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The best movie posters in cinema history come from many different decades, different genres, and in different styles, meaning any film can use art and graphic design to leave a lasting impression on an audience before they even sit down in the theater or grab the remote. Movie posters have gone through iterations over the years, with some poster trends growing tiresome and others opening interesting new angles on a movie and the creative direction of a project. Sometimes styles fall out of favor only to return and shock everyone with their originality.

While the worst movie posters tend to feel like they were cobbled together in a few hours with little input from anyone who actually made the movie, the best movie posters highlight why a viewer should watch a film. They can draw in viewers with an intriguing location, make them curious with a mysterious hint at what's in store,...

Some movies are tailor-made for the big screen, especially sci-fi movies. While streaming has changed the landscape of cinema, there are still some movies which deserve to be watched on the biggest screen possible. Movie theaters offer an immersive experience that very few people are able to replicate at home. Streaming robs some movies of their scale and spectacle.

Sci-fi movies often rely on eye-popping visuals, which makes them uniquely suited to a big screen experience. Action and horror movies also tend to benefit from being watched in theaters, while some other genres aren't impacted as severely. Although streaming is more convenient and often much cheaper, it hasn't been able to replace the feeling of watching a sci-fi masterpiece unfolding in a theater.

Related 10 Best Epic Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time, Ranked

Sci-fi is already one of the most intriguing genres in cinema, but when a sci-fi epic creates a vast world,...

Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Vertigo faced mixed reviews initially, but are now considered masterpieces. Fight Club and Scarface also received negative reviews at first, but later gained cult status and critical acclaim. The Big Lebowski and Bonnie and Clyde provoked confusion and controversy, but are now celebrated in film history.

Some movies are so unexpected and revolutionary that it takes a while for critics to understand the vision, and they are torn apart when they are released. Many of the best movies ever made started out with mixed reviews, since their unconventional styles defied classification and confused people. The very qualities that made such movies interesting and unique also meant that critics didn't know how to approach them.

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis stirred controversy recently by referring to some of the negative early reactions in a trailer. The quotes for Coppola's old movies were proven to be fake,...

British veteran comedy actress Josephine Tewson, who found her biggest success in her sixties starring in one of the 1990s’ biggest TV sitcoms, has died aged 91.

Tewson was best known for playing Elizabeth, the living-on-her-nerves neighbour of Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances, from 1990 to 1995.

But she appeared in a string of other shows too, such as Shelley with Hywel Bennet and No Appointment Necessary with Roy Kinnear. Following the success of Keeping Up Appearances, the show’s writer Roy Clarke gave Tewson the role of Miss Davenport in Last of the Summer Wine, which she played from 2003 to 2010.

In a statement, her agent Jean Diamond said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Josephine Tewson.”

The actress died on Thursday at Denville Hall, a care home for actors and other members of the entertainment industry in north London.

Several decades before she enjoyed sitcom stardom,...

At the intersection of big-star international dealmaking, the 70mm epic, and the humble sword ‘n’ shield actioner, this comic book viking saga stacks one absurd, borderline bad taste action scene on top of another. It’s an irresistible mash-up of earlier successes, well directed visually by Jack Cardiff. Richard Widmark at forty must play the Viking action hero, Russ Tamblyn at thirty is still a physical dervish, and Sidney Poitier takes on the strangest casting of his career. Plus, low sexist comedy from a platoon of hearty Brit thesps!

The Long Ships

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 137

1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95

Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.

Cinematography: Christopher Challis

Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic

Art Director: Bill Constable...

Lindsay Anderson’s third ‘Mick Travis’ movie is a crazy comedy eager to overstep lines of cinematic decorum. Britain in 1982 is a country at war with itself, torn by elitist snobbery and working-class revolt. Union grievances cripple the functioning of a major public hospital, on a day when the Queen is set to visit. A huge comic cast grapples with satire that reaches beyond cynicism to express total dysfunction. And the comedy has a wicked sting in its tail: Graham Crowden’s mad-as-a-hatter scientist has diverted National Health funds into grisly experiments with human body parts. The ‘visionary’ maniac spills more blood than Peter Cushing and Sam Peckinpah, put together.

