• 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…

  • Logan

    March 9, 2017 - By 

    Finally! Writer/director James Mangold (Walk The Line) has made up for the damp squib that was 2013’s The Wolverine, with a fantastic final outing for Hugh Jackman that transcends the usual superhero formula and delves into a much darker, violent and more vulnerable, nearly dystopian world. Unlike the many other movies of this genre, Logan gives the viewer a feeling of realism, substance and heart, of the type that has never been seen in the rest of the Marvel or DC worlds, making for an instant classic. In the year 2029, mutants are all but a thing of the past,…

  • George Best: All By Himself

    March 9, 2017 - By 

    George Best: All By Himself begins in darkness, with the voices of commentators eulogising George Best’s remarkable footballing talent, before the dreamlike moment is shattered by a recollection of Best’s ex-wife Angie of seeing a homeless man walking along the road, only to realise it was George. In Daniel Gordon’s documentary, football is secondary to the tragedy of Best’s personal demons, as Gordon attempts to unravel the enigma and get to the root cause of the star’s dramatic decline into alcoholism. Gordon’s film unfolds in a largely chronological structure, taking the audience from Best’s humble beginnings, through his meteoric rise…

  • 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…

  • Certain Women

    March 3, 2017 - By 

    [This review contains mild plot spoilers] I wasn’t surprised to discover, just a few hours after watching Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, that the film’s three, loosely connected narratives were adapted from a collection of short stories. (The author of these stories is Maile Meloy, and the collection from which they’re drawn is called Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.) Like a good short story, each of Certain Women’s segments offers a concise but rich glimpse into other lives, places and experiences. And, while each part could easily stand alone as a minor-key indie drama, they interlock in…

  • A Cure For Wellness

    March 3, 2017 - By 

    Gore Verbinski’s (Pirates Of The Carribean) latest big budget venture is a mishmash of the mystery/suspense/horror genres, that sees the director move into painfully familiar territory. So much so that you would swear that he’s trying to evoke the ghost of Stanley Kubrick, but in the most unflattering, unoriginal and derivative manner. A Cure For Wellness tells the story of a young, cocky Wall Street executive called Lockhart, who is tasked with bringing an important CEO of his company back from a ‘wellness retreat’, located in a picturesque location of the Swiss Alps. But as soon as he arrives, an…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Hidden Figures

    February 17, 2017 - By 

    How the stories of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson managed to not become common lore in NASA’s history until now could only be put down to racial and gender prejudice. And while writer/director Ted Melfi (St Vincent) has told this inspiringly important and fascinating story to a decent degree, Hidden Figures is let down by a hokey script that is laced with safe racism, giving the film a conventional Hollywood feel, one that takes away from the remarkable story. During the space race between the USA and the USSR in the 1960s, three African-American women broke huge…

  • Fifty Shades Darker

    February 14, 2017 - By 

    More meta-event than movie, Fifty Shades Darker arrives with the forced fanfare of a willy cake from your Aunt Sheila. On page and screen, the series has struggled to provide material to match its breathless cultural ubiquity and this deficit continues with film number two. Is anyone actually enjoying this anymore? Local saucepot Jamie Dornan does the interview rounds like a good boy, but his screaming eyes betray the pain of bondage. Pipe up Jamie, what’s the safe word? Picking up a little time after Christian Grey (Dornan) and Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson, still the best thing here) severed their…