Films total on 3.9.2025: 7,407
Latest review: The Afterman
Welcome to my film guide, something I’ve worked on for around 40 years and moved to the internet in 2007. In it, I offer my humble opinions on the many movies I've viewed over the years. Below is all you need to know about the guide, from ratings, to how it is ordered, to what you will find here, and more. So first up...
The ratings system explained
Unlike most film guides, films really have to earn their stars in my system. If you’re familiar with the stars system is Halliwell’s Film Guide, then that is probably what my marks are most closely modelled on. While it may appear at first to be a too-strict system, I feel it is the best. Think of it as assessing movies by the same high-standard criteria that The Good Food Guide assesses restaurants.
So, a brief summary, and you are advised to read this: No stars means a film which could be anything from desperately poor to merely adequate, it is not an actual mark in itself. These films are rarely worth setting aside time for. One star could indicate a good try, a movie that’s far from perfect but has some redeeming features; or it could be a commercially successful or important picture that isn’t actually very good. Two stars will usually be a film worth seeing and could be highly enjoyable or technically excellent. Three stars indicates a supremely proficient production, notable for all sorts of reasons, and definitely worth watching. Four stars is the pinnacle – only around 2% of all films on this site earn this accolade – and denote a masterwork and/or perennial personal favourite.
I feel that this star system, which is admittedly weighted towards indicating shades of differences at the upper end of marks rather than the lower end, is a superior system, particularly for a film ‘book’. (It would not be suitable for a weekly or monthly magazine reviewing films because it would seem unnecessarily stingy and not exhibiting the necessary excitement that greets ‘new’ products. There, films are largely rated against other movies out at that time, and not against classics from the past – that would hardly be fair.) This system rewards real value and doesn’t stoop to the ‘all must have prizes’ way of thinking.
You are recommended to also read the reviews of the films before flying into a state of apoplexy about the [too high/too low] star rating.
Obviously there isn’t a soul out there who will agree with all of these ratings. But they have all been arrived at after much consideration, and hopefully reflect both consistency and wisdom. Over time, I reserve the right to tweak ratings, because times change, the reputation of films changes, and imitators come along and either do the job better or erode the power of the original through familiarity.
How it's ordered
If a film has more than one title, the title the film will be reviewed under will tend to be the one that is most recognised in Great Britain or the one most generally recognised as the 'proper' one. Foreign-titled films can be listed under their original title or more likely the English title; again, it is the one which is most familiar.
Alphabetically I go by the word-at-a-time arrangement rather than paying attention to the complete title. So, for example, In Like Flint comes before The Incredible Shrinking Man. Hyphenated or apostrophised words are counted as one word. Compressions like Dr (doctor) are treated as if they were spelt out. Titles that are acronyms do not necessarily go at the front of a section. Film series tend to go in the order of entries eg Spider-Man: Far From Home goes after Spider-Man: Homecoming.
What's in it
All sorts. Among the many you will find most or all of the films of the following people: Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Laurel and Hardy, Peter Sellers, Jim Carrey, Steven Spielberg, Pete Walker, Will Hay, Roman Polanski, Paul Verhoeven, Jacques Tati, Quentin Tarantino, Bruce Lee (main starring roles), Marilyn Monroe (main starring roles), Tinto Brass (’76 onwards), Harold Lloyd (two-reelers onwards), Boris Karloff (horrors), Bela Lugosi (horrors), Vincent Price (horrors), Peter Cushing (horrors).
You'll also find too many of the following sort of films: James Bond, Carry Ons, Sherlock Holmes, Hammer horrors (and British horrors generally, especially ones from the 1970s), horror anthologies, Beatles-related, British sex comedy/drama (especially ones from the 1970s), Universal monster movies, official video nasties, Edgar Wallace Mysteries, Monty Python, Tarzan, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Star Trek, the Doctor series, St Trinian's, Shakespeare adaptations, Friday The 13th, Saw, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Mission: Impossible, Man From UNCLE, Robert Youngson compilations, Harry Potter, the Christopher Lee Fu Manchus, Matt Helm, mondo movies. You will not find any films whose main content is hard core pornography. Nor are there any public information films, as much as I love them.
