Film, TV & Book Reviews

Secrets in stories, whether on page or screen, are tricky things. Everyone knows that in real life, people keep secrets irrationally, not to say stupidly, and that’s just how ...

With July rolling along, summer is in full swing, much like my air conditioning settings, and we suddenly find ourselves with more time on our hands. Lazy August is just ...

In The Waterfront, the latest drama created by Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek, The Vampire Diaries, and Scream) we see a grounded portrayal of a family-run business on the verge ...

By Philippa Tracy Hidden Valley Road is the story of an American family striving for the American dream. There are 12 children: two girls and 10 boys, six diagnosed with schizophrenia, one ...

I was never a big fan of culture wars. I have always considered it to be a distraction from the real issues, such as systemic oppression, and an attempt to ...

DCI Carl Morck is beyond grumpy. The kind of grumpy you really wish you could get away with, but politeness means you can’t. He is the lead of a ...

It takes some guts to write a novel in which your narrator and central character is a comedian, for the simple reason that to pull the character off, you need ...

“Superhero films are dead!” That’s the tired cry we’ve heard from critics for years now, so often, in fact, that it’s become meaningless. Despite the headlines, superhero ...

The Diplomat opens with a bang — literally. Minutes into the two-season series, a British aircraft carrier is bombed off the coast of Iran, killing dozens of sailors and triggering an ...

‘You weren’t supposed to suddenly get a new family at eleven o’clock on a Saturday after you’d sold out of eggs.’ So much of Kevin Wilson’s ...

In an era dominated by sequels, trilogies, franchises, reboots and prequels, getting an original idea greenlit is next to impossible. Today, product recognition is everything. If audiences can’t instantly ...

Zero Day is an American political thriller, in which Robert De Niro stars as former US president George Mullen, who is called out of retirement and given free rein in ...

Featuring a musical performance by Lady Gaga, a surprise drop by Adam Sandler and a soaring stock, Netflix wrapped up this year’s TUDUM show – the streaming behemoth’s annual ...

By Philippa Tracy On a recent trip to Dublin I picked up a copy of Amongst Women by John McGahern, considered his finest novel and described by some as a ‘...

An asylum seeker caught in between lands, jobs and mountains of paperwork. Sounds familiar? It’s a story we’ve heard all too often in the past few years, and ...

Of the many ways in which I unintentionally broadcast my lack of coolness to the world, the one we’ll talk about this week is my blind and rabid excitement ...

Netflix’s latest true-crime docuseries Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders peels back the sealed lid on one of America’s most terrifying unsolved cases. This three-part series, out on Monday, ...

There are a lot of people who, typically as a result of their own ignorance, tend to dismiss philosophy as navel-gazing solipsism. The immediately flippant counter to these people is ...

Last week, we peeled back the curtain on some of Hollywood’s myths regarding movies. From behind-the-scenes shenanigans (including actual assault) to misconceptions about legendary improvisations, it turns out you ...

Eccentric detective and avid birdwatcher Cordelia Cupp is called to the White House during a state banquet to solve the murder of the chief usher. Binoculars in hand, she proceeds ...

By Philippa Tracy Who was Eileen O’Shaughnessy? She is perhaps better known as the first wife of writer George Orwell (Eric Blair). In a particularly burdensome moment of what ...

The IMDB trivia page is a fascinating place, where one has the rare chance to take a sneak peek at what’s happening behind the scenes of each movie. Not ...

Netflix’s The Four Seasons, co-created by Tina Fey, turns Alan Alda’s 1981 film into a smart, eight-part series about the ups and downs of long-term friendship and marriage. It ...

George Eliot describes marriage as both a ‘bourne’ and ‘a great beginning’ at the end of Middlemarch, in which we see examples of marriages as both endings and beginnings. Kate ...