Pete Baran

Cast list of A High Wind To Jamaica featuring Martin Amis

He plays a particularly insufferable kid in A High Wind To Jamaica . The warning signs were there

It's a hip groovy vicar's take on a crown of thorns using the language the kids understand

The A1 is only a motorway for 147 disjointed miles of its 401 mile route.
The longest Autobahn is the A7 at 598 miles

I will never escape the glory of the werewolf transformation where the snout comes out of his mouth. I was very late to it, but love it and it is a very strange, very British film.

Poster for The Amityville Horror

Watching The Amityville Horror
Of the big horror films of the 70's there always seemed to be a stink hanging over TAH,not just for its'true story'bullshit. And that stink is correct, a selection of possessions, bad air and ghosts lurch from jump scare to cats at the window. Even Kidder can't save it

No!

The screaming horrors of the Goodness Beer Brewery bouncey castle will forever haunt me.

YouTube video by The Celluloid Highway Lalo Schifrin - Main Title [The Amityville Horror, Original Soundtrack]

42. The Amityville Horror is not #agoodthing, a hackneyed grabbag of haunted house tropes and 70's rip-offs. Which in some ways describes Lalo Schifrin's score for it with its Hermann Psycho stings.But the actual theme tune is a dreamy kiddie sing song which is lovely,devoid of the rubbish around it

Da Mimmo restaurant in Brussels

There's Da Mimmo in Brussels

It's one of the five types of wealth.

It's the worst of the five.

A cheesier version of this film would have involved Dolph using every aspect of the Modern Pentathlon to defeat the baddie, or defect but there is almost no swimming or horses. And even the pistol shooting is lacklustre. Lots of running, a bit of fencing.

Poster for Pentathlon

Watching Pentathlon
Dolph plays a DDR modern pentathlete who defects to the US at the 1988 Olympics. His family is punished and he breaks down because the Wall came down a year later.A commitment to angsty realism is thrown over for his ex coach David Soul's Neo-Nazi nonsense. Squanders a great idea

Clark Kent's authorised biography of Superman!

Hal Lacroix's Here And Beyond did something like this with a generation ship narrative with discrete sections set at different non-linear points within the 360 journey. We see various characters age, or their youth,all in service of an overall story.

Adrian Lester doing one of his many, I don't believe this shit, faces

41. I will probably come back to various aspects of Ponies over the next few weeks as I am enjoying it immensely. But the first thing that leapt out at me that made me feel that this show knew it's stuff was the casting of the great Adrian Lester, he's always #agoodthing

Poster of Tempted By Love

Watched Tempted By Love
Sweet Lifetime May December romance between a Michelin starred chef and a Michelin type using uber driver. But she's only back in the US for a bit and can't commit, whilst is he going to the cordon bleu school to suck up? Good on power dynamics and menopause

Poster for Summons To Death

Watching Summons To Death
A rather low key Bond style crime film from Shaw Bros; it takes some time to realise the protagonist is.There's a treasure map, a femme fatale and killer poker game and they nick the music from You Only Live Twice.It's too silly to be serious,but not as serious as its title

Have you no dignity?

The cover promises Tako Nigiri action. Not so?

I really didn't have the three hours to watch it the other night but I knew it was going. Soz. It hasn't made me like him any more, but as you know I am very much Team Jane

Sexy poster for Dracula A Love Story

Busy German pictoral poster of Dracula A Love Story

Watching Dracula A Love Story
Luc Besson's take on the count seems indebted to the last 30 years of Dracs. Lumbering Caleb Landry Jones whips through the Vlad the Impaler backstory, and has the bouffant of Coppola's. A Parisian setting, gargoyle minions and Christoph Waltz instead of Van Helsing

That was the mistake STPGuy6 made

Poster for Monsieur Spade

40. Clive Owen's US accent has always been patchy, but he's great at hangdog. In Monsieur Spade he plays a retired Sam Spade who has found himself in France. It's 1963 and a crime in a nearby convent is too close for him to ignore. An unlikely mash up of character and setting and yes #agoodthing

Ah, Bela Tarr's finest. Seven hours of smurf miserablism

The poster for Munro

Watching Munro
The best animated short Oscar winners in the 60's really weren't interested in beautiful animation. Munro is about as minimalist as a cartoon can be. Barely any backgrounds, the character design is minimal. But the story is fun,of a four year old that gets drafted. Tinkertoy Catch 22

Poster for Henry Fonda For President

Watching Henry Fonda For President
The most intriguing film I missed at Bologna last year was this three hour essay film that takes Henry Fonda's career and life and uses that to tell a history of the USA. Rambling and in places reaching, it's a wonderfully idiosyncratic and intriguing journey

Poster for Bridal Boot Camp

Watching Bridal Boot Camp
Apparently real things for brides to lose weight before a wedding, this frippery reinvents it as a mixture of tradwife and self esteem class, because their boot camp instructor is just a mean girl.

Grilling sardines onna boat

Today was tinned, but on Saturday I had them fresh, char grilled in a dinghy over what strikes me as a daft but traditional way to cook them

I ate sardines today. I doubt there's been a week in the last ten years when I didn't eat a sardine of some sort.

Eat a sardine Alix

Poster for The Kiss

Watching The Kiss
It's a 'trapped in a loveless marriage picture which complicates its own plot purity, but luckily Garbo is up to the task. She starts the film ending one affair because married, gets suckered into a compromising position by a kid and her husband dies.Will the court find the truth?

If you're lucky there will be lots of hard surfaces for it to awkwardly echo off of and distort the top end of the tannoy

Poster for Rats!

Watching Rats!
A scrappy emo indie action comedy set in Pfresno Texas where a zealous pig cop arrests a kid and sends him undercover to try to bust a nuke smuggling ring during a hand chopping serial killer spree. Rampant bad taste and comic gore can't hide the energy and ACAB heart in this thing