Leigh: Hard Truths (2024)
Hard Truths is the work of a master operating at full capacity. Like most of Mike Leigh’s other films it revolves around a collection of lower-middle class characters. In [...]
November 2024
Berger: Conclave (2024)
Edward Berger’s Conclave feels like a throwback to two distinct 90s modes: the mid-budget adult thriller and the corporate Vatican thriller. It’s about a papal conclave [...]
Van Morrison, Versatile (2017)
Released only three months after Roll With the Punches, Versatile couldn’t be any more different in its sound. This is an easy listening album, even smoother than What’s [...]
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962)
I’ve made a shift to an e-reader (a Kobo) over the last month and it’s been a much easier transition than I was expecting. I do miss the tactility and sensuality of [...]
The X-Files, Season 3, Episode 16: “Colony” (February 10, 1995)
“Colony” is the most pivotal moment in The X-Files’s mythology since the pilot – in fact, it is effectively a second pilot. Even from the vantage point of our [...]
Van Morrison, Roll With the Punches (2017)
Roll With the Punches feels like a spiritual sequel of sorts to Pay the Devil. Both albums see Van Morrison moving away from the “close enough for jazz” sound of his [...]
The X-Files, Season 3, Episode 15: “Fresh Bones” (February 3, 1995)
“Fresh Bones” has a ghostly, half-formed quality, although that works quite well with its fixation with the threshold between life and death. It draws heavily on Wes [...]
The X Files, Season 3, Episode 14: “Die Hand Die Vertletz” (January 27, 1995)
Towards the end of the last episode, “Irresistible,” Mulder and Scully reflected that the serial killer was “extraordinary in his ordinariness.” “Die Hand Die [...]
Van Morrison, Keep Me Singing (2016)
Unlike many of his 60s and 70s singer-songwriter peers, Van Morrison’s voice has grown even more resonant with age, becoming deeper and richer without losing any of its [...]
Van Morrison, Duets: Revisiting the Catalogue (2015)
Some of Van Morrison’s best work in the 2000s had been covers, especially on his country album Pay the Devil, while his 2010s work would see him revisiting certain tracks [...]