It’s New Years Eve and tradition dictates that I must review the year gone by for fear that no-one else will think to do it and the year would end unreviewed. Which would be a disaster. This year, the year that will be being reviewed is 2021. The best thing about 2021 was that it…
Category: review
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 23
I’ve been meaning to watch 1934’s The Thin Man ever since I started doing this pointless annual festive film countdown. I knew it would make the cut, but it was seemingly always ‘out of print’; I couldn’t find a copy of the movie that wasn’t ludicrously expensive so my ambitions were thwarted. Fortunately this year…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 22
1944 musical Meet Me In St. Louis is a film about a family that really like living in St. Louis. I don’t think it would be too disingenuous to claim that it’s not really about much else. There are a few subplots involving the love lives of the older siblings and some others involving the…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 21
The 1991 incarnation of The Adams Family was my introduction to that creepiest and kookiest of families. Indeed, although I’m sure I saw the 1993 sequel, Adams Family Values, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any other iteration of the franchise. Which is strange, because I really loved this movie when it came out. I’m…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 20
I’ve never read the 1969 novel, The Poseidon Adventure but it must be pretty good because it has been adapted three times for the screen. Although up until 2005 there was only one adaptation, which was the 1972 movie of the same name. I’ve never seen that either, but I’d have thought one adaptation of…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 19
I had no interest in watching 1995’s While You Were Sleeping. Ever. I haven’t entirely swerved rom-coms in my annual advent compendium of movies that are slightly Christmas(ish) but the ones I have included have, by and large, been movies I’d already seen. Because sometimes I have to watch rom-coms. It’s part of the deal…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 18
I often have misgivings about movies that are based on real life events, and similar misgivings about movies that win ‘Best Picture’ at the Academy awards. While they can be relied upon to be thought-provoking and powerful, they can also be a little bit hard going. I had no doubt that 2018’s Green Book would…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 17
2013’s I Give It A Year is a sort of anti-rom-com, about a ‘happily ever after’ that doesn’t pan out the way it is supposed to. It’s an interesting concept but in many respects it plays like an actual rom-com, and it relies so much on being fed by the hand it is ostensibly trying…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 16
A slow-moving film centred around nineteen-fifties haute-couture would normally be a pretty hard sell for me. But when it is written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and features the final big-screen appearance of Daniel Day-Lewis prior to his most recent retirement, then even I can be convinced that it might be worth a watch.…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 15
The plot of 2017 drama ‘The Wife’ does rather hinge on a twist, and it is quite a predictable twist. But just because you can spot the revelation long before it’s revealed, does not make the journey any less enjoyable. Glenn Close gives an understated but brilliant performance as the titular character, while Jonathan Pryce…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 14
Unlike Lady and the Tramp, I don’t recall ever watching 101 Dalmatians as a child. I’ve seen it a few times as an adult, most recently in an attempt to entertain Little Proclaims (an attempt that was only partially successful, but still more successful than most of my efforts to get my daughter to sit…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 13
A movie which centres around one man trapped on an island for five years definitely runs the risk of being a bit..well…dull. While such an ordeal might make a compelling narrative for a novel, it seems hard to imagine how a film with only one character for a significant portion of its running time could…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 12
Having included Bridget Jones Diary in last year’s Christmas(ish) movie countdown, I felt it only right that I revisit the 2004 sequel to explore its Christmas(ish) credentials. As is often the case with sequels, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is not as good as the original movie. It might even be reasonable to suggest…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 11
When I included 1995’s Jumanji in last year’s iteration of my advent calendar I received a couple of comments that suggested that the 2017 relaunch of the franchise might actually be one of those rare instances of a reboot being better than the original. And those comments were absolutely spot on – Jumanji: Welcome to…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 10
2018 action-thriller Peppermint is rarely thrilling and I’m not entirely sure why it’s called Peppermint. It often feels like a straight-to-DVD affair but I think it had a moderately successful cinematic release. Jennifer Garner stars as the vigilante out to avenge the murder of her family and, to be fair to her, she is definitely…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 9
