Popular Features
Ben Dover: The Sultan of Schwing
Britain’s pornographer-in-chief on the toughest thing about his job, changing attitudes to sex and why all politicians are bastards “M’lud, one of the pornographic tapes in question involved a young lady and a German sausage, a Brat… (leans back) – or was it a Bock…? It was, I believe, a Bockwurst. The lady was in the process, your honour, of committing an unnatural act with a meat appendage.” Ben Dover, real name Simon (though he tells me it’s Lyndsay) Honey, hits the Soho bar we’re meeting in with his motormouth at full throttle and full volume. Now sitting opposite, he’s telling me about his court appearance for supplying porn to some Belgian bloke … Read more
All the Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked
The good, the bad and the ugly, from the very first one to the most recent, here’s the what and the why of Marvel’s web-spinning, hammer-throwing, shield-tossing, Groot-uttering heroes and superheroes in one handy chunk Who’d have thought, when Iron Man gave birth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in 2008, that more than two decades on it would still be flying and still pulling in enthusiastic audiences? Even Kevin Feige, who has produced every single one of them, cannot have expected a run of so many successful films – pushing $30 billion at the box office and counting. As I write, in September 2022, Marvel are planning releases as far as ten years … Read more
Five Films about Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher, Mrs T, The Iron Lady, is dead. 31 years ago she was the most unpopular UK Prime Minister in history. Then, after winning the Falklands War she was re-elected in 1983. She was elected again in 1987 before being defenestrated by her party in 1990, a defeat she never quite came to terms with. Politically she was deeply divisive but on one point everyone is agreed – she recast British politics, and to a certain extent global politics, with her doctrine of open markets, privatisation, financial deregulation and tax cuts. Thatcher made the world we live in now. To some she was the greatest prime minister who ever lived, to others … Read more
Ryan Reynolds and the Death of the Real Man
All aboard Ryan Reynolds, prime example of Hollywood’s new breed of depilated, exfoliated, irrigated masculine star. Whatever happened to real men? From out of the low, strong sun, three figures ride towards the camera, tall in the saddle, squinting into the wind. As they hit medium shot, John Wayne turns to the compadre on his left and parts the lips on his line-free face to reveal two rows of snowy white teeth. Meanwhile the man he is about to address, Clint Eastwood, has thrown aside his poncho to reveal a shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his tan, hairless chest cresting sensually towards what might or might not be a nipple ring. And on … Read more
100 Years of… Sherlock Jr.
Buster Keaton’s masterpiece Sherlock Jr. wasn’t that successful when it debuted in 1924. Audiences didn’t laugh that much. Critics also didn’t think it was that hilarious – “far and away about the most laughter lacking picture that “Dead Pan” Buster has turned out in a long, long while,” said Variety. Even Buster Keaton seemed rueful about it when later interviewed – “alright but not one of the big ones”. There is something in those verdicts. It isn’t a massively funny film but there is so much conceptual and theoretical brilliance on display here that it doesn’t matter. Variety’s review also reckoned Sherlock Jr. wasn’t a patch on Harold Lloyd. But Keaton here is … Read more
100 Years of… Safety Last!
Here’s an image so iconic that it’s recognised by people who have no idea what film it’s from, or who the geezer hanging off the clock is. Wikipedia calls it one of the most famous images from the silent-film era but it’s surely more than that – this is one of the most famous images from any era, in any medium, and ranks alongside the Mona Lisa or the mask of Tutankhamoun, right? Maybe I’m hyperventilating a bit there, but to change tack slightly, the added brilliance of this remarkable image is that it perfectly sums up in one frame what Safety Last!, Harold Lloyd’s 1923 masterpiece, is all about – hanging on for grim … Read more
The Brooding Intensity of Michael Fassbender
Passion, power and emotional ferocity are all hallmarks of aMichael Fassbender performance. But is he just a kitten in real life? Here’s a funny thing. I’m in the audience at the New York Film Festival. On stage director Steve McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender are answering questions about the disturbing, brilliant film that’s just been shown. Shame, McQueen and Fassbender’s follow-up collaboration to the gruelling Hunger has Fassbender delivering a volcanic performance as a sex addict who’s either dialling rent-a-hooker, beating off at work or devouring porn at home. Intense, dark stuff. Someone from the floor asks Fassbender a question about the relationship between the two damaged lead characters, a brother and sister … Read more
The Best Films I Saw in 2013
Here they are, the best films I saw in 2013. It’s a Top Ten job with the best in no particular order, followed by a list of films that made the top ten at some point in the year, then got bounced. This is not a Best of 2013, let me quickly point out, just the best films I’ve seen this year. So a film everyone else has seen but I haven’t won’t be here (I’ve not seen American Hustle yet, f’rinstance). And there might be stragglers from 2012 in here which I caught up with late. It really is “the best films I have seen this year”. If you’re wondering what to … Read more
The Curious Return of Douglas Sirk
What is it about a film-maker who died around 25 years ago in obscurity that fascinates a new generation of directors? The director Douglas Sirk died in 1987 aged 90. Born in Hamburg as Detlef Sierck, he became well known for his string of lush melodramas made in Hollywood in the 1950s. Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), The Tarnished Angels (1957), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) and Imitation of Life (1959) are considered his key works. The French “auteurists” were the first to start the re-assessment of Sirk in the late 1950s – the distinctive look of his films marking them out as … Read more
Great Films About Food
With the good burghers of the UK reeling from revelations that there’s more horse in their impossibly cheap frozen dinners and meat patties than in the 2.30 from Uttoxeter, I started thinking about food in films. Not the “food as scene setter” – though who doesn’t hanker after a cosy neighbourhood Italian restaurant with booths and checky tablecloths, the sort you see in old Scorsese movies – no, I’m after the ones where food is either pivotal, or transgressive, or transformational. Significant, in other words. Babette’s Feast (1987, dir: Gabriel Axel) Often held up as the best film about food – I’d go along with that – Babette’s Feast dangles sensual pleasure in … Read more
The Razzies – Winners Who Showed Up
One supposedly represents the best of the best and the other the worst of the worst. In theory the Oscars and the Razzies are polar opposites, yet they have something in common. Each loves a pile-on. Every year as awards season comes around again, a fog seems to descend on the members of the voting academies, groupthink sets in and some perfectly OK but largely unremarkable movies start mysteriously migrating – up to become Academy Award contenders, or down to where the Razzies await. If a bona fide celebrity is involved, the movement can be quite dramatic. Was Driving Miss Daisy really the best picture of 1990? Against, say, Do the Right Thing? Did … Read more
The Film that Broke the King of Cool
In 1969, when Steve McQueen suggested a film about the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans race, everyone thought it couldn’t fail. Everyone was wrong At the end of the 1960s Steve McQueen had it all. Though it was an era of longhaired peaceniks, this shorthaired toughie had become acknowledged as the King of Cool. He was one of the highest paid actors in the world and his string of box office smashes already included three total classics – The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Bullitt. On top of that he’d been Oscar-nominated for The Sand Pebbles and, in 1970, had just made The Reivers, a gentle period drama that proved McQueen … Read more
