You Have Been Listening To…: Part II

It is the third weekend of a personal hiatus from the radio. There will be no more reviews by me of any kind on Dublin City FM 103.2 till May. But here’s a round-up of links to the previous editions of Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle and a list of the films we discussed on each one if you’re eager to explore the back catalogue.

DECEMBER

Review of 2018 (A Quiet Place) + TV Choice Die Hard 2 + Classic Home Alone

Review of 2018 (Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Goldstone) + TV Choice Spectre + Classic Duck Soup

Review of 2018 (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, The Old Man and the Gun) + TV Choice Skyfall + Classic Home Alone 2

Preview of 2019 (Once Upon A Time in Hollywood) + TV Choice Edge of Tomorrow + Classic The Great Escape

 

JANUARY

BumbleBee + TV Choice John Wick + Classic Blade Runner

Stan & Ollie + TV Choice In the Line of Fire + Classic Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Glass + TV Choice Speed + Classic Heat

Vice + Oscars 2019

 

FEBRUARY

Happy Death Day 2U + TV Choice The Social Network + Classic Tom Jones

Cold Pursuit + TV Choice La La Land + Classic The Taking of Pelham 123

 

MARCH

The Aftermath + TV Choice Hunt for the Wilderpeople + Classic The Third Man

Fighting with my Family + TV Choice Boyhood + Classic The Italian Job

Classic The Enemy Below + Classic The Woman in the Window

Top 10 Films of 2018

10) First Reformed

Ethan Hawke goes green

As only Schrader would think:

God’s taxi driver

9) Hereditary

Artist loses head

When daughter loses her head

Demons are the worst

8) 120 BPM

Click your fingers and

Act Up, throw pig’s blood, shout loud

Fight to save your life

7) Cold War

Love in black and white

Here, there, and everywhere

Polish misery

6) Isle of Dogs

Wes returns to form

Dog lovers of the world – cheer!

(Frost on windowpane)

5) A Quiet Place

Don’t make a sound, and

watch where you step, and accept

kids are your downfall

4) Mission: Impossible – Fallout

A chase, by car, bike,

chopper, on foot, and truly

THE FIGHT for an age

3) Goldstone

Strong silent type cop

ruffles rich Outback feathers

in odd homecoming

2) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Woody H insists

Truth in Advertising has

gone too damn far here

1) The Old Man and the Gun

‘Over the hill’ gang:

Repartee a specialty,

Catch them if you can

They call this screening ‘The Mop’

There is a certain type of film that plays last of all at a multiplex for the purpose of mopping up late-comers and professional procrastinators.

Right now in Movies at Dundrum Blockers is on at 21:20 and A Quiet Place at 21:10. A Quiet Place is the kind of film that fits the archetype of ‘The Mop’, as is Cineworld’s final movie tonight, The Strangers: Prey at Night, on at 22:45. The Mop is usually a horror film. In fact a good deal of Blumhouse’s output (Sinister, The Purge, Happy Death Day, Truth or Dare) would be well-suited to mop purposes. The Mop ought to be a horror film, because it sustains horror week in week out. Horror films aren’t expensive to make. That is the secret of Jason Blum’s success. It is possible to make a very presentable film on the catering budget of a CGI-laden blockbuster. And horror films and late, dithering audiences have an easy to understand and easy to fulfil compact.

The audience that needs to be mopped has arrived without having booked in advance, something which admittedly is becoming less common. They have no firm idea what they’re going to see and are heavily swayed by the times of the films and the times of bus/Luas home. One of my greatest experiences in dithering saw myself, the man behind the online pseudonym E von Ludendorff, and John Fahey begged to leave Cineworld by a security guard who’d  suffered thru too many minutes of arguing over what to see – “Lads! Would you go outside for a few minutes, just DECIDE, and then come back in”. That resulted in an almighty tussle between Saw, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and Shark Tale.

Horror films don’t get much respect outside of Hallowe’en. But, just as Seth Rogen noted it’s easy to tell if a comedy is working as opposed to a drama, it’s quite easy to spot when a horror film is not scary. They are a matter of technique. Think of the sequence in Let Me In where Elias Koteas foolishly moves towards the bloodied door to see what’s behind it while Michael Giacchino’s string orchestration goes into a frenzy. In the hands of someone like Matt Reeves or James Watkins such a sequence is almost unbearably suspenseful. In the hands of a hack, the effect is lost entirely, and you become aware it’s just a guy slowly walking towards a door with a vampire behind it.