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 Yesterday

Richard Curtis’ Beatles rom-com Yesterday was the film of the week much earlier today on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

Danny Boyle may be the director but this is a Richard Curtis film, and it would be much better if it weren’t. A world in which The Beatles have been erased from existence save for the memory of one struggling musician is a high concept comedy, but Curtis insists on making it a ho-hum rom-com. Kevin Willmott’s CSA showed that you have to rein in the butterfly effect for alternate history because everything would become unfamiliar. Would the Beach Boys be as important without Pet Sounds, their riposte to the Beatles? Curtis displays no such interest, save an Oasis joke, in exploring the butterfly effect of his own bloody high concept. Kate McKinnon is the most reliably comic element of this film, and she is lip-smackingly playing a caricature record executive – Hunter S Thompson’s famous jibe mixed with notes of her SNL Hillary Clinton. But then all the characters in this film are caricatures. This poses a problem when Curtis wants you to care about the romance as if it involved characters with some humanity.

The romance is already scuppered by Jack (Himesh Patel) and Elly (Lily James) patently having the chemistry of hopeless dreamer and dutiful girlfriend in the opening scenes, until it’s bafflingly revealed they’re just friends. They do not hold themselves as fast platonic friends like Holmes and Watson in Elementary. When she complains she always wanted more, and Curtis writes improbable scenes doggedly making this fetch happen he, like Nick Hornby in Juliet, Naked, defies the felt experience of human nature. But this aggravating drive to the grand romantic gesture reaches a new low for Curtis. GK Chesterton once quipped that art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. I draw the line at Curtis; in the vein of his Doctor Who episode in which he shamefully zipped Van Gogh to the future to hear Bill Nighy valorise him then returned him to the past to kill himself to general hand-wringing; resurrecting the murdered John Lennon as septuagenarian sage giving Jack a pep talk to make the finale’s grand romantic gesture. No… No. No. No!

Listen here: