January is prime time for going to the cinema with a plethora of Oscar nominees showing on the big screen. This weekend some of the biggest Oscar movies hit Irish screens including The Revenant, the Irish Oscar nominated Room and Creed. Here are all of our reviews to help you decide what's worth booking.
The Revenant *****
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu | Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson
Duration: 156 minutes | Cert: 15A
An epic action movie set in a vast landscape that tells an age-old tale of revenge and redemption, The Revenant boasts stand-out performances and stunning visuals
Rumours of Werner Herzog-like demands and escalating production costs circulated around the making of The Revenant and it’s easy to see why. It’s a near three-hour epic that cost $135m and watching it is an almost physical experience.
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who made Birdman and Babel, the story itself might have been carved from the very landscape and foundation myths of America. Set in the Great Plains in 1823, we meet a team of trappers, lead by Domhnall Gleeson’s Captain Andrew Henry, who go by such unromantic names as... Read Alan Corr's full review here.
Room ****
Director: Lenny Abrahamson | Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay
Duration: 118 minutes | Cert: 15A
Lenny Abrahamson strikes a very human chord in his big screen adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s celebrated book Room. What could be a harrowing tale of captivity and the slow destruction of the soul is in fact a life-affirming movie about survival, resilience and an inspiring lust for life. Room is also a kind of modern day fairytale but it is also loaded with suspense and all the elements of a gripping thriller.
Brie Larson, who has won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for her performance, plays Joy (although she is mostly called Ma), a young mother who has been imprisoned in a tiny garden shed with her five-year-old son, Jack, for seven years.
She should be a woman on the edge of nervous collapse and Jack might be expected to be a withdrawn shell of a boy denied the joy and beauty of a full life. Instead Ma has made their 10 x 10ft prison a place of wonder for the bright and curious child, turning the grimy hovel into a universe of... Read Alan Corr's full review here.
Creed ****
Director: Ryan Coogler | Starring: Michael B Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Tony Bellew
Duration: 133 minutes | Cert: 12A
Let's face it, for all the memories, there weren't too many movie fans wishing their lives away waiting for another Rocky. There were six in the can already - what could a seventh outing possibly add?
Well, a lot, as it turns out. Creed is a special film that pound for pound competes with the best heartstring-pulling of Rocky Balboa's 40-year screen odyssey but, crucially, looks to what's ahead in a very exciting way. As the name implies, the gloves are passed on to a new generation here, with Stallone taking on a very different role. You need to take a ringside seat.
In the opening 1998 flashback we're introduced to Adonis 'Donnie' Johnson (Jordan), an orphan living in state care who thinks with his fists and doesn't know when to stay down. It runs in the family: Donnie is the lovechild of Rocky's late friend and rival Apollo Creed. He was born a few months after Apollo's death in Rocky IV but has inherited his father's... Read Harry Guerin's full review here.
The Hateful Eight ***
Director: Quentin Tarantino | Starring: Kurt Russell, Samuel L Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, James Parks, Walton Goggins, Channing Tatum, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth.
Duration: 167 minutes | Cert: 18
There is nothing radically wrong with The Hateful Eight, but there is no reason why it couldn’t have been despatched in 90 minutes, even with all those plot twists. The story does not need the guts of three hours to work itself out, which also means it does not need the intermission.
You may find yourself wrapping up needlessly in the cinema, putting on that racoon or bear skin again inside, as a wild snowstorm pretty much blows throughout, punctuated and driven by Ennio Morricone’s powerful, sympathetic score. The score in fact is about the only thing that’s sympathetic, because the core cast of characters are to a man - and the woman played by Jennifer Jason Leigh - a bunch of no good critters.
The story unfolds in five chapters in a film which, as one might expect, deconstructs Sergio Leone. The opening scenes are brilliantly conjured, a fantastic carved Christ on a wooden cross, that blizzard blowing through desolate, mountainous Wyoming. A stage coach stops on a snow-filled track, effectively blocked by Samuel L Jackson nonchalantly sitting on a saddle astride a number of corpses of dead men... Read Paddy Kehoe's full review here.
Joy ***
Director: David O. Russell | Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper
Duration: 124 minutes | Cert: 12A
Writer-director David O. Russell reunites Lawrence with her Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle co-stars Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper, but can't quite come up with the same magic for the third time in a row.
According to the opening credits Joy was "inspired by true stories of daring women ... and one in particular,” Joy Mangano, a home-shopping entrepreneur who along with the Miracle Mop has invented over 100 other products. Lawrence stars as Mangano in the story of a one woman struggle to save her family from financial ruin – loosely based on Mangano's real life experience.
While Joy has all the ingredients of a stellar rags-to-riches story (superb cast, great writer) it doesn't quite add up. O. Russell has, for some reason, used a mish-mash of film styles and introduces an ensemble of characters, but fails to really develop them... Read Suzanne Keane's full review here.
The Danish Girl ****
Director: Tom Hooper | Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard
Duration: 120 minutes | Cert: 15A
Tom Hooper directed one of the most successful films of recent years, the biopic The King's Speech, and he's on similar ground here. The Danish Girl is based on the true story of Danish artist Einar/Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of gender confirmation surgery.
Based on David Ebershoff's 2000 novel of the same name, it stars Eddie Redmayne as Elbe, Alicia Vikander as the artist's wife and fellow painter Gerda Wegener, and the two leads put in an astonishing shift in what must have been an emotionally exhausting shoot.
And although the transgender issue will be the dominant reason this film gets attention, really this is a love story. As Elbe realises that she's a woman trapped in a man's body - in the film, it starts off innocently when Gerda asks her husband to stand in for a female model - Gerda offers unconditional support, up to and including Elbe's ultimate goal of making the transition to Lili complete... Read John Byrne's full review here.
