Philhelm Scream

Source As with Quantum of Solace (2008) and The Great Gatsby (2013), Prometheus (2012) is one of those films where I often try to convince myself that I was wrong, and that actually, surely it can’t be as bad as I remember.  Maybe it’s actually pretty good?   Yeah, I’m sure it was actually great – I’ll put it on now.   I might even get as far as lying to myself during the movie, wanting it to be good… right until a biologist thinks it’s a good idea to start toying with a scary space snake, and a geologist suddenly turns in to a zombie after having his face melted off.  Despite it’s entertaining scares and great visuals, it’s around that point where I begin to accept that this was in fact a let-down of a movie.  Aliens (1986) is a superb thrill ride of a war film, but Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is one of my favourite films of all time .  I love how much of a slow burner it is, cranking up the horror and dread very gradually.    One of Prometh...

Source The other week I was walking in to Manchester Central Library for lunch and a spot of people watching when a leaflet caught my eye. On the front was a picture of Tippi Hedren running away from a flock of birds, and it was advertising a 4 week lecture course on Alfred Hitchcock at the library in conjuncture with Home cinema. As well as the four lectures, the cinema was to put on a screening of Hitchcock’s last great film, The Birds (1963). Hitchcock films have caught my imagination since I was a kid. I vividly remember my Mum describing me the plot of Dial M For Murder (1954), and telling me of this fat, funny director, whose films always had a blonde woman in, and you had to spot him in his own films. When I was a little older I was freaked out by an awful waxwork of Janet Leigh screaming in her shower at Blackpool’s Madame Tussauds. Then there was the Universal Studios tour in LA that took in Psycho’s (1960) Bates Motel, and a 3D screening of his ‘best bits’ at the sa...

Source Been pretty lax with Philhelm Scream recently, but I'm looking to put that right this week.  I recently started a four week course on Alfred Hitchcock that included a screening of one of my favourites: The Birds (1963) at Home, Manchester.  I'm hoping to write something about both when I can, but for the time being Charlotte and I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 the other day.  Appreciate this has been out for a while now, but as the original was one of the few Marvel films to really catch my imagination I'm still keen to pen a few words on it's follow up even though many will have seen this already.  I've never really succumbed to Marvel Studios' takeover of the cinematic galaxy.  I've really enjoyed all of the Spiderman films (apart from no. 3... what the hell?), and Deadpool blew me away (the fact it laughed in the face of other Marvel franchises helped), but James Gunn's under the radar success story, Guardians of the Galaxy (2...