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First Blood (1982)

Just as the original Rocky film is a beautifully-observed and deeply-affecting character study of a desperate loser's last chance, not far off what Martin Scorsese was making around the same time and miles better than the empty calories of all the progressively-worsening sequels in quality, so the first Rambo film has practically nothing at all to do with the plastic Mattel action figure toy that made all the ones that followed.

First Blood begins as a film about the way many Vietnam vets were treated upon their return home and feels similar to something like The Deer Hunter in seriousness of tone. The secret of both the first Rocky and Rambo films is that they took these grittily-realized, emotionally-believable stories and then strapped a jet pack to the back of them, successfully transforming them into hugely enjoyable and satisfying entertainment, kickstarting a new era of cinema the same as Spielberg and Lucas did around the same time, setting the template for the eighties blockbuster.

Everything of genuine filmmaking value that Stallone ever made rests entirely on these two films, and they remain genuinely great films that you could show to anyone you would never even think to try show an Expendables flick, or any of the Rambo sequels, to. There are many wildly exciting and over-the-top action scenes in this film but they never seem far-fetched enough to break the spell because of how well-grounded in character the story has been from the start. An excellently-made film in all departments, with genuinely-compelling acting from Stallone and good stuff from the rest of the cast, but Brian Dennehy might be best of all, creating an extraordinarily-well-rounded and nuanced bad guy getting progressively further and further out of his depth. A stone-cold classic.

9/10

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Top 10 11 Christmas Movies

Gremlins (1984) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Scrooged (1988) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Edward Scissorhands (1990) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Klaus (2019) ★★★★★★★★½☆

The Shop Around the Corner (1940) ★★★★★★★★★☆

A Christmas Carol (AKA Scrooge) (1951) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Trading Places (1983) ★★★★★★★★★☆

It's a Wonderful Life (1946) ★★★★★★★★½☆

Home Alone (1990) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Die Hard (1988) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

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GREMLINS joe dante, 1984

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Lordy...

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Hitler Reacts To Snow White Woke Trailer

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Quentin Tarantino has watched every film ever made but has no idea which ones are any good.

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Well, I've fixed it, but some of you aren't going to like it:

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THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER 1940 | dir. Ernst Lubitsch

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Elizabeth Taylor, 1967

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Recently finished rereading Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor", which might actually be my favourite by him after 'Choke'. When he's good he's very, very good. - maybe even my favourite living author - though he's certainly had a run of bad ones too.

The good, since you ask, I would say are (in descending order) Choke, Survivor, Snuff, Invisible Monsters, Fight Club, Lullaby, Haunted and Beautiful You. And the ones to avoid like the plague: Rant, Pygmy, Damned, Doomed, Tell-All. Have just begun reading Diary again, not sure quite where I'd put that. Maybe somewhere in the middle.

Well, I hope that answers all your urgent Chuck Palahniuk-themed questions.

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The Dead Zone (1983)

David Cronenberg adds great weight and tragic gravitas to the story of a psychic who eventually comes to foresee the end of the world.

Christopher Walken gains said powers after a car crash puts him into a coma for years, and by the time he wakes, his youth and health are gone, the love of his life has married another and the world has moved on without him. This awful sense of helpless loss is forever near the surface of the story, and what marks it out as a something above the usual horror/supernatural films.

Along with De Palma's 'Carrie' and Kubrick's 'Shining', the best ever adaptation of one of Stephen King's books.

9/10

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Off the top of my head, I'd have to say either Avatar or Joker.

Also Watchmen.

And Blue Is The Warmest Colour.

And 12 Years a Slave.

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The General (1926)

I think I narrowly prefer Steamboat Jr. myself, but this is widely held to be Buster Keaton's masterpiece, in no small part because of the astounding attention to period detail: The General is one of the most handsome films of all the silent era.

Set during the American civil war, Buster is a train engineer who is refused enlistment because he is more useful to the army in his job, but his girlfriend believes he is a coward. When she is later taken hostage by the opposing army, Buster embarks on an epic wartime odyssey to get her back.

Full of the usual death-defying stunts you usually get in a Keaton movie, this one seems on a grander scale than those before: the train crash at the end of the film, where a steam engine plummets off the tracks into a ravine, was done for real, at enormous cost, and the train remained at the bottom of said ravine for almost 20 years, until it was finally salvaged for scrap at the end of WWII.

9/10

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Cabaret (1972)

The 1970s were a time in which a new kind of adult musical film was born. "Cabaret" has some precedent in "The Sound of Music", in that it chronicles the slow rise of the Third Reich, but it's much more dark and grim in tone, far less to do with smiling schoolchildren and more to do with sexual deviancy and promiscuity in the bohemian Berlin nightclubs. It was the first musical to get an "X" certificate.

An interesting difference between this and most - then and now - is that all of the songs are realistically sung in performance - mostly on stage in the Kit-Kat nightclub, with a band - rather than by a character just breaking into song to express their feelings, supported by an invisible orchestra. This helps add to the realistic tone, grounding it in historical reality.

The songs, particularly "Two Ladies", "If You Could See Her like I Do" and "Tomorrow Belongs To Me", are superb, viscerally-affecting and the best part of the film by far. Liza Minnelli is a little annoying but this might be her best film. Michael York and Helmut Griem are both a little bland, but the best character of all is Joel Grey as the club's nameless emcee, observing and sneakily mocking everything like a court jester or a trickster god until the end.

9/10

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Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

John Malkovich's greatest and most iconic role, as the wicked Valmont, conspiring with the equally-cruel Marquise Glenn Close to break and despoil young lovers' hearts for fun.

It's a very seductive film about seduction, filled with all that emotional violence and passive-aggressive manipulation that female audiences lap up, but it's such clever and nasty fun that its appeal is pretty universal, I would say.

Dangerous Liaisons successfully walks a line between the heights and depths of the human soul, and that is what makes it so witty and moving and so great a film.

9/10

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Stanley Jefferson went on to become Stan Laurel, of Laurel & Hardy fame. It's always been strange to think of him and Chaplin working together for quite awhile before they were famous, because they never did again after they were successful, and we don't think of the public personas they are famous for as having any connection whatsoever, or even belonging to the same era.

The Karno Company toured the West coast of the USA in 1911.

The Karno Company touring in Sacramento : Arthur Dandoe, Stanley Jefferson, George Seaman, Charles Chaplin, Fred Karno Jr., Albert Austin, Emily Seaman, Amy Reeves, Muriel Palmer, Mike Asher and Fred Palmer.