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285. Trainspotting (#173)

Posted on May 21, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Emma Kiely, 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, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting.

Using heroin to numb the pain of simply existing, Mark Renton drifts through a series of episodic adventures in nineties Edinburgh. Renton and his friends find themselves caught up in a web of sex, violence, drug abuse and existential malaise, grappling with challenges both large and small as they struggle to make it out the other side of their experiences.

At time of recording, it was ranked 173rd on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: 1990s, addiction, britain, choose life, cool britannia, danny boyle, drugs, Edinburgh, emma kiely, ewan bremner, ewan mcgregor, heroin, irvine welsh, johnny lee miller, Kelly Macdonald, new labour, nineties, podcast, robert carlyle, Scotland, thatcher, The 250 | Leave a comment »

Millennium – Human Essence (Review)

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Darren

This July, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the sixth season of The X-Files and the third (and final) season of Millennium.

Human Essence is the second (and final) script from Michael Duggan. It is also, notably, the first episode of the third season not to credit Duggan as an “executive producer” before the final credits.

Human Essence is a terrible episode of television. However, it is interesting to note that it is mostly terrible in ways that generic television can be terrible. The third season of Millennium is often terrible because of decisions or realities imposed by or resulting from creative decisions relating to the show itself. In the case of something like Through a Glass Darkly, the terribleness results from a perfect storm of vices associated with Millennium as a show. The Innocents and Exegesis are hobbled by choices made about the direction of the show.

Here there be monsters…

Human Essence is terrible in a much more generic way. It would be a terrible episode of just about any television show. One of the problems with the episode is that it feels like it could easily be a terrible episode of just about any television show. With some light revisions, Human Essence could easily become a terrible episode of The X-Files or a terrible episode of Law & Order. Change the character names, tweak the dialogue a little. It wouldn’t take more than some light scrubbing to remove any hint of Millennium from the script.

However, it would take significantly more scrubbing to get the smell of crap off the script.

Yeah. We’re hip.

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Filed under: Millennium | Tagged: drugs, drugs are bad, emma hollis, frank black, heroin, human essence, michael duggan, millennium, racism, worst episode ever | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: La French (The Connection)

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2015.

La French (aka The Connection) looks and sounds beautiful.

Working with cinematographer Laurent Tangy, director Cédric Jimenez manages to capture the scenic beauty of seventies Marseilles. The classic architecture, the sea views, even the hot night spots all look absolutely stunning. Le French manages to capture the crisp feeling of the late seventies without ever feeling stylised or staged. Similarly, Jimenez manages to pull together a beautifully evocative soundtrack, with songs as distinct as Call Me and This Bitter Earth helping to underscore emotionally-charged sequences and giving the film a sense of style and taste.

La French is a stylishly-constructed crime thriller that stretches from the south of France to New York and back again, a family loosely inspired by the infamous “French Connection” that fed drugs into France and overseas to the United States. However, despite its obvious overlap with William Friedkin’s The French Connection, it seems like Jimenez owes more to the work of filmmakers like Michael Mann or Martin Scorcese, constructing a crime epic that flows beautifully and effortlessly, with an impressive soundtrack complimenting a dynamic visual style.

This is perhaps the biggest problem with La French, a sense that there might actually be too much style – that the film may occasionally feel a little too hollow or detached from its twin leads. However, Jimenez cleverly casts Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche in the lead roles, who help anchor the film with a sense of humanity that only occasionally gets lost in the film’s beautifully-crafted production.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: crime, drugs, film, French, heroin, Jean Dujardin, la french, Movie, non-review review, review, the connection, the french connection, thriller | 2 Comments »

Interview: Grace Dyas of THEATREclub

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Darren

I had a chance to talk to Grace Dyas on Friday evening during rehearsals for her show HEROIN, which will be playing at axis, Ballymun from next Thursday (you can get more info here). Grace is a third of the theatre company known as THEATREclub, which she co- founded in November 2008. The group found huge success bringing one of her earlier plays, ROUGH, to Ballymun last year. With HEROIN winning the “Spirit of the Fringe” award at ABSOLUT FRINGE last year, and Grace picking up the Fishamble New Writing Award for ROUGH the year before, I think it’s safe to say that the company’s energy is only matched by their ability.