Curtis Hanson has remained the quiet genius amongst Hollywood directors, releasing films infrequently over a career spanning nearly 40 years. In the late 1980s he’s remembered for the Hitchcockian “The Bedroom Window” and pot boiling thriller “Bad Influence” by those lucky enough to see them. More people caught “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” and “The River Wild in the early 1990s. But he finally received the recognition his directing prowess deserved when he released the massive critical hit “L.A. Confidential”. This was followed three years later with “Wonder Boys” which, for me, is his greatest achievement. Michael Douglas has rarely been better in the role of disgruntled writer Grady Tripp who has to deal with the various social problems of his friends and associates while trying to come to terms with his own neurosis. The film features a great script by Steve Kloves who brings Michael Chabon’s characters to vivid life. Robert Downey Jr.’s small but perfect performance is worth the price of admission alone.

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 …

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 …

“Are you telling me you built a time machine out of a DeLorean”: The Magic of Robert Zemeckis

Robert Zemeckis was once asked if television was a bad influence on children. He answered, emphatically, “television isn’t an education, but I see no reason to turn it off.” What would so many television-starved children give for Zemeckis as a babysitter, or indeed a father: ‘Can I pur-lease watch more TV?’/’Of course you can!’ He was a product of the television generation – this new visual medium that found its way into most …

Part of our “Top10Films: Dustin Hoffman” feature
Dir. Bob Fosse; screenplay by Julian Barry; starring Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner, Stanley Beck
Considered by many US-based critics as a film lacking the sort of anti-establishment relish that made its origin of study the darling of counter-culture 1950s and 1960s Americana, “Lenny” plays better in the United Kingdom where mainstream media is more open to the real meaning of the comedian’s ‘blah blah blah’ skit and other obscene eccentricities. Frequently, we see Hollywood actors, musicians, and comic stars appear on talk shows …

Part of the Top10Films: Dustin Hoffman feature
Dir. Alan J. Pakula; screenplay by William Goldman; starring Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Jason Robards, Ned Beatty
My first cinematic introduction to the Watergate saga arrived in the form a simpleton named Forrest Gump phoning the police after seeing some people burglarising the building across from his hotel. Of course, at the time I was eleven years old and neither understood the reference or had much interest in it. Watching the film now, the moment is another lovely touch in the …

Part of our “Top10Films: Dustin Hoffman” feature
BUY: Straw Dogs on DVD from Amazon
Dir. Sam Peckinpah; written by Sam Peckinpah, David Zelag Goodman; starring Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Jim Norton, Ken Hutchison, Donald Webster, Del Henney, David Warner
“I don’t know my way home,” says simpleton Henry Niles to a dishevelled David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) at the end of Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece “Straw Dogs”. David, with one lens of his spectacles broken and cuts and bruises to his face, smiles and calmly replies: “That’s okay, I don’t either.” The two men drive …