Film, Books

Perfect Days – Film Review

German director Wim Wenders’ almost wordless drama about a Tokyo toilet cleaner is one of the year’s great surprises – a joyfully uplifting film about the small pleasures in life.

Poor Things (2023)
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Hanna Schygulla
Writer: Tony McNamara (based on Alasdair Gray’s novel)
Running Time: 2h 21mins
UK Release: 12th January 2024
 

Poor Things is a filthy feminist comedy from Greek film-maker Yorgos Lanthimos, a hilarious twist on the Frankenstein story with Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe.

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Books – Best Of 2023

29th December 2023 · 2020s, 2023, Film, Books

Obviously these are just the ones I have read, and I am a slow reader. But I enjoy a good novel, with good characters, and I try to alternate my novel-reading with the occasional non-fiction book.

Looking at the list, it’s only now I notice that while the first (The Bee Sting) is very much an Irish book about an Irish family, the next five all have themes of race.

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I’m notoriously bad at remembering TV shows and when they came out but here’s a selection of ones I’m pretty sure I enjoyed during the past year.
 

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Cinema – Best Of 2023

20th December 2023 · 2020s, 2023, Film, Books

Lots of good films this year, and a massive revival in cinema receipts thanks largely to an old-fashioned head-to-head with Barbenheimer over the summer. And I’ve just noticed that five of my top ten have female directors, which must mean #MeToo has had some sort of impact in cinema.

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The Royal Hotel – Film Review

The Royal Hotel is a slow-building mystery thriller about two female backpackers who find themselves at the mercy of Aussie men at their worst after taking a holiday job behind the bar of an Outback watering hole, in Australian film-maker Kitty “The Assistant” Green’s second feature-length assault on toxic masculinity.

Killers Of The Flower Moon

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone

Screenplay: Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese.

Running time: 206 minutes.

I confess I had some apprehension over its length, but Killers Of The Flower Moon is well worth the numb bum. And we can surely expect Oscar nominations for the three principals – De Niro, DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone – as well as Scorsese himself.

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AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs Of Marc Bolan & T.Rex – Film Review

 
This was a year in which the broadsheet film reviewers doled out 5-star reviews like candy to kids on an almost weekly basis, creating high expectations for the year in cinema.
 

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Like most of us, I imagine, I spent a lot of time watching the telly over the course of this year. These were my favourites and I think they demonstrate pretty clearly why anyone who wants to “defund the BBC” is an idiot.

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