It's just a film

No. No it isn't just a film. How can it possibly be just a film?

Is it just a book? Just an opera? Just the symphony? Just the juiciest steak? Just great sex? Just a perfect sunset? Just a body? Just lightning? Just your favourite band, live? Just a best friend? Just a livid ocean before a storm? Just inspirational architecture? Just the perfect kiss? Just an old bottle of wine?

Just a film indeed. Shame on you.

There are films which have scared me half to death, have altered my behaviour, have let me understand myself and others in clearer ways, have moved me to tears and have filled me with such melancholy I'm too heavy to leave the sanctuary of the cinema. There are films which have made me laugh so hard I've been in pain, have left me soaring, wanting to run laps round the room, cheering but not sure for what. There are films which have made me wish I could sing, films have made me wish I could dance, films have made me wish I could fly or time-travel or be invisible or grant wishes or predict the future. There are films which have made me think of people I've let slide from my life, made me find them, made me rebuild rickety bridges. There are films which have angered me, frustrated me, moved me to act, moved me to speak out or stand up and be counted. There are films which have become bonds with people, have held us to a moment, an impulse, a time a feeling and a memory that might otherwise fade. There are seductive films that have hooked me, reeled me in, tempted and teased me, thrilled and indulged me. There are films which have excluded me, kept me watching from a distance, allowed me to look but not touch, to appreciate only as an obscure object of austere beauty. Films delight and fuel me, drive me and excite me.

So there's no such thing as just a film.

Well, not unless we're talking about the majority of mainstream bile spewed forth to distract the masses. Then it's mostly shit.

Holy Batshit! It's Franchise Man!!

BATMAN BEGINS is, contrary to what way too many suck-ass 'critics' have put in print, a steaming pile of shite.But that's a glib thing to say. What possible justification can I have for being so angry at spending £5 and losing 141 minutes of my life?

There's so much to be angry about, it's hard to know where to start. Hans Zimmer must be a stressed man, because given all responsibility for generating any tension or suspense or drama in the movie, he failed spectacularly. It must come as some relief to him in his darkest moments that he was not alone in failing.

Having composed soundtracks for films like The Rock, Broken Arrow, Scream 2 and Pearl Harbour, he was obviously the natural choice to accompany yet another turgid waste of everyone's time, effort and money.

The only person who failed harder than him was the director, whose only notable efforts so far (Memento and Insomnia) were unlikely to generate any kind of enthusiasm for his ability to do justice here. So do we expect Chris Nolan to go the way football managers go when their team are shit or do we lay the blame firmly at the feet of the producers, whose concern was solely to reap a fortune from numb crowds for whom disappointment is as much a part of the cinema experience as cramming nacho's down their gullet? I would want him to fall on his sword, but if he's as gutless as his movie, it would be a complete waste of time.

What blame can be laid on Nolan is that the film's pace is all over the place, it looks ugly and it's badly edited. He really is Roland Emmerich's mini-me, and I'm not sure I can damn him more than that.

What else can I kick it for? The script is insulting, the cliche's are rampant and he's lifted scenes directly from - of all things - Highlander, at least two of the Die Hard movies and, of course, Spiderman. The end result is tedious, tiresome and hackneyed.

It becomes downright embarrassing to see the likes of Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Rutger Hauer, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman try their damndest to make the most of the drivel they've been paid handsomely to spew forth, but I'm sure they sleep better at night knowing their kids dental bills are paid till beyond the end of time.

Caine's accent goes through every borough of London at least twice without ever settling anywhere, and the Neeson/Bale training dialogue is really only missing the line 'There can be only one..."

And poor Christian Bale. A thoroughly believable Batman, unlike the potato-faced uber-smug shenanigans of those who have gone before. Unlike them, Bale at least looks like he lives in his skin and is capable of independent thought. He tries, god love him, but what could even the greatest actor do with this mince?

I went prepared for a vapid, huge, entertaining blockbuster movie and was still disappointed. I didn't think any film this year or any other was capable of making me wish I'd gone to see Revenge of the Sith instead, but this one managed.

Batman doesn't begin. Trust me, it's so much worse than that - it just never fucking ends.

I don't know whether to hate the machine that churns this shit out or the audiences who not only lick it up, but do so with such enthusiasm it justifies the creation of even more.Mainstream commercial cinema doesn't actually have to be this awful, but because people pant at the doors on opening weekend, it doesn't have to try any harder.

This movie was an appalling fucking waste of time and I'm sure all the people who thought they liked it will find kind words to say of War of the Worlds too. We no longer need scary Victorian institutions mutilating the mentally unsound in the name of science - audiences seem to be more than willing to pay for the privilege of lobotimising themselves, one fucking awful movie at a time.

