At their worst, films can be misleading, gratuitously violent, formulaic or  just plain boring.  At their best they can be  inspirational, uplifting and even life-changing.  The same can be said of books and most if not every other art form that comes to mind.  When discussing art forms, film posters are an art form in their own right although sadly ignored or taken for granted.

Like it or not, film and the cinema have had arguably the most influence on the formation of opinion and thought of the Western world to date than any other medium.  Even television has never had the same influence.  The qualification to date is because that influence is fast fading in a world of multi-media over-exposure and the cinema is becoming something of a minority and even cult pastime.  The reason is of course that it is difficult to motivate oneself to "go to the pictures" when the pictures now come to you in your own home.  However, even though the local Cinema is becoming an endangered species it is reasonable to assume that it will not vanish altogether, given the attachments of aficionados and others who simply like the big screen and the experience itself.

In the Golden Age of Cinema from the 20's to the 70's people flocked to see the events that previously had only been available via books or newspapers.  The Cinema brought them alive and gave flesh to the bones ---the Wild West was never wilder, the Jungle was never fiercer, love was never lovelier.  The only trouble was that most interpretations of history and events and novels were wildly distorted, leaning always toward the lurid and the dramatic and just like everyone else I loved every minute of it.  I believed that the only good Injun was a dead Injun, the good guy always gets the girl and tigers lived in the jungles of Africa along with Indian elephants and coconut trees.  I even believed that General Custer was one of the good guys.

The power of the cinema to twist historical events and characters into the completely fictitious and unrecognizable can never be underestimated and the Hollywood myth-makers never hesitated to follow the dictum " If the lie is more interesting then print the lie".  However, I believe that their motives were simply to put more bums on seats and they never gave a thought to impressionable minds who may have swallowed their tales as History.  At the other end of the scale is Leni Riefenstahl whose representations of a Nazism akin to Norse mythology purposely shaped the thinking of a whole generation.  I could go on with this but basically it is a subject in its own right and although it pops up here and there further on in this narrative I will stop in order not to overstate my case.

Mostly it's not serious ---- just me revisiting some old favourites but it has been a voyage of re-discovery and it is amazing just how many things I thought were "good" were really "bad" and vice-versa.  I think that's more down to me changing than anything else. 
 It is not meant to be an encyclopedic coverage of every film in every genre --- I haven't enough lifetimes for that  ----- rather it is my take on films which I think are worthy of comment for one reason or another.
Nothing will ever replace a good book because the imagination knows no bounds but the cinema comes a very close second.