Britannia Hospital

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1982 / Color / 1:85 widescreen/ 117 (111) min. / Street Date June 29, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Leonard Rossiter, Vivian Pickles, Graham Crowden, Jill Bennett,

Marsha A. Hunt, Joan Plowright, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Hamill.

Cinematography: Mike Fash...

‘When somebody decides to call a character Brock Blennerhassett,’ says Michael Smiley, ‘you think, well, that hasn’t just come off the top of your head, there must be something going on there!’ What’s going on with Blennerhassett, his lead role in new darkly comic Victorian drama Dead Still, is strange, timely and layered, says Smiley.

Dead Still, available in the UK now to stream on Acorn TV, is ‘a dark, funny, proper period drama set in Dublin in Victorian times’ Smiley explains. His character Blennerhassett is part of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry who’s broken away to work in the experimental field of memorial photography, taking pictures of posed corpses for bereaved families. ‘That was a big thing in Victorian times because of the British Empire being in mourning after Prince Albert died.’

The series blends a murder mystery with gallows humour and colonial Irish politics. ‘All of...

“The Ruler Of Ambrosia”

By Raymond Benson

Director John Schlesinger emerged from the so-called British New Wave, or “Free Cinema Movement,” of the late 1950s/early 60s, that was typified by pictures made by maverick filmmakers working with low budgets and concentrating on working-class heroes in often bleak settings of smaller towns around Britain.

Billy Liar, based on the novel by Keith Waterhouse and the stage play by Waterhouse and Willis Hall (with a screenplay by Waterhouse and Hall), was Schlesinger’s second film, and it is an exhilarating demonstration of the director’s confidence and talent. Schlesinger would go on to direct such classics as Darling (1965) and Midnight Cowboy (1969).

Filmed in widescreen black and white, the tale focuses on Billy Fisher a young man who still lives with his stodgy parents and a grandmother in a Yorkshire town. He juggles three girlfriends and a job at a mortuary that he hates,...

Director Bryan Forbes tries his hand at comedy. His nostalgic Victorian farce features an eclectic choice of Brit stars — established greats John Mills & Ralph Richardson, the freshly-minted Michael Caine, reigning jester Peter Sellers and even a debut for the collegiate pranksters Peter Cook & Dudley Moore. It’s a beaut of a production with a charming John Barry music score… but the result yields more indulgent smiles than out-and-out laughs.

The Wrong Box

Region A+B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1966 / Color / 1:75 widescreen / 105 min. / Street Date November 23, 2018 / available from Amazon UK / £14.99

Starring: John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Nanette Newman, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Wilfrid Lawson, Thorley Walters, Gerald Sim, Irene Handl, Norman Bird, John Le Mesurier, Norman Rossington, Diane Clare, Tutte Lemkow, Charles Bird, Vanda Godsell, Jeremy Lloyd, James Villiers, Graham Stark, Dick Gregory, Valentine Dyall, Leonard Rossiter, André Morell, Temperance Seven, Andrea Allan, Juliet Mills.

Cinematography:...

Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter, Douglas Rain, Leonard Rossiter | Written by Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke | Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s mid-period masterpiece is almost as remarkable for how it has not influenced sci-fi filmmaking as for how it has. While special effects took a giant leap in 1968, to this day we still have the sounds of swooshing of ships and zapping lasers in the vacuum of outer space. Then there is the small matter of awe. It’s hard to think of another example of a science fiction movie with such an unflinching commitment to wonder.

Now 2001: A Space Odyssey is being re-released in honour of its 50th anniversary, with a pristine 4K remaster in its original, super-stretched 70mm aspect ratio.

