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Grapefruit

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Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2025 #6 :     Bring Her Back With their second feature, the Philippou brothers proved that Talk To Me was no fluke. While the party vibe of their debut is toned down in their follow-up – another bone-rattling A24 possession horror – they dug even deeper emotionally this time, delivering an invigoratingly brutal and breathtakingly dark tale of dead kids and adults driven out of their mind by grief, all propelled by the terrible things you might do out of irreplaceable love and loss. Sally Hawkins is fearsomely brilliant as Laura, the foster parent who takes in brother and sister Andy and Piper (Billy Barratt and Sora Wong, both outstanding) with nefarious intent – inflicting them with psychological warfare, lovebombing, and a sinister supernatural plot. The filmmaking here is precise and powerful, the performances gut-wrenching, the energy and tension undeniable – cementing the Philippous as new horror greats. I'm not a massive fa...
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Find your sister. And legs.

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Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #7 :     Predator : Badlands Badlands isn’t just another great Dan Trachtenberg Predator movie – it’s the second great Dan Trachtenberg Predator movie of 2025. Arriving on the heels of blood-spattered animated anthology Predator: Killer Of Killers, Badlands sees the Prey filmmaker overhaul the hunter-and-hunted formula once again – delivering us a Yautja hero in runt-of-the-litter Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), and dispatching him to the ‘Death Planet’ of Genna on an epic monster hunt, all aided by the top half of a Weyland-Yutani synthetic (an effervescent Elle Fanning). The result is giddily entertaining ‘80s dark fantasy, with a dash of Star Wars, a surprisingly emotional chosen-family narrative, and a constant supply of inventive action beats. It’s a Predator movie like no other, still delivering thrills, spills and brutal moments (there’s a lot of non-red blood, despite its family-friendly rating) while ta...
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Look up on the wall, there on the floor, under the pillow, behind the door

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Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 11/10/81 : Abacab - Genesis Our fourth visit with Genesis and this is one I've never heard and for some reason I thought it was much earlier than '81 - I don't think I knew they were quite this popular at this time. Hmmm - this is a peculiar album, whilst also being completely understandable when you know where they came from and here they ended up. It's got both the pop sound and rhythms of Invisible Touch and some weird prog sounds, off-kilter rhythms and far too long tracks of Selling England By The Pound . It's feels a bit "neither fish nor fowl" these days and I can't say I particularly liked it, but maybe (just maybe) it's what people were crying out for in '81. We're at #6 in the charts this week on their fourth week of a decent 22 week run, with it having peaked at a surprising (for me, at least) #1 for its first two weeks. The top five this week were  The Police , Shakin' ...
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Probably my prettiest course

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The third parkrun write-up! 01/08/26 : Roosevelt Island DC  Heading back in time to August we come to an event which it's very unlikely I'll ever do again (but never say never!). But first, some background as to how I came to be there - and where there actually is! As a reward for our youngest doing her GCSEs she was offered a trip to the US to watch a WNBA game (it's fair to say she's a BIG fan) - which sounds like a nice offer on our part but resulted in a whole load of soul searching for her because she couldn't decide who to support and hence what her preferred destination was. EVENTUALLY, the Washington Mystics were settled upon as the team of choice and hence she & I found ourselves heading over there for a few days at the end of July. And one of those days was a Saturday, so obviously the opportunity to experience an American parkrun had to be taken advantage of. There are three parkruns in the greater DC area, but the Roosevelt Island event was easily t...
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Like a big American car but misspelt with a 'D'

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Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 18/10/81 : Madness 7 - Madness This is our third visit with Madness and currently we've experienced their first and last albums, which span a 44 year gap - this is going to be more like the former than the latter, I suspect. It opens with "Cardiac Arrest" which was always one of my favourites of their singles (helped by the video where they play the xylophone section on a skeleton) and then it follows that with "Shut Up" which I'd completely forgotten about, so it was nice to reminded about that. "Grey Day" is the only other one I recognised, but the rest of the album is very much in the same vein - they're definitely getting to their "nutty boy" sound here. "Benny Bullfrog" was maybe a bit too nutty for me though, but most of it is some well-crafted fun which doesn't hang around long enough to get tiresome - I liked it. We're at #7 in the charts this week on t...
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Mrs Robinson was attacked by a killer whale

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Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 25/10/81 : Hedgehog Sandwich - Not The Nine O'Clock News We've not had a comedy album in a while - and I'm pretty certain this is the most recent one we've seen chronologically. I was just a bit too young for it at the time but I'm aware of their best work retrospectively - I'm expecting this to be a mix of chuckles and "huh?"s Yeah - it's got some classics on here which are still pretty funny and you still see quoted from time to time. "Constable Savage" still hits harder than it should ( "Savage, would I be correct in assuming that Mr Kodogo is a coloured gentleman?" ) and "HiFi Shop" has only become more relevant as technology has taken over the world. Some of the sketches have obviously dated eg they do like to have a go at Ronald Reagan (although some of their complaints seem amusingly mild these days) and their accurate send-up of That's Life isn't go...
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I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick on the cigarettes there in the ashtray

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Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 01/11/81 : Almost Blue - Elvis Costello & The Attractions Our seventh visit with Elvis C in various guises and I generally like the singles but don't quite get the rest of it - let's see if that continues here. Well, I do like the single because who doesn't like his version of "Good Year For The Roses" - and the rest of the album surprised me by being a similar country-tinged melancholy. However, when I read the Wikipedia entry and learned it was an album of country cover versions (so it could have been ignored) then I guess that makes a bit more sense. I also recognised "I'm Your Toy", but didn't recognise the track name - once again, Wikipedia came to the rescue by telling me that The Flying Burrito Brothers (and later Belly) released it "Hot Burrito #1". Taken one at a time, I didn't mind any of these tracks (although  his voice isn't quite good enough for some of the...
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