• Belfast Film Fest Blog: Day 9

    April 7, 2017 - By 

    It’s engines go for festival, and we’ll be running daily reactions, reviews and previews of upcoming screenings here on this regular blog. There’s going to be a lot to get through. Send us your film reactions at conor@thethinair.net, or tweet @thethinair – we want to hear what you’re seeing and what’s good. Day Nine – Friday 7th We’re closing in on the home stretch here. Expect more reviews and reflections over the weekend, including cinematographer Kirsten Johnson’s absorbing, reflective doc-collage Cameraperson and Breaking Bad‘s Betsy Brandt’s not-bad (that’s a lot of Bs) lead turn in missing-husband drama Alice in Motion, but for…

  • 21 (Pretty Much Random) Picks For The Belfast Film Festival

    March 29, 2017 - By 

    Time to hunt out your best pair of sitting-down trousers. The 17th Belfast Film Festival kicks off his week, running from Thursday 30th March to Sunday 9th April, boasting a packed programme of new cinema, both local and international, as well as special guests, live events, short films and classic screenings. There’s a lot going on, and any preview is going to be piece-meal. Ultimately, most of the fun will be encountering something totally unexpected once the lights go down. We’ve picked out a handful of screenings and events but encourage you to browse the full programme on their website. Here at The Thin Air we…

  • The Boss Baby

    March 28, 2017 - By 

    It’s a movie about a baby. Who wears a suit. Like a boss does. I’m not sure what else to tell you. Based on the children’s picture-book by Marla Frazee and directed by Madagascar regular Tom McGrath, Dreamworks’ The Boss Baby takes a universal truth about the demanding reality of newborns, and spins it into a whimsical theory about the origins of toddlers and the conflicting demands put on a family’s resources. Voiced by Miles Bakshi (and Tobey Maguire in the adult-looking-back voiceovers), Tim is a 7 year-old enjoying life as the sole recipient of his parents’ time and attention, mom and…

  • CHiPs

    March 27, 2017 - By 

    Based on the 1977-1983 television series of the same name, CHiPs is an action-comedy remake strangely obsessed with the question of what can and cannot be considered homophobic. Frank ‘Ponch’ Poncherello (Michael Peña) is an FBI agent who goes undercover in the California Highway Patrol to uncover some dirty cops. On the morning of his first day, changing in the locker room, he bristles when his new partner Jon Baker (Dax Shepard), clad only in tightie whities, reaches for a hug. Ponch quickly explains he’s not homophobic or anything, it’s just a weird thing to do with a stranger. Cut to…

  • Beauty and the Beast

    March 21, 2017 - By 

    One of the reasons fairy tales work is that they are so obviously not real. Their fantastical, exaggerated qualities help make the horror, weirdness and romantic impossibilities easier to process. And while it wasn’t exactly frightening, Disney’s iconic animated musical Beauty and the Beast, part of the late-80s/early 90s “Disney Renaissance”, had an understanding of how to build Gothic contrast, moreso than even the 18th-century French original, in which the Beast is not Beauty’s jailor but her doting servant. There was a strangeness to Beauty and the Beast‘s obviously warped story; not just the Stockholm Syndrome infatuation, or the intense…

  • Kong: Skull Island

    March 20, 2017 - By 

    Like John Goodman’s black ops adventurer whose mania for fantastic beasts and where to find them drives the film, Warner Bros are chasing something big with Kong: Skull Island. Coming with an Avengers Initiative-style post-credit coda and forming a “Monsterverse” (sigh) with Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla, this new Kong rendition is a reach for a big, stonking franchise to compete with other studios’ similar endeavours. Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong leant into the tragic, emotionally grand tradition of old-timey, New York skyline iconography. Whatever you make of Jackson’s film – and reception was mixed – an eager artistic vision shone through. Skull…

  • Trespass Against Us

    March 9, 2017 - By 

    There is something very pseudo-Shakespearean about Trespass Against Us, and not just because of Michael Fassbender’s pedigree playing the mad Scottish king. This West Country Traveller crime drama revolves around the question of lineage and, in its own grubby way, dynastic fulfillment. The Cutlers are a family of Travellers who, along with the rest of their small nomadic community, have rejected conventional townie life and finance their existence with a spot of thieving on the side. At the head of the clan sits Brendan Gleeson’s Colby, usually seen squatting on his beaten-down leather armchair throne, who keeps a firm grip…

  • Fist Fight

    March 2, 2017 - By 

    In the new comedy Fist Fight, a just-okay sketch idea that somehow bumbled its way into feature production, Ice Cube plays Mr. Strickland, a history teacher at a high school that’s going down the tubes. On the last day of the year the annual senior pranks are in full flow, the administration is going through payroll with butcher knives and he’s stuck trying to teach kids about the Civil War with a crappy VHS player. Finally pushed over the edge, Strickland goes for a student’s desk with a fireaxe and lands himself in front of the harried, impatient principal (Breaking…

  • John Cusack Joins The 17th Belfast Film Festival

    February 28, 2017 - By 

    The 17th annual Belfast Film Festival, running 30th March – 8 April, is on the horizon, and the organizers have announced a range of festival highlights. Principal among them is the news that John Cusack, one of modern cinema’s most unconventional stars, will be in town as this year’s special guest and recipient of the festival’s Outstanding Contribution to Cinema award. The screenwriter, author and star of Say Anything, High Fidelity and Dragon Blade will be joined in conversation by local film broadcaster Brian Henry Martin at the Movie House Dublin Road on Friday 31st March, to reflect on his…

  • Dublin Review: The Rehearsal

    February 20, 2017 - By 

    What if Miles Teller in Whiplash wasn’t a dick, and chose the girl over the art? Then you’d get something like Kiwi drama The Rehearsal, which doesn’t have the intense tempo of Damien Chazelle’s jazzy endorsement of creativity-as-cruelty, but is interested in similar questions of how a young artist finds themselves and what they are willing to sacrifice in the process. Alison Maclean’s first feature since 1999’s Jesus’ Son adapts Eleanor Catton’s debut novel of the same name, with Emily Perkins as co-screenwriter, for a down to earth spin on the Fame mythos with a strong eye for drama school’s…