After endless Star Wars instalments and Star Trek variations, there’s been nothing in mainstream sci-fi cinema that looks or sounds...

Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter, Douglas Rain, Leonard Rossiter | Written by Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke | Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s mid-period masterpiece is almost as remarkable for how it has not influenced sci-fi filmmaking as for how it has. While special effects took a giant leap in 1968, to this day we still have the sounds of swooshing of ships and zapping lasers in the vacuum of outer space. Then there is the small matter of awe. It’s hard to think of another example of a science fiction movie with such an unflinching commitment to wonder.

Now 2001: A Space Odyssey is being re-released in honour of its 50th anniversary, with a pristine 4K remaster in its original, super-stretched 70mm aspect ratio.

After endless Star Wars instalments and Star Trek variations, there’s been nothing in mainstream sci-fi cinema that looks or sounds...

The likes of Harvey Keitel and Kevin Bacon seem to be permanent fixtures on British TV screens these days. Over the last few years, there’s been a glut of Hollywood’s finest only too happy to put their faces to brands we know and love. We’ve had Al Pacino playing indoor golf for Sky Broadband, Arnold Schwarzenegger doing a comic turn with those pesky meerkats, and even Sly Stallone delivering Warburtons loaves. Such A-listers have, however, been doing this for years, as these five can testify.

Joan Collins – Cinzano (1978-1983)

When was the last time you heard someone ask for a glass of cinzano at the bar? Back in the day though, this was a tipple that screamed class and sophistication. So who better to spearhead the campaign than Ms. Collins. With a little help from comedy great Leonard Rossiter, it was a case of acting royalty taking...

Few latecomer ’60s spy movies were big successes. This amusing Brit effort sank without a trace, perhaps taking with it the career of the talented Tom Courtenay as a leading man. The comic tale pits an underachieving, cheeky London lad against an intelligence conspiracy that wouldn’t be doing anybody much harm — if they didn’t insist on murdering people.

Otley

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator (UK)

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. / Available at The Ph page / Street Date March 19, 2018 / £15.99

Starring: Tom Courtenay, Romy Schneider, Alan Badel, James Villiers, Leonard Rossiter, James Bolam, Fiona Lewis, Freddie Jones, James Cossins, James Maxwell, Edward Hardwicke, Ronald Lacey, Phyllida Law, Geoffrey Bayldon, Frank Middlemass.

Cinematography: Austin Dempster

Film Editor: Richard Best

Art Direction: Carmen Dillon

Original Music: Stanley Myers

Written by Dick Clement, Ian la Frenais from a book by Martin Waddell

Produced by Bruce Cohn Curtis, Carl Foreman

Directed by Dick Clement

The British film...

Stanley Kubrick’s contribution to great cinema of the 1970s offers his vision of what an epic should be. Transported by images that recall great paintings of the period, and Kubrick’s new approaches to low-light cinematography, we witness a rogue’s progress through troubled times. And even Ryan O’Neal is good!

Barry Lyndon

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 897

1975 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 185 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 17, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger, Steven Berkoff, Gay Hamilton, Marie Kean, Diana Körner, Murray Melvin, Frank Middlemass, André Morell, Arthur O’Sullivan, Godfrey Quigley, Leonard Rossiter, Philip Stone, Leon Vitali Leon Vitali, Wolf Kahler, Ferdy Mayne, George Sewell, Michael Hordern (narrator).

Cinematography: John Alcott

Editor: Tony Lawson

Production design: Ken Adam

Conductor & Musical Adaptor: Leonard Rosenman

Written by Stanley Kubrick from the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray

Produced and Directed by Stanley Kubrick

The...

The health service is an election battleground, but on screen it has long united the nation through film and television’s ongoing love affair with the NHS

Britannia Hospital was not a hit. Released in 1982, the film was a grand slab of British oddity from director Lindsay Anderson, arriving after the boarding school revolt of If … and business-land romp O Lucky Man. The lead was the great comic actor Leonard Rossiter, star of TV’s Rising Damp, cast as the administrator of a chaotic NHS hospital preparing for a visit from royalty.

