E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Cold Sweat turns 50 this year, and is a movie hardly anyone knows or loves. B-movie fetishists are a perverse lot, and I am one of them. I can genuinely revel in a well-made, odd, quirky, forgotten second-rate flick, with few if any pretensions, seeing it with great affection and respect for what it is; whereas many a pretentious, 'bigger picture' can leave me cold. Cold Sweat is actually, in its way, a great film, but because the director Terence Young has almost no auteurist-following, it's been neglected; the reviews it does get are perfunctory and mainly indifferent - it's seen, if at all now, as a toss-offed Charles Bronson actioner, one of the cheap Euro-trash movies he made as his violent vigilante career went supernova. It's out on DVD, and easy to find online. I'd recommend it to any fans of the crime/thriller genre, and, for the reasons I mention below, it is separately fascinating for being an example of how a film can gather incredible talent...

TOM FORD FANS On a lighter note - Lord we need one - 2016 was a great year for cinema, popular, commercial, foreign and domestic, art-house and comic-book.  As I was reminded recently, the last time a film took all top 5 Oscars (Best film, director, producer, actor and actress) was 1991 for horror classic  Silence of the Lambs (one would have thought Titanic , but Winslett did not win that year). 26 years later, this could happen again with La La Land - or not, so stiff is the competition.  If they use all ten places, here are the ten films Eyewear thinks the Academy will nominate for Best Picture, based on other prizes, and critical reception. 1. La La Land - the sentimental favourite, and one to beat, for its self-reflexive rescue of the musical; 2. Moonlight - a powerful contender, examining a young boy's life as a black gay person in Miami; 3. Manchester by the Sea - probably shoe in for Affleck as best actor; 4. Jackie - again, Portman would win for...

In   the Guardian   yesterday (19th July),   Peter Walker   and   Charles Gant regarded what has become a virtual media monopoly in the UK – much maligned by some – and asked what will be missed when it’s gone. Not   The News of the World , but the Harry Potter franchise. While the losses to the UK’s filmmaking economy and skills base are being totted up, as a teary-eyed viewer I found myself posing the question critically: what will I find myself missing when there is no HP 7.75 or 9 rampaging through next summer’s schedules? It’s a question with two aspects: the film and the series, not least because – unlike Lord of the Rings   – it is not an auteurial project, but (almost) an old-fashioned studio film series, albeit one helmed most ably by   David Yates   for the final four films. The plot of the final film (and indeed the whole arc), that good triumphs over evil through its ...

January Jones in Unknown Eyewearers may beg to difffer - but here are the Top 140 Eyewear Films Of All Time .  Many are currently available at Amazon for under £10.  Have a good summer of visual pleasure! [editor's note: I have revised and expanded this list from the original 125, after considering the comments sent to me.] After the Fox Aliens Altered States American Gigolo An Officer and a Gentleman Antichrist Apocalypse Now Barry Lyndon Barton Fink Black Book Black Narcissus Blade Runner Bonnie & Clyde Bram Stoker's Dracula Cape Fear Casablanca Chinatown Citizen Kane Colonel Redl Congo Cyclo Darkman Days of Heaven Death in Venice Diamonds Are Forever Die Hard Dillinger Doctor Zhivago Don't Say a Word Double Indemnity Dune Elmer Gantry Excalibur Eyes Wide Shut Fantastic Voyage Fargo Fear Strikes Out Five Corners Flash Gordon Flightplan Forbidden Planet French Connection G...