I love films. And because I’m a total and unrelenting movie snob, I only really watch them at the cinema. And I love art house films and French films and Iranian films and Korean lesbian films and… well, any lesbian films really, and I even like films that say nothing and go nowhere. Except Koyaanisqatsi which I fucking hated. And I hate ‘blockbusters’ and franchises and anything with a number in the title except SE7EN and anything with Tom Cruise except Rain Man, and I love weird and bizarre and David Lynch and the Coens and Tarantino and… and… and…

They’re the rules. The party line. Why go and see Fast and Furious 19 when you could watch flowers growing in fields in Nicaragua to a backing track of long-forgotten (with really good reason) Aztec bongo music played on shrunken heads?

But I have guilty secrets. Fucking loads of them. Movies that I really shouldn’t even deem worthy of the ticket price yet which I watch time and again on tv. Well, bits of them anyway. Terminator. Terminator 2 (breaks two cardinal rules but I dearly love that movie), Pretty Woman (Nooooo!!!! yes, love it), Officer and a Gentleman, Maid in Manhatten and… the worst of all, Top Gun.

The ‘fingernails down a blackboard’ effect of little Tommy was more than offset by Kelly McGillis at her absolute finest, driving a Porsche 356 with planes and motorbikes and Russians being shot out of the sky. Add in Val Kilmer at his slimiest and you really do have a wonderful film fit for the entire cheese-making industry of the world. And I love it. Everyone loves it. It took our breath away.

And so they’re making part 2. To which, as always, I have to ask: Whyyyeeeeee????? Some things should just be left alone. They’re perfect. And if you can’t improve them, why make another? Oh, for money, forgot about that, silly me. So Tom is making the movie. Obviously Scientology is a bit short this month (not in a Tom way) so he’ll make the investment for them. And star in the film, obviously, though this time as ‘an instructor’. Probably of flight, not of singing ‘you’ve lost that loving feeling’. And his ‘maverick’ rebel student is… is… is a gel!!!! No shit, they let women fly. Not yesterday from Heathrow, obviously, but in general terms, women can pilot.

I haven’t yet watched the opening edition of Twin Peaks Nouveau but its been panned by the critics. Not that I care about them. And now we have Top Gun re-boot to look forward to as well. Has the entertainment industry run out of ideas? Or just become cynical and lazy?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx