Film Reviews by MT

I was reluctant to give this a try as I’ve long been convinced that it’s impossible for a film involving any degree of time travel to have a plot that’s not predominantly nonsense. (The first Terminator film just about makes it, but it does have a rather limited amount of time travel.) Bill and Ted nail it when they decide they’ll go back in time in the future and steal Ted’s dad’s keys and leave them behind that sign right there and - voila! - find the keys.

I’m supposed to write a review of Goodfellas? How about “Scorsese is a genius and this has great actors and music”? But you know that. After watching dozens of hours of the Sopranos what struck me when rewatching this was how concentrated the action is: that’s what you get when a story arc has to fit into two hours, but I kept expecting characters to sit around and do thinking. Instead we have the voiceover driving us along at a frantic pace. Just remember to keep stirring the sauce.

This is like commenting on Dickens or Picasso - it says more about me than about Ozu. Having written that I was impressed - we had kind of added this to the list by mistake, thinking it was a recent film and when it turned up I realised how little I knew about classic Japanese film. I often get annoyed with “old” films - Hitchcock etc - why are they talking and doing things weirdly? - perhaps it was helped by the fact this was a “foreign” culture but I spent the whole time being interested and entertained instead of reminded that the film was seventy years old. I’ve already some more Ozu to my list.

In my opinion W C Fields has aged better than Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd and possibly even the Marx Bros. This is still an entertaining watch, with great sight gags and physical humour as well as decent characterisation, jokes and a surprisingly coherent plot.

Minder was at its best - the main characters well developed and some brilliant guest appearances: Mike Read, Bill Nighy, Richard Griffiths, Suzi Quatro! Forget modern series set in the early 80s, you don’t get the full-on beige clothes and  Vauxhall Chevette experience if it wasn’t actually filmed then. Genius.

I’m a huge ZZ Top fan - I thought this was fascinating, the early history of the band, the nerdy technical stuff, the background of the Texas Tour and some fabulous new film of them playing live. If you’re not a fan this is not really for you - weird old geezers burbling on and on. And on.

I hadn’t seen this for ages. I knew it was made a long time ago, but it was still a bit of a shock. Cruise is so young, smoking is cool, making money is even cooler - even the Porsche looks dated, and in a bad way. Possibly the weirdest thing was seeing Joe Pantoliano with his own hair. A historical document.