MOVIE night

When I saw Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner for the first time on VHS tape in the late 1980s, I wanted to live in the future. It was set in a dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, and the reality is probably not that far from this sci-fi classic.

It’s my favourite ever film so I would think that reader Paul Swift has very good taste!

“My dad was a cinema projectionist before the Second World War which I think is where I get my love of movies,” says retired teacher Paul. “These are all films I never tire of and have watched a dozen times or more over 73 years.”

1. BLADE RUNNER (1982) The jaw-dropping opening credits set the scene for possibly the best sci-fi film ever. A rain-drenched Los Angeles doubling as an Asian street market is the backdrop and Rutger Hauer’s iconic death speech is one of cinema’s great moments.

2. ALMOST FAMOUS (2000) Star-struck teenage wannabe music journalist goes on tour with the band Stillwater. He meets, and is stricken by, Penny Lane played by Kate

Hudson. “She’s not a groupie, she’s a Band Aid!” Throw in Frances Mcdormand as his formidable mother and you’ve got perfection.

3. CHINATOWN (1974) Jack Nicholson has never been better than as the cynical private eye with Faye Dunaway as the doomed heroine. Los Angeles, in a drought, is the backdrop to a shocking story of incest and murder.

4. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963) The second outing for Sean Connery as Bond and this has everything, evil Spectre, a beautiful Russian spy and a ruthless antagonist in Robert Shaw. The briefcase was the start of the gadget era and played a major part in a visceral fight on the Orient Express.

5. THE SEARCHERS (1956) John Wayne at his finest in a contender for the greatest Western ever made. John Ford’s direction never falters even in the clumsily executed comic interludes which were often his Achilles heel.

■ Send your top five films and tell us why. Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk