FILM REVIEWS
With John J McGowan
“See you in the back stalls! “
Happy (Special) Birthday, John McGowan!
For the past six years, John McGowan has become a familiar voice on Learning Works, signing-off his movie reviews with the phrase: “I’ll see you in the back stalls.”
John backs his movie critiques and other cimena commentary with a vast range of experience in closely-related media and a lifelong love of the movies. He began writing reviews of movies and television programs over forty years ago and, in the years between, he has himself, worked in most areas of television production. He has been a writer, producer, director, actor and news presenter in a long career as a journalist and educator.
He cut his teeth in television as a journalist at Adelaide’s Channel Nine and later trained as a teacher before embarking on a second career as an educational broadcaster with ABC radio and television. After sixteen years with the ABC, he set up his own production company as a commercial video producer.
However, his fascination with motion pictures has always been his abiding passion. One outcome of this was the publication, in 2005, of his biography of South Australian-born Hollywood pioneer actor-director John Paterson McGowan.
“He was the famous John McGowan,” as John likes to say.
The book, published in the United States and sold globally via the internet, was the result of many years of painstaking research. It is the first biography of the prolific J.P.McGowan and has been welcomed with acclaim by film historians internationally.
Despite John’s impressive knowledge of the movies, he says he still likes to be just another anonymous face in the stalls when he settles down to be entertained in a picture theatre. His reviews reflect his own response to the movies he sees and he likes to believe that his assessments are formulated independently of media releases and other promotional influences. He makes careful choices about which movies he will see and review and says he is grateful for the freedom granted him by Learning Works to arrive at his own judgements.
He believes that a good movie review should provide the listener with enough information to enable them to decide whether or not they want to spend their time and money to go and see the movie. He has great disdain for “lazy” reviewers who spoil the surprise of the movie by divulging too many details about the plot.
“Even if I don’t like a movie I won’t tell you the story,” John says.
His favourite movie? “Lawrence of Arabia is in a class of its own,” John says. “No computer-generated special effects, but it’s a perfect blend of sure-handed storytelling of an engrossing, epic-scale life-and-death drama set in a breathtaking real-life desert landscape. It’s a magic carpet ride and, for those of us sitting in the stalls, that’s what the movies should be all about.”
“They don’t make movies like Lawrence anymore - and they never will – because the lure of the computer is too seductive,” he says.
FILM REVIEWS
With John J McGowan
Since early 2005, Learning Works’s John J McGowan has reviewed a number of recently released movies, many of which are now coming out on DVD.
This alphabetical listing includes a rating for each film, together with links to the relevant month of broadcast in the Learning Works archives. Scroll down to the broadcast date to access most of the scripts (in pdf format) and most of the audiofiles (in mp3 format).
We trust that this will be a useful resource for Learning Works listeners in either checking out a current movie, or a recently released DVD.
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Films
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Rating |
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A Good Year |
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A History of Violence |
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A Prairie Home Companion |
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Babel |
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Batman Begins |
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Being Julia |
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Brokeback Mountain |
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Capote |
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory |
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Da Vinci Code |
Give it a miss! |
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Eight Below |
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Flags of our Fathers |
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Flashed Away |
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Good Night and Good Luck |
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Into The Blue |
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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang |
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Night at the Museum |
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Robots |
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Snakes on a Plane |
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The Departed |
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The Devil Wears Prada |
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The Holiday |
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The Queen |
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The World’s Fastest Indian |
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Tristram Shandy |
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War of the Worlds |
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