Samurai Marathon
When an American naval officer (Danny Huston) lands on the shores of Feudal Japan, a daimyo (Hiroki Hasegawa) sends his army on a 36-mile footrace to test their mettle that […]
Author Archives: Dan Meier
Police Academy
An understaffed police department opens its ranks to recruits of any gender, age or weight in 1984’s Police Academy, AKA If…. meets On the Buses. This comedy sees a new […]
Kindergarten Cop
Arnold Schwarzenegger goes undercover as a preschool teacher to find a dangerous criminal in Kindergarten Cop, the opposite of 2017’s Aftermath in which he tracks down a man in witness […]
The Hours
Three ticked-off women wallow in Stephen Daldry and David Hare’s The Hours, something of a misnomer since it clocks in at one hour 50. The stories of Virginia Woolf (Nicole […]
Hamlet (1990)
Mel Gibson goes mad in this cinematic version of perhaps the most quoted and adapted of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Where films like The Banquet and The Bad Sleep Well took Hamlet into […]
Extraction
Extraction is a new Netflix action movie from a story by the Russo brothers – if you can count “mercenary rescues kidnapped boy” as a story. It’s odd that the guys […]
National Theatre Live: Twelfth Night
On the twelfth night of lockdown the NT gave to me… a screening of Twelfth Night for freeee. Currently available for free on YouTube, Shakespeare’s gender-bending romcom is well-suited to […]
The Madness of King George
Who better to guide us through this period of self-isolated baking than Alan Bennett? Adapted from his play with the same star (Nigel Hawthorne) and director (regular collaborator Nicholas Hytner), […]
No Country for Old Men
Did you know there’s an episode of Tom & Jerry where they both commit suicide at the end? I mention this partly because it’s the darkest thing I’ve ever seen […]
Beverly Hills Cop
Eddie Murphy turned down Ghostbusters to make the movie that would narrowly beat it, as Beverly Hills Cop cleverly comes top of the 1984 box office. This action-comedy about a […]
Screen Goblin 