The Glass Castle (Amazon) is an impressive tale of a hardscrabble American family struggling to stay afloat under an alcoholic father (Woody Harrelson). He’s continually enabled in his dysfunctionality by his ever-jolly wife (Naomi Watts). His children seem to have an incredible ability to soak up punishment. His favourite one is played by Brie Larson.…

I was so taken with Wildlife (Netflix) I bought the book after seeing it. It’s written by Richard Ford, an author I wasn’t familiar with. It’s so beautifully written I went on a trawl for everything else by him afterwards. I urge you to check him out. He writes like Hemingway. I can think of…

You’ve probably all seen The Crown by now. I enjoyed it but like many of the mini-series on Netflix it was anything but ‘mini’. I also thought John Lithgow was far too tall for Winston Churchill though his performance is solid. We’ve been so spoiled by some of the recently brilliant depictions of Churchill on…

Bono was sitting beside Sophia Loren on a plane once when a lightning bolt flashed through the sky. She leapt into his arms in terror. “Don’t worry,” the U2 frontman assured her, “That’s just God taking your photograph.” It’s hard to believe the 86-year-old star is still acting. The term “living legend” is over-used but…

The year had hardly begun when Covid-19 struck. It changed the way we viewed films. Social distancing wasn’t as much of a problem in cinemas as it was in pubs or at rock concerts but it still took away from the experience. The ‘reel’ thing wasn’t the ‘real’ thing anymore. People steeped themselves in boxsets,…

As someone who grew up within 100 yards of two cinemas, I was going to films almost as soon as I could walk. If someone told me I wouldn’t be in one more than a dozen times this year I’d probably have told them to send for the men in the white coats. But that’s…

In the aftermath of one of the most controversial and divisive presidential elections in American history, it might be an opportune time to survey what President Trump did in his four years in office. There are a number of DVDs on Amazon that deal both with his presidency and his life up to it. There’s…

Anyone interested in seeing good films has to think outside the box – no pun intended – in a wish to avoid the dross that’s often inflicted on us on the terrestrial TV channels. Thanks to Netflix, live streaming and other digital platforms I’ve been mentioning recently there are thankfully more choices available to us…

The recent closure of Cineworld provided proof, not that it was needed, that the film industry is on its knees today. But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. Online companies have made a killing, as I said a fortnight ago in this page,  due to the large numbers of people watching films from…

While the new NPHET restrictions are of course necessary to get to the bottom of this whodunit we call Covid-19, they do raise the old questions of why the familiar fall guys (churches, cinemas, etc.) have again been targeted. Is the elephant in the room not the secondary schools?  They opened in late August and…