The anniversary of Shane MacGowan's death came and went last week... now bear with me. I need to write this down somewhere. And I threw on "Rainy Night in Soho" after watching Nick Cave butcher it at MacGowan's funeral and found myself unable to sing along without tearing up. I've spent the week trying to parse that strong reaction. I remember the exact way I came to listen to The Pogues for the first time. I listened to The Clash,…
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2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
What a massive mistake it was to watch this on a tiny TV when I was 16. I didn't appreciate this picture at all until it started rolling for a second time.
The score's wailing choirs are so good. I thought they sounded like wind, personally, like a relentless, invisible roaring force that never crescendos, it just keeps going. Felt like that was a pretty apt connection to the monoliths, uniform and unchanging, but perpetually pushing creation and evolution forward…
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Chicken for Linda! 2023
Absolutely gorgeous stuff, really really sweet, very funny. Had the constant feeling that I was going to cry, even when things weren't particularly saccharine or particularly sad. I guess it really captures the struggle of single parenthood really well. I could see my relatives very clearly in Pauline, and my heart went out to her the entire runtime.
It really broke my heart when she worries that chicken and peppers might be above her as a recipe. It sounds like…
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Criterion Challenge: William Friedkin’s Closet Picks
Enjoyed this but I was struggling to hone in on the innovations here, except for the murderer's leitmotif of course. And I liked the comparison of the cops and the criminals. Surprised even to get such brazen commentary in the 30s. Maybe I'm being thrown off by the later Hays Code. And I didn't get those unsettling airs people keep mentioning.
Feeling confident I'll really appreciate this on a rewatch, maybe I wasn't in the right humour for it last night!
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Small Things Like These 2024
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Easily my favourite film of the year. This might be the most authentically Irish film I've ever seen, by every conceivable metric. I'll try and break this up cohesively but I'm bad at writing reviews, bear with me.
First off, Furlong is the absolute, quintessential image of Irish fatherhood and masculinity. And he's the image of that familiar archetype pushed to its extremes. He's so reductive about his past and childhood. He lies to his kids, he clearly doesn't speak…
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Gladiator II 2024
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Really strong action, in particular the flooded Colosseum. This is is my first time watching Mescal act and he's doing us proud out there in Hollywood, have to say. I was also souring on Pascal after Mando Season 3 and him picking projects that don't really interest me but he's good here! I liked the conflict being like that of RRR, where a laser focused goal of personal revenge sets the protagonist against someone who seems to be evil, but…
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