I’m not sure if I can genuinely describe Disney’s 1955 classic, Lady and the Tramp as a childhood favourite. I suspect, in fact it was a childhood favourite of my younger sister, but I did watch a lot of Disney movies in my teens, often under the guise of being slightly irritated because we only…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 8
I don’t know if it’s fair to describe 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook as a rom-com; it is a movie that is hard to pigeon-hole but rom-com, albeit unconventional rom-com, might be the best description. Nonetheless, as someone who has a pathological aversion to rom-coms, I have always enjoyed this movie so it might be best…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 7
2016’s La La Land has enough critical acclaim and a whole raft of awards (though it famously only held the Academy Award for Best Picture for about two minutes), so it doesn’t really matter if I liked it or not. I didn’t actually see it for the first time until August 2017, by which time…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 6
2005’s Four Brothers is exactly the kind of movie I enjoy watching when I don’t really want to have to think too much about what it is that I am watching. It’s full of mindless violence and clichés but it never pretends to be anything it isn’t and if you can suspend your disbelief and…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 5
It’s a somewhat quirky fact that the person who brought the world ‘Mad Max’ is also, at least partially, responsible for 1995’s saccharine-sweet family-friendly flic, ‘Babe’. But George Millar is definitely credited for having written both. On paper, ‘Babe’ is not the kind of movie I should like. I was slightly too old to be…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 4
2020’s ‘The 2nd’ is the kind of low budget action movie that, once upon a time, might have been described as ‘straight-to-video’ and is the sort of thing I might have mistakenly picked up at Blockbusters in my early twenties to watch with my flat-mates and some cheap lager when we were unable to sufficiently…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 3
Spoiler Alert – If you haven’t seen this 2004 movie and you still intend to watch it some 17 years after it was released then I should warn you that there are some plot details below which might ruin it for you. But it’s all fairly predictable stuff so you’d probably have been able to…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 2
2015’s Daddy’s Home is a run of the mill comedy vehicle for Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. It’s fairly predictable, eminently forgettable and even at a slender 96 minutes, probably slightly longer than it needs to be. It’s the kind of movie that, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve probably already seen all of the…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 1
Unless I’m much mistaken it is now December and therefore it must be time for The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films. We kick off this year’s festive countdown with a movie from the Rocky franchise. This is the third time a Rocky movie has featured in my annual advent calendar with…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 26: Who Killed…… The Zutons
And so another A-Z comes to an end. From tomorrow I will no longer be writing about music from the noughties. I may not be writing about anything at all. Or I may be writing about something. Only time will tell. In another 11 months I may well decide to complete my trilogy of A-Zs…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 25: Yours Truly Angry Mob
As ever, when we get to the penultimate day of an A-Z challenge, we must ask ourselves ‘Y’. It can be hard to come up with an answer, but today I have managed to do just that. Y is for Yours Truly Angry Mob In their early days, Kaiser Chiefs always struck me as a…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 24: X&Y
On last year’s A-Z I had to cheat a little bit for X by including XTRMNTR by Primal Scream. The main reason this was cheating was because last year’s retrospective was meant to be 90s music and that particular album was released in the year 2000. It was very much at the beginning of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 23: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
And so to ‘W’ in this A-Z musical retrospective of the noughties. There were a few decent albums from the 2000s that began with ‘W’ but one from 2006 still managed to stand out from the crowd. W is for Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not In January 2006, I was entering…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 22: Vampire Weekend
Day 22 of this self-indulgent wander down a memory-lane of music from a decade that is inherently less nostalgic for me than the decade that preceded it, but which, nonetheless, does retain elements of nostalgia – nostalgia which is often evoked by listening to the albums of the day. V is for Version 2.0 Vampire…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 21: Up The Bracket
It’s always a shame that I have to write twenty other posts before I can finally make time for ‘U’. But that is the way of an A-Z challenge. As much as I would like to put ‘U’ first, it just wouldn’t be proper. U is for Up The Bracket By the time I got…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 20: Twelve Stops and Home
It’s finally time for ‘T’. But not necessarily time for tea as I’m more of a coffee drinker by trade. But do feel free to have a warm beverage of your choice. T is for Twelve Stops and Home I don’t know if I could describe myself as a fan of Horsham alumni The Feeling.…
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