Films @ Dave’s Info Cafe

The other night I treated myself to a double helping of Werner Herzog cinema. BBC3 was having a Herzog night and showed Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, Wrath of God one after the other! And then a documentary to bring us up to date with his more recent activities. Why am I raving on like a lunatic [...]

As you can see from the first part of this I am a fan of the old style epics which are usually historical stories with universal themes involving large scale conflict, and where no expense is spared, either on the costumes, settings or numbers of extras to fill the screen. However, apart from Gladiator and [...]

One of my great passions in movies is to watch epic films. You know the ones – grand scale, sweeping visuals and action and heroic stories. A good epic film needs the big screen to fit in the cast of thousands and the panoramic view of the action. There have been many epics made over [...]

I watched Atonement on DVD for the first time last week. I was curious to see why there was so much fuss and Oscar buzz about a British period piece set around the second world war. I also had a local interest as the much-heralded, one take scene of the beach at Dunkirk was filmed [...]

No, I’m not talking about his drunken rants against Jews but the dark side of his more recent films. Has any one noticed that you have to have a fairly strong stomach to watch the films directed by Mel Gibson? Of course you have. You have to wade through a lot of gore. It obviously [...]

I’m on a roll now. The Song Remains The Same just started me thinking again about pop music films again. It’s funny how one thing leads to another. I’d almost forgotten about probably the greatest film about popular music and culture. And it was made by a bone fide film maker with a host of [...]

1999 was one of my favourite years. I studied film and the cinema for a year at John Leggott sixth form college in Scunthorpe and ended up with an “A” Level in Film Studies. For years I had avidly watched movies at the cinema and on the television and more recently on video. I had even [...]

We all know a great film when we see one don’t we? Well not always. What is a great film to someone may be awful to someone else. Films are very subjective. Citizen Kane leaves film critics in raptures but today’s teenager will wonder what all the fuss is about (and probably hate it to [...]

Well, I took my son to see 300 at the local Empire multiplex on Wednesday to see for myself what all the hype was about. I have to admit that it was far better than I had imagined. As long as you watch it  as a fantasy rendition of a true life event, then you see a stunning [...]

It must be a great time to be a young energetic and imaginative film-maker at the moment. “The world is your lobster!” as Derek Trotter might have said. Why do I say that?  Because it seems to me that they have more options now than their predecessors ever had. It was not so long ago that [...]