis has become one of Hollywood’s forgotten star directors. Legal troubles and a decade of poor work has put the director out in the wilderness. Forgettable films from a forgotten filmmaker.

Yet, you ask anyone if they’ve seen Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and most will reply “Damn right I have – best music video ever made!” Well, that was the brainchild of Jackson and John Landis.

Throughout the decade we were wowed by fantasy, thrilled by action, and frightened by horror, all the while being annoyed by remakes and endless sequels. We had everything turned on its head with numerous twist endings and welcomed new and old Superheroes. New directors entered the scene (Christopher Nolan) and others were finally recognised by mainstream audiences (Peter Jackson, Alexander Payne), while older pros continued to make great movies (Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg).

I’ve heard Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s 2004 Oscar-nominated film to be likened to Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”. Yet, I’d hazard a guess this is more a marketing ploy to pigeonhole the film into a more saleable product. It is like saying Antonia Bird’s drama “Priest” is like “The Exorcist”. They both feature members of the church questioning their own faith after all, but the two films couldn’t be more dissimilar. Granted, “ City of God” and “Pulp Fiction” share the depiction of crime and a time-switching, non-linear narrative, but there is little ironic humour to find in Meirelles and Lund’s uncompromising film. “City Of God” isn’t interested in stylised characters that overplay the merits of the metric system or theatrical violence and pop-culture references, it cuts far closer to the bone than that.

d. Stanley Kubrick; w. Stanley Kubrick; st. Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, John Clive
Stanley Kubrick’s mesmerising 1971 classic is an interesting beast. The film’s hallucinatory visuals depicting a strange, narcissistic society of the future, steeped in seventies art deco and harsh, contrasting lighting, paint a bleak, uncompromising picture. Kubrick’s use of implied violence, death and cultural destruction throw the viewer into a hellish, emotional quagmire of pessimism and hate.

Yet we’re complicit in the violence as Malcolm McDowell’s Alex narrates the story to us as if we are …

Ratso’s hang-ups, Sumner’s ordeal, Braddock’s sexual desire: The Life and Characters of Dustin Hoffman
Everyone who interviews Dustin Hoffman leaves with the same thoughts on the man: warm, intelligent, and accommodating. His small physical stature – there’s only 5ft 6in of the man – is dismissed by a presence that fills the room. He is a complete part of the Hollywood furniture: iconic and recognisable in both looks and voice. He is Tinseltown gold and a legend of the film industry.
As a child – although I did not know it …

In the eighties, the high-concept movie was in vogue, its number increasing. Thanks largely to blockbusters “Jaws” and “Star Wars”, the eighties saw what was tried and trusted in the decade before it and simply repackaged the thrills for an audience wanting exactly the same entertainment.
The industry was drastically changing from the top down. Huge, multinational conglomerates who, quite rightly, viewed their acquisition as a profitable arm of the company bought a number of studios. United Artists merged with MGM in 1981, while 20th Century Fox was bought by oil …

The vampire: that harbinger of everlasting life and eternal damnation. From the cloaked gothic majesty of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” to the down and dirty night-crawlers of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark”, vampire’s have formed the basis for more literary and cinematic horror than any other fictional creature.
Early cinematic incarnations of the blood-sucking sun-haters were based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Infamously, Friedrich Murnau made “Nosferatu” in Germany without acquiring the rights to film the novel. After a lawsuit, all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed. The film …