10 Great Truths Of Movies

1. Any film made by or starring Dan Aykroyd made before 1985 is a comedy classic. Any film made by or starring Dan Aykroyd after 1985 is not worth watching*.

2. Hannibal Lecter was mildly scary in The Silence of the Lambs. Since then he has become a cliche, like a camper version of Christopher Lee's Dracula. Which will, no doubt, make Hannibal Rising eminently missable.

3. David Lynch makes his best films (The Elephant Man, The Straight Story) when he isn't trying to be purposefully weird. David Cronenberg makes his best films (Shivers, Scanners and Videodrome) when he is trying to be purposefully weird.

4. Bill Murray is not as funny as he, or everyone else, seems to think he is. However, he is still *quite* funny. In Groundhog Day anyway.

5. Any successful slasher movie is the kiss of death for cinema for the next few years owing to the number of crappy copy cat movies that dominate the silver screen. Witness Scream being followed by the terrible I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, Urban Legend, Final Destination 1-3, Scary Movie, and Scream 3.

6. Any successful superhero movie is the kiss of death for cinema for the next few years owing to the number of crappy copy cat movies that dominate the silver screen. Witness Spiderman being followed by Hulk, Daredevil, The Punisher, Elektra and Fantastic Four**.

7. Roger Moore should have stopped being James Bond after Moonraker, and Timothy Dalton should have taken over from For Your Eyes Only onwards. I mean, A View To A Kill would have been a much better film had Christopher Walken's Nazi engineered super villian not been best by a Bond with poorly dyed hair and a need to wear baggy clothes to hide both the substantial girth around the waist and the saggy old man's tits sported by Moore in that film.

8. The phrase "Wes Craven presents" before movie title is a 100%, absolute guarantee that the movie in question will be total, indisputable shite.

9. 96% of people claim to love Withnail & I. Of that 96%, 77% only like the movie because one of their mates said it was really cool***.

10. Oliver Stone, John Carpenter and Briand De Palma were all great directors. The operative word here being were. Whatever talent they had, it has long since gone.

* The one exception is Grosse Point Blank. Although John Cusack was the star of that. And one exception in 22 years is not great.

** No doubt Batman Begins and Superman Returns will have similar shite being produced in their wake.

*** I made that statistic up, believe it or not. Although it does sound about right.