Radio Times

The burning question is this: am I becoming a Shane Meadows bore? I realise I bang on about Britain's most talented young film-maker rather a lot. I can hear myself doing it. But what am I to do? I really do genuinely think he is a national treasure, on a par with Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.

I am not alone. This Is England (Monday 24 November Channel 4), his hymn to life as a teen skinhead in post-Falklands-conflict Britain, finally saw him collect a Bafta after 12 years of making semi-autobiographical films in...

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Here's what director John Moore and I have in common: we both love 1970s horror classic The Omen. And here's how we differ: only one of us loves it so much he felt the need to make it again.

Moore, whose previous film was a remake of 1965 desert-crash adventure Flight of the Phoenix (is anyone spotting a trend yet?), remade The Omen (Saturday 15 November C4) in 2006, showing his respect by pretty much copying the original, scene for scene.

Replacing the original film's stars (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick), Liev Schreiber now plays...

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Hollywood's response to the Vietnam War didn't really come until after the evacuation of American troops in 1975.

The unflinchingly critical Coming Home and The Deer Hunter were released three years later, opening the floodgates to other similarly themed movies.

A more recent equivalent for us is the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But film-makers did not wait for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to address it.

By then we'd already seen a host of films: Cal; Angel; The Crying Game; In the Name of the Father; Some Mother's Son; Michael...

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For me, the heat of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino joining forces in cop thriller Righteous Kill was dampened when the film company sent out a flimsy plastic wallet with their image on it. This should be a major movie event, a double header to rival Newman and McQueen or Davis and Crawford, not commemorated by something designed to keep your bus pass in.

It turned out to be apt. The film, a formulaic police procedural, was panned by critics and shunned by audiences, with the much-anticipated sparks generated by two of the greatest screen actors...

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Have you seen Saw (Saturday 25 October, Channel 4)?

The horror movie that helped re-energise the genre in 2004 with its inventive methods of blood-letting and torture? The bit where a victim has to cut off one of his limbs? Brilliant!

What about the sequel, Saw II (Sunday 26 October, Channel 4)? Even more ingenious torture traps! The pit filled with hypodermic needles! Awesome!

Who could wait for the third part in the franchise, where the architect of the mayhem, Jigsaw, gets his skull drilled? Not me.

Actually, I did wait. In fact, I'm still waiting...

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I can't be doing with film festivals. I admire those intrepid critics who spend their entire year with a complimentary bag slung over their shoulder, traipsing from screening to screening in the far-flung likes of Telluride, Haugesund or Karlovy Vary – or indeed the more glamorous likes of Cannes, Venice and Berlin.

Their feet hardly touch the ground, and when they do get home, they must spend days pressing "0" on their phones hoping to be put through to reception. They're welcome to it.

I enjoy the London film festival, of course, but that's probably because it's my...

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I don't hate Adam Sandler. That's too strong a word.

I reserve my hate for murderous totalitarian regimes and people who talk in the gym.

But I think it's accurate to say that I can't stand Adam Sandler. His presence in a film is enough to send me running for the hills with my fist rammed into my mouth.

Needless to say, I won't be making an appointment to view Spanglish this week, despite the fact that it was directed by James L Brooks (Broadcast News, The Simpsons Movie) and that it's the film in...

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Now pay attention!

With the terrestrial premiere of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire upon us, in which the 14-year-old wizard is mysteriously entered in the 17s-and-over Triwizard Tournament, I think it's worth considering the problematic age difference between Harry in the multi-million-selling books and how he's perceived in the films.

There are seven Harry Potter books, each one representing a year in the young wizard's life at Hogwarts School.

He is 11 when the first book, The Philosopher's Stone, whisks him for the first time to the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, there to begin...

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In Hollywood, sci-fi and fantasy are king. Titanic may still head the top 20 all-time worldwide box-office list, but it's the only film there that's based in fact.

Below it, you will find a variety of marauding dinosaurs, invading aliens, undead pirates, broom-riding schoolchildren, and, of course, a particular galaxy "far, far away".

Peter Jackson's remarkable Lord of the Rings trilogy, has now put the Star Wars saga into the shade. This surely makes him the king of fantasy.

He took an imagined world – albeit one that existed in literature – and gave it...

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When did you last throw a sickie and take the day off?

Well, don't feel guilty. The visionary American director Terrence Malick took seven years off between The Thin Red Line in 1998 and his 17th-century historical epic The New World in 2005.

But that was nothing compared to his 20-year break between Days of Heaven in 1978 and The Thin Red Line. It only took Michelangelo four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

In fairness, after Days of Heaven, Malick moved to France to teach and work on future...

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As the 56th US Presidential election looms, with its torrent of ticker tape, flags and hype, it seems a shame that for those of us without a US passport, the whole thing will be a mere spectator sport. We may as well just sit back and enjoy the show, which is precisely what it is.

Long before Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee, he was liberal Hollywood's candidate of choice, banking $1.3 million in donations at a Beverly Hills fundraiser attended by Steven Spielberg and Eddie Murphy, with George Clooney and Barbra Streisand sending cheques.

Meanwhile, Republican candidate...

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The original King Kong, made in 1933, pioneered the use of stop-motion animation in its creation of the giant ape. Kong was indeed "the Eighth Wonder of the World" – and it was all done with metal, rubber, air bladders and rabbit fur. The New York Times called the film "a remarkable example of the most up-to-date camera tricks".

When Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson remade King Kong in 2005, he too used the "most up-to-date camera tricks" – but they now included the very latest computer technology. The result is that a...

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For me it was Mr Gilbert and Mrs Elderkin, who taught English at Weston Favell Upper School and who, between them, helped demystify the works of Hardy, Shakespeare and Dickens. But I mean no disrespect to either when I say that the Hollywood studios would hastily reject their tutelage of the future Radio Times film editor as a Hollywood pitch.

To cut it as a mentor figure in the movies you have to be uncompromising, or reclusive, or wild, or enigmatic, or - in the very specific case of Ryan Gosling's eighth-grade teacher in the excellent Read more...

Is it possible for the Hollywood mainstream to take a mature approach to portraying sexual identity issues? Sloan Freer weighs up the evidence.

Playing a pre-op, male-to-female transsexual may not be an obvious career choice for Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman. But in road movie Transamerica (Wednesday Film4) she proved her versatility with a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe.

Like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert before it, writer/director Duncan Tucker's colourful indie film married acerbic comedy with a poignant exploration of complex sexual identity issues. It was...

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