Part of me, and it is a very large part, feels extremely uncomfortable giving Yesterday a star rating implying that it’s a good film, because in point of fact it is not. It is an adorable film, almost entirely on the backs of stars Himesh Patel and Lily James; it is one of the most […]
Most weeks this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: with Yesterday, an Oscar-winning director looks at what might happen if the medium-changing popularity of the Beatles happened here […]
After Magical Mystery Tour imploded with critics and fans, the Beatles were mightily disinclined to make another feature film; for had not the shooting of Help! been a massive nightmare for all involved? and now their labor of love had been widely, even universally derided as an indulgent, impossible mess. But there was a single […]
Notwithstanding the heroic amounts of marijuana consumed by its stars, the set of the Beatles’ second feature, Help! was not a happy set. And that is why the band took a bit of a break from making movies, dedicating their time instead to assembling records with silly names like Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely […]
A Hard Day’s Night being one of the most profitable movies of the 1960s, it was a matter of necessity that there was going to be a second Beatles feature. It’s to the band’s credit that it was no mere retread, though a retread might have ended up making a bit more sense than Help!, […]
Mark Clemens made a simple request with his donation to the Carry On Campaign: that I must review either A Hard Day’s Night or Help! Being something of a Beatles fan – oh yes, I am quite a trendsetter – that got me to thinking about what a good idea it would be to review […]
Do I feel particularly generous towards Across the Universe because I just watched Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band a few days ago? Unquestionably. But that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot here to love. After all, it is third film by the hallucinatory genius Julie Taymor, whose extraordinary Titus proved that no […]
Like Finnegans Wake or The Waste Land, music maven Robert Stigwood’s 1978 epic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is such a vast experience that one does not know how to begin discussing it: each possible thought contests with every other thought, all of them vital, all jousting for primacy. So I suppose I shall […]
