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

Notes on The Aftermath

Keira Knightley’s new post-war romance was the film of the week much earlier today on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

The Aftermath seems to be attempting to surf on the eddies left by Atonement, but this is a far more muted drama, and its startlingly more explicit affair comes out of nowhere. Indeed one imagines that pages 55 and 75 had been stapled in reverse order in the shooting script. Knightley’s character lost her son in the Blitz, Alexander Skarsgaard lost his wife in the firebombing of Hamburg. Yet there is no reason for her jumping from ‘I hate the Germans, they killed my son’ to jumping Skarsgaard. But if only it had come after the film’s best scene, where Knightley plays the piano. The first time she has properly played since her son died, using the copy of Debussy’s Claire de Lune inscribed by Skarsgaard’s dead wife. As Skarsgaard’s daughter joins in, and all are then reduced to tears by Knightley’s broken monologue about her dead son Skarsgaard sits down to comfort her. That scene should precede their affair…

Listen here: