Stuff and Things

The films of Alexander Payne usually feature a few things. Typically there is a male lead, somewhere in their middle ages, quite often kicked around by life and verging on full-blown curmudgeonism. Whether being played by Matthew Broderick ('Election' 1996), Bruce Dern ('Nebraska' 2013) or George Clooney ('The Descendants' 2011), there tends to be a similar protagonist at the core of most of his work. The most memorable of these characters, in my book, was Miles Raymond - portrayed brilliantly by Paul Giamatti in 2004's brilliant 'Sideways' and Giamatti makes his return in this film to team up with Payne once again.  Here he plays a lecturer at a a prestigious boarding school somewhere in deepest WASP country, USA. He is a professor of ancient history; an extremely well-read, authoritarian presence who seems to deeply resent the privileged children he is being forced to attempt to educate. He is also known throughout the school as "Wall-Eye...

'Romance' is the fourth studio album from the Irish outfit and marks their first big swing for the fences. Previously they had made their name with moody angst-ridden post-punk anthems but, while some of that is still present here, this album branches out into grander landscapes and is all the better for it.  Supporting Arctic Monkeys on a vast US Tour has apparently widened the band's scope. Singer Grian Chatten is quoted as saying " I didn't want to write, like, a 'Champagne Supernova' , but I did want to do something that felt like it was deep within and far without." This is clear pretty much from the opening notes of the album. I mmediately you feel the sense of something fresh and different with opening track 'Romance'. Ominous Nirvana-esque guitars give way to even more ominous chimes and gigantic horn blasts. "Into the darkness again..." Chatten purrs, like some sort of neon Willy Wonka pulling you into the weird and wonderf...

I once heard a joke that the Irish are the only race of people who would be so light-hearted that they can name a bloody thirty-year conflict "the troubles". Most of the battles took place in the city of Belfast, a place still staunchly divided today between Irish and British nationalists and one of the major losses of the war is the slow decline of the Irish language itself. As this film points out, there are only 6,000 native Irish speakers in the whole of Northern Ireland and more people speak Polish. Leave it to this film, an utterly frenzied, drug-fuelled extravaganza to bring this issue to the fore.  Rich Peppiatt's directing debut begins knowingly with a montage of every story you usually see about Belfast - cars blowing up, riots, gangs of balaclava-wearing youths charging the police etc. - but instantly subverts the usual narrative with the narration "Every f*ckin' story about Belfast starts like this, but not this one. And don't be actin the f*ckin...

Since the release of their debut album (2017's 'Brutalism'), Bristol-based IDLES have steadily ascended the musical ranks with their defiant style of angry rock (but don't call it punk, they don't like that), culminating in a magnificent headline set at Glastonbury 2024. While they built their name on predominantly boot-stomping riot starters, over time the band have started to explore the quieter side of their capabilities. So much so that legendary producer/atmosphere master Nigel Godrich was brought in for their latest studio effort. Of this unexpected melding of minds, Godrich said  " I see this band, I see them perform, and I see Joe who’s a star. And I thought it would be interesting to see how they would translate if he was a little bit more musical, if he sang more".  The result is 'Tangk', the band's fifth album and by far their most accessible collection of songs to date.  It begins with pure Godrich atmos on opening track 'IDEA 0...

With the recent, Eddie Redmayne-fronted, re-release of this story in a big budget TV format, it seems now might be an appropriate time to revisit the original film that inspired the series.  A co-production of the UK and France (showing that sometimes we can get along) and based on a Frederick Forsyth novel of the same name, this film is a political thriller telling the story of an attempted assassination attempt on General Charles De Gaulle. Although it is based on real characters and organisations that were indeed active in France in the 1960s, the plot itself is fictional and tells the story of a mysterious contract killer, known only as 'Jackal' who is hired by a paramilitary group to assassinate the general based on the conceding of Algeria, which happened at this time.  Edward Fox plays Jackal and he begins as the quintessential English spy type. Posh, handsome and always immaculately turned out. As the film progresses, however, we begin to see that it's not all just ...

"So I've decided to take my work back underground....to stop it falling into the wrong hands."  Before The Prodigy became a worldwide sensation, with Keith Flint becoming a cyber-punk poster boy and even your granny knowing the lyrics to "Firestarter", there was this: four maniacs from the illegal rave scene in deepest Essex. Their first album ('Experience', 1992) took the rave from the abandoned warehouses and shot it into the mainstream. Their unexpected breakout hits 'Charly' and 'Out of Space' made them instant stars of the genre and the whole vibe was one of hippy, dippy drug-fueled fun. This album immediately takes a darker tone, opening with weird industrial groans that sound like they are coming from a subterranean lair somewhere, followed by the noise of a typewriter and a man saying the words that open this review, thus immediately vaulting you into some sort of post-apocalyptic dungeon party put on by a mad genius. This is not ...

“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.” This book came to my attention recently when hearing, of all people, Joe Talbot (lead singer of vicious post-modern punk band IDLES) saying how much of an influence it had been on their work. Considering their music, this was an intriguing concept. Based on the title and packaging, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this book is a new-age journey through shakras and crystal moons. Indeed you will likely find this book in the self-help section of your local Waterstones, which is greatly misleading. This is an incredibly wise, brave and profound treatise about love not just in the terms that we might know it, as something that just happens to us, but as a concept that can drive the very essence of what it means to be alive.  Bell Hooks herself was a world-renowned theor...

