The third serial of DOCTOR WHO’s redefining Season 24, DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN, may suffer from a clumsy and largely unsuccessful attempt to pun the all but forgotten pop group Echo And The Bunnymen, but it’s also the serial that’s surprised me the most on reappraising it. Oh sure, it still has some of the hallmarks that classic Who is often derided for (some of the make-up effects are truly…

Having opened the new era and series of DOCTOR WHO with the reassuringly familiar presence of a quarry, PARADISE TOWERS provides a similar comfort factor of that time-honoured Whovian trope of endless, conspicuously similar corridors, plus the inevitable return of the Doctor’s perennially ill-fated attempts to take a holiday. Beguiled by the sales brochure, Mel (Bonnie Langford) persuades the…

Before it was the social media battle cry of an embittered faction of Whovian fandom railing against the casting of Jodie Whittaker, “Leave the girl, it’s the man I want!” was the portentous opening line to DOCTOR WHO’s latest narrative – and real-life – regeneration as the series exploded back to life in 1987 with TIME AND THE RANI after a nail-biting nine months off-screen during which the…

A couple of years ago, a Twitter #ThisIsYourFilm was making the rounds where you had to choose your favourite movie from every year you’ve been alive. Well, it’s come back round again so here, revised and updated, are my favourite movies from every year I’ve been alive. At least it’s still favouritemovies and not ‘best’ movies otherwise this could have taken forever. So, without further ado, for…

Loosely based on the John Updike novel of the same name, George Miller’s sly satire of the gender wars brings a dusting of dark magic to the hollow lives of a sleepy New England town of Eastwick.

Alexandra (Cher), Jane (Susan Sarandon) and Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer) are close friends who support each other through the trials and tribulations of small-town single life. When, one night over some…

In all the fever pitch excitement of the countdown to “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and its subsequent reception, the 30th anniversary of another space saga which took place once upon a timewarp in a galaxy very, very, very, very far away kind of slipped by. Released 30 years ago in the UK on the 11th December, Mel Brooks’ “Spaceballs” was an affectionate and good-natured spoof of the venerable…

As the years went past and cinematic tastes changed, Universal’s Monsters found a new home as beloved perennial TV favourites, gathering new generations of fans year after year and breaking out into popular culture through Saturday morning cartoons and reinterpretations. As the cinema reinvented and reinterpreted the creations, Universal’s pantheon continued to be the benchmark they were measured…

Among this movie’s few achievements is the coining of the instantly cliché tag line ‘This time it’s personal’. It also, like many “Jaws” fans, pretty much ignores “Jaws 3” completely, although not – it has to be said – to deliver a higher quality and more fitting end to the “Jaws” saga. When Sean Brody is killed by an apparent shark attack, Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) is convinced a great white…

So…with it being my birthday, I figured why not do a post around the Twitter hashtag #ThisIsYourFilm where you choose your favourite movie from every year you’ve been alive. Piece of piss, right? Won’t take that long. Oh boy, was I wrong. Even now, as I’m writing this opening preamble, I’m still second-guessing some of my choices, especially for the decade from 1984 to 1994. At least it’s…

With Roger Moore finally bowing out, for the first time in nearly fifteen years the producers were looking to cast a new James Bond. When NBC’s “Remington Steele” shenanigans put paid to Pierce Brosnan’s chances at Bond (for the time being, at least), it was a case of cometh the hour, cometh the man. That man was Timothy Dalton, whose life story could easily have been called ‘The Man Who Would Be…