Great Depression | the m0vie blog

433. City Lights (#54)

Posted on August 30, 2025 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, with week with special guest Síomha McQuinn, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This week, Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights.

In a city, a tramp has a series of unlikely encounters with an eccentric millionaire and a blind flower girl that set in motion a series of bizarre and unlikely adventures.

At time of recording, it was ranked 54th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: blind flower girl, charlie chaplin, cinematic history, city, City Lights, early cinema, episodic structure, filmmaking influence, Great Depression, Humor, imdb, new york, podcast, production, síomha mcquinn, silent cinema, silent film, social commentary, Tramp | Leave a comment »

307. The Grapes of Wrath (#232)

Posted on October 9, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, with special guests Aoife Martin, Jason Coyle and Ronan Doyle, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath.

Released from prison after serving four years, Tom Joad returns to his family’s farm in Oklahoma to discover that it has been utterly changed by the Great Depression. He joins his family on a road trip westward, towards the new opportunities waiting for them in California. However, the Joads very quickly discover that their push westward may not deliver them to a promised land.

At time of recording, it was ranked 232nd on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: american, aoife martin, California, dustbowl, Great Depression, henry fonda, immigration, jason coyle, John Ford, john steinbeck, migration, new deal, okies, ronan doyle, the grapes of wrath | Leave a comment »

274. Modern Times (#40)

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Dean Buckley, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

So this week, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.

A factory worker suffers a psychotic breakdown on the assembly line, and loses his job. Upon recovery, he very quickly finds himself swept up in a series of misadventures that reflect the rapidly changing balance between human labour and industrialisation. Is there still room for the lovable tramp in a society so dramatically reinventing itself?

At time of recording, it was ranked 40th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: change, charlie chaplin, dean buckley, Great Depression, history, humanity, industrialisation, machines, mechanisation, memory, modern times, nostalgia, paulette goddard, romance, silent cinema, sound, talkies, The 250, the great depression, the great recession, the tramp | Leave a comment »

123. The Sting (#100)

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week joined by special guest Gerry Mooney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This time, George Roy Hill’s The Sting.

When a simple con leads to horrific consequences, amateur con artist Johnny Hooker vows to avenge himself on crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Enlisting the help of over-the-hill veteran Henry Gondorff and a motley crew of small-time hoods, Hooker sets in motion an elaborate con game with potentially disastrous consequences.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 100th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: con artists, film, gerry mooney, Great Depression, Movie, new hollywood, nostalgia, Paul Newman, podcast, Robert Redford, the sting | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Highwaymen

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Darren

The Highwaymen is an uneven and clumsy piece of work.

In many ways, The Highwaymen positions itself as a logical extension of the modern deconstructive western, the tales of men on the edge of the frontier grappling with the challenges of modernity. Sometimes, those stories are set in the old west as it faces massive social shifts; The Sisters Brothers is a recent, effective example. Sometimes, these stories unfold in a more contemporary setting featuring characters still processing how the world has moved past them; Hell or High Water may be the best of the recent examples. The Highwaymen positions itself somewhere on the spectrum between the two; an early scene has the Governor of Texas offering an elevator pitch for the entire film, “It’s 1934, Lee, and you wanna put cowboys on Bonnie and Clyde?”

This is the basic premise of The Highwaymen, and it is a good one. It is two different American archetypes thrown into stark opposition with one another, a story that pits two of the last cowboys in the old west against a newer and hungrier breed of American outlaw. The Highwaymen is the story of the two Texas Rangers drafted out of retirement to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde. Forget Monsters vs. Aliens or Cowboys and Aliens or Alien vs. Predator, this is a pop cultural match-up for the ages. It is cowboys versus gangsters. (It might be more accurate to describe Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as “public enemies”, but “cowboys versus public enemies” is not quite so evocative.)

With all of this in mind, it is disappointing that The Highwaymen feels so hollow.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Great Depression, Kevin Costner, Movie, non-review review, review, the highwaymen, thirties | 2 Comments »

96. Paper Moon (#229)

Posted on September 1, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode thrown in.

This time, Peter Bogdonavich’s Paper Moon.

Mose is a two-bit hustle who is passing through town in time to visit a funeral for an old flame. While there, the woman’s young daughter is thrown into his care. Mose immediately denies paternity of the precocious and intelligent young Adie, but the pair quick gel as they embark upon a string of hustles across Depression-era America.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 229th best movie of all-time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: family, Great Depression, Oscars, paper moon, Peter Bogdanovich, ryan o'neal, tatum o'neal | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Daleks in Manhattan (Review)

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Daleks in Manhattan originally aired in 2007.

We must evolve! Evolve! Evolve!

– Dalek Sec has perhaps the most out-of-character moment for a Dalek ever

The concept of Daleks in the past is a great idea. However, with the exception of Evil of the Daleks, it is also a bit of a tricky one. Steven Moffat found that out with the first Dalek story of his tenure, Victory of the Daleks, bringing the Daleks to the Second World War. However, Russell T. Davies tried telling a Dalek story set in the past as part of the show’s third season. The Parting of the Ways had featured a Dalek story set in the future, while Doomsday saw the fiends lay siege to modern-day London. Placing the Daleks in 1930s New York seems a staggeringly ambitious proposition.

It’s a hell of a town…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Andrew Garfield, arts, Bad Wolf, bbc, Dalek, doctor, DoctorWho, Empire State Building, Great Depression, Helen Raynor, Hooverville, Manhattan, Miranda Raison, New World, new york, russell t. davies, science fiction, steven moffat, tardis, United States | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Water for Elephants

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Darren

Water for Elephants is undoubtedly a well made film from a technical point of view. It stylishly evokes a collective memory of Depression-era America with a skilled romanticism, all beautifully staged and designed, scored with music clearly intended to tug at the heart-strings. However, despite the technical proficiency with which the film is crafted, it ends up feeling ultimately quite lifeless, and a little stale – like a mediocre circus, the movie is stylish and momentarily distracting, but it never manages to grasp its audience, or to engage.