You Have Been Listening To… : Part III

It is time to discreetly begin to draw the curtains for Christmas. There will be no more reviews by me of new releases on 103.2 Dublin City FM this year. But here’s a round-up of links to the previous editions of Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle and a list of the many films we discussed since June if you’re eager to explore the back catalogue.

JUNE

X-Men: Dark Phoenix + Classic Ghostbusters II + Classic The Matrix

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/9619-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Balloon + TV Choice The Accountant + Classic Dr Strangelove

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/16619-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Brightburn + TV Choice Dial M for Murder + Classic Mean Girls

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/23619-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Yesterday + TV Choice Casino Royale + Classic Superman II

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/30619-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

JULY

Apollo 11 + TV Choice Bullitt + Classic Rear Window

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/7719-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Stuber + TV Choice Jaws + Classic Ma Nuit Chez Maud

https://soundcloud.com/patrickseandoyle/the-sunday-breakfast-show-film-review-14719

The Current War + TV Choice Arrival + Classic Gone with the Wind

https://soundcloud.com/patrickseandoyle/the-sunday-breakfast-show-film-review

AUGUST

Hobbs & Shaw + TV Choice The Guest + Classic It Happened One Night

https://soundcloud.com/patrickseandoyle/the-sunday-breakfast-show-film-review-1

The Art of Racing in the Rain + TV Choice Patriots Day + Classic Phase IV

https://soundcloud.com/patrickseandoyle/talking-film-on-the-sunday-breakfast-show

Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood + TV Choice Dirty Harry + Classic Army of Shadows

https://soundcloud.com/patrickseandoyle/talking-film-on-the-sunday-breakfast-show-1

Pain and Glory + TV Choice White House Down + Classic Little Women

 SEPTEMBER

Crawl + TV Choice Gone Girl + Classic Whiskey Galore!

IT: Chapter 2 + TV Choice X-Men: Days of Future Past + Classic The Italian Job

https://soundcloud.com/patrickseandoyle/talking-film-on-the-sunday-breakfast-show-2

Extra Ordinary + TV Choice Batman Begins + Classic Ghostbusters

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/15919-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Ad Astra + TV Choice Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me + Classic The Godfather: Part II

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/22919-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Ready or Not + TV Choice L’Avenir + Classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/29919-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

OCTOBER

Joker + Judy + Classic White Heat

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/61019-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Gemini Man + TV Choice Now You See Me + Classic Fight Club

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/131019-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Dark Lies the Island + TV Choice Good Night, and Good Luck + Classic Crimes & Misdemeanours

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/201019-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

Countdown + TV Choice The Shallows + Classic Them!

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/the-halloween-show-with-patrick-doyle/

NOVEMBER

Doctor Sleep + TV Choice Kingsman: The Secret Service + Classic Girl, Interrupted

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/101119-the-sunday-breakfast-show/

Le Mans ’66 + TV Choice Funeral in Berlin + Classic Rio Bravo

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/171119-the-sunday-breakfast-show-with-patrick-doyle/

DECEMBER

Marriage Story + TV Choice World War Z + Classic Field of Dreams

https://www.mixcloud.com/patrickdoyle/

Notes on Marriage Story

Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story was the catch-up film of the week much earlier today on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Michelle Quance/VARIETY/Shutterstock (10404629aa)
Noah Baumbach and Adam Driver
Variety Studio at Toronto International Film Festival, Presented by AT&T, Day 3, Canada – 08 Sep 2019

Adam Driver’s fourth collaboration with Baumbach this decade is a film that is very good, and yet also very hard to recommend. It is a film which will stay with you, from the unusual narrated opening montages, to Driver’s astonishing one-take delivery of a Stephen Sondheim song, to the absurdity of a court appointed observer silently judging a parent without ever having observed how parents handle raising their children. When it is funny it is hilarious, but the emotion and financial agony of a divorce is represented in excruciating detail where throwaway comments are weaponised and Driver’s character ends up accepting the fiction that he has always lived in LA when he has never lived in LA because that’s the narrative the court wants to hear.

Listen here:

Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part XXIII

As the title suggests, so forth.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Michelle Quance/VARIETY/Shutterstock (10404629aa)
Noah Baumbach and Adam Driver
Variety Studio at Toronto International Film Festival, Presented by AT&T, Day 3, Canada – 08 Sep 2019

Contours of the Decade: Noah Baumbach

In the continuing struggle to perhaps impose some sort of order and coherence on a decade of cinema in time to produce a Top 10 list at the end of the year it’s interesting to consider how Noah Baumbach has fared as director. Greenberg, Frances Ha, While We’re Young, Mistress America, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Marriage Story. Six films as writer/director is a pretty good decade’s work by anybody’s estimate, and more so when you realise that only one of those six is not top drawer. It’s been a decade of collaboration, four films with Adam Driver in some capacity, two films with Greta Gerwig as co-writer and star as well as one with her in a supporting role, and three films with Ben Stiller rediscovering his talent. Perhaps most interestingly while critics seemed to shape a narrative that, after the exhaustingly abrasive Greenberg, Baumbach’s films had been given soul by Gerwig, that demonstrably was not the case. Even after While We’re Young it was clear Baumbach was more optimistic even without Gerwig than he had been previously. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) made clear that in fact the change in Baumbach was one of maturity. Where Gerwig without Baumbach stuttered with the cliched and sour Ladybird, Baumbach without Gerwig was operating on a new plane. Compare the fathers played by Jeff Daniels in 2005 and Dustin Hoffman in 2017 and you will be struck by the notion that this is essentially the same character, but now viewed by an older artist with a correspondingly more mature and therefore forgiving eye.