#1: Chicken Jockeys and Psych Wards The year 1975 is widely ascribed to be the first canonical ‘Great Movie Year’ – that is the first to have its movies lauded, interrogated and discussed widely as a collective. The dawn of the modern blockbuster with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws arrived alongside a raft of exciting auteur-driven projects,…
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The Accountant 2: 2 Math 2 Furious
Director: Gavin O’Connor Starring: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J.K. Simmons, Daniela Pineda, Robert Morgan Running Time: 124 minutes We have already seen a fair share of sequels produced for the movies of 2016. M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological horror Split was followed by Glass in 2019. Fantastic Beasts and Deadpool both launched financially successful…
Who’s The Best You Can Get For That Gold Statuette? That’s Anora!
The Academy Awards, cinema’s biggest night of celebration, had its 97th annual ceremony last night, and it was Sean Baker’s Anora, an urban-fairytale romcom about a Brighton Beach stripper who runs off with and marries the son of a Russian oligarch, took away many of the top prizes. Baker’s superb film, which won five out…
Chasing Pavements: Alex Ross Perry’s Docu-Fiction Hybrid Film Is A Fascinating Look At The Alt-Rock Legends
Director: Alex Ross Perry Starring: Pavement, Zoe Lister-Jones, Michael Esper, Kathryn Gallagher, Joe Keery, Jason Schwartzman, Nat Wolff, Fred Hechinger, Griffin Newman, Tim Heidecker, Logan Miller Running Time: 128 minutes Alex Ross Perry’s affinity for a chaotic and self-destructive artist is well-established in his filmography. His 2014 feature, Listen Up Philip, is an examination of…
A Life Lived: The Quiet Beauty of The Summer Book
Director: Charlie McDowell Starring: Glenn Close, Anders Danielsen Lie, Emily Matthews, Ingvar E. Sigurdsson Running Time: 90 minutes There’s a quote from one of Tove Jansson’s delightful Moomin books that I have always adored: “The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It’s a time for protecting and securing…
Run Silent, Run Deep: DIFF’s Silent Shorts Gala Demonstrates How A Festival Can Effectively Bring Classic Cinema to a New Audience
The 2025 Dublin International Film Festival has gotten off to a roaring start. Thursday’s Opening Night Gala saw Light House Cinema’s Screen 1 hosting everyone’s favourite ‘King of the Conclave’, Ralph Fiennes, in attendance for the Irish premiere of his new film, The Return, alongside the film’s director, Uberto Pasolini. Friday saw a fantastic celebration…
“I Guess You Had to Be There”: Movies That Spiritually Capture A Music Genre
In my review of A Complete Unknown, I noted that early critiques of the film prior to its release surrounded screenwriters James Mangold and Jay Cocks’ decision to focus on the early career of Bob Dylan. The Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s which Dylan arrives into at the beginning of the film,…
‘A Complete Unknown’ has its haters. But It Ain’t Me, Babe.
Director: James Mangold Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Joe Tippett, Scoot McNairy, Norbert Leo Butz, Boyd Holbrook Running Time: 140 minutes Before a single shred of tangible information was available about James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, originally titled ‘Going Electric’, critics and film personalities online were already analysing and comparing it…
The Price to be Paid: With ‘Nickel Boys’, a major new auteur announces himself
Director: RaMell Ross Starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Gralen Bryant Banks, Fred Hechinger, Jimmie Fails Running Time: 140 minutes One of the complaints often levelled at film critics’ choices for films that they collectively hail as ‘a masterpiece’ is their tendency to choose films that are formally and technically outstanding, but…
Me & My Monkey: Robbie Williams apes himself in new biopic, Better Man, to great effect
‘Fame makes monkeys of us all’ serves as both the tagline of the film Better Man, and also the conceit behind its most significant choice. Even if one had no knowledge of Robbie Williams or never saw the film, it was hard to argue that having the man himself represented by a Caesar-esque CGI ape…