• Gloria Bell

    June 7, 2019 - By 

    Gloria Bell is something of a gear change for Sebastián Lelio after his Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman. That film was a sobering deep dive into transphobia that drew fire from trans critics for dog piling woes upon a trans woman with little substance to back it up. Gloria Bell, an American remake of Lelio’s own 2013 film Gloria, is a much more nuanced and life affirming proposition The film’s opening act is a master class in patient character building. We follow Gloria, a fifty something year-old divorcee, as she sings love songs in the car, checks in on her distant…

  • Papi Chulo

    June 7, 2019 - By 

    2016’s Handsome Devil, a minor hit and the second film from Irish director John Butler, turned on issues of gay estrangement and unlikely male friendship. It balanced melodrama and excesses — like Andrew Scott’s literature teacher and his ‘Oh Captain, My Captain’ grandstanding — with a genuinely sweet consideration of the loneliness and alienation that comes with being young, gay and wayward. Butler channelled his own difficult queer history into a generally broad treatment, a heightening and blending of Irish cinematic tones. Papi Chulo takes Butler out of the island for the first time, but operates along similar thematic and tonal lines for its story of…

  • Forbidden Fruit 2019 – Day Three

    June 4, 2019 - By 

    As people begin filtering into IMMA for the final time of the June bank holiday weekend, there is an easiness in the air. The audience is noticeably more mature than those of days gone by and most certainly of a more relaxed disposition. There’s not so much a hum of excitement, but rather a coolness- a feeling that says, “take it easy folks, have a nice one”. Easing the crowd into the day on the mainstage is Glasshouse, a chamber ensemble performing the music of Bon Iver, for a moderately sized crowd. Their interpretations of Justin Vernon’s work is a…

  • Forbidden Fruit 2019 – Day One

    June 2, 2019 - By 

    It’s about two in the afternoon and the sun is peeking out from behind a blanket of clouds to kiss the grounds of Kilmainham with intermittent drops of light and heat. The first few punters are entering the fields surrounding Ireland’s Museum of Modern Art for Forbidden Fruit, a weekend festival that showcases local and international talent for thousands amongst the idyllic surroundings of the IMMA grounds. Opening up the festival on the District Stage is a local artist: April, an RnB-inspired singer-songwriter from County Kildare. Being the first act of the weekend is