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I skipped the Oscars on TV, although quite a few people I spoke with over the weekend were keen to mention movies to each other. These days of newspaper over-hype mean that when friends gather in my neck of the woods, we tend to exchange movie recommendations of our own, which we can then act on or not depending upon what we hear. Movies come and go so fast, and so many are so utterly vapid, that it often seems hardly worth giving up a perfectly good evening unless the promise is going to be fulfilled.

I think I fell into a movie slump some years back when it occurred to me that, if I were a fishing enthusiast, I’d long ago have given up on such a pitiful puddle of offerings as I was expected to fish in.

Then on Saturday I was speaking with an eminent crime-novelist who urged me to see more Quentin Tarantino films like ‘Kill Bill’ because of their ’stylized violence’. I could not gain from her any sense of why it would be necessary for me to do so. As it happens I’m still haunted by the brutal, although ’stylized’, violence of ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Reservoir Dogs, ‘The Usual Suspects’ and so on. Why would I want to add more, horrible, unforgettable imagery? Sam Peckinpah’s movies still jar my memory twenty years on.

I know ours in a violent and brutal world and so filmmakers are just trying to reflect aspects of what is, I suppose. But the more we dwell on the negative the more we’re going to become negative. The way to remove darkness is not to meditate upon darkness, but to turn on a light.

To remove violence from the world we have to start by removing it from our own minds. I reserve the right to protect myself from movies that pull me in the opposite direction.