criticism
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Monday – Octopussy Let us consider, if you will, a climactic action scene from the film Octopussy. Roger Moore’s Agent 007, having tumbled from a train while chasing down the villains, has rushed across Germany by hitchhiking and stealing cars. Upon finally reaching the military base that is soon to be obliterated…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Monday – For Your Eyes Only Much as I love the elevated tone and casual irreverence of most of the Bond films so far, watching one suddenly take itself completely seriously was a real eye-opener, especially right after the series reached the absolute pinnacle of camp fun with Moonraker. For Your Eyes…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Before we get into this week’s reviews, I’d like to point you in the direction of another piece I wrote recently for the wonderful UCC Film Writers Blog. Have you ever wondered what the deal is with the Wachowski Sisters? Good news! I’ve slapped together 3000 words of a whirlwind beginners guide…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan I have a complicated relationship with the music biopic. On the one hand, I’m well aware of their limitations and foibles, and exceedingly wary of the deluge of low-quality rush jobs that have proliferated in recent years. Dewey Cox was very much the last word on the genre years before it truly…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Monday – Liar Liar, Rear Window and Airplane! While Jim Carrey has often proved perfectly capable of giving grounded, dialled-back performances when the film called for it, this is an interesting beast – a perfectly ordinary, straightforwardly sentimental story that Carrey plays to the absolute maximum of his comic buffoonery. It’s as…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Monday – Whisky Galore and The Spy Who Loved Me I’ll generally concede that the British make great comedy, but this wasn’t it. Whisky Galore should be an anarchic good time, and is advertised as a subversive anti-authority piece, but it feels too entrenched in the sensibilities of its time to work…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Monday – Love Lies Bleeding Would you rather watch a sincere outcast love story, a surreal body horror or a traumatic gang thriller? With Love Lies Bleeding, you get all three at once – which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Each component is well-done and full of memorable moments, but it never…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan It’s weeks like these that I begin to question this entire format. Ah well. Monday – All That Jazz and Anger Management Feverish and sweaty, the feature-length nightmare of a dying man who cannot stop even if he wants to. Sharply edited in a way that keeps the fragmented story understandable. So…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Monday – The Man With The Golden Gun Fun fact if you weren’t already aware – not only was Christopher Lee the first choice of author Ian Fleming for the role of Bond, he was also Fleming’s cousin and one of the real-life inspirations for the character. Lee served as an intelligence…
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by Oscar O’Sullivan Who else here saw Challengers earlier this year and had their minds blown? The trio of stunning performances, the perfectly paced non-linear story, the pounding electronic score, precise camera and rhythmic editing – it’s one of the year’s very best, yet it seems to have fallen by the wayside in the awards…
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