Most films accepted as 'classics' should be here. I have, for instance, seen all of the Best Picture Oscar winners (and the vast majority of those nominated), all Golden Globes winners, all Bafta Best Film winners, filmsite.org's top 100, most of the IMDb's top 250, the vast majority of English language films in the latest 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book and nearly all films that were awarded the maximum four stars in Halliwell's Film Guide. Unfortunately there's also a load of trash here, a lot of it sci-fi or horror from the 1980s. We all have to start somewhere.
What is a film?
How long does a feature film have to be and does it have to have had a cinema release to qualify for this blog? Well, it's a bit vague. Basically, I've settled on the 'pretty much anything' formula, meaning that you will find short films (eg Laurel and Hardy), ones that were only ever meant to be released on video, and TV movies. TV movies is the area where I fear I have been inconsistent. But there are reasons for this: when I was growing up in the Seventies and Eighties the TV and Radio Times would denote in their film review section what was a movie - so you would get what were often pilots for series listed in this section. I followed suit. But in recent years this has not so much been the case; which is why you will find a review of, for instance, the pilot of Highway To Heaven, but NOT a review of the 2012 Hitchcock drama The Girl. Hopefully this policy is not too distracting though, and I would not have liked to exclude TV movies altogether, and then lose the likes of Duel, Dying Room Only, Helter Skelter, Chiller and others. Another area of difficulty is a season of made-for-TV films where one or two of them were released to the cinema - do I include them all? Again, I've erred on the side of inclusion, particularly, as stated, if they were from a few decades back. The likes of Netflix have further muddied the waters with their 'films' made for their websites. All this is probably not a huge problem as I don't claim to be a fully comprehensive reviews site!
Who might like this guide
This blog is for people who like films but aren’t totally obsessed with them. It’s for people who don’t see it as their duty to see all major new movies and find something good in them. It’s for those who are incredulous at the over-enthusiastic star ratings in Radio Times; for those who find Halliwell’s Film Guide schizophrenic and unreliable; for those who don’t buy into the left-wing attitudes of the Time Out guide; for those who feel that the IMDb has too many morons on it; for those who have seen a good deal of films but appreciate something a bit different or a little eccentric, or appreciate a sophisticated film that is also entertaining. I guess, essentially, it’s for people like me. If not me exclusively…
How this all came to be
This project originated around 1985, when I started to write capsule reviews of films I watched into a notebook. Halliwell's Film Guide and Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopedia Of Film were a great influence on me. I soon transferred these reviews to a folder where they were now organised under letters of the alphabet. I continued this way for about 17 years by which time I had catalogued nearly 4,000 films. In 2006 I decided it was time I transferred all this data to my computer and set about the huge task of doing so. The advantages of this hardly need noting but were as follows: the reviews could be rewritten and errors eradicated; alphabetical order would make it easier to find films; cast and director could be added; the work could later be transferred to the internet.
It took me around a year and several hundred man-hours to not only rewrite the majority of reviews and synopses but to add the name of the directors and input several members of the casts, particularly those who feature in other movies in the blog. I am indebted to the miraculous website that is the IMDb for help in doing this.
Transferring and rewriting reviews from films I had seen some 10 to 20 years previously occasionally proved tricky as I only had my own badly written thoughts and very vague memories. Consequently, the shorter reviews on the blog tend to be films seen long ago. Longer reviews are often films I have seen more recently, but there are exceptions. While I staunchly stand by most of the evaluations, it could be that I need to see certain films again to appreciate them more. And I imagine that I am also too generous with the odd movie due to youthful inexperience. But all should come good: the film guide is an ever-changing, ever-evolving project that hopefully improves by the month.
Many of these reviews are capsule versions of longer ones I have written for various publications. These publications include everything from the Newcastle Herald And Post to Sky Magazine, FHM, DVD & Blu-ray Review and SFX. So I have actually been paid to watch a good deal of the films I have sat through. And I've also worked at a cinema.
Despite doing this guide and watching these films I'm never quite sure whether I'm someone who loves films but dislikes lots of them, or loathes films but happens to like a lot of them. Maybe I'll get back to you on that one.
