The Challenge Part 1

One day, I’m going to die. So are you. I was reminded of this at Christmas, when I was given the latest edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I love making lists of films to watch, tracking them down and crossing them off gives me the kind of pleasure most people only experience in bed, bungee jumping or finding out they have superpowers. But, as this book clearly points out in the title, I’m going to die. There is a finite amount of time I have left to watch these films, films that I must watch before I die, else my life be not deemed worthy of the cinematic Gods.

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Second Chance: P.S. I Love You

For every good film, there must be an equally bad film (Newton’s Third Law of Motion Pictures). Like most people, I tend to not watch a film if I hear that it’s bad, even more so if this opinion comes from a review. But a review is merely one person’s opinion, and I’m not going to agree with them all the time, surely? So in this column I’ll be providing badly reviewed films with a second chance, seeing if they are as bad as everyone seems to think.

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Exam

Last night, I experienced the long-awaited and highly anticipated joy of watching Exam, the 2009 writing and directing debut of Stuart Hazeldine. Looking at his earlier work, dabbling in the scripts of such cinematic highlights as Knowing and the remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still, expectations should not have been high, yet due to word of mouth and some decent reviews, I had been looking forward to watching the film for quite some time.

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