Tess McGill (Melanie Griffiths) is tired of being treated like crap by the appalling men at the stockbroker office where she works who seem to equate ‘secretary’ with ‘prostitute’. After one particularly sleazy encounter too many Tess quits and finds a new position under the seemingly benign Katharine Parker (Sigourney…

Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) doesn’t so much appear on the screen at the start of ‘The Swimmer’ (1968) as more emerges from some unnamed void. Who the hell is this guy? We know nothing about him so can only go by observation alone — dressed purely in navy trunks, eyes…

“When I burst onto that stage,” Michael Flatley instructed his dancers during a 1994 documentary about the making of ‘Riverdance’ “you’ll all need to stand back and give me as much space as possible because when I leap out in front of that audience I’m going to fucking explode.” This…

‘Pretty Woman’ (1990) might carry itself with the sassy strut of a film ready to plunge its hand into your crotch or fuck you on top of the piano but, in reality, it’s an oddly virginal affair. Julia Roberts plays a prostitute who looks like she’s never had sex in…

Earlier this year I was talking to someone vastly more knowledgeable about cinema than myself about the appeal of Anthony Mann’s historical epics and, for myself, it came down to one specific element — nobody shoots flaming torches in daytime better than Mann. So if you’re a fan of that…

Remember that scene in ‘When Harry Met Sally…’ (1989) where it’s blindingly obvious that Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher are dying to bugger off and immediately find somewhere to energetically fuck? ‘To Have and Have Not’ (1944) is like that but stretched out into an entire movie because this film…

‘Bullet Train’ (2022) is a deeply excruciating, annoying and tedious experience and that’s all down to three very specific reasons: the dialogue, the pacing and an unbearable level of smugness. …

‘Hold Back the Dawn’ (1941) has a fantastic and startlingly ‘modern’ and meta opening as the film doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as simply barge straight into itself, into its own movie, and directly address its own director. Or, to be precise, into the movie director, Mitchell Leisen…

A gunslinger walks into a bar… and that’s it. Thank you and goodnight! Okay, so ‘The Gunfighter’ (1950) might have a plot so extremely minimalistic it’s practically radical but what is done within this slender slice of drama is really something else. This is an outstanding piece of work. Jimmy…