Movie Review Round-Up: The New Releases

Marvel blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok is the crowd-pleaser this weekend, but sublime drama Call Me by Your Name, Grace Jones documentary Bloodlight and Bami and true story weepie Breathe are also in cinemas.

Call Me by Your Name *****
It has been a very good year for love stories. First La La Land, then Moonlight, followed by The Big Sick and God's Own Country. Now comes Call Me by Your Name. It is, arguably, the best of the lot of them.

There are few things more satisfying than wanting to make a beeline for a bookshop after leaving a cinema but such is the spell that Call Me by Your Name casts that plenty will have André Aciman's source novel under their arms on the way home. If they don't, then it's the safest of bets that the Christmas list is soon to be reworked. Read our full review here.

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Thor: Ragnarok ****
There's life in the old god yet...

Billed by star Chris Hemsworth as Thor's masculinity crisis - single, less hair, loss of lump hammer leading to performance anxiety - Ragnarok is the best of his three solo outings and repositions Mr Odinson closer to Guardians of the Galaxy than The Avengers. Read our full review here.

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Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami ****
You'll be transfixed from the opening shot. There is Grace Jones stalking the stage in the unlikely setting of the Olympia Theatre on the more rundown end of Dublin's Dame Street. She is dressed in a gold death's head mask singing her signature song - Slave to The Rhythm - in her strangely masculine and stentorian voice as her incredible live band grind out the structured funk beats.

Shot over five years, we see many sides of Grace Jones here; the hard-nosed businesswoman, the mother, the grandmother, the daughter, the sister and the mercurial, globetrotting priestess of weird pop in what is essentially a tour/recording studio diary crossed with an exploration of her Jamaican roots. Read our full review here.

Breathe ***
The directorial debut of Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes star Andy Serkis, Breathe tells the true story of how disability campaigner Robin Cavendish lived with polio for decades having been given "a matter of months" by doctors at the time of his diagnosis.

It begins in the 1950s as tea merchant Cavendish (played by Andrew Garfield) woos and then marries Diana (The Crown's Claire Foy) - the woman everyone fancies but who appears too intimidating to approach. Within three minutes the word 'jolly' has been used twice, and Breathe is looking like the nicest film of 2017 this side of Gifted - and catnip for Daily Mail readers and American audiences. Read our full review here.

Property of The State ***

Director Kit Ryan tackles one of the most terrible crimes in recent Irish history in this brave if slightly flawed film. It boasts a very strong cast - including Moone Boy's David Rawle as you’ve never seen him before - and it is a damning indictment of the failures of our educational, penal, and mental health services.

In 1994, the murders of Imelda Riney, her three-year-old son Liam, and Fr Joe Walsh in East Clare shocked the nation. They were committed by Brendan O’Donnell, a severely disturbed young man who had been failed and abused over the course of his life by the very institutions charged to look after him and prevent the terrible acts he was so capable of carrying out. Read our full review here.

Still Showing:

Geostorm **
With a big budget and stellar cast, director Dean Devlin had all of the right conditions to create the perfect storm, but instead of breaking any new ground, his movie evaporates into thin air.

Geostorm becomes a generic by-the-numbers calamity that mirrors many of the clichés from Roland Emmerich's (The Day After Tomorrow) disaster flicks. It comes as no surprise that Geostorm's director is Emmerich's long-time collaborator, with the pair teaming up to work on both Independence Day outings and 1994's sci-fi actioner Stargate. Read our full review here.

Marshall ****
Marshall is a reliably entertaining film based on a celebrated 1940s trial in the early career of Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) who would, in time, become the first African-American justice of the US Supreme Court.

Feisty 32-year-old lawyer Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) is summoned to Connecticut to defend a black chauffeur named Joseph Spell (Sterling K Brown). Spell has been charged with the rape and attempted murder of his 'white socialite' employer, Mrs Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson), while her husband is away on business. Read our full review here.

The Death of Stalin ***
Stalin dies, giving rise to a lot of averted eyes, thinking on one's feet and winging it in the Kremlin, in Armando Iannucci's passable screwball comedy which might aspire to satire but actually isn't so.

There are elements of Monty Python in the merciless dialogue and madcap farce of it all with Steve Buscemi giving a marvellous turn as wise-guy Nikita Khrushchev. Read our full review here.

Happy Death Day *1/2
The pi delta frat house slasher movie has provided plenty of cheap thrills for decades now and since the advent of horror send-ups like Scream, plenty of laughs too. However, when film producers attempt to mix cliché with a true classic they have truly hacked off more than they can chew.

The USP of the catchily-titled Happy Death Day is that it's Mean Girls meets Groundhog Day with maybe a spot of the underrated Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner Edge of Tomorrow thrown in. Read our full review here.

Movie Review Round-Up: The New Releases

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