4 Stars

When thinking of great films starring the legend that is Jack Nicholson, few would immediately name this 1973 cult classic. However, Jack himself considers this his finest moment on screen, famously stating "I did it in that movie. That was my best role". When you watch this largely unheralded gem again now, it's not hard to see why.  At the dawn of 'New Hollywood', Hal Ashby became quite an important figure. However, by 1973 he was coming off the back of the abject failur

"I hate tennis." - Andre Agassi  The sports autobiography. It is a tough nut to crack. They often find themselves falling somewhere between 'mildly disappointing' and 'woeful'. For further reading on the matter, there is a fantastically hilarious piece written by the great David Foster Wallace on why this appears to be the case (the appropriately titled 'How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart'). The abbreviated conclusion is along the lines that what makes these people outstandin

At the time of it's release, what is now known as 'the heist movie' was just starting to find it's cinematic feet. After relative successes like 'Ocean's Eleven' and 'The Italian Job' in the 60s, Sam Peckinpah's 'The Getaway' (1972) became something of a box office hit, thus opening the door for more of the like. Because as we all know, when Hollywood finds something that works, they'll rinse the living arse out of it until it don't work no more. 

Sam Fender, also known as the Geordie Springsteen, has been blazing a trail since his 2019 debut 'Hypersonic Missiles'. Despite looks that could land him on Love Island, Fender is a unique beast. His music is what should be a very unfashionable brand of whole-hearted Americana, but instead of talking about the lost wheat fields of Kansas, the subject matter very much focuses on working class life in the UK, particularly his own upbringing living largely below the poverty line

"So I was sitting in my cubicle today and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life." Before Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant's 'The Office' there was 'Office Space', one of the first films to satirize the mundane realities of life in an average workplace. At the time of it's creation, Mike Judge was riding high off the ba

Politics has always been a tricky subject to represent in a meaningful way. The problem is, by and large, that the subjects involved are almost beyond portrayal a lot of the time, such is the vacuous, used car salesman veneer of most politicians on the entire planet. How do you tell stories about non-people pretending to be people? The best efforts are often satirical (2009's 'In The Loop' being a fine example) or overly-glossy and not realistic (any episode of 'The West Wing

“You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle” This book, now a popular series on Netflix, is a romantic comedy steeped very much in the Richard Curtis / Nick Hornby tradition of middle class white people doing middle class white people things. On paper, this sounds potentially irritating, instead it's written in such an earn

To try and categorise the music of Ween is really an exercise in futility. To say their music crosses many genres is a massive understatement - it's more like they fully become a different band with every song, unless we're talking about something like their 1996 release '12 Golden Country Greats' wherein the band go full-on spit and sawdust for an entire album. This genre-bending style culminated, in the opinion of many, in 1997's 'The Mollusk' - widely considered to be thei