It’s a movie that feels like a panic attack – the staff mutiny at creeping privatisation, strange experiments take place behind closed doors. Often it seems about to implode as you watch, leaving just a cloud of strange-smelling smoke – but then, it is supposed to be a portrait of collapse. As per the title, the idea was that...

Thirty years ago today, Clue, a whodunit spoof inspired by the popular board game in which the players have to find out who killed someone, and where, and with what, hit the theatres. First movie based on a board game, Clue had three alternative endings. In 1985, people who wanted to see the three endings had to go to three different theatres. Fortunately, the DVD version offers the three endings.

Set in New-England in 1954, this Jonathan Lynn's first feature is about a blackmailer, Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving), who, after having invited his six victims in his mansion, is found dead. Panic-stricken, his six guests, Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd), Mr. Green (Michael McKean), and Miss Scarlett (Leslie Ann Warren), and his butler, Wadsworth (Tim Curry), will be trying to solve the mystery. To make things worst, other crimes will be committed...

To commemorate the release of Clue,...

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From Quatermass to The Year Of The Sex Olympics, the voice of classic British screenwriter Nigel Kneale is still resonant and exciting...

Conflict drives drama. What people want and how they set out to get it makes for the best entertainment: Chief Brody wants to make Amity Island a safe place for his kids; Indiana Jones wants to find the Ark of the Covenant; Mark Watney wants to survive on Mars, A giant shark, a bunch of Nazis, and a planet without an atmosphere respectively stand in their way.

But conflict isn't only a device from which to hang big action sequences. The tension between ideas can make for brilliant drama - the kind of film and television that you think about for years afterwards - and one of the best screenwriters for this conflict of ideas was Nigel Kneale.

Kneale was born in 1922 in Barrow-in-Furness and,...

Writer David Nobbs has passed away at the age of 80, the British Humanist Association has confirmed.

Nobbs was best known for creating the comic television character Reginald Perrin, played in the BBC series by Leonard Rossiter.

Nobbs created the BBC sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, which ran between 1976 and 1979, from his series of novels.

The novels follow the story of a middle-aged middle manager, Reginald "Reggie" Perrin, who is driven to bizarre behaviour by the pointlessness of his job.

The Yorkshire-born writer also provided material for The Two Ronnies, Ken Dodd and Frankie Howerd.

Nobbs wrote over 20 novels during a prolific career that spanned nearly 50 years.

Watch a clip from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin below:...

Ron Moody as Fagin in 'Oliver!' based on Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist.' Ron Moody as Fagin in Dickens musical 'Oliver!': Box office and critical hit (See previous post: "Ron Moody: 'Oliver!' Actor, Academy Award Nominee Dead at 91.") Although British made, Oliver! turned out to be an elephantine release along the lines of – exclamation point or no – Gypsy, Star!, Hello Dolly!, and other Hollywood mega-musicals from the mid'-50s to the early '70s.[1] But however bloated and conventional the final result, and a cast whose best-known name was that of director Carol Reed's nephew, Oliver Reed, Oliver! found countless fans.[2] The mostly British production became a huge financial and critical success in the U.S. at a time when star-studded mega-musicals had become perilous – at times downright disastrous – ventures.[3] Upon the American release of Oliver! in Dec. 1968, frequently acerbic The...

Actress Pauline Yates has died, aged 85.

The British star was best known for her starring role in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin from 1976 to 1979, as the title character's wife Elizabeth Perrin opposite Leonard Rossiter.

She also played the wife of comic-strip artist Dudley Rush (Robert Gillespie) in Keep It In the Family, and starred in Bachelor Father.

Yates's family have said that she "died peacefully in her sleep" yesterday (January 21) in Denville Hall nursing home in Northwood, Middlesex.

