Review: “The Gentlemen” starring Theo James and Kaya Scodelario

Many artists have an unmistakeable style.  Van Gogh’s brushstrokes are unlike anyone else’s; they may be imitated but never repeated.  Hemingway’s prose is clipped and edited to a degree dissimilar to another author’s.  No one used cinematic montage like Sergei Eisenstein did.   Similarly, a Guy Ritchie production bears hallmarks of its own. Characters are […]

Review: “One Day” starring Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall

“One Day” is refreshingly different: it is a portrait of a romance but it is painted in generally dark colours. There is regret, memory, tears, bitterness, and yet it is beautiful.

Review: “Napoleon” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby

Ridley Scott turned the story of Napoleon Bonaparte into a big budget epic; how does it compare to 1970’s “Waterloo”?

Review: Married At First Sight Australia, Season 10

I generally don’t watch “reality TV”. I remember when British television launched Big Brother. It was baffling. It was as if the contestants were lab rats in a maze and we were watching them eat, sleep, and claw each other. The firm behind Big Brother, Endemol, apparently has gone in for an even more torturous […]

Review: Superman: Red Son starring Jason Isaacs and Vanessa Marshall

I must admit that I’m not a “comic book” sort of person. I never collected them. I watched some superhero cartoons on Saturday mornings when I was a boy. I don’t recall specific plots, but I do remember that the Green Lantern’s powers were useless against items coloured yellow. Also, there was a “Bizarro” version […]

Revisiting “Four Weddings and Funeral”

I remember the first time I saw “Four Weddings and a Funeral”.  I was visiting the Cheshire town of Wilmslow, and it was being shown in an old movie theatre in the centre of town.  I speculated that the theatre hadn’t changed much since the 1920’s: the seats were worn, and the floors were sticky […]

Transparently Love

I am not a fan of the Amazon series “Transparent”; I live in a country whose government is presently going through a nervous breakdown, so watching the neuroses of others played out on a screen is an unlikely form of entertainment.  Also, the revelations about Jeffrey Tambor’s conduct towards women makes the programme less than […]

Review: Tony Benn: “Will and Testament”

I owe Tony Benn a great deal. While he was Minister for Technology between 1966 and 1970, Mr. Benn created a British equivalent to IBM, International Computers Limited. Although its history was not trouble free, it was a success story; it was there that I began my working life after I graduated from University. It […]

Review: “Gone Girl” starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike

Some films are meant to be taken at face value: a car chase is a car chase, an explosion is an explosion, and they are there solely to get the adrenalin pumping and to attract the eye. Other films are purposefully deeper: for example, the German film, “The Lives of Others” is designed to stimulate […]

Review: “Blithe Spirit” by Noël Coward, starring Angela Lansbury and Charles Edwards

It’s difficult for me to say when I first became aware of Angela Lansbury. Perhaps it was due the Disney film “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” in which she played the trainee witch Eglantine Price. It may have been when I saw her on television in the long running series “Murder She Wrote”. She certainly caught my […]

Me And My Blog

Picture of meI'm a Doctor of both Creative Writing and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, a novelist, a technologist, and still an amateur in much else.