Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

The Sundae Film Awards 2026

We watched a lot fewer new films than usual this year. Amid the wider atmosphere of horror and sorrow and grim foreboding in the world, it felt like a dispiriting year for popular cinema, the first big stumble since Tom Cruise resuscitated its prospects in 2022. Still, don’t let that take away from the films we loved enough to celebrate, because they’d all be great films in any year. A frenetic sports epic about table tennis? Pynchon as Terminator 2 in the key of stoner comedy? Rapid-cut montages of Irish news footage? These are the things that movie dreams are made of!

As with every year, we gave one award for each of the eight major Oscars: we care about most of the others (except for the fake awards like Best Original Song) but this post would be absurdly long if we picked those too. We each did out our personal nominees and then selected the winner by consensus, so the winners only come from films that both of us have seen and nominated, but we’ve each picked a personal runner-up regardless of whether the other has seen or nominated it. We also each gave a Special Achievement Award for something that doesn’t fit our other categories.

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Ciara Moloney Podcast

Friday Film Showcased – The Big Clock (1948): The Big Clock/No Way Out Special Part 1

Friday Film Showcased (FFS) returns with part one of a two part special on adaptations of Kenneth Fearing’s novel The Big Clock. We are doing this as a tribute to the late Gene Hackman, who is not in the movie discussed in this episode, but was alive when it came out. But was he a child? Listen and find out!

Ciara Moloney and Conor Hogan discuss topics including: Ray Milland (man), ray-millanding (verb), The Powerhouse Charles Laughton, queer coding and the Hays Code, clocks of various sizes and mechanisms, comedic genius Elsa Lancaster of Bride of Frankenstein fame, Maureen O’Sullivan who surely is only in this as a favour to her husband John Farrow (father of Tia, Mia, and this film, if directing is fatherhood), how much can you actually fit behind a bar, President McKinley, and the existential quest to find one’s self. Literally!

The Big Clock (1948) – The Big Clock/No Way Out Special Part 1 – Friday Film Showcased

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

2025 in Film(s That Didn’t Come Out in 2025)

Check out previous instalments here.

2025 was a year that happened and now it’s over. Ciara completed her PhD and finally watched Tiger King. Dean presented at his first conference and finally finished the second season of China Beach. Along the way, we saw Richard Herring live, and The Pillowman at The Gate Theatre, and did a long-overdue guest episode of our podcast with our friend Conor.

We also watched a lot of films, some of which stuck with us so much we just had to tell you about them. You’ll have to wait until the tenth (TENTH!?) annual Sundae Awards in March for our thoughts on new releases. In the meantime, as ever, please enjoy a selection of our favourite films from this year that didn’t come out this year.

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Podcast

Meet Me in St. Louis: The Sundae Presents, Episode 42

Ciara and Dean take a Christmas journey to St. Louis, Missouri with Judy Garland. They talk about wonderfully horrible children, the history of world’s fairs and whether John Truett is a neurodivergent king.

Meet Me in St. Louis – The Sundae Presents

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Television

The Sundae TV Awards 2025

We watched probably as little new TV this year as we have since we started doing these awards, and just like last year, that’s mostly because we’re just busy. Ciara finished her PhD and is now officially Dr. Ciara Moloney, expert in the screen and stage works of Martin McDonagh. Dean broke more news stories, including one a government spokesperson had to respond to on the radio. In many ways, the TV landscape is no less disillusioning than last year, but as the world slides further into nightmare, the beautiful illusions still left to find are all the more precious. Some of them even feel like hope.

And no, we didn’t watch Andor, so stop asking.

These, as far as we’re concerned, are the best shows of the most recent TV season (June 2024 – May 2025). As well as the classic drama and comedy awards, we also have two awards for reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.

You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations.

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Ciara Moloney Podcast

Heart and Souls: The Sundae Presents, Episode 41

Ciara and Dean are joined by legendary friend of the show, Conor Hogan, co-host of Friday Film Showcased. They talk about video van men, set up and payoff, and Robert Downey Jr being a vaudeville kid unstuck in time. Listen below.

Heart and Souls – The Sundae Presents

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Ciara Moloney Film

The Art of Singing Badly

Armageddon is the kind of movie that people say “not that it’s a great movie or anything but…” before they say anything nice about it. It’s a Michael Bay movie about guys who work on an oil rig going to space to save the Earth from an asteroid, and therefore dumb, and therefore sucks. One day I’ll write about how it is a great movie, actually, because Michael Bay is a genius and he deserves his flowers after being treated as a critical punching bag for most of his career. But right now, I want to tell you about my favourite scene.

The oil workers, having been given a crash course in being astronauts, are about to board the rocket. They’re in their space suits. Harry (Bruce Willis) hugs his daughter Gracie (Liv Tyler) goodbye, promising to see her in a couple of days. Then Ben Affleck, who plays her boyfriend AJ, holds her close, swaying her in his arms as he sings: “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…” It’s ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’, which manages to be fun and silly at a potentially tense moment, but also resonate as terribly romantic and bittersweet, heart utterly on sleeve. Affleck first sings in a quiet intimacy, forehead pressed to Tyler’s, and then belts with buoyant exuberance, sweeping her up off her feet.

He can’t sing worth a damn. It’s beautiful.

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Stephen Chambers Film

Mickey Rourke: The Star That Should’ve Been

I used to think no one pursued a career in entertainment without hoping to be famous, but that’s not true. There are plenty of faces you’ve seen in films over and over, but couldn’t tell me their names if your life depended on it – and they like it that way. There are plenty of working actors, writers, musicians who just want to make a living doing something they love. But with Mickey Rourke, it seemed he was destined to be a star, regardless of what his initial goals were. The look he had, the roles he played: he should’ve been the next big thing. And he kind of was, but he kind of wasn’t. Either way, it stopped. The general consensus is that it stopped because Hollywood had enough of him and his attitude. Maybe he had enough of Hollywood. Maybe it was suicide by cop. Maybe he didn’t know that an actor couldn’t want the amazing heights of fame and so, like someone too cowardly to break up with someone, even when they know they should, he made them make the decision for him. He made the cop shoot him, the girl leave him, the industry toss him.

And so that might be the key to understanding the whole “reluctant star” thing. “Careful what you wish for” may not always apply, especially when referring to someone who did no such thing. Did Mickey Rourke sit in his bedroom daydreaming of – wishing for – the Hollywood glitz and glamour? I doubt it. He just wanted to be good and for people – not everyone, but some nebulous, satisfactory someone – to respect him for it.

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