Category Archives: Reviews

Eagles, Chapter V – Hotel California (1976)

Members: Don Felder, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Randy Meisner, Joe Walsh

Hotel California is the seminal album in the discography of the Eagles, and even those who are not fans know this one.

With the addition of Joe Walsh and the departure of Bernie Leadon, the quartet that remained had left its country roots well and truly behind, and the Eagles emerged as a very different band.

Hotel California (Don Felder / Don Henley / Glenn Frey)
Lead – Henley
There’s nothing new left to be said about this song – from its lyrical mystery to its fantastic two minute guitar outro. It’s not only their most famous track, but also one of the defining songs of the seventies. 10
New Kid in Town (Don Henley / Glenn Frey / JD Souther)
Lead – Frey
I always found this song to be overrated, which is not to say it’s bad, just that it’s the lowest point on an album filled with great material. 7
Life in the Fast Lane (Don Henley / Glenn Frey / Joe Walsh)
Lead – Henley
A great rock song with a biting Henley vocal and some influential guitar work from Walsh. 9
Wasted Time (Don Henley / Glenn Frey)
Lead – Henley
One of my favourite Eagles songs, and up there with the best ballads Henley ever tipped his vocals to. This is even more poignant if you’ve let go of a relationship. 10
Wasted Time (reprise) (Don Henley / Glenn Frey / Jim Ed Norman)
instrumental
A nice little breather, before…
Victim of Love (Don Henley / Glenn Frey / Don Felder / JD Souther)
Lead – Henley
A very good rock track that often gets unjustly overlooked on this album amongst all the classics. 9
Pretty Maids All in a Row (Joe Walsh / Joe Vitale)
Lead – Walsh
The first lead vocal for the newest Eagle, Joe Walsh. Nobody would suggest Walsh has a great voice, but with the right song it can work, and this is the right song. 8
Try and Love Again (Randy Meisner)
Lead – Meisner
This is Randy’s last lead vocal on his final album with the Eagles, and it’s also his best. A beautiful song. 9
The Last Resort (Don Henley / Glenn Frey)
Lead – Henley
This epic Eagles track – the way that it dramatically builds musically, lyrically, and vocally – is one of my favourites. 10

Overall: 90%
I usually love to hold the contrarian opinion, but there’s a reason this album is so highly rated: and that’s because it’s a fantastic collection of songs… and it’s hard to argue otherwise.

Night Shift #11 – Strawberry Spring…

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619i-4slsfl645695221..jpgWord count – 3,700

Strawberry Spring is told as a flashback tale about the murder spree at a college in the late sixties, as experienced through the eyes of one of the students.

This short story surprised me – not with the twist, because I saw that coming a mile away – but with the accomplished manner in which it has been written, given that this was originally published when King was only twenty-one.

It’s one of those stories where it doesn’t matter if you can see you ending before it happens, because predictability is not necessarily a bad thing. If it is written well – and this is – then you just have to stand up and applaud the work, and this is one of the best entries I have read so far in Night Shift.

Recommended ⇑

Potted Film Review: 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

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Starring: Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson, Eva Mendes

There is no other way around it, 2 Fast 2 Furious – even by the franchise’s own ridiculous standards – is a silly movie, but not even silly in a good way. It takes all of the borderline plausibility of The Fast and the Furious and turns it up to eleven. Even the title is terrible.

Although Vin Diesel could not be regarded as a great actor, his absence here is sorely missed. I know he comes back into the franchise, and if this is what the movies without him are like, his return cannot happen soon enough.

The cars may still be cool, but I would be very surprised if there is a worse entry in the series.

Not Recommended ⇓

Night Shift #10 – Sometimes They Come Back…

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619i-4slsfl645695221..jpgWord count – 9,700

There is an interesting idea buried in here about reincarnation, but it takes so very long to get to anything interesting in Sometimes They Come Back that it’s already an uphill battle to win my attention over, and it never manages to do it.

The second act is fine and the most involving part of the story, but it is flanked by a beginning that takes forever to get where it is going, and an end that doesn’t really pay off what has happened before.

This is the halfway point of Night Shift, and although the entries have been mostly positive so far, Sometimes They Come Back is a let down – not least of all because they managed to make a trilogy of movies out of it. It is one of the longest entries so far in this collection and certainly one of the weaker ones.

