As regular readers will know, I’ve been posting my personal ‘year’s best’ lists ever since I started writing here in 2016, and each time I’ve prefaced the survey of my favourite movies, music, etc, with complaints about the dreadful state of British and international politics followed by the expression of (mostly forlorn) hopes for an … Continue reading My best movies, music, books and other moments from 2022
Over the decades the two questions I’ve been asked most, as critic and programmer, have been what my favourite film is and what made me want to work in film. To the first, after explaining that I don’t have a single favourite film, I used to reply L’Atalante, but that often met with blank looks, … Continue reading Revisiting Hollywood’s last golden age: my part in a new publication
For the list of my best (ie favourite) films, music, books, etc two years ago, I noted the importance of taking solace from the arts at a time when Brexit, Johnson, Trump, climate change and others were cause for such anxiety, anger and despondency. Last year, of course, with Covid having taken its toll, we’d … Continue reading Best of another bad year: movies, music and other highlights of 2021.
Since a similar post seemed to go down quite well last year, and in case you’re wondering what to buy folks (or yourself) for Christmas, I thought I’d again offer recommendations of classic movies released on BluRay and DVD during the last 12 months. Many of the films listed below come in glorious restorations and, … Continue reading Just in time for Christmas, part 2: great classic movies now out on disc.
Howard Hawks has been one of my favourite filmmakers ever since I first discovered what a director did. How could he not be when he made – to cite my personal top-ten of his films (for today, anyway, and listed in the order they were made) – Scarface, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, … Continue reading Howard Hawks: Hollywood hack or supreme cimematic artist?
If I’m a little late to the wake with this tribute to Bertrand Tavernier (1941-2021), that has nothing to do with my feelings about the man or his films, and everything to do with other obligations. I’ve been pleased (and not a little surprised) to see his passing marked so widely with obituaries and remembrances, … Continue reading The Man Who Lived Movies: a Tribute to Bertrand Tavernier
Since it’s International Women’s Day, I thought I’d put together a list of some of my favourite films directed by women. It was going to be 50 fiction features, but even by restricting each director to just one title, that meant leaving out rather too many movies I really wanted to mention, so I tried … Continue reading Women’s Pictures: 75 great films you may not have seen…
In the few years I’ve been posting best-of blogs in the face of worsening political circumstances, I’ve often expressed a rather forlorn hope that things might improve the following year. Well, it turns out, obviously, that the hope I expressed last year could not have been more forlorn. How terrible 2020 has been… not only … Continue reading Best of a bad year: movies, music and other highlights of 2020
Because he hadn’t appeared in a film for around half a decade, the death of Michel Piccoli (1925-2020) at the age of 94 came as no surprise; I had actually been wondering about his health only last week while chatting with a friend. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t deeply saddened by the news of his … Continue reading Michel Piccoli: one of the greatest
When my colleagues in the programming team at BFI Southbank decided to take up my suggestion that we should mount a retrospective of the films of Elia Kazan – the last one had been way back in the early 1970s – I thought it would be interesting to curate it myself and even, perhaps, to … Continue reading Re-considering Kazan (or how I was wrong about Elia K’s movies)
notes and observations by Geoff Andrew 