Philhelm Scream

As is now a famous Philhelm Scream tradition (ie. I’ve done it once before, last year ), approaching the half-way point of the calendar year feels a suitable time to take stock and rank some films. After what was an incredible strong Oscar year, there’s a good showing of the nominees here seeing as each received a January release here in the UK. Fingers crossed July – Dec is just as good! 1 0. Hidden Figures I thought it was a bit of a shame Hidden Figures (along with 2016's Hell or High Water) slipped under the best Picture radar a bit this year, while the incredibly dull Lion (2017) and Dev Patel’s hair seemed to get a lot more coverage. The story of the first ever black female employee at NASA, and the struggles she faced to get there was told really well. It’s a proper fist pump of a story, and doesn’t get too bogged down in the boring number crunching that it could so easily have done. The leading trio of Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer are each bri...

Source A documentary’s place is often on the small screen where it has the time to carry out it’s investigation in full across a few episodes. Making a Murderer was a great example of that – there wasn’t anything visually grand about the series that was missed having it on my small screen, and it’s run time allowed it to delve deep in to the detail, rather than cramming it all in to 2 hours.   Despite the tendency to find them more on TV, there is a growing trend in documentaries made for the big screen now. What was once an ignored platform is finding an ever growing audience. That’s reflected in my admittedly blinkered list of all time faves, seeing as only one was made outside of the last 10 years. Attention for film docs is getting bigger and bigger, and some of my favourite experiences in a cinema have been sitting through some of the films below. It isn’t often that audiences will challenge what’s being presented to them when it’s got that ‘documentary’ label, but t...

Source A few weeks ago Charlotte surprised me with a birthday trip to Berlin for three days.  As he wasn't touring to Manchester, and seeing as flying to Berlin would cost the same as a train to London, the idea was to catch a Joshua Radin gig while we were there.  We have friends living in Berlin that were kind enough to put us up, and we had a brilliant break away from the norm.   Charlotte’s blog covers the break we had in all its foody glory , but there were a few bits where we went that had a certain filmy flavour too. If you’re not aware of Joshua Radin, you have probably heard some of his acoustic folk over the top of that sad bit at the end of every Scrubs episode .   I’ve been a big fan for years now, but it was a weird experience seeing him in another country.  The venue looked like a converted theatre or cinema, and that added to the chilled atmosphere.  The day after we went to Berlin’s Film Museum in Potsdamer Platz .  If you have ne...

Source The sequel. The idea of it hardly inspires confidence does it? You could end up with an Empire Strikes Back or a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A Terminator 2: Judgement Day or a Speed 2: Cruise Control. The Dark Knight, or a Batman & Robin. We often get sequels it doesn’t seem anyone asked for (looking at you XXX: Return of Xander Cage), and yet there are some films where I’ve left the cinema desperate for more. Are great films better to be left alone untainted by a poor follow up, or is it worth the gamble. For different reasons, here are some great films I would love to see a follow up to. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Source The easiest one to pick on my list. I really enjoyed the original Swedish movie interpretations of Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium’ trilogy of novels. They were all made at the same time for TV, and I owned them all on DVD when they came out. It made a star of Noomi Rapace, and I’ve been a big fan of her work since in The Drop, Sherlock...

Source Much of my exposure to films came from whatever was on the TV. My brother and I would spend a couple of evenings a week at my Granny’s house after school and we would finger through the TV guide and circle films for her to record on VHS. Each week we would then sit down with a Wagon Wheel and watch whatever action-filled gore-fest we had picked the previous week (“Ooh, you two do watch some horrible stuff!”). I would also stumble across films myself, scrolling through the channels late at night. Sometimes I would come across a gem, and that was exactly how I first watched The Shining (1980) and Alien (1979). A lot of the time though it would utter rubbish. Without Netflix the pickings were pretty slim back then so I would have to make do with whatever film ITV2 were showing for the 46th night in a row. Nowadays we don’t watch an awful lot of telly. If we’re not watching a DVD or Netflix, we will be working through a boxset (the latest Sherlock series was the first ‘liv...

Source You could tell Die Another Day was going to be dire as soon as Bond somehow gives himself a heart attack to escape custody.  And then there was the invisible Aston Martin.  Despite that though, it actually started very well.  I even like Madonna's title song (dons tin hat), but the start's hovercraft chase is really fun too.  I caught Skyfall's pre-title action sequence (and brilliant title song) on TV the other day, and it got me thinking about how important they are to the Bond formula.  It's a given now that every Bond film starts with a look down a gun barrel, a breathtaking action scene, followed by the song and title sequence.  Die Another Day, and to a lesser extent Spectre, were poor Bond films that couldn't live up to it's breathtaking starts, but those scenes are so good I'm almost tempted to put them on and sit through the whole thing.  So, putting the rest of the film and the brilliant title song sequences aside, what are the bes...

Source Lets be honest, 2016 has been a rough one.  As we all nurse our Christmas hangovers and stress over the New Year resolutions to break, now would be a good time for good news.  Following on from my look back at my faves of 2016, here are 15 films I'm already counting the days down until... 15. T2: Trainspotting (January) 14. The Founder (January) 13. The Mummy (June) 12. Manchester by the Sea (January) 11. Hacksaw Ridge (January) 10. Beauty and the Beast (March) 9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (May) 8. The Lego Batman Movie (February) 7. War for the Planet of the Apes (July) 6. La La Land (January) 5. Silence (January) 4. Dunkirk (July) 3. Blade Runner 2049 (October) 2. Alien: Covenant (May) 1. Star Wars: Episode VIII (December) There's no trailer for this as of yet.  I'm making no apologies for posting this instead. Honourable mention...