The definitive American television series of the 1990s. The X-Files comes to the big screen with an anticlimactic whimper. And how could it be otherwise? Why should material so perfectly realised in one medium necessarily translate well into another? The series is crisply and thoughtfully executed in just about every detail, but the heart of its appeal lies in the elegant handling of ...
The latest in the ubiquitous mockumentary genre, Mike Bassett: England Manager follows the eponymous hapless head-honcho of the England Squad through the build-up to the World Cup. Ricky Tomlinson is Bassett, once again donning the sheepskin coat of the nation's favourite working-class northern underdog (Riff Raff, The Royle Family). Plucked from obscurity and literally out of ...
When it comes down to naming the best Western of all time, the list usually narrows to three completely different pictures: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, Hawks' Red River and John Ford's The Searchers. About the only thing they all have in common is that they all star John Wayne. But while The Searchers is an epic quest for revenge and Red River, a sweeping ...
Leave it to the Chairman of the Board to rope in a great director for the first Rat Pack movie, Ocean's Eleven. Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) did indeed direct this 1960 caper movie starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop; but the results now seem like more of a historical artefact than a good piece of entertainment. The ...