I find it hard in these strange times to watch a film without viewing it through the prism of Brexit. After all, what other reason can there be for making a film now about Churchill? And this is not the Churchill of the Boer War, not the Churchill of Gallipoli, not the Churchill of the … Continue reading Darkest Hour – Keep Clem and Carry On

I think I’ve worked it out – the whole Star Wars franchise is really a parable about Brexit. I mean, of course it’s all nonsense but if you believe enough, you can leave Europe and it will all turn out fine. Stay with me on this… The First Order (the baddies) are the Brexiters of … Continue reading Star Wars – The Last Remainer Jedi

Chris Froome’s failed drugs test (for that is what it is) is a disaster for him, for Sky, for British cycling and for cycling as a whole and caps a year for him and Sky that is triumphant and catastrophic at the same time - a rare achievement. It is hard to see how he … Continue reading Chris Froome – puff the Magic Dragon

BBC2’s investigation didn’t teach us very much. Sir Dave Brailsford and Shane Sutton were unrepentant; two men obsessed with winning won a lot. And if some bodies fell along the way and a few people got upset, well it was a price worth paying. Why no interview with Jess Varnish? Sutton denied telling her to … Continue reading Britain’s Cycling Super-Heroes; the Price of Success – BBC2 19 November 2017

The 1928 Tour de France was one of the toughest on record. The route circled the whole of France (no plane transfers in those days), was 3340 miles in length – much of it on gravelled roads - and of the 168 riders who started, only 41 finished. It was also notable for the participation … Continue reading Le Ride

Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, produced by Kenneth Branagh, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring er… Kenneth Branagh has several faults, the chief of which is Branagh himself. Branagh has chosen to play Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot as a sort of Indiana Jones with a funny accent and a silly … Continue reading Murder on the Orient Express – train wreck

‘Comedy is tragedy plus time,’ says Alan Alda’s character in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanours. And later, ‘if it bends it’s funny, if it breaks it’s not funny.’ For various reasons I was in Moscow in 1957, shortly after Kruschchev assumed power and at about the time that Molotov was shot. Which is to say … Continue reading The Death of Stalin

I was always in the kitchen at parties, hiding behind the pots, avoiding the pot, the fun and laughter and the people getting off with each other. And I was all set to hate The Party.  A few years ago, I went to see Transformers 9:  Revenge of the Batteries with my son and I … Continue reading The Party

Philip K Dick was a truly visionary writer whose massive oeuvre of science fiction novels has proved fertile ground for film-makers. Ridley Scott’s 1982 re-telling of Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ – filmed as Blade Runner – has gained cult status over the years for its beautifully realised post-apocalyptic Los Angeles landscape, … Continue reading Blade Runner 2049

Paul Fournel’s Anquetil, Alone is part biography, part hagiography, part limpid, poetic treatise and part a prose meditation on one of the greatest ever cyclists; the first to win 5 Tours de France and the first to win the Tour and Vuelta in the same year. Fournel traces Anquetil’s life through a series of lyrical … Continue reading ‘Anquetil, Alone’ by Paul Fournel