Cecil B. Demented (2000)

I started watching John Waters’ Cecil B. Demented (2000) on NYE 2017, and took a break, only getting time to finish it on Jan 2, so this was technically the first good movie I watched in 2018. Trashed by critics on release, recommended to me by my friend Clare Nina, this film is a gleeful, […]

A New Leaf (1971)

I’ve been slowly catching up on Elaine May’s films as a director. A New Leaf (1971) was apparently a longer, darker film in her original cut before Robert Evans head of Paramount stepped in to make it more audience friendly – still, despite that, I think it is such a funny, wonderful film. A bit […]

The Childhood Of A Leader (2015)

I’d never heard of The Childhood Of A Leader (2015) until one year when I asked people what their favourite scores/songs of the year were and someone recommended Scott Walker’s score from it. The thundering overture sets the strident tone for this drama which, per the title, looks at Prescott (Tom Sweet), a young boy […]

The Hot Rock (1972)

With Robert Redford announcing his retirement after The Old Man And The Gun, hopefully another earlier film where he played a bank robber will get new attention. I remember seeing the ending to The Hot Rock (1972) and loved Redford’s walk to the jazzy score by Quincy Jones. Finally sat down and watched the whole […]

Day Of Anger (1967)

Riz Ortolani’s jazzy, bombastic, memorable score to Day Of Anger (1967; I giorni dell’ira) was used in a key sequence of Tarantino’s Django Unchained and is known from the soundtrack. Sitting down to watch this Lee Van Cleef spaghetti western, there’s also a similar plot to Django with an older, experienced gun fighter Talby (Van […]