During a career that spanned six decades, Yates became a regular performer in 1960s TV series, including Armchair Theatre, Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, Gideon's Way, Nightingale's Boys, The Human Jungle and The Ronnie Barker Playhouse.

She returned as Elizabeth Perrin for The Legacy of Reginald Perrin in 1996, and continued to perform on stage. Her most recent roles were in Rose and Maloney and Doctors in the early 2000s.

Yates...

The cinematic debut of Steve Coogan's bumbling talk show host is a quietly audacious triumph

You'd expect an Alan Partridge movie to be funny. You wouldn't expect it to be a coup de cinema. And yet, in its own superficially low-brow, cheapo way, Alpha Papa is exactly that. It's a Fabergé egg disguised as a Kinder Surprise; an intricate piece of engineering done up to look like a whoopee cushion.

Big-screen Partridge has been chatted about for a decade now, and concerns have stayed the same. Surely Alan's petty parochialism isn't cinematic catnip? Wouldn't such a radical shift of situation endanger the comedy?

But in his 21-year career, Alan has already proved unexpectedly flexible. He's straddled radio, TV, stage, print, online, news spoof, chat show, memoir, mockumentary, meta-farce. This quantity of content comes with a downside, of course – many fans are so invested they feel they know Partridge better than his creators.

My mother Pat Ashton, who has died aged 82, was an actor for over four decades. Probably her most important TV role was that of Annie, wife of a burglar (Bob Hoskins) who comes out of prison to find that his old friend (John Thaw) has moved in, in Thick As Thieves (1974). When Yorkshire TV declined a second series, the writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais took the idea to the BBC, where it was developed into the much-loved series Porridge.

Pat was born and raised in Wood Green, north London. During her early years, the piano was the focus of entertainment at home, with her brother Richard playing all the popular songs of the day. Her grandmother had been a trapeze artist, performing in front of the tsar in Russia, and Pat quickly became fascinated with music hall, learned to tap-dance from an early age and went on to...

Deadbeat - Makes You Stronger (review here) proves that sometimes death is only the start of our problems. We recently chatted with author Guy Adams about his new novel, what inspired its dark moments and what lies ahead for the Deadbeat series.

Amanda Dyar: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us. To start off, can you tell us a little about yourself and your recent work as a writer?

Guy Adams: No problem at all, thanks for asking me!

I'm an English writer currently living in Spain because if you're going to lock yourself in your office all day, it may as well be a nice outside world you're not seeing.

I've done a real mixture of stuff over the years. I wrote a novel called The World House for Angry Robot books followed by a sequel Restoration. I've written three novels...

Classic ITV sitcom Rising Damp is to return as a stage play.

The original comedy series starred Leonard Rossiter as troublesome landlord Rigsby and aired on ITV between 1974 and 1978.

Don Warrington - who played the cultured Philip Smith in the sitcom - will direct the new stage adaptation from the Comedy Theatre Company.

The UK tour will launch in Blackpool at the Grand Theatre on Tuesday, May 14 before moving on to Darlington, Salford, Malvern, Norwich, Sheffield, Woking, Bradford and finally Richmond - wrapping up on July 20.

The play's cast includes Stephen Chapman (Rigsby), Paul Morse (Alan), Cornelis Macarthy (Philip) and Amanda Hadingue (Miss Jones).

The Rising Damp TV series was itself based on a stage play - writer Eric Chappell's 1971 work The Banana Box.

The varied and brilliant career of the director of Bugsy Malone and Fame is to be celebrated by a Bafta fellowship

From the custard pie guns of Bugsy Malone to the legwarmers of Fame; from the prison brutality of Midnight Express to the unalloyed musical joy of The Commitments – the career of Alan Parker in all its variety and brilliance is to be celebrated by a Bafta fellowship next month.

