Top Ten: Tom Hanks Films

Happy birthday Tom Hanks. The nicest man in Hollywood is 59 today and to celebrate here are my Top Ten Tom Hanks films.

Boyhood

When I first heard about Richard Linklater’s film Boyhood, the story of a family told over a span of 12 years and filmed over that same timeframe, I was thoroughly excited. It was such a bold idea and had the potential to be a generation defining narrative…

Top Ten: Sandra Bullock Films

Last week People magazine named Sandra Bullock as the most beautiful woman in the world this year. This cheered me a lot, I’ve always liked Sandra Bullock – she seems great fun and the kind of woman I’d like to be my friend. She seems not to take the Hollywood hoopla too seriously…

Top Ten: Book to Film Adaptations

You know I love films and I love books, so it kind of follows that I love films based on books. Sometimes the adaptations are quite poor and disappointing (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), much less often they improve on the source material (anything based on a Tom Clancy book) but just sometimes a great book leads to a great film…

Top Ten: 2001 Films

A couple of weeks ago on a Facebook film discussion page someone posted a challenge for me to name my Top Ten films of 2001. I could have just left a comment on the page with the list but thought why not go the whole hog and actually write a post. 2001 wasn’t a classic year in film and saw the release of Freddy Got Fingered, Pearl Harbor and Planet of the Apes…

Top Ten: 2013 Movies (so far…)

We’re almost half-way through the year so it’s time to have a look back at how 2013 has been so far. Next week I’ll be doing a Top Ten books that I’ve read this year (although not all have been published in 2013) but I’m starting with the Top Ten 2013 Films…

Brave

One of the talking points of this year’s Oscars was whether or not the correct film won the Best Animated Feature category. Almost inevitably the Academy Award went to Pixar for their latest film – Brave. Fans of Aardman Animation’s The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists were outraged…

Argo

Just before the Oscars I did one of those Facebook quizzes – how many Best Picture Academy Award Winners had I seen. I was confident and as I started clicking from 2011 downwards I was quite happy – The Artist, The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker – I was on fire…

West Side Story

Today is composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s 83rd birthday and to celebrate I’m reviewing two of his musicals brought to life on the big screen, starting with the classic Oscar-winner West Side Story. I’ve already discussed West Side Story a couple of times on the blog, it features in both the Top Ten Musicals and Top Ten Weepies categories…