There are very few films that I enjoy. If a film isn’t entertaining, it is a waste of time as far as I am concerned; if it isn’t entertaining and it contains a pretentious message, it deserves to be loathed – I loathed Avatar. If a film is entertaining and it manages to convey a message while avoiding the expected leftist Hollywood tendentiousness and my son – who is a film enthusiast – likes it, there must be something in it.

I watched Defendor a few nights ago: it is a modernised cross between Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Not as good as reading either book, of course, but worth a look if you have an idle couple of hours. The director, Peter Stebbings, is Canadian and the town that our hero is defending is a thinly disguised Hamilton – a steel town not far from where I live which, from some angles, resembles Mordor.