The Big Picture Magazinehas reviewed film since 1989 and a Tuesday morning press screening of Andrew Davis' The Package. Since then he has watched a number of better movies, and a few worse.
Whatever your very own personal take on the whole concept of travel in the pandemic/lockdown era, you will probably agree film is one of the safest and most rewarding ways to see the sights, out and about, out of yourself when you’re sick of your stinky boots. One of my favourite destinations in cinema year […]
You may have met a man – quite young – A brisk-eyed youth, and highly strung: One whose desires And inner fires Moved him as wires … -From “So Various,” Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) The role of Gawain in David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2021) offers Dev Patel the opportunity to display a round table smorgasbord of […]
There are those convinced George Lucas only ever dreamed up Star Wars so he could sell spin-off toys to kids. And now, nine episodes in (is it nine? you tell me!), movie merchandise helps keep the commercial world a-spinning. Merch can be cool, though – the more unlikely it is, the more “cultish”, the cooler […]
James Dickey’s novel opens with a map being unrolled. Disconcerting – “curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned it loose” – then, revealing – “All this in here will be blue … this whole valley will be under water.” John (Point Blank) Boorman’s movie version unveils the river itself through a curtain of […]
We’re all opening up, ready to get back to it – doin’ the things that we want to. Like the Lou Reed song: It reminds me of the movies Marty made about New York Those frank and brutal movies that are so brilliant Fool for love, meet the raging bull They’re very inspirational, I love […]
Spare a thought for Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) in David Lean’s World War II drama, at the mercy of his Japanese captors in a deep jungle POW camp, tortured, baked in the sun in a tiny corrugated “oven” after procedural and ethical clashes in the lead-up to the construction of the titular monument – an […]
You’ve got to have friends. “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” We all need to know who our real friends are. “I trust Mr. Brown, I do not trust Mr. Grey.” Friends in high places. “Make him an offer he can’t refuse …” Crime film aficionados will recognise the lingo, and feel they […]
Shakespeare told us love is blind, although there are those who insist he stole it from Chaucer. It is Preston Sturges who reminds us of the truism in The Lady Eve (1941), a screwball constructed like a clever card trick that always comes up aces. That’s “screwball” as in “farcical romantic comedy” – Shakespeare also has […]
Old pals John Wayne (as Sheriff John T. Chance) and Ward Bond (as Pat Wheeler, soon to be murdered, shot in the back) have a conversation that says much about the good guys’ dilemma in Howard Hawks’ classic Western Rio Bravo (1959). Wheeler: A game-legged old man and a drunk. That’s all you got? Chance: That’s […]