Parker, 68, follows in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and Elizabeth Taylor in receiving the honour. It is the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' equivalent to a lifetime achievement award, but the director is not worried about the signals that accepting such an award might send.

"I'm honoured by the award – flattered, really," he said on Tuesday. "A lot of people deserve it more than I do. I know film-makers who have refused these sort of things,...

'Playing Fagin was one of the happiest times of my life. I loved the boys' mischievous minds – I wanted to make them laugh'

Mark Lester, actor (Oliver Twist)

The auditions had narrowed down to two other boys and me. We were put in a room in a London hotel and Carol Reed, the director, ordered the dismayed hotel barber to cut our hair badly to resemble a workhouse style. Then he just looked and looked at us, and we were sent home with this awful hair. When I heard I'd got the part, my reaction was that it was a chance to miss a lot of school. Actually, I spent most of the time in my dressing room reading Sherlock Holmes.

Ron Moody, who played Fagin, was very jolly and used to play cards with us boys between shoots. But we were all terrified of Oliver Reed. He was one...

Leonard Rossiter has become the latest TV star to be accused of sexual abuse while at the BBC. The Rising Damp actor appeared in many BBC productions in his career, including his iconic role as Reggie Perrin in The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, before his death at the age of 57 in 1984. The Sun reports that a man has alleged he was the victim of a sexual assault on the set of the Rossiter-starring TV play The Year of the Sex Olympics, while working on the production as an extra at the age of 18. The accuser claimed that Rossiter was present for the attack and that he arrived after being "tipped off" that it was taking place. He was then alleged to have "watched with glee". The man said that he attempted to report the abuse to a senior BBC figure working on the play but was ignored, (more...

Rarely has Dickens been such flat fare: the meat and humour are gone, replaced by gristle and a damp-pancake Miss Havisham

Great Expectations isn't just Charles Dickens's best book. It's also his soapiest. Of all the novels he wrote in instalments, it's this that most graphically caters to the cliffhanger, drips with deadline sweat and amps up the action at every chapter's close. So it takes a special type of talent to turn it into a film quite this flat.

Mike Newell (of Four Weddings fame) must take the lion's share of blame, but a chunk too should be saved for One Day's David Nicholls, who supplies a York Notes adaptation, a bowdlerised whistlestop tour round keynote scenes. He appears to have extracted not just much of the book's humour – early scenes with Mrs Joe (Sally Hawkins), Mr Joe (Jason Flemyng) and young Pip fall notably flat, despite David Walliams...

You may find the new Ben Stiller movie The Watch strangely familiar. But that's not necessarily a good thing

You might be forgiven for thinking that you've seen The Watch before. Not because Ben Stiller's character is the same uptight blowhard that he has played in everything for the past 15 years, or because Richard Ayoade is basically just Moss from The It Crowd again, or because Vince Vaughn remains content to sit back and bibble out the same directionless patter that has been his stock in trade for what seems like centuries.

No. The reason is because, once you've scraped away all the sex jokes and clanging Costco product placement, you're basically left with Dad's Army. Both are essentially stories about a group of ill-prepared middle-aged incompetents trying to escape the monotony of their day-to-day lives by fudging together a defence against an enemy they don't fully understand. With The Watch,...

Trevor Nunn's latest Shakespeare doesn't impress the critics much – even with a movie star at the helm (although they do at least like Ralph Fiennes's Prospero)

This again: Shakespeare made marketable with the presence of a movie star. On the specials board today – Ralph Fiennes as Prospero in a Trevor Nunn Tempest. But wait! Here's a turn-up. Fiennes is actually the best thing about this production, in the view of half the critics. The other half – actually more like three quarters – would say he is the only good thing it has.

"Oh, that this Tempest were a monologue!" Karen Fricker declaims to the groundlings at Variety. "While Fiennes is a major artist in full command of his powers, once-great helmer Nunn is currently sucking fumes." I'll leave you to speculate on what that last bit actually means.

