Jolly Good Films

I am in Anglesey for a couple of days just checking up on the old country estate. All well, serfs not restless etc. The northern boundary has been renewed and this is the first time I have been able to inspect the work of the local artisan ie the bloke who put up the new garden fence. Looks jolly good, gravel boards, the full monty.

I spent an enjoyable day yesterday drafting  a university essay and at its end I treated myself to watching a film I had been meaning to get round to for ages. But first things first. On the night of my arrival (great journey up here in the precious Jag, stereo belching Mozart) BBC4 went some way to justifying the licence fee (but why not shown on terrestrial channel?) by showing a recent Italian classic, Gomorra. This is the antidote to pillocks who find the mafia glamorous - unrelenting, ugly and brilliant.

That was my first night here. Last night I watched something possibly even better. I hadn't seen Donnie Darko, somehow always overlooking the freebie dvd in among the pile of films we keep here. Well I rectified that late last night and what a bloody treat. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I had seen David Lynch's Lost Highway recently at university and really rated that. There are echoes of that film in Donnie Darko but the latter is altogether more efficiently realised. This is one to watch and watch again. I will be amending the list of my Top 50 Films. A list with which I may bore you in the future. Since I wrote the list a few years ago (compiled at the behest of a friend's film obsessed son who was very taken with our big tv and rather less impressive dvd collection) I have occasionally had to admit new entries (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3 would be two such) but I have never been brutal enough to relegate other films so my Top 50 now has more than 50 members. This has the ring of a New Year resolution about it. What could be more important than reimposing the internal discipline of a list that noone gives a shit about other than me? For anyone who doubts the vitality of listing and ranking cultural artefacts I refer you to another film on my list, High Fidelity, which I have also re-viewed this week. Here's a mildly provocative statement - I think films of Nick Hornby novels are actually rather better than the books. Heretically I feel the same about Lord of the Rings.