Here’s one for ski season – a German poster for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. OHMSS is one of my favourite James Bond films and the only one to star George Lazenby as 007. When it came out it did not do well – mainly because it didn’t star Sean Connery. Its reputation has grown…
Raging Bull
Martin Scorcese’s biography of boxer Jake La Motta is the movie for which Robert De Niro famously piled on nearly 30 kg and won his second Oscar. It has phenomenal performances, fantastic black and white photography, and the fight scenes are wonderfully choreographed and edited. But it is very slow burn, and whilst it is…
Bullitt
Before today’s Fast and Furious style CG-enhanced, gravity-defying car mayhem there was the car chase in Bullitt. It is rare that a movie’s reputation rests on one scene – but I think that’s very much the case with Bullitt. The first/only thing people remember about it is the iconic car chase around San Francisco, for…
Point Blank / Payback
These two hard-boiled thrillers make for an interesting movie pairing. Point Blank was released in 1967, starring Lee Marvin, directed by John Boorman, and is held up as something of a ‘noir’ classic. It is basically a revenge story. In it, a double-crossed career criminal, shot and left for dead, works his way up through…