The Christmas TV Strategy Guide 2021

The original Thunderbirds can be a bit of an acquired taste due to all the puppets cutting about the place, and this 60s film version isn’t exactly the best way to start. It’s basically an episode stretched out a bit longer than it needed to be but its well worth seeing just thanks to the near hallucinatory musical sequence where Puppet Cliff Richards and The Shadows pops up out of no where

The hight point of the Wallace and Gromit films? Its hard to argue against that; this was such a confident follow up to A Grand Day Out, taking in film noir themes with a step up in cinematography that just added a whole new level of polish to the whole thing. It also has one of the greatest chase sequences this side of Castle of Cagliostro

The live action Transformers films start off alright but then quickly deteriorate into being properly terrible. Properly, properly terrible. So hopes weren’t high for this film which, God Bless it, actually ended up being pretty half decent. It helps that the robot design takes a step towards the original design losing a bit of the busyness that made the previous live action films a mess to watch at times. And it’s no where near as racist or misogynistic which is always good

In 1986 the quality of mainstream pop music was just about to hit a slump but there should still be a bit of fun to be found here

ITV4 delivers with the sequel to the first Rocky, which is essentially a remake of the first film in that it follows pretty much the same structure only this time has Rocky win at the end so everyone can leave the cinema properly happy, It’s also the last time we see Stallone’s 1970s face before he assumes his true 1980s form as seen on the poster for Rocky III

This was a bit of a change of tack when it appeared after Goodfellas; yes its Scorsese and De Niro together again but its much more of a genre piece. Yes, Goodfellas is a gangster film but it had a lot more to say than that. Cape Fear is a much straighter film, which is still a fun watch don’t get me wrong. Also, you can make a case for Juliette Lewis stealing the film which makes it a good watch as well

I can remember going into WH Smiths, probably waiting for Ryan to show up, and reading a copy of Total Film that featured this in the Coming Soon bit. It was only a paragraph or so of text, but I was very excited to see it; I had loved Spaced but I was resigned to not seeing it in the cinema because films like this just didn’t come to my local cinema. It would probably appear in London or something, whilst I got whatever Richard Curtis nonsense that was out at the same time then I’d have to catch it on DVD or whatever. But, by some miracle of the release schedules, I did get to see it at the cinema and it was brilliant. And it was a success, which was even better as it helped prove that people would turn up for other British films and not just Four Weddings and a Notting Hill, Actually. Really can’t stand Richard Curtis films.