Film Review: Town of Strangers and a small town theme In Town of Strangers, the viewer can sense the director's empathy, one is aware of a listening ear for the people who turned up for … Movie • 10 Mar 21
À L'abordage and young love's sweet song of the South Felix, a young nurse, falls in love with a girl named Alma at an open-air party by the Seine and follows her, though uninvited, to … Movies • 13 Nov 20
Huppert triumphs in zany crime caper Mama Weed Mama Weed - original title La Daronne, which means The Matron - stars Isabelle Huppert as an Arabic/French translator for the Paris police. Being short … Movies • 13 Nov 20
Nocturnal upends the cliche about fatherhood and flight Bleak and intense, Nocturnal is mildly creepy but curiously credible, upending the lazy cliche viz a viz so-called irresponsible fathers who, it is believed, scarper … Movie Review • 18 Sep 20
A White, White Day's slow-burn revenge drama The tormented policeman Ingimundir tries to hold things together in a starkly remote Icelandic outpost before the desire for revenge takes over in Hlynur Palmason's … Movie Review • 04 Sep 20
Wide awake in America with Max Richter's SLEEP The film Max Richter's SLEEP introduces composer and musician Max Richter and his creative partner Yulia Mahr as a performance of his celebrated eight-hour opus … Movie Review • 04 Sep 20
My Rembrandt - Money and Old Master mania 350 years after his death, the paintings of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) are changing hands for vast sums, but your reviewer would have preferred … Movie Review • 04 Sep 20
The bleakly humorous Lift is an elevating experience Smart and hard-edged and set in centre-city Dublin, Lift elicits to full effect the black humour involved when six people get stuck in a lift … Film Reviews • 14 Jul 20
When All is Ruin Once Again: A poignant warning note When All is Ruin Again draws near to poet WB Yeats' tower at Thoorballylee, cleaving close to a poetic vision of destiny, of generations passing, … Reviews • 18 Apr 20
Breton passion in Portrait of a Lady on Fire Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a cool, almost ascetic work exploring sexual repression and sexual longing - sides perhaps of the same 18th … Movies • 02 Mar 20
Will Ferrell plays it dark in Downhill This thought-provoking remake of Ruben Östlund's 2014 Swedish-language film Force Majeure deftly juggles dark passages with oddly comic counterbalance Movies • 25 Feb 20
The Call of the Wild is doggone good This fascinating adaptation of Jack London's classic 1903 novel, set in Canadian Yukon territory in the 1890s is a must-see. Movies • 19 Feb 20
Jihad Jane and the Waterford link in new documentary Ciaran Cassidy's fascinating documentary, Jihad Jane, hears the stories of two American women who were imprisoned following charges related to terrorist conspiracy in 2010. Movies • 17 Feb 20
Parasite: worth seeing if only for after-screen debate Winner of four Oscars, Palme d'Or 2019 and Best Foreign Motion Picture at the Golden Globes, Parasite boldly attempts satire about Seoul's haves and have-nots. Movie Review • 17 Feb 20
The Rhythm Section is Bond-lite and little else Replace Liam Neeson with Blake Lively and what you have in The Rhythm Section is essentially another Taken movie. The film wants to be both … Movie Review • 29 Jan 20
Film review: The Personal History of David Copperfield Everyone is on top form in Armando Iannucci's joyous adaptation of the Dickens' classic. Movies • 23 Jan 20
Long Day's Journey Into Night Dense and layered, inscrutable and withholding of its essence, Long Day's Journey into Night (not to be confused with the Eugene O'Neill play of the … Movie Review • 28 Dec 19
The Kingmaker - Imelda and the 'conjugal dictatorship' Lauren Greenfield's latest film shows how the Marcos legacy endures and is linked with current President Duterte's regime as family scion Ferdinand 'Bong Bong' Marcos … Movie Reviews • 19 Dec 19
Beanpole's relentless bleakness fails to grasp Beanpole should in theory work as a cinematic enterprise and its intense performances will certainly move those who without effort directly engage with its trauma, … Movies • 08 Jan 20
The Biggest Little Farm: a charming feel-good doc Friends told John and Molly Chester that attempting to farm in harmony with nature would be reckless, if not impossible. Nevertheless, the couple cheerfully bought … Film Review • 27 Nov 19
Knives Out: infantile slapstick in Agatha Christie mode Knives Out is a trite, pale comedy that tries to be as infantile as it can be within the bounds of adult entertainment. Movie Review • 27 Nov 19
La Belle Époque: an enticing daydream fantasy realised La Belle Époque's two screenings at the IFI's recent French Film Festival sold out in advance. It's an appealing fantasy in which Daniel Auteuil's sixty-something … Movies • 22 Nov 19
Like Spotlight, The Report is solid but not exceptional Hot on the heels of the engaging satire, The Laundromat, comes The Report, another Steven Soderbergh/Scott Z Burns collaboration. However, both films could not be … Movies • 22 Nov 19
Herzog's Meeting Gorbachev - the triumph of failure The German film-maker Werner Herzog met Mikhail Gorbachev on three occasions to speak to him about his life, notably the period when he was General … Movies • 06 Nov 19
By the Grace of God: a French clerical sex scandal Disquieting to watch, and based on real events, By the Grace of God recreates the explosive fallout in France in 2015 and 2016 when abusers … Film Review • 24 Oct 19
