There's plenty to see in the cinema this weekend including the new Irish movie My Name is Emily, sci-fi thriller Midnight Special and Cannes winner Dheepan.
My Name is Emily ***
Director: Simon Fitzmaurice
Starring: Evanna Lynch, George Webster, Michael Smiley
Duration: 95 minutes | Cert: 12A
2016 is shaping up like our new favourite year for Irish movies. We've already had Room, Sing Street and Mammal and now comes writer-director Simon Fitzmaurice's debut My Name is Emily, an adapt-to-your-own-life story about mental health, memory and loss that offers something different across the generations. To say it's a dry-eye challenge is quite the understatement.
Evanna Lynch plays the teenager living the maelstrom of her mother's death, her father's breakdown, a new school and foster home.
Read Harry Guerin's full review here.
Midnight Special ***
Director: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Jaeden Lieberher
Duration: 112 minutes | Cert: 12A
It's almost more frustrating when a film draws you in from the get-go and shows real promise, only to drop the ball when it comes to the conclusion, than it is to watch a wholly middle-of-the-road flick. It's all about expectation management. Writer-director Jeff Nichols gives us the promise of something truly spectacular here, but fails to deliver in the final act, leaving the viewer with a sense of being cheated.
The ambiguities in this story - a boy on the run from a religious cult and a government agency - are where the movie shines.
Read Sinead Brennan's full review here.
The Huntsman: Winter's War ***
Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt
Duration: 114 minutes | Cert: 12A
The fact that the media preview of Snow White and The Huntsman were on the same day as its cinema release implied that this could be a bit of a hard slog. Added to that, I'm no fan of fantasy tales with swords, sorcery and shaggy hair, so the fact that I found The Huntsman: Winter's War a bearable two hours at the cinema came as quite a relief.
Based on the characters from the classic fairy tale Snow White, as well as The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, there was the odd 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall' moment, but in essence this is this is a love story and an action tale of redemption.
Read John Byrne's full review here.
Dheepan **1/2
Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby
Duration: 115 minutes | Cert: 15A
Dheepan has all the elements of a decent film, but somehow it is presented in overly-melodramatic terms It tells the story of the Tamil Tiger fighter of that name who is played by Jesuthasan Antonythasan - an author, activist and former Tamil Tiger in real life. Dheepan leaves Sri Lanka in the closing days of that country's Civil War. Turning his back on violent struggle in the aftermath of yet another massacre, he links up with a young woman named Yaliani (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), previously unknown to him.
She is looking after a nine-year-old girl Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) who has lost her mother in the conflict. All three pretend to be a bona fide family to gain...
Read Paddy Kehoe's full review here.
Still Showing:
Victoria ****1/2
Director: Sebastian Schipper
Starring: Laia Costa, Frederick Lau
Duration: 138 minutes | Cert: 15A
The decision to film Victoria in one 138-minute take with one camera was a brave and tactically brilliant one - it makes the viewer latch on immediately and lends a curious real-time urgency. In contrast to Hitchcock's Rope or Iñárritu’s Birdman, director Schipper's thriller was genuinely shot in a single, uninterrupted take, without any post-production enhancement.
Laia Costa plays the young Spanish girl working in Berlin who, having left a disco in the small hours, gets lured into the company of four local wide boys. Quickly things heat up as she's roped into a bank heist. Definitely one of the best movies so far this year.
Read Paddy Kehoe's full review here.
Mammal **1/2
Director: Rebecca Daly
Starring: Rachel Griffiths, Barry Keoghan, Michael McElhatton, Nika McGuigan
Duration: 99 minutes | Cert: 16
Notorious Love/Hate cat killer Barry Keoghan comes face to face with a whole litter of kittens in this tale of an unlikely relationship between a deprived young man from Dublin's inner city and a world-weary woman from suburbia.
It's merely a happy script coincidence but it raises one of the few wry smiles in this bleak film from Joyriders and The Other Side of Sleep director Rebecca Daly. Mammal delivers a fresh take on the idea of nature versus nurture but often...
Read Alan Corr's full review here.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ***
Director: Zack Snyder
Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot
Duration: 151 minutes | Cert: 12A
Why would the good guys fight each other when there are super villains in more need of their attention? While Dawn of Justice does show, rather tenuously, how Batman and Superman could see each other as the bad guy, the route the film takes to bring them to their epic showdown is ropey, manic and incoherent - but a thrill ride nonetheless.
The film is told from both Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent's points of view, but thankfully it leans more towards Batman's camp because...
Read Sinead Brennan's full review here.
