The Revenant (2015)

A revenant is someone who has returned from the dead. It’s also often quite a difficult enemy to defeat in role-playing games like D&D. The Revenant is a film about men with beards and would make a good advertisement for frozen fish if it weren’t far too long. There’s easily a half hour to an hour of material that could be removed and this would make it a much better film – one I might even recommend.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Well. The Best Years of Our Lives is quite a film. It runs for about two hours and fifty minutes but it’s not long – there’s hardly a moment wasted. Long films are the ones full of emptiness like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Dark Knight and Inception. This isn’t a film full of pretentious, self-important speeches and a whole load of assorted other shit the Joker got up to the other day. It’s about what happens when men come back from war but its strongest characters are women.

Wonder Bar (1934)

Wonder Bar is about the musical numbers. They’re pretty elaborate, especially one with many dancers surrounded by mirrors. Its visually arresting in a way that a dancing CGI army wouldn’t be. It’s certainly not to my tastes, however, and I was glad whenever the acts within the film ended.

Aughavannagh – Lugnaquilla Adventure

2/1/2016: With the folk I usually walk with missing in inaction, I thought I’d try out a route I couldn’t convince anyone to do – Lugnaquilla (925m) from the south (Aughavannagh), taking in the ridges surrounding the Ow river valley. My planned route was about 18km with around 1,000m of ascent, so I started walking along the forest road in light drizzle not long after sunrise. There would only be about 7.5 hours until sunset (Ireland is 53 degrees north). It was quite mild with no wind so I didn’t bother with anything over or under my shorts. I would follow the river up the valley before crossing it and cutting up onto Aughavannagh mountain. Since there’d been so much rain over the last weeks the Ow was very full and it was apparent from the beginning that I’d have to cross quite a bit higher than planned.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

“Long before we had this title, the idea of The Force Awakens was that this would become the evolution of not just a hero, but a villain. Star Wars had the greatest villain in cinema history. So, how you bring a new villain into that world is a very tricky thing. We knew we needed to do something fucking bold. The only reason why Kylo Ren has any hope of being a worthy successor is because we lose one of the most beloved characters.” – J.J. Abrams

I thought it had been established that cheaply killing off a character for mere emotional impact was recognised as plain bad writing. Traditionally it has been a wife, girlfriend, daughter or red-shirted security guard that gets it, but in The Force Awakens it’s