It's that time of year when there's plenty of good stuff to see in the cinema. And if you want a helping hand in deciding what to go to, here are all of our movie reviews in one place.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 ***
Director: Frances Lawrence | Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Claflin
Cert: 12A | Duration: 137 minutes
The final instalment of a franchise like this is pretty much guaranteed to make bank – if you've sat through the first three films, chances are you'll venture to the cinema one more time to get some closure. But it seems as though the inevitability of making money has made the filmmakers complacent, and this series ends on a bit of a bum note.
For the final chapter of Katniss' (Lawrence) story, we see her and a group of rebels storm the Capitol as she hopes to fulfil her personal mission of assassinating President Snow (Sutherland). Along the way we are treated to some much-needed action as the game-makers behind the Hunger Games tournaments are tasked with protecting the city from the rebels with motion sensor 'pods' that, when activated, aim to annihilate, sometimes torturously, passersby.
In the film the game-makers are hailed as having become more creative, but it's as if the filmmakers lack the actual imagination to come up with enough creative traps to keep things high-octane and edge-of-your-seat for more than a few bursts here and there. The action we do see is, however, excellent, with... Read Sinead Brennan's full review here.
The Dressmaker **
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse | Starring: Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Sarah Snook
Cert: 12A | Duration: 118 minutes
The Dressmaker is a visual feast - contrasting a dreary rural Australian town with outrageous couture costumes - but it's let down by an inflated running time and confused tone.
Kate Winslet is magnificent in the central role of Tilly Dunnage, a femme fatale style character who was ostracised from her small town as a child after being accused of murdering a young boy. She makes a triumphant return many years later in a form-hugging scarlet frock, determined to clear her name and wreak revenge on the wrongdoers from her past.
Her mother Molly, played by the brilliant Judy Davis, has suffered a slow demise in her absence, and Tilly soon sets to work bringing her home on the hill to a decent living standard, while battling with her mum's contrary ways.
Tilly decides to set up shop in the house, intent on transforming... Read Sarah McIntyre's full review here.
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Steve Jobs ****
Director: Danny Boyle | Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels
Cert: 15A | Duration: 122 minutes
If the thought of a movie about late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs makes you yawn, please stifle it and hot-foot it to your nearest cinema. Regardless of whether you are an Apple fan, this is a brilliant movie. Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet are truly magnificent.
After the 2013 Ashton Kutcher-starring biopic Jobs, you may think the world does not need another film about the narcissist/genius. However, this new movie is in the best of hands with Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and writer Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) at the helm.
Sorkin's screenplay is essentially a three-act play that follows the rise and fall of the Apple mastermind at three different times in his career as he launches new products. We are given a backstage pass to... Read Suzanne Keane's full review here.
Brooklyn ****
Director: John Crowley | Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Julie Walters
Cert: 12A | Duration: 111 minutes
Is Brooklyn the most Irish film ever made? It is certainly brimful to frothing point with all the images and rituals of a nearly vanished Éire, a place of kindly, twinkly-eyed priests, indeterminable Sunday masses, and buttoned-down small-town parochialism. You can almost smell the cabbage and bacon wafting through the grey streets of Enniscorthy in the early Fifties. It is like a John Hinde postcard written by Maeve Binchy. The Quiet Man is even mentioned at one point.
But John Crowley's charming, vivid and tender adaptation of Colm Tóibín's book is so much more than that. It artfully subverts any charges of shamroguery by telling a gripping story of small lives facing upheaval with all the spirit and craft of a classic American film from the era it captures so very well. It also boasts career-high performances from Saoirse Ronan and Domhnall Gleeson which are understated and quietly devastating.
Ronan plays Eilis Lacey, a bright but timid young woman stuck in the stultifying atmosphere of small-town Ireland in 1952, a place where the main pastime for young women with limited choices seemed to be husband hunting. It looks like Eilis will take the route of marriage to a local boy and observance and obedience to all that is expected of her. But when a local priest domiciled in New York, Fr Flood (a marvellous Jim Broadbent) offers to sponsor her... Read Alan Corr's full review here.
Kill Your Friends ***
Director: Owen Harris | Starring: Nicholas Hoult, James Corden, Georgia King, Craig Roberts
Cert: 18 | Duration: 103 minutes
John Niven's 2008 novel Kill Your Friends was an expert skewering of the bloated Brit Pop years as seen through the eyes of Steven Stelfox, a Machiavellian A&R man who reckons murder is just another step on the career ladder.
Niven, who worked briefly as an A&R man himself at a time when the UK industry was awash with cash, wrote with a brittle, unforgiving style that recalled Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and Martin Amis' gloriously decadent novel Money.
