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2024 was a big year for Kendrick Lamar. After winning the softest rap battle ever with Drake ("You need therapy", "No, you need therapy"....what ever happened to 'that's why I f**ked yo' b**ch, you fat motherf**ker'), and being announced as the Superbowl halftime show headliner, things were already shaping up quite well. Then, out of nowhere, he dropped this album just in time to claim back his throne and remind everyone that is the best rapper in the game. All in all, quite

After soaring the heights with 'The French Connection' (1971) and 'The Exorcist' (1973), William Friedkin's next two efforts were considerable box office flops by comparison. This being despite the fact that one of them, 1977 classic 'Sorcerer', is one of the best films of the era. So by 1980, Friedkin found himself in the position of still being a coveted director, but his star was arguably on the decline. The fortunes of Al Pacino, on the other hand, were quite the opposite

Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, David Lean's 1962 behemoth has been described as the "epic to end all epics" and with good reason. Magnificently filmed in Panavision Super 70mm, (which basically results in a massive frame, handy when shooting the infinite abyss of the middle eastern desert) the sheer scale of this film is something to behold. The budget for extras alone must've given the studio bigwigs a mild aneurysm. Simply put, it is massive. 

“As with everything else in my life, I decided that if we were all going to get through this in one piece, I’d better have a sense of humor.” If you're like me, you may have been made aware of this book because of David Fincher's macabre 2017 TV Series of the same name, which is a faithful adaptation of the account of John E. Douglas - creator of the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and allegedly the first person to coin the term "serial killer". 

To give fair warning, this review may turn into somewhat of a self-meditation or, more accurately, a psycho-analytical breakdown of my own personality. Because, in attempting to correctly surmise how loathsome this TV series is, I am continually faced with the existential question of 'why am I still watching it?!' Is there something deep in my psyche that somehow enjoys self-flagellation? Is it being a child of divorce, wherein my inner infant thinks that the disintegration o

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 - por

'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

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