Sepsis attacks more than 250,000 people in the UK every year and 60,000 of these people die. Starfish (Amazon) is the true story of a man who succumbed to it and survived. After a very traumatic period where he almost lost his sanity – and his wife – he came to terms with it. This…

It’s hard to believe Bob Dylan will be 80 on the 24th of this month. He’s ingested so many substances into that hard-travellin’ body of his over the years. There was a time I didn’t think he’d even make it to 50. To quote Kris Kristofferson, another singer-songwriter who has no right to be alive…

Arrah shure isn’t it a grand thing entirely that Lionsgate is after puttin’ Wild Mountain Thyme up for rental?  And shouldn’t we all be dancin’ jigs of delight as we root out our shillelaghs and cloth caps for the occasion. It was originally slated for the cinemas. They’re citing Covid as the reason for the…

“The show must go on.” Notwithstanding the pandemic, the Oscar ceremonies are taking place next Sunday – and not by Zoom as previously thought. They’ll be held at two venues in LA, the familiar Dolby Theatre and outdoors at Union Station. Because of the time difference, in Ireland we’ll have to wait until the news…

Raymond Chandler once said there were only seven plots. Everything else was just variations on a theme. The idea came back to me as I watched the French thriller In the Shadow of Iris (Netflix). It starts interestingly enough with a kidnapping but there are so many convolutions in the storyline afterwards I lost interest…

This is the 70th anniversary of the making of Paramount’s archetypal western Shane, though it wasn’t released until 1953. Anytime I mention it to anyone of my vintage (there are still a few of us around) I get the response, “It was the favourite film of my childhood.” Brandon de Wilde played the young boy…

The Luminaries did nothing for me. If you sewed my eyelids open and strapped me in front of the television I still wouldn’t have been able to watch it. But I enjoyed all six episodes of Behind Her Eyes, Eve Hewson’s latest outing on Netflix. As no doubt you know, she’s Bono’s daughter. It can…

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…