There’s so much I can (and will) write about being a twin, and being Shelley’s twin. It’s a privilege that I’ll never stop appreciating — and by ‘privilege’ I don’t just mean that I’ve been lucky to have Shelley as the other half of a split ovum I participated in…

Two hundred and seventy-fourth film: The Crying Game, a 1992 movie full of twists that, if you’ve had one of the big twists spoiled for you decades ago like I did, you might only recently be seeing for the first time. I didn’t realise there were multiple twists though, and…

Saint Cecilia was, by all accounts, quite a musical lady. She sang during her own wedding, gave to the poor, and was apparently quite difficult to kill, having survived a bit of burning and a bit of being chopped at with a sword for a few days longer than is…

Two hundred and seventy-third film: JFK, , a well-directed conspiracy movie from Oliver Stone about the assassination of Kennedy, maybe you’ve heard of him. Three hours is a grotesque insult of a duration for a movie, but Stone clearly needed it to cram in every single flash of footage and…

Two hundred and seventy-second film: Jezebel, a 1938 film set in 1952 New Orleans that chucked Bette Davis directly into the Hollywood A-list. The simple way to describe the actual story is that a selfish, headstrong southern belle eventually learns the meaning of sacrifice, like Gone With The Wind but…

Two hundred and seventy-first film: The Jerk, Steve Martin’s first feature film that watches like a stick-figure drawing of Forrest Gump. The early scenes, in which Martin’s Navin narrates his upbringing as a poor black child, are moderately uncomfortable but deeply hilarious, and the rest of the movie has absolutely…

Facebook, bearer of good memories and bad comments, has its ups and downs. Sometimes it’s a place where odd chain-letter style activity occurs: someone tags you in a post with instructions, you follow those instructions, you tag others, and so on. Usually they’re annoying, sometimes they’re alright. Fourteen years ago…

Two hundred and seventieth film: The Jazz Singer, a 1927 film starring Al Jolson that marked the abrupt end of the silent movie era by showing the first scenes with the soundtrack synched to the footage. It tells a pretty straightforward story — a Jewish boy who wants to be…

Two hundred and sixty-ninth film: Jaws, the fish movie. This thing, obviously, has everything. Ominous strings, your classic public-safety-versus-big-business conflict, a mouthy, flashy mayor, a salty skipper with a robust mental health problem, a cynical, world-weary sheriff who hates the water, spilled milky fish guts, and Richard Dreyfuss giggling. And a shark. Also including the best version of ‘Show Me The Way To Go Home’ ever filmed, it’s about a shark that kills people and people who kill sharks. It starts, it gets going, it keeps going, and it paddles briskly home. It’s perfect. Five crumpled Louisiana number plates out of five.