Dublin Oldschool and Sicario 2: Soldado are the most-anticipated films this weekend, but there's also drama in Leave No Trace; comedy in Tag and Patrick; and a true story of survival in Adrift.
Dublin Oldschool ***1/2
Emmet Kirwan's heady pop culture cocktail brings viewers on a pulsating, drug-fuelled ride through the streets of Dublin - but the trip eventually loses its high.
Through an unsteady diet of dance music and hardcore sessions, Kirwan injects a dose of reality to a tale that's close to home. Loosely based on real events, Kirwan's big screen adaptation of his sell-out play centres on two estranged brothers who reconnect over their troubled past. It's awkward, brassy, and just like Dublin's finest characters, it's unapologetically funny.
Somewhere between all the yokes, raves and empty cans, Kirwan brings to life the moving tale of family breakdown and the grim truth of addiction. This isn't an examination of the Dublin drug culture from the outside looking in, it's one from the inside looking out. Read our full review here.
Sicario 2: Soldado ****1/2
Summer is about to drop below freezing.
Three years on from inflicting cinematic shellshock with arguably the film of 2015, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin have returned as (delete depending on worldview) bad good guys/good bad guys Alejandro Gillick and Matt Graver in this just-as-tense-and-troubling sequel to Denis Villeneuve's Sicario.
Following a terrorist attack in the US, assassin Gillick and CIA agent Graver are dispatched to inflict maximum damage. "To see this thing through I'm going to have to get dirty," cautions Graver. "Dirty is exactly why you're here," comes the reply from the very top. The two horsemen of the apocalypse then mount up for Mexico, and you'll feel like you need a shower by the time they're finished. Read our full review here.
Adrift ***1/2
If all the drama and romance on RTÉ2 this month have failed to have their way with you, then perhaps Adrift's Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin will. Would that every screen couple had quite so much chemistry as the Big Little Lies and Hunger Games stars.
In this true story of soulmates and survival, they play drifters who fall for each other and vow to circumnavigate the globe together - only to receive a very generous offer to take a yacht from Fiji to San Diego. They agree, and end up stuck in the middle of 1983's Hurricane Raymond.
Director Baltasar Kormákur has established himself as quite the champion of the human spirit with the real-life events of Everest and The Deep also on his CV. This fine addition deserved to have more wind in its sails in the US and changes tack without ever feeling like two films trying to be one. Read our full review here.
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Leave No Trace ****
Directed by Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone), who co-wrote with her frequent collaborator Anne Rossellini, Leave No Trace is a restrained, sensitive character study of a father and daughter who have chosen to live off the grid in a national park in Oregon.
Will (Ben Foster), a quietly but deeply traumatized war veteran, has chosen to bring up his 13-year-old daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) separated from the rest of society. They, for the most part, live off the land in a state park, changing camp frequently and practicing military-style drills to remain undercover.
Theirs is a physically taxing but spiritually peaceful existence. They read books, play chess, catch rainwater to drink, forage for food and spark fires with a flint and steel... Read our review here.
Tag ***
Jeff Tomsic makes his directorial debut with Tag - the hilarious true story of a group of men who have been maintaining their friendship since high school through a yearly, epic game of tag.
The story formed the focus of a 2013 Wall Street Journal article entitled, "It takes planning, caution to avoid being 'it'", and the film follows journalist Rebecca (Annabelle Wallis) as she attempts to understand the group and their hysterical game.
Ultimately, Tag shares a heartfelt story of friendship and midlife crises. The brotherhood of the high school group is evident through each man's support for their respective struggles with cancer, divorce, drugs, alcoholism, and mental health issues. Read our review here.
Patrick ***
The Pug Nation will be mobbed up like never before thanks to Patrick, a pedigree chum with screen smarts and charisma galore. The search for the canine Chris Pratt is over, and he looks just as good in a waistcoat.
His big screen buddy, Beattie Edmondson, is no slouch when it comes to the laughs, either. She's in the acclaimed BBC sitcom Josh and is the daughter of Jennifer Saunders and Adrian Edmondson. She also contends that Patrick has given her the opportunity to work with her best male co-star to date, and following his lead (sorry) they get this sweet family comedy over the line - in more ways than one.
While Turner & Hooch won't have to schooch up and make room at the top table, Patrick is an easy watch and manages to work in a few dog lessons for humans about responsible pet ownership, looking after neighbours and avoiding the hamster wheel of 'compare and despair'. Read our full review here.
Still Showing:
Ocean's 8 ***
Ocean's 8 sees Sandra Bullock take the mantle from George Clooney in a heist film that works as more than a gender-swap reboot.
The cast are incredible and their characters all have their own unique thing going on, with their differences celebrated and their talents exploited to pull off the job. Though Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway lead the charge, everyone - including Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Helena Bonham-Carter, Rihanna and Awkwafina - has their moment to shine.
Trying to accommodate eight big characters is no mean feat, and character development does suffer as a result, but as an ensemble they gel really well together and there is never a dull moment. Read our full review here.
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In the Fade ****1/2
Diane Kruger gives it her all in this nauseatingly tense and gut-punchingly devastating drama.
Written and directed by Fatih Akin, In the Fade sees Kruger take on the role of a lifetime as Katja, a German woman consumed by grief after the deaths of her Kurdish husband Nuri (Numan Acar) and their young son Rocco in a racially-motivated nail bomb attack.
The film is structured in three equally gripping and visceral sections in which it genre-hops from a study of grief to a courtroom drama, and finally a revenge thriller, all anchored by Kruger's powerhouse, can't-take-your-eyes-off-her performance. Read our full review here.
The Happy Prince ****
Labours of love rarely come more superbly wrapped than Rupert Everett's engrossing biopic of the final years of the legendary Oscar Wilde.
Written and directed by, and also starring Everett, this latest celluloid look at Wilde's life skips past his days as a hugely successful playwright of late-Victorian London, and concentrates on his post-prison period, after being convicted of gross indecency.
By then, Wilde was in disgrace and fled London for France and Italy. To the horror of his remaining friends, he also resumed his destructive relationship with Bosie (Colin Morgan), whose father had provoked Wilde into taking a libel action on the back of an accusation that Wilde was "posing as a sodomite". When Wilde lost that libel case, he was then charged, found guilty, and jailed. Read our full review here.
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Kissing Candice ***
This unsettling debut from writer/director Aoife McArdle is likely to divide audiences. It's set in a post-Troubles, Irish border town but that's as much as is made explicitly clear in the hallucinogenic, bleak and fragmentary 103-minute running time.
Is it a coming of age movie about a troubled teenage girl called Candice? A gritty tale about small time gang members? Or a head trip that blurs all kinds of lines and ends up as an impressionistic art house experiment - a kind of Irish noir meets lurid 1950s teen psychodrama?
Kissing Candice is all of those things. But it can also be patience-sapping in its downright refusal to stick to any narrative cohesion. McArdle made her name directing highly stylised TV ads and promo videos for U2 and Bryan Ferry, among others, and she seems to have taken that episodic and non-linear approach with her big screen debut. Read our full review here.
