• The Program

    October 19, 2015 - By 

    ‘Contains the use of performing-enhancing drugs’ warns the title card of The Program, John Hodge and Stephen Frears’ unpacking of the Lance Armstrong myth, and it ain’t joking. Doping paraphernalia and vocab comes at the viewer thick and fast: drips, syringes, tubes, platelets, red and white cells and liquids in tiny bottles with too many syllables on the label. Blood is drawn, test results are cooked and dodgy equipment stuffed out of sight, with Team Armstrong and the anti-doping watchdogs locked in an arms race of detection and evasion. Cycling isn’t about lungs and legs, insists the opening voiceover of Ben Foster’s Armstrong,…

  • Macbeth

    October 9, 2015 - By 

    In recent years, screen adaptations of Macbeth have sought to make an impression by courting relevance. Geoffrey Wright’s 2006 film, starring Sam Worthington in the lead, tranposed Shakespeare’s blood-coated tragedy to modern-day Melbourne, putting the verse in the mouths of rough cokehead gangsters who wouldn’t look out of place on the Sons of Anarchy set. For the BBC’s 2005 ShakespeaRe-Told series, Peter Moffat turned the theatrical into the gastronomical, casting James McAvoy as an ambitious sous chef chasing Michelin star glory. This new Macbeth, directed by Justin Kurzel (his sophmoric feature after 2011’s The Snowtown Murders), is the first high-profile film adaptation of the…

  • The Martian

    October 2, 2015 - By 

    Improperly handled, optimism can be unbearable. One of the (many) problems with Chris Nolan’s Interstellar and Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, two recent advocates for a return to space-age can-do adventurism in a jaded age, was their wild asymmetry between telling and showing. Both films were too breathlessly busy evangelising about mankind’s untapped potential to actually demonstrate that potential in action: ‘reach for the stars’ bluster can only get you so far. Ridley Scott’s The Martian, a highly polished and entertaining space castaway story based on Andy Weir’s novel, is sort of a fulfillment of these earlier film’s ambitions, selling its golly-gee…

  • The Visit

    September 15, 2015 - By 

    It’s hard to deny that M. Night Shyamalan has had one of the more interesting career trajectories in contemporary American cinema. Beginning his career with some middling rom/family-coms, Night found a frankly ridiculous level of success with 2001’s The Sixth Sense”, one of the very few Oscar nominated horror films. He followed this up with two decent, if not spectacular pictures before seemingly deciding to set his bed on fire. The Village and Lady In The Water quite rightly tanked while The Happening may well be one of the most unintentionally hilarious films ever released by a major American studio. Most of…

  • Irrational Man

    September 14, 2015 - By 

    Judge Thomas Spangler – the catalyst at the centre of Woody Allen’s latest dark-comedy, Irrational Man – is a creature of habit. Every day he jogs along the same route, drinks the same juice and stops to read the paper on the same park bench. His routine is, in fact, so constant and predictable that it actively plays a part in his own demise. Allen, too, follows a predictable routine. He exercises in the mornings, writes at the same desk all day, and watches baseball at the weekends. He once famously missed an Academy Awards ceremony because it clashed with…

  • Jack MacGowran Remembered @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 20, 2015 - By 

    Though he died over forty years ago actor Jack MacGowran is still a regular on TV and at international film festivals, having graced such timeless classics such as The Quiet Man, Tom Jones, Doctor Zhivago, Cul-de-Sac and The Exorcist. As a theatre actor MacGowran is best known for his work with Samuel Beckett.  In a revealing talk at Enniskillen’s Southwest College, three people closely connected with MacGowran shed light on his career, his craft and his collaborative relationship with the Nobel Prize-winning writer Beckett. Jack’s daughter, actress Tara MacGowran was joined by Garech Browne, co-founder of Claddagh Records, who had…

  • Mistress America

    August 20, 2015 - By 

    With Frances Ha and While We’re Young, Noah Baumbach had made a pretty convincing argument that the most recent act of his reasonably long career is the strongest. Both films tackled ideas of identity, maturity and creativity with a delicate hand and a great deal of profundity and it pleases me to say that his latest effort, his second of 2015, Mistress America sits comfortably alongside the calibre of his previous two efforts. The picture, Baumbach’s second with writer, star and all round charming presence Greta Gerwig, is at its heart a screwball dramedy about growing old, developing a personality and the…

  • Absolutely Anything

    August 17, 2015 - By 

    On paper, Absolutely Anything sounds like a winning combination: not only does Terry Jones’s sci-fi comedy boast the (unofficial) screen reunion of the surviving Monty Python crew, but it’s also the final film appearance of the late, great Robin Williams – as a talking dog, no less. Despite everything, the film is wholly unremarkable, failing to generate more than a handful of chuckles throughout. Alongside lead Simon Pegg – who has helped pen some of the best British comedies in recent years – the talents of Messrs Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, (writer & director) Jones, Palin and Williams are all but…

  • The Gift

    August 14, 2015 - By 

    Note: The Gift is best enjoyed without the mildest of spoilers. Just to let you know. Even when playing entirely reasonable characters, Jason Bateman tends to come off like a bit of an asshole. His performances usually radiate a faint smugness or superiority – understandable as the token straight man amongst buffoons, idiots and Tobias Funke, licensed analrapist. The Gift, the feature directorial debut by Joel Edgerton, the Australian actor who wrote The Rover, expertly mines Bateman’s reserves of smarmy unlikability, as one half of an upper middle class couple starting a new life in the Los Angeles suburbs. In pure…

  • Ohio Impromptu @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 14, 2015 - By 

    The legend on the sign reads ‘The Captain’s Word is Law’ and so it is on the boat ferrying a group of Beckettphiles to Devenish Island for a sunset performance of Ohio Impromptu. When it comes to Samuel Beckett’s plays, however, even beyond the grave Beckett remains very much the captain, with his estate watching closely for any interference with the meaning or spirit of the work. However, as director Adrian Dunbar demonstrated last year with Catastrophe – his striking directorial debut of Beckett – following Beckett’s guidelines is the surest way to success. “If you start fiddling around with…