Category Archives: Film review

Neill at home, Two Paddocks in Alexandra, New Zealand. Photo: Fiona Goodall Like a few other natural low-key actors, Sam Elliot, Martin Sheen, and Tom Berenger I enjoyed the company of them all, but I barely got to know Sam Neill. … Continue reading →

After the SNP’s junk politicians decided to come over all truthy today, Sunday, to tell us Scotland’s liberty is a decade away, minimum – ha! ha! ha! ha! – I thought readers would need something to make them laugh and … Continue reading →

As politics take the festive season off, (almost) so will this site until early January. Most hard working folk will be counting the pounds left in their pocket to get through to the Spring. Film reviews, once welcomed by readers, … Continue reading →

Kenneth Branagh’s cellulose autobiography of his childhood is one of those productions that almost resists a critique because it is so absolutely honest in the depiction of growing up in the middle of Northern Ireland’s religious and bloody battles between … Continue reading →

As football commentators are apt to say, this was a game of two-halves. The Duke doesn’t really get off the ground until the trial scenes. And for all of its length it remains unabashed English nostalgia for a time that … Continue reading →

I begin with a lament. The composer of the film score, Scotland’s Patrick Doyle, a creator of prodigious output who really ought to be lauded as our national composer, has manufactured a low, deep insistent growl for the tense murder … Continue reading →

I can understand why this film bombed at the box office. It stretches too far, and was shot in colour but after some selected North American premiers, issued in black and white by the studio. I have no idea why … Continue reading →

Moviegoers of Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation (Hollywood’s third attempt), of the sci-fi novel Dune have noticed the presence of bagpipes during the latest two-and-a-half-hour epic. The new movie version of Frank Herbert’s best-selling novel has received positive reviews since its premiere … Continue reading →

The last time I wrote about Matt Damon was his almost solo performance as a marooned astronaut in ‘The Martian‘. I commented he had a habit of choosing storylines in which his character always gets rescued. In Ridley Scott’s medievil … Continue reading →