Kill Your Friends was a deeply unlovely and compelling black comedy with a loathsome but seductive anti-hero, but sadly it has not made a fully successful transition to the big screen. The main problem could be the casting of Nicholas Hoult as Stelfox. Hoult is a fine actor for sure, but he’s just too damn good-looking and smooth as the dark-hearted record company man. Hoult's craven A&R man has the killer instinct but... Read Alan Corr's full review here.
SPECTRE ***
Director: Sam Mendes | Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes
Cert: 12A | Duration: 148 minutes
Even with all the treats in cinemas this year, for many of us 2015 has only ever really been about two films, the spy and the space opera, and with them has come the through-the-seasons hope that the best would be kept 'til last.
Well, there's no doubt that the trust-themed and death-driven SPECTRE has some superb stuff in it, but the definitive Bond movie to go with all the hype? No. For two reasons Skyfall helmer Sam Mendes' return to the director's chair isn't all that it should have been.
SPECTRE opens with an epic sequence that sets a new standard for the Bond prologue. With 007 (Daniel Craig) down Mexico way on the Day of the Dead, we get a brilliant tracking shot, a nod to Live and Let Die (there are plenty more classy tributes to other favourites to come), a hat on a bed, and a stunt to get even the sternest of set-piece scholars salivating. It's everything that... Read Harry Guerin's full review here.
Mississippi Grind ****
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck | Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Ben Mendelsohn, Sienna Miller
Cert: 15A | Duration: 108 minutes
Mississippi Grind feels like an instant classic and if you're looking for yet another vibrant, glamorous film about gambling, driven by fancy montages of roulette tables and poker games, you've come to the wrong place because in this feature it's all about the characters.
Gerry (Mendelsohn) is a gambling addict who has racked up debt all over town and after meeting a mysterious stranger, Curtis (Reynolds), decides to travel through Middle America, hitting all of the best gambling spots along the way, in the hopes of getting himself into the green once more. Curtis, on the other hand, isn't so easy to pin down as you wonder about his motivation throughout - he gambles on people rather than gambling with money.
Both Reynolds and Mendelsohn give compelling performances which carry you through the film as it never gets too bogged down in a plot. I feel this will be the wakeup call the world needs to realise... Read Sinead Brennan's full review here.
The Lobster ****
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos | Starring: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw, John C. Reilly
Cert: 15A | Duration: 118 minutes
Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, Alps) brings his trademark deadpan tone to his first English language feature that offers a wildly imaginative and occasionally insightful take on modern dating.
Beautifully shot in the South-West of Ireland, Lanthimos and his long-time collaborator Efthymis Filippou explore the full spectrum of relationships and societal conventions about commitment. From the get-go subjective (and terrifying) questions are raised about love and relationships. Can we still be happy if we don't find 'The One'? Do we really want to die alone? Is two really better than one?
Set in a near-future where it's illegal to be single and 'loners' are shipped off to a mysterious spa-like retreat... Read Laura Delaney's full review here.
Crimson Peak ***
Director: Guillermo del Toro | Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston
Cert: 15A | Duration: 118 minutes
Many scary movies don't really do it for me. I find they often lack a quality storyline in favour of trying to scare you for fear's sake, or I end up hiding behind my hands like the wimp that I am. Crimson Peak, however, certainly made me jump but wasn't so scary that I couldn't watch, and the plot was intriguing enough to hook me in.
Some of the scariest moments of the film come as we meet our heroine Edith Cushing (Wasikowska), an intelligent, independent, aspiring horror writer who tells us very matter-of-factly that ghosts are real. And in her world, they are. We have our first ghostly encounter of the movie early on and it's a spine-tingling, truly terrifying one. But as the film progresses, they are never as scary again, as we come to realise that it's the people in Crimson Peak that really deserve to be feared. The human horror is sometimes way more effective than the paranormal.... Read Sinead Brennan's full review here.
Sicario *****
Director: Denis Villeneuve | Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro
Cert: 15A | Duration: 121 minutes
We're back in the familiar cinematic territory of the badlands of the Mexican/US border in Denis Villeneuve's masterful thriller about the US war on drugs. But even more so than Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy's fatally flawed and deeply pretentious The Counsellor or the Coens' No Country for Old Men, Sicario trades in an even darker and more disturbing world of brute force and moral ambivalence.
The screen fades up with an explanation of the title: 'Sicario' is Mexican for hitman. In the blunt shock of the opening scene, a macabre discovery is made by an FBI drugs team in the wall linings of a cartel safe house in Arizona. Before we can catch breath, there is another eruption of savagery. From there, we are in no doubt that we are in a very, very bad place with some very bad people. The drip, drip sense of dread never stops... Read Alan Corr's full review here.
