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Hollywood has always had a penchant for tales about small town suburbanites sucked into violent crime. These films are often violent and tongue in cheek. At their best, they use every cinematic trick in the book to depict the moral degradation of anti-heroes who should be behaving like model citizens. Some even manage to milk the blackest humour out of the most macabre of situations. Get the mix wrong, however, and you end up with a movie that leaves one hell of a sour taste in your mouth. Tate Taylor's 'Breaking News in Yuba County' has clear aspiraitions to take its place among the best of the genre. At its heart is Allison Janney's Sue Buttons, a mild mannered Kentucky housewife who wanders around a supermarket at the start of the movie, repeating out loud a mantra from a self-help daily affirmation podcast designed to build her confidence. She has come to collect her own birthday cake and notices the e in her Christian name looks more like c but then meekly accepts

The public's fascination with true crime podcasts has always felt ripe for parody. So hats off to Steve Martin and John Hoffman for finding the right vehicle to do just that with the 10 part Hulu comedy mystery 'Only Murders in the Building'. Podcasts like 'Serial,' The Clearing,' ''My Favourite Murder' and 'Someone Knew Something' have gripped or amused listeners around the world. However some of them have not been immune to criticism, facing accusations of voyeurism, trivialising murder, lacking journalistic rigour and trading in speculation. The public's appetite for bizarre true crime mysteries remains undiminished, though, as  Jim Sheridan's Sky Crime  and  John Dower's Netflix  documentaries this year on the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in Co Cork proved. Another Netflix documentary this year ' Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel ' also posed some alarming questions about the public's fascin

  Dear Evan Hansen. It must have seemed like a great idea turning a hit musical about you into a film. It must have also seemed like a pretty good bet that the film was going to be a hit. After all, the Broadway production not only wowed theatregoers but it netted six Tonys, a Grammy and an Emmy in 2017 and won Oliviers when it transferred to London's West End.  Its songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Pahad had already proven themselves onscreen by contributing songs to the Oscar winning ' La La Land ' Stephen Chbosky would have seemed like a sound choice as director following his success with his young adult movie 'The Perks of Being A Wallflower' and his smart script for the Disney live action version of the musical ' Beauty and the Beast '. Not only that but he cast Ben Platt in the lead - the original Evan Hansen - and Julianne Moore and Amy Adams also landed key roles. So Evan, what the hell happened? Why does a musical about you that worked so well onsta

About a fortnight ago in the run-up to the 2021 Denis Villeneuve version of 'Dune,' I decided to revisit David Lynch's 1984 movie of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel. A spectacular flop, I remembered it as being bad. I just forgot how bad. Ham acting (I'm looking at you Brad Dourif and Patrick Stewart), ropey effects, Sting's cosmic underpants and a soundtrack featuring Toto were just some of its lowlights. Lynch, of course, wasn't the first choice to direct the film. David Lean had originally been attached to the project and then Alejandro Jodorowsky who wanted to cast Salvador Dali, Orson Welles and Mick Jagger. Ridley Scott seemed the natural choice when Dino de Laurentis acquired the rights but after working on three drafts of the script, he bailed. Lynch's film with Kyle McLachlan, Francesca Annis, Max Von Sydow and Dean Stockwell somehow came surprisingly close to making back its $40 million budget despite being hammered by the critics. John Harrison a