The Standard's Henry Hitchings, to everyone's relief, is not a man...

Some would say “difficult and remote”. Others would say “brilliant, bold, daring but an absolute control freak”. The late Stanley Kubrick was labelled many things in his time but no one can doubt the man had a rich talent for realising cinema as a grand, sensory spectacle. This month marks the 12th anniversary since his death and as a tribute to his talents I would like to propose 50 reasons why the filmmaker may have actually been the greatest director of all time.

In no particular order;

1. Was a Master Of Almost Every Genre

There’s little doubt that Kubrick was a cinematic connoisseur. To prove it he created a classic entry in almost every genre, whether it be a clever comedy satire (Dr Strangelove), a masterful psychological horror (The Shining), innovative sci-fi’s (2001: A Space Odyssey & A Clockwork Orange), a beautiful period drama (Barry Lyndon), controversial anti-war movies (Paths of Glory...

A hoard of lost TV dramas – starring the likes of Sean Connery, Maggie Smith and Derek Jacobi – have resurfaced. What do they say about TV then and now?

We have become used to the idea of major TV dramas being imported from America: series such as The Wire, The Sopranos and The West Wing. But a stash of programmes heading for Britain this month have a more complicated history. These are not strictly imports; rather, they are being returned to their country of origin.

The 65 plays – starring actors such as Sean Connery, Maggie Smith and Derek Jacobi – were transmitted by the BBC and ITV between 1957 and 1969, but were only seen once. Subsequently, if they were asked after by historians or biographers, they were found to be missing, presumed wiped, a frequent fate in a period when the preservation of TV programmes was an expensive business. However, during a recent stock-taking...

Stanley Kubrick, 1968

When 2001: A Space Odyssey was first released, few would have predicted it would still be feted nearly half a century later. In fact few would have tipped it for even short-lived glory. At its premiere – its premiere – there were 241 walkouts, including Rock Hudson, who asked: "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"

Even its champions were stumped. "Somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring," thought the New York Times; "Superb photography major asset to confusing, long-unfolding plot," reckoned Newsday. But bafflement was the intention, explained its creators. Said Arthur C Clarke, whose 1948 story The Sentinel was the starting point for Stanley Kubrick (Clarke's novelisation postdated the film): "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."

A cop-out? Far from it: 2001 is magisterial. Its impeccable serious-mindedness is nothing to scoff at; what some saw as ponderous now seems merely prescient.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have given us a lively Likely Lads throwback, says Peter Bradshaw

Like Clement and Le Frenais or Waterhouse and Hall, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have written a big-hearted movie about working-class lads from the sticks who want to get off with girls and get on with their lives, but feel a gravitational, detumescent pull of loyalty, to each other and to their boring, boring hometown. And they've got a sinking feeling that this sinking feeling is the natural order of things, however big their dreams. Coming down in the world at last, like a punchline to a lugubrious gag, is the way it has to be.

It's a film which is at once dated and backdated: the British kitchen-sink genre this superficially resembles conjures up the monochrome image of the late 1950s and early 60s. But Gervais and Merchant have chosen the 70s as...

George Lopez's latest bland supporting role is in the new Jackie Chan film The Spy Next Door, but he's known on the Us comedy circuit as a tough and funny standup, and turned in a brilliantly nasty performance in Bread and Roses. Time to sing his praises

This week I have found myself pondering the screen career of someone whose name may not ring a bell: George Lopez. Brits who watch Hollywood movies, even Brits like me who watch an awful lot of them, may well be sublimely unaware of the extra-textual showbiz baggage that bit-part actors bring to the film. It's rather the opposite of a disorientating phenomenon I blogged about a while ago, which I provisionally named "inappropriate cultural flashback" – an inability to get out of your head the previous telly career of an actor appearing in a classy feature film – such as Keith Chegwin in Polanski's...

