Very true. I've nothing against adaptations. But many I think miss the point of adapting; it's not merely a case of 'staying true' to the original narrative, but it adds nothing specifically cinematic. And I've called many films "filmed-theatre" which are not adaptations, they were written for the screen, and my criticism was that they were nevertheless neglecting the whole idea of being cinematic.

I enjoy stories, and I dislike some too, but I don't like stories for the sake of stories. Imagine somebody tells you a story out of nowhere, with no particular relevance. They tell you just for the sake of telling you a story. It's boring business. No, like I said, I enjoy stories, if they're good, but don't approach a film expecting to be told one. My primary point of engagement with a film is its aesthetic, its formal qualities. The first fact of Cinema is the image, the visual, and sounds. When I write of what a film is about, you'll note I never regurgitate plot synopsis, but rather explore the film's thematic exploration.

You could say an entire narrative comprises littler narratives. Such as a man going into his house. It's told in one shot, from one camera angle, and that is a self-contained, rather ordinary story. We then cut to a shot of the man inside the house. When Cinema was in its early stages, this cut was feared to confuse audiences; they wouldn't make the link. Nowadays, the opposite is true, sometimes to a narrowing effect, such as when Lynch cuts from one character to another in Lost Highway, people get confused and walk away from the film having dismissed it. What if those two shots of a man walking into a house and of a man inside of a house showed two different people inhabiting two different parallel universes? They're linked together with a simple, invisible transition, and brought together, and are assumed to be of the same cohesion. Cinema in this respect is an illusion; the camera is truth 24-times-per-second, and every cut's a lie.

I love Taxi Driver because it's an exploration of violence, of the social external impact on an individual mind, how that impact is internalised through repressed rage, and how it's externalised again through more violence. A cycle, evoked through a pattern of mundanely repetitive shots - the camera on the bonnet of the taxicab, riding through the New York night, to the sound of Bernard Herrmann's score. Why aren't The Matrix and The Terminator in my top ten? Because neither match the profound resonance of those films in my top ten. If I had a top ten, which I don't.

In the context of what I've been saying, if it's an exploration of a theme which interests me, which I find of interest, I'll give it merit. But cinematically speaking, if its aesthetic value is very ordinary, I'm not going to consider it essential viewing.

So what about films without a story or plot? I think every film begins with the visual. Not all films need a story to exist, but all films needs some kind of visual to exist.

If not a picture of The Last Supper, it would be a picure of a bunch of guys at a table, wining and dining. But it would still be beautiful to look at, if it was painted in the same way.