Frolic in brine, goblins be thine

There are some movies which render me territorial. Not quite to the point where I'd wee on the film to prove it was mine, but I might give serious consideration to wee-ing on the person trying to take it away from me. Like a band or a song or a place or a person, there are some things so precious that you can't bear the idea of anyone else appreciating it, let alone touching it or deluding themselves that they have any right to even notice it at all.

Or maybe it's just me.

Either way, there are some movies that no matter how much you love them, I love them more. And I love them in that special way that makes it perfectly sensible to strap them down and hobble them so they will stay mine forever.

This is a story about RINGU.

There will be no mention of penguins in this story, so if you think I said Pingu you will be confused.

I go to a film festival in Montreal every summer and it used to take place at a grand old cinema called The Imperial, which was all chipped ormulu fandanglings and sticky red carpet. I loved that place. You couldn't really sit down too quickly as the rusty nails sticking up through the arm-rests would lacerate you, but it was a great cinema.

The very first year I went there, I arrived after 39 hours in transit and found my own way to the movie theatre. There I was told that my driver wouldn't be around for a couple hours, so why didn't I just store my luggage in the office, go watch a film and I would be taken to my B&B afterwards? That sounded like a plan to me, so I dumped my bags and headed into the auditorium as the lights were going down, found a seat and watched as.....

....I watched as the equivalent of punk happened to my movie life.

Again, spoilers follow, so if you have only seen the mince remake, read on, cos you don't deserve to see the original, and if you haven't seen either, please go watch the original immediately :)

I'd never seen an Asian horror movie before and although they are now so commonplace as to have become frustratingly familiar, RINGU left me breathless.

The story of a young psychic woman whose daughter Sadako's powers outstrip her mother's, are both victims of fear and violence from their community and husband/father/mentor. Wife disposed of, Sadako's father clubs his daughter over the back of the head and tips her recumbant corpse down a well. We assume she's dead, but one of the genuinely upsetting truths exposed towards the end of the movie is that she was alive in the well for years and years.

Sadako is about as abused as a person can be. Not only that, but she's vengeful and powerful. Her vengeance reaches beyond her brick confines and her anger forms images on a videotape that, once watched, gives the viewer seven days to live. And how do you avoid death? You sacrifice one close to you, by ensuring that they watch the tape, of their own volition, thereby transferring the curse.

I watched this film unwind. With peaks of action in the beginning and end, it plateau's in the middle, leaving you unprepared for Sadako's physical assault on the world. Not since Poltergeist has a movie made me sit further away from the TV.

Jet-lagged, exhausted, hungry and tired, I was in no fit state for what this movie threw at me. I would have walked away, happy to admit I was too scared to stay, but that would have meant getting up in a dark cinema, and I already felt exposed and vulnerable.

Film over, 1000 shocked film fans stumbled into the welcome foyer light and although there was palpable enthusiasm for the movie, there was something else going on. People seemed stunned. It's rare to see any movie have that kind of effect on so many people, but as they all drifted off into the night, it was impossible to shake the dread that settled inside me, accompanying images I was trying to let go, but that seemed in no great hurry to leave.

My driver appeared and took me off to my B&B. And here's where it got interesting. The house was up a flight of a dozen open-backed creaky wooden steps from the pavement, looming under a nearly-full moon like Bates Motel. I had my foot on the second step when my ride roared off into the night. Abandoned on a too-quiet suburban street, scared shitless by the best horror movie I'd seen in years, I was not a happy bunny.

Still, I made it to the porch, retrieved the key that had been left for me and stepped inside. No lights, but another wooden staircase. I went up and faced a short corridor with three doors. The note said mine was at the end. Of course it was. I opened the door and in the middle of the dark room stood a huge bed with wrought iron head and foot boards. A lace cover trailed all the way to the floor on all sides, a massive ceiling fan hung lifeless above it, and the lace curtains over the window threw odd shapes on the far wall.

I needed light. And company. And a big stick and a stiff drink.

I felt the wall around the door but no light switch. Then I realised I was avoiding getting anywhere near the bed so I did the sensible thing and checked under it. No monsters, although at that point a monster I recognised would have been a blessing - what I feared most was long dark hair, long white robes and a temper that stretched from the most violated corners of hell.

I still needed light.

I carried on feeling all around the wall in case the switch was somewhere stupid, but still no luck. My eyes still weren't adjusting to the dark, and I was exhausted so I put my bag on the armchair, pulled my shoes off and climed onto the bed.

The room was sweltering (Montreal summers are super hot) and a smart bit of my brain remembered the ceiling fan and I was happy to see a string hanging down from it. I pulled the string and the light came on. I screamed, very loudly, because in my sweep of the room I hadn't noticed the mirror opposite the bed, and so on seeing long dark hair and a white shirt in the very sudden light, I nearly died.