A talented Irish actor on stage and in films for Ford and Huston

For an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by Brian Friel, Ireland's leading contemporary dramatist, Donal Donnelly, who has died after a long illness, aged 78, was curiously unrecognised. Like so many prominent Irish actors in the diasporas of Hollywood, British television, the West End and Broadway – all areas he conquered – Donnelly was a great talent and a private citizen, happily married for many years, and always seemed youthful.

There was something mischievous, something larkish, about him, too. He twinkled. And he had a big nose. He had long lived in New York, although he died in Chicago, and had started out in Dublin, although born in England.

In John Huston's swansong movie The Dead (1987), the best screen transcription of a James Joyce fiction,...

Those worried that this show is just a redux of Fawlty Towers can rest easy and by all means go out and buy it. Trust me, you’ll watch it often if you have any affinity at all for the hapless main character played to anxiety driven perfection by Leonard Rossiter. Produced during the years 1976-1979 the series chronicles the adventures (or non adventures) of Reginald Perrin miserable employee of the Sunshine Desserts company. Whether under the thumb of his bombastic boss C.J., being looked at askance by his devoted wife, or minimized by his grown but needy children, Perrin is looking for an escape. An affair with his secretary? Mean spirited daydreams about those he loathes? Where the series ends up taking that concept I won’t say but it does more than just deliver one off gag ridden episodes. Perrin is on a journey that Basil Fawlty never really even started.

The Office Season 5 has officially come to a close. But, before there was "The Office" there was Reginald Perrin, the British Comedy about an eccentric sales executive who is disillusioned with his life and unrewarding job at Sunshine Desserts. Now, the wildly popular BBC series starring Leonard Rossiter makes its debut on DVD. To celebrate the event, BuzzFocus is giving away (3) copies of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin on DVD. To enter, just tell us your thoughts on "The Office" (including favorite moments, characters, gags, etc) by leaving a comment below and you’ll be entered to win a copy of "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin” on DVD. Entering is simple. You’ve got to be 18 years of age (or get your parent’s permission), reside in the USA and provide your name and a valid email address (only used to contact winner) when leaving a...

The British sitcom The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin aired three seven-episode seasons between 1976 and ’79, each following the efforts of the title character—a frustrated middle-class businessman played by Leonard Rossiter—to find some meaning in his increasingly absurd life. Each season told a full story, broken up into half-hour installments generally built around one or two big comic setpieces. While ambitious in intent, Reginald Perrin was bound to the conventions of its place and time. It was very much a mid-’70s Britcom, complete with catchphrase-spouting supporting characters and laughter punctuating even the most banal line ...

Hey Britcom fans! To celebrate the release of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin: The Complete Series on DVD today, JustPressPlay is giving away three copies of the box set! If you have heard of it, you know the series has "Comedy Classic" written all over it. In short, it's about a business man at the end of his rope and the funny things he begins to do as he loses his mind. Or you could read our review!

For those of you that have never heard of Reginald Perrin before today, consider the following:

Do you like The Office (UK or Us)? Do you think obsessive compulsive disorder or anxiety attacks can be funny? Do you wish Monk was funnier? Do you like Monty Python? Do you like Fawlty Towers?

If you said yes to one or more of these questions - you ought to enter the contest.

Like much of the very best of classic British comedy, the likes of Steptoe and Son (remade for the Us as Sanford and Son) and `Till Death Us Do Part (remade as All In The Family), The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin was a zeitgeist television program that effectively captured the idiosyncrasies of a cultural and political climate on the verge of a major shift in values.

Adapted by writer David Hobbs from his own darkly comic series of novels, the short, sharp shock of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin comprised three seasons, and effectively a beginning, middle and end that encompassed one ordinary man’s complete mental breakdown brought about by the suffocating monotony of the everyday.

A comedy of manners that slighted both the middle class and the rise of consumerism in English society, each episode began with the now iconic title sequence that showed...