05 The Naughty List Of Mr Scrooge

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Of all the joys in life, cake, a well-timed sarcastic remark, and the sheer relief of undoing a tight belt after a hearty meal, none quite compare to the magic of cinema. Films, those shimmering portals of escapism, offer a brief but blissful reprieve from the soul-sapping tedium of daily existence. Or, at least, they used to.

Lately, however, I find myself watching movies with the same enthusiasm one reserves for a dentist’s drill. The plots resemble moth-eaten jumpers, full of holes and barely holding together. The direction, often, appears to have been done by someone who mistook a camera for a piece of abstract sculpture. As for the actors, some exhibit the emotional range of a damp flannel, while others make me suspect that the director simply found them loitering near a bus stop and offered them a sandwich to take part. And then, there are the clichés: So overused they’ve become the cinematic equivalent of reheated chips: unappetising and slightly tragic.

Faced with this dire state of affairs, I did what any self-respecting, opinionated individual would do; I flung myself headfirst into the perilous thicket of movie criticism. My hope? To gently (or perhaps not so gently) nudge you away from cinematic disasters and towards films actually worth your time. But why stop there? Given that my own eyesight is on a downward trajectory, I thought, "Why not make these reviews available in audio form for others who might be in the same boat?" And then, like an overexcited chef throwing ingredients into an already bubbling pot, I thought, "Why not add music?"

Thus, I turned to Suno, that mystical forge of melodies, and lo, the tunes were born! Of course, a little remixing was required, like trimming an unruly hedge into something vaguely respectable, but the results were so pleasing that I simply had to share them. And because no grand artistic endeavour is complete without a visual flourish, I cobbled together a series of simple yet elegant music videos to match.

So here we are...