Part of me is really very glad that a movie can do that to me, and it's a big part of the reason why I was so disappointed at the remake, but that's another story entirely.

Although I initially hated Ring 2, when watched with the original they make for three of the best hours any horror fan can hope for, and although the prequel, Ring 0, is mince, the last 10 minutes of it are cack-yer-pants scary and the film is tolerable just for those.

Go on, find someone who doesn't know them and break part of their mind they didn't realise they had :)

What time is High Snot?

Sometime in my late 20's, I sprung a leak.

Never really been sure what caused it - a fissure lurking somewhere in the dark blown open by a particularly violent sneeze would be my guess.

Regardless of what caused it, the only permanent damage seems to be that I leak profusely during movies which up until the explosion, would have been dismissed as cack-handed sentimentality. Embarrassingly enough now, I can be found sobbing my heart out to daytime mince like Channel 5 movies called things like Please Don't Take My Children Away From Me! Usually by the time they get to the courtroom scenes I have floated away on a tide of snot and tears and have had to call the Coastguard.

The effects of this undignified sobbing are either embarrassment (I'm in a public place where people know me), total shame (I'm in a public place where people know me and my weeping isn't quite loud enough to drown out the bloody Elton John soundtrack....thank you very much, Baz Luhrmann) or total submission, as in the case of CINEMA PARADISO.

Now, CINEMA PARADISO is a movie every lover of movies should see because it is director Giuseppe's celluloid love letter to all things cinematic - the building, the staff, the machinery, the experience, the life-altering impact that great cinema and memory can have. A glorious movie.

I went to see it with a boyfriend who is nowadays presumably off making other women's lives more complicated than necessary, but at the time it was my turn. He and I were in the back row of an auditorium full of nice old ladies. Now, you and I both know there's no such things as nice old ladies. Any shopping trip to Safeway on Pension Day will back me up on this. They are all either spies or witches or super-sentient zeppelins or mad. Some of them are nice, too, but it's a combination thing.

The movie starts. I love the movie. I am also about to give somethinig away about it which you should absolutely not read if you haven't seen the film yet. Go now, immediately, and see the movie.

Seen it?

Ok, now read on.

I hadn't quite realised what effect the movie was having on me until the boy returns as a man and joins the crowd to watch the destruction of the building. All I could see was my beloved Toledo in ruins. That started it. Then when he takes the reel of film from the can and plays it, and sees all the moments censored from his young life, one after the other unfolding on screen. That did it. Oh man, that did it. I started crying. And not the kind of crying where one tear escapes and you can pretend that you merely stuck a fork in your eye and have recovered, thank you, no...this was the kind of crying that heeds no man. Unless it is your boyfriend who proceeds to hand you tissue, after tissue, after tissue.

During the emotional scenes, that was nice of him. During the end credits, that was good of him. As 200 nice old ladies filed past us, that was patient of him. As the cleaning staff came in and did a smashing job, that was tolerant of him. I couldn't stop. Something in me had gone - I was completely heart-broken. It may sound ridiculous to you (and 200 nice old ladies, one projectionist, two cleaners, three cafe staff and a taxi driver) but I just couldn't help it.

I cried until we got outside (after the 20 minutes it took me to recover) when I just stood there all snivelly and pathetic. Being a nice man (sometimes) he took me out for some of the best Chinese food I'd ever eaten, and very sensibly didn't talk about the film.

I haven't watched it again since, not because I don't want to, but I'm not sure if it would lessen the impact it initially had on me if it did the same the second time or, even worse, had no effect on me at all.

Still, the boyfriend was particularly wary at future screenings of delicate films and always came armed with hankies, but there was no repeat performance.

Still, it is a very beautiful and special movie, which you should watch. Though maybe not with me.

Blame it all on the giant snake....

My parents aren't really big movie fans. They enjoy them, but not the same way I do.

When I was a kid, our local cinema was called The Toledo. Toledo is still one of those words that I love. The cinema (which was still there, last time I checked) was an Art Deco white-fronted thing, full of jade, black and white tiles and lots of interesting wrought iron work.

It had a balcony, and lots of little alcoves full of statues.

It also had a sticky floor, was freezing and you always came out having been bitten by something in the dark.

Still, it was our local, and even I am just old enough to remember Saturday matinees with added sugar.

The first film I ever went to see was The Jungle Book. We got there late (an unforgiveable movie sin, I know) and I remember stepping from the cool, shabby foyer into the dark auditorium and feeling the floor fall away from me. My world was simply the biggest screen I had ever seen, and on it the biggest snake, hissing off into the jungle with a knot in his tail.

I remember being led to a seat, but being able to find the floor or the chair unaided, hypnotised as I was by the furious Kaa.

That was where it started. Total adoration. An experience unlike any other.