Amy Scott’s recent documentary celebrating the life and work of the late director Hal Ashby, simply called Hal, may have slipped by without you noticing. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and received a limited release late last year. Scott must be commended for making a tender and celebratory ode to an … Continue reading Peace and Love: The Wonderful Films of Hal Ashby
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019, Sony Pictures) Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern and Al Pacino. Narrated by Kurt Russell. SPOILER ALERT: Please note that some of the film's plot is discussed in detail below. Once Upon … Continue reading The One Review: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019 Quentin Tarantino)
The Emerald Isle has offered a lot to the world (submarines, Samuel Beckett, decent stout, Clonakilty black pudding etc.) but if you were to look at Hollywood films over the years, it would seem that all we have been good for are things like potatoes, leprechauns, excessive drinking and terrorists. Begorrah and bejaysus, a soft … Continue reading Hollywood Fieldtrips to Ireland: The Good, the Bad and the Uafásach*
And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, come and see! And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him John 6. 7-8 (New Testament) Recent events in the US have put the … Continue reading Nazism and the impact of World War II as depicted on Film
Charlie Chaplin once stated that A Place in the Sun (1951) was ‘the greatest film ever made about America’. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it won six of them along with numerous other awards and accolades. Produced and directed by George Stevens, and starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters, it is one of … Continue reading Shades of Light and Dark in A Place in the Sun
In 2003 a swords and cannon, swash-buckling epic was released into the cinema. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl made the pirate movie popular again in a way that it hadn’t been since Errol Flynn in Captain Blood (1935) and The Sea Hawk (1940). Pirates of the Caribbean owed at least … Continue reading Lost in the Fog: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
*Please Note: depending on where the reviewer watched them, some of these films were only subject to release in 2017 despite having premiered at film festivals in 2016. Reviews by JJ McDermott Paterson (2016, directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani) A delightfully unexceptional film typical of Jarmusch's minimalist autuership. Set in … Continue reading JJ, Robin and Alan’s Round-up of the Year in Film…So Far
Paris in the twenties, it can offer plenty, To a young man with a vision, so they say. With a friend named, Fitzgerald, I was headed for the old world, On a merchant steamer bound for Biscay Bay. From Mickey Newbury's 'Heaven Help the Child' (1973) I remember first absorbing myself in F. Scott Fitzgerald's … Continue reading Adaptations Part 2: The Great Catastrophe of Adapting Gatsby
Blade Runner 2049 is due for release October 2017 - a sequel, 35 years in the making, to Blade Runner (1982). It is commonly known that this is part of a spate of remakes and sequels which Hollywood has produced in the last two decades in an attempt to draw declining audiences back into cinemas, … Continue reading Fear for the Future: Blade Runner 2049 Preview