Christopher Nolan is probably the single best director working in film and television today. He has reached that rarified space wherein his name alone warrants an immediate green light from studios and guarantees box-office draw. His films are generally always pushing the envelope of what a big budget studio blockbuster can be and he is one of only a few working directors today for whom you drop everything and insist on seeing his latest release at the cinema. Such was the case with 'Oppenheimer'. Even without knowing its plot, you instantly felt the need to go and see this film in massive IMAX glory. This was the case for myself and the venue I went to had the sound dialed to the point that it shook the chairs we were sitting in. Fitting for a film about nuclear bombs.  Cillian Murphy plays real-life quantum physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, considered the father of the atomic bomb, and this film delves pretty deep into his personal life, his brilliance, and the haunting effect...

Someone once said that romantic comedies are the hardest stories to execute, because you always know how it's going to end. Therefore it becomes about the journey and, for many romantic comedies, the chemistry between your two leads. Some films go for sweeping romance (The Notebook, Titanic etc), some go for something reflective of the times (The Apartment, 500 Days of Summer etc.), and some go for appealing to as many people as possible. This film certainly falls in the latter category. It makes no attempts to be anything other than a feel-good romantic comedy that everyone can enjoy.   While this in itself is okay, you find yourself fully dependent on the strength of your two leads. In this case, the boy and girl on a complicated path to love and happiness are portrayed by Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell - two near-perfect physical specimens because god forbid we should ever want to watch two people who look terrible naked lead this kind of story - and the key question become...

The sad irony of this title, contrary to what a lot of people think, actually has nothing to do with the untimely passing of the man formerly known as Biggie a few weeks before the release of this album. This double-LP was actually finished weeks before he was unfortunately gunned down in the streets of Los Angeles and serves as a direct narrative follow-on from his platinum selling debut 'Ready To Die'.  The first album ends with a self-inflicted gunshot and one of the darker tracks in hip hop history. That moment is re-lived in the 'Intro' of this album, but now we see what happens next. Hence the title 'Life After Death'....see? We hear Puff Daddy at his artist's side begging him to pull through, but it is all futile as the beeps of the life support machine eventually go flat and we slip into the afterlife, thus beginning the album proper. Obviously the parallels with real-life here are impossible to ignore and tough to swallow at first. But separating ar...

Even if you've never seen Don Siegel's 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, you probably will be aware of it's titular character and his famous quote:  "I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking 'Did he fire six shots or only five?'  Now to tell you the truth, I've forgotten myself in all this excitement.  But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and will blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?'  Well, do ya, punk?"   That iconic scene has become part of cinema history and rightly so. It is phenomenal. But what about the movie itself? Is 'Dirty Harry' a classic?  Set in San Fransisco, the story follows Eastwood's character, who is the archetypal hard-boiled detective - refusing to play by the rules but, damnit, getting results. He is singular to the point of being almost superhuman. You just get the sense that no matter the odds, with his trus...

“I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.” Jon Ronson is an investigative journalist who shot to fame when his first book 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' became not only a best-seller, but also a major Hollywood film starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey. Quite the cast. Here he turns his microscope to what it means to be considered a psychopath, within both society and the mental health industry itself.  The central thesis at the heart of this book is that of one Robert D. Hare. Hare is a revered criminal psychologist who, in his works dealing with anti-social personalities, became frustrated at the lack of clarity around what constitutes an actual psychopath and, as a result, came up with the Hare Psychopath Test. This test is a fairly simple list of 20 personality traits. All you have to do is list whether they are absent, likely...

"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride." If you're anything like me, you probably haven't given much thought to how the food actually gets to your plate when ordering in a restaurant. You sit down, you eat, you drink, you soak in the atmosphere, you pay and you leave - either satisfied or not. What doesn't occur is the absolute miracle that has taken place behind those swinging doors for this experience to even take place at all.  Anthony Bourdain's 'Kitchen Confidential' came out in the year 2000 to widespread acclaim. At the time, there were very few, if any, since Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London', first-hand accounts of the machinations at work behind the restaurant industry. This proved to be a thrilling and endlessly fascinating look into a sub-culture most people will never know or be a part of. It serves as both an autobiography of Bourdain himself and a no holds barred exposé of what goes o...

While the world is familiar with Robert Downey Jr, his father is perhaps lesser known. This is both a shame and also the inevitable result of a career which was devoted almost entirely to subversion. Robert Downey Sr was one of the more bizarre filmmakers in history, who developed an absurdist style all of his own and this film explores not only the career of the man but, more importantly, his relationship with his now mega-famous son.  If you familiar with Sr's work, you will know that there isn't much he takes seriously. To give some kind of idea, a rousing speech is delivered in 'Greaser's Palace', one of his more accomplished works. In this speech, the character being referred to has the name "Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger with a side of Aircraft Noise and You'll Be Gary Indiana." This name is mentioned multiple times with a matter of fact-ness as if his name was John. This gives immediate insight into the mind we're dealing with here.  ...