Not Recommended ⇓

Potted Film Review: Green Book (2018)

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220px-Green_Book_(2018_poster)Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali

Films about race relations in the United States of the sixties can be very hard to balance – they are either too steeped in history and are not entertaining as a result, or they try to tackle the issue in a manner they are ill-equipped to do – but Green Book sits somewhere in the middle. It is very easy to watch, and extremely simple to become invested in.

Mortensen channels his best Tony Soprano throughout as the blue-collar driver who just wants to get back home for Christmas, and Ali is charming as the refined musician who doesn’t really appreciate what life is like for ‘his kind of people’ in the states down south.

Green Book won the Oscar for Best Picture, and I certainly won’t argue with that.

Recommended ⇑

Night Shift #9 – Trucks…

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619i-4slsfl645695221..jpgWord count – 6,200

Trucks is about a bunch of autonomous – yes, you guessed it… trucks. The story is set entirely in a rest stop after the trucks have taken control of the surroundings and are keeping the patrons as their playthings.

There’s not much going on in Trucks, and we never find out why the vehicles have suddenly become sentient – not that it matters, I guess. Sometimes keeping the mystery is fine, and let’s face it: any explanation would probably sound like bullshit anyway, so why bother trying, right?

The story picks up in the second half, as the survivors decide on the best course of action, but this never really clicks the way I would like it to, or indeed the way that it should. I think if King wrote this ten years later it would be a much better piece, but as it stands it’s only just passable.

Recommended ⇑

Potted Film Review: The Fast and the Furious (2001)

MV5BNzlkNzVjMDMtOTdhZC00MGE1LTkxODctMzFmMjkwZmMxZjFhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjU0OTQ0OTY@._V1_Starring: Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez

This is my first time with this long-running franchise, which is a surprise for me. Fast cars, fiesty girls, and a central bromance… I’m surprised I didn’t get around to this years ago.

It’s hard not to see a lot of Point Break in this movie, because if you swap out the street racing and throw in a few surfboards that is exactly what you have, although this is certainly a step below that in quality.

The Fast and the Furious is cheesy and at times feels like it’s taking itself far too seriously for what it is. This is not a great movie, and at times it’s not even a good one, but it does have a charm that carries it across the finish line.

Recommended ⇑

 

Night Shift #8 – Battleground…

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619i-4slsfl645695221..jpgWord count – 3,600

Battleground is a simple idea, as the best short stories often are. A hitman finds a mysterious package has been delivered to his apartment, and when he opens it he discovers it is filled with a platoon of toy soldiers who are out to kill him for the job he has just done.

It’s all action, all the way, and there is little room to catch your breath. There is next to no character development, and not much in the way of a backstory, but it really doesn’t matter, because it’s just so damn cool.

Battleground is the best story I have read from Night Shift so far. There would perhaps be an argument that at its brief length it reaches its conclusion far too quickly, but that is a minor quibble in an otherwise very strong entry for this anthology.

Recommended ⇑

Potted Film Review: In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)

MV5BN2I1MGQ2ZjMtMjc1My00YzU1LThjNzktNzJlMWRkMTc0NjZhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTkxNjUyNQ@@._V1_Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Michael C Hall, Cleopatra Coleman

A surface-level synopsis of this movie may make you feel like this is ripping off The Terminator, but once you dig down you will find that this Netflix offering is a little more complex than that, and perhaps a tad more grounded as well.

Time travel in movies is an easy sell for me, but it can be a difficult concept to pull off successfully. Although it ties itself up in knots in the final quarter hour, and the reveal is a little hard to swallow, In the Shadow of the Moon earns its stripes by managing to sidestep many of the head-scratching problems a movie like this faces.

Recommended (but you will need to keep your brain switched on) ⇑

Night Shift #7 – Gray Matter…

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619i-4slsfl645695221..jpgWord count – 4,700

Gray Matter is an early effort from Stephen King, and it feels like it. It’s about a fungus (of sorts) that seemingly develops from a can of beer and proceeds to become one with the guy drinking it. There is really not much more to it than that.

Gray Matter is one of those horror tales that has no explanation – something weird happens… but we never find out why. Now, whether that is because King was simply too lazy to come up with an answer, or he didn’t think it needed one, I don’t know. For the most part I have tried to steer away from writing that way, because it can be infuriating, and that is certainly the case here.

This is one of the poorer entries in Night Shift so far. It’s not clever by any stretch, and it’s fairy basic old-school horror. It is also very talky and reflective and doesn’t have all that much going on either, so… on to the next one.

Not Recommended ⇓