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Float like a brick – sting like a duck

Tweet The Fighter – David O Russell Stop Press: Amy Adams can say f*** and flash her boobs. Forgive the crudity of my language and coarseness of thought: but welcome to the tone and ethos of this astonishingly over-rated meretricious, unpleasant, really bad film. To be clear: I have absolutely no moral objections to ‘bad’ […]

Passion and love; friendship and respect; philosophy and humanity

Tweet Stars Hankies My Afternoons With Margueritte – Jean Becker Rumpelstiltskinian: Director Becker has taken a few random narrative straws and spun them into a fragment of gold. Sentimental? Yes: but touching, truthful and with that rare quality in modern movies, heart. Semi-literate Germain Chazes (a superb Depardieu) was the unwanted result of a post-prandial […]

Love and Sex

Tweet Love doesn’t make the world go round – sex does: it is the energy that drives action. But sex leaves everything as it is. Love seeks to change things for the better – it aspires to the good. And of course this includes sex itself. Much misery – and bad sex – is caused […]

The Kids Are All Right – the parents are screwed up

Tweet Embarrasssment defines and divides Americans and Brits. Movies reveal this. For Americans embarrassment is funny: for Brits embarrassment is, well, embarrassing. Films like Meet The Fokkers or any comedy with Robert de Niro in it demonstrate this perfectly. Ben Stiller is the patron saint of embarrassment humour. There is an instinct for schadenfreude in […]

Ruth – Poem: love, respect, daughter

TweetRuth You are my dawn the first light of my days As I awake from rumpled sleep I think of you and my world’s at peace You are my morning the warmth of my new day and on my present journey I think of you and my doubts are stayed You are my noon my […]

Slumdog Millionaire – a chicken tikka masala of a film

Tweet Slumdog Millionaire – Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionaire is like a shot of bad tequila – feels great as it goes down then begins to burn at your gut and eventually makes you feel queasy. ‘Slumdog’, for it already has an abbreviated nickname; is a nice, naïve, pacy little romantic fairytale knocked up inexpensively by […]

President-elect Obama – Inauguration – a letter to America

TweetThe Inauguration of President-elect Obama – a world, not just American celebration. The celebration of president elect Obama’s inauguration will be shared by the world. Its ethnic and racial symbolism touches all nations, all people. A black US President will mark though not an end, a key milestone on the civilising journey from slavery and […]