The TV movie has produced some of cinema's most unsung work, from Spielberg's career-launching Duel to Werner Herzog's haunting Lessons of Darkness. Made under commercial constraints yet often freed from studio conservatism, the format rewards closer attention than it usually gets. See what Macca makes of the titles below.
Rating: 2.5★
Let me be straight with you: I kept having to remind myself, the whole way through Rags, to judge it for what it actually is rather than what I might want it to be. And what it is, plainly, is a straight-to-television teen musical. A modern, gender-flipped
Rating: 3.0★
The best children's stories tend to be complete things. They say what they have to say, and then they stop. That is what made the original The Gruffalo so satisfying when it landed on BBC One that Christmas a couple of years earlier: it was tight, funny, structurally
Rating: 4.0★
If you've had a small child in the house at any point this century, you will know The Gruffalo more or less off by heart, whether you meant to or not. Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's picture book is a fixture of British bedtimes, and there&
Rating: 3.5★
My son has watched plenty of things once and forgotten them by teatime. The Highway Rat was not one of them. He came out of it obsessed, quoting the thing for weeks afterward, and honestly that's about the highest praise a half-hour film for small children can
Rating: 3.5★
There is a quiet magic to A Dessert for Constance that genuinely sneaks up on you. Sarah Maldoror's 1981 picture announces itself with the kind of premise that could easily slide into bleak social commentary: two immigrants in France, doing the thankless, back-breaking work of refuse collection.
Rating: 2.0★
There's a moment in Lost in Paradise when actual pirates show up, and honestly, that tells you everything you need to know about this film. You're settled in, you've got your tea, you've accepted the cosy, predictable rhythm of a stranded-on-
Rating: 1.0★
Sometimes you watch a film not because you want to, but because it's the only one available. That's the uncomfortable truth sitting at the heart of my experience with Dhanmalhi. For most international viewers, this 1993 Maldivian production directed by Reeko Moosa Manik isn't
Genre Music
Style Wars (1983)
Genre War
Lessons of Darkness (1992)
Genre Comedy
★★ — Travolta and Me (1993)
Genre War
★★★½ — The War Game (1966)
Genre Documentary
Seven Up! (1964)
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