Exercise in patriotism

Honestly, first it’s restaurant reviews and now it’s films, too, which does make me think: what next? Deborah, when you get a minute, would you mind changing the toner in the photocopier? Deborah, would you make sure to empty the bins before you leave? Doesn’t anyone else at The Spectator do any work at all? Oh, all right, I’ll do it. I seem to do everything else, so why not? I’ll just empty the bins, change the toner, and then get to it, OK?

So, what is my brief, then? My brief, it appears, is to see the films ‘ordinary punters’ are likely to see rather than, say, Les Soupes Turines de Paris by André Labourious, which is showing for the next ten minutes only at the Curzon, Soho, and won the prize for best film about soup at the Outer Mongolian Film Festival last year. This is a great shame because while Les Soupes de Turines de Paris isn’t André Labourious’s greatest work (I think that has to be Encore Chateaubriand!) it has its merits.