I can't remember when I started watching films - all I know is I was glued to the sofa (settee where I'm from) from an early age, and was a total couch potato.
I thrived on fantasy - sci-fi, horror, sword and sorcery. By the time I was 12, I'd seen nearly all the '50s sci-fi flicks and all the Hammer movies (my parents were very indulgent - I vividly remember being huddled up beside them, quaking in fear, watching The Omen and The Amityville Horror with my dad laughing at my torment).
My first visit to the cinema - my mum taking me to the Nottingham Odeon to see Star Wars (it wasn't called A New Hope in those days). It felt like looking through a window into another universe.
My favourite movies at age 14 - Blade Runner, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Excalibur, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Hitchcock's The Birds.
Then, one night, I stayed up after the folks had gone to bed to watch Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. I caught Peter Greenaway's Belly of an Architect on Channel 4 - Brian Dennehy sweatily having sex on a train, art and architecture to a Michael Nyman score. I became obsessed with Cronenberg.
In my twenties, I moved to London and discovered the National Film Theatre (now BFI Southbank)...and the floodgates opened. For a measly £12 a year (am I remembering that right?) I received a monthly programme, opening up an Aladdin's Cave of filmic treasures - cult movies, classic movies, arthouse films, world cinema... I grabbed hold of every film book I could afford.
I largely taught myself, but a brief spell in film school and then a degree followed.
And then I started to write...
This site collects together all the articles, reviews and titbits I've ever written about film. From an early age up till the present day. I've changed my mind, and my style, many times over the years, but I've left all the pieces unedited - sometimes to my embarrassment.
I hope you can find something amongst them to entertain, or stimulate you, or even just open your eyes. As mine were opened by Brian Dennehy on that train.
You can check out my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCixcdzQUTJb3qFlz_RGUzAQ and contact me at michaelbartlett946@gmail.com