People keep saying they’re earnest – and I suppose they are, though I’m old enough to remember genuine, unbearable, galactic-level earnestness – Live’s “Lightning Crashes,” for instance. Or . . . well, pretty much anything by Live. (I mean, they called a song “The Dolphin’s Cry,” for fuck’s sake.) But Healy’s lyrical…

Finally, some good news.

No, it’s personal now. To the death.

Okay, but come on: Straub-Hulliet is intellectual. Late Rossellini is intellectual. Chungking Express, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The Heartbreak Kid, Multiple Maniacs, The Devils . . . those are just fun. And Contempt and Wake in Fright are simply great, gripping movies: you don’t need a library card to enjoy them.

There’s eight Fast and the Furious films, bud. Add in Hobbs & Shaw, that leaves you five solid hours to eat pizza, play Fallen Order, and have a cry-wank over Paul Walker.

Saw her as Medea in the West End once. She was so incredible, I went back the next day and lined up for a return, so that I could be astonished all over again.

Glad to see Joseph D’Agostino getting his due – critically, if not commercially. ‘Jackson’ is one of the most moving rock songs I think I’ve ever heard (it frequently makes me tear up, inexplicably), and his songwriting is generally extrordinary.

Was just talking to a friend here about seeing them at the Metro Theatre in Sydney in 1998 or 99. They had two girls in American cheerleader outfits get up and do a routine on either side of the stage while they played ‘Joe Rey’, complete with pom-poms. It was absolutely fucking joyous.

I love all their work, and was amazed by how strong their last album, Sky Full of Holes, was. ‘A Dip in the Ocean’ is Teenage Fanclub-level pop perfection, and ‘Action Hero’ might be the best of his many sad studies of middle-aged manhood. But there’s no filler on it: ‘Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart’, ‘Cemetery…

Someone’s never played the Asshole Game.

I’m sure he thinks his God will protect him. It would be nice to see him disabused of that notion – in much the same way as he’s rid this country of the idea that basic competence is a requirement to hold high office.

This is a guy who, I am told, does reps between takes, and whose dream project is Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’. I think his obnoxious-asshole condition might predate this furore – and likely even the shooting of the original film.

I’m glad to read this review, since I was made to feel truculent, wrong-headed and contrary for not joining the critical hosannas laid before it.

TWO TIMES! Holy moly!

TWO TIMES!!! Boyoboy.

Oh, man. You got me good!

. . . or maybe just because it’s rubbish.

I think that’s true, but it also says something about contemporary America, I think, that the two dominant subgenres of porn right now are fauxcest and interracial cucking. One is the heartlands’ big taboo, the other its great, overriding anxiety.

You’re right to call out that Steadicam sequence – the only interesting moment in this very tedious film. It reminded me for a moment of another, much better Georgian movie: Rezo Gigineishvil’s Hostages.