With the lights up in the city and holiday films on our cinema screens, Christmas season has well and truly arrived this year to the fair city of film, and in December an all-time family favourite will be playing at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre with live music to accompany some timeless animation.
Director: Dawn Porter Running Time: 81 minutes
The theme of the 2017 Dublin Feminist Film Festival is ‘FeministFutures’, films that ask questions about future generations of women, not just related to science and technology, but also on the challenges facing women moving forward and subjects worth considering as things change for women in Ireland and elsewhere. The 2016 documentary Trapped makes for an excellent choice for an opener to the festival in this regard, depicting an urgent reality for women in the United States that has only continued in importance in the face of the considerable political changes in that country since the film’s release. For viewers in Ireland, the film makes for vital viewing as well, delivering the important message that no matter what happens next year with regards to repealing the 8th Amendment, the job of fighting for reproductive rights for women won’t be finished. Those who look to control and restrict the bodily rights of women will not go away.
November 24 -26 will see the return of Dub Web Fest, Ireland’s celebration of online storytelling. Now in its third year, this film festival curated for online programming will have among its programme a MasterClass workshop in editing to be delivered by the experienced and renowned Irish editor Tony Kearns. From advertisements of the likes of Lynx, the Lotto and Playstation to acclaimed music videos including ‘Just’ by Radiohead and ‘Firestarter’ by The Prodigy, chances are high that you’ve seen his work, even if you haven’t realised it. More recently, Kearns has edited a number of feature films, including Cardboard Gangsters, the true crime drama set in the heart of Darndale. Film In Dublin spoke with Tony ahead of Dub Web Fest, to get his insights into the editing process.
Next Friday will see Grindhouse Dublin celebrate the anniversary of another fan favourite, and they pity the fool who won’t be there.*
Attention Irish horror fans! Lock in is an intense psychological horror feature film from writer/director Malcolm Deegan. The film tells the story of Robert O’ Rourke, a recluse who struggles day by day to remember his identity. Closed away from the outside world, Robert is plagued by visions that may or may not be real. Soon Robert awakens into a nightmare that is very real and will change him forever. The film is currently seeking production funding to help complete the project, turning to crowdfunding to ensure their film gets made.
The Dublin Feminist Film Festival celebrates female filmmakers, with the aim of inspiring and empowering more female involvement in filmmaking. The films screened at the festival consider women both on screen and behind it, showcasing stories told by and about women. For four years the festival has showcased great films by women from Ireland and abroad and involved women in film in discussions about their work, and the festival returns November 16 – 18 for a weekend of films that look to the future of women in cinema.
The cinema equivalent of a Coca Cola truck wheeling into town for Dublin film fans, the Light House Cinema’s announcement of their ‘Naughty or Nice’ season heralds the arrival of the Christmas season, just as the Halloween decorations start coming down. The month of December in the Smithfield cinema is dedicated to Christmas classics, with all your favourite Christmas movies available on the big screen. We don’t know about you, but it’s hard not to look at the amazing artwork above by Chris Judge and not feel the excitement and the nostalgia start to flow. The full season has been announced and tickets are already on sale, so the time to start writing to Santa for two tickets to Die Hard is now.
Director: Taika Waititi Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thomson, Jeff Goldblum, Mark Ruffalo, Idris Elba, Anthony Hopkins, Karl Urban Running Time: 130 minutes
Thor: Ragnarok is fine. This might seem like a needlessly dismissive hot take on a movie that has been popular with critics and a hit at the Irish box office (the film was responsible for over 46% of the Irish 3-day weekend box office), but given the considerable talent involved in the film, both on screen and in the director’s chair, is it spoiled to come out of Marvel’s latest blockbuster? Let’s not be too much of a curmudgeon about this; Ragnarok is a frequently very funny film, one that meets the expectations of its audience, set firmly from that “he’s a friend from work!” trailer, more or less exactly. It is another Marvel movie, and much like pizza, even when they’re not amazing they’re still pretty good. It is what it is. It just could have been more than that.
Director: Tomas Alfredson Starring: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones, Val Kilmer Running time: 119 mins
Nordic noir is something that Hollywood has been trying to crack for many years. Although movies, novels and TV shows on this side of the pond have slashed their way to nordic noir notoriety, Hollywood’s attempts to produce this type of dark, urban-based crime fiction hasn’t produced many results.
Expectations were high, however, when news broke of The Snowman; a Jo Nesbø novel adaptation directed by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy director Tomas Alfredson, starring Michael Fassbender and produced by none other than Martin Scorsese. On paper The Snowman should be a masterpiece. In reality, it couldn’t be further from one.
Director: Armando Iannucci Starring: Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin Running Time: 107 minutes
For years with both The Thick of It and Veep, Armando Iannucci has brilliant and bitterly skewed the nature of politicians in the West, bumbling self-servingly from scandal to scandal, always better equipped at putting down each other than accomplishing anything on their own. Applying that style of satire to Soviet Russia seems like a recipe for great comedy, but the stakes are rather different in a political climate where no one is allowed to admit that scandals ever happened and putting down political rivals meant a few feet underground rather than a few creatively chosen swear words. Staging the aftermath of Josef Stalin’s death similarly to the events of an episode of one of those programmes results in a black comedy that’s frequently very funny, but the satire here has a somber note too. That the people in charge of a superpower could be as arrogant and incompetent as those shuffled off to The Thick of It‘s Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship has some fairly chilling implications. Thank Christ we don’t have to worry about anything like that these days.
