Today’s article is in answer to a question I received from a reader.  Kevin emailed to ask “Is it just me, or are more and more old movies being re-released at the moment?”

I suspect Kevin has been triggered by the 20th-anniversary re-release of James Cameron’s drippy classic Titanic.  Although he could have been referring to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Mulholland Drive, Maurice, GoodFellas, Daughters of the Dust, Prick Up Your Ears, Howards End, The Big Heat, Hellraiser, Terminator 2, Dirty Dancing, The Silence of the Lambs, The Graduate, and a black and white version of 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road – all of which were re-released in UK cinemas so far this year.

So let’s take a quick look at whether we’ve seen a greater number of movie re-releases recently.

Last Wednesday, I gave a talk to 90 teenagers as a part of the Into Film festival.  This annual festival is a free, UK-wide “celebration of film & education for 5-19-year-olds” which holds screenings, workshops and lectures in cinema screens.  I will cover Into Film in more detail in a future post so today I wanted to look at a topic that came up in my conversations with the teenagers and festival organisers.

I was dismayed to learn that some of the teenagers at Into Film events had never been inside a cinema before.  This isn’t statistically unlikely, it just differs so much from my memories of being a teenager that I wasn’t expecting it.  I spent as much time in cinemas as …

Last week saw the release of Justice League, a film in which a brave, plucky band of CGI artists gallantly battle Henry Cavill’s moustache. The film is available to watch in either 2D or 3D, with most multiplexes offering audiences either option.  I opted to see it in 2D and very much regretted it (not the choice of 2D, the decision to see it at all).

I had a lot of time to think during the movie, so I started to wonder whether many other film fans would have made the same choice I did and picked the 2D version over the extra-dimensional 3D option.

Sadly the box office figures for Justice League 2D vs Justice League 3D are unlikely to be released so …

A few months ago, Stuart Heritage wrote an article for the Guardian entitled “How to spot a bad film without even seeing it“.  It used the example of the Will Ferrell / Amy Poehler comedy The House to discuss his telltale signs that an upcoming film is worth avoiding. These included:

• Embargoed reviews
• Production rumours
• Poster chicanery
• Interviews about anything but the film
• Sub-90-minute running time

The first on Stuart’s list – little to no early reviews – has already been covered well by Walt Hickey over at FiveThirtyEight.  In the article When Should You Buy Into A Movie’s Hype? he looked at the correlation between when movie reviews are released and the quality of the movie. Walt notes:

How early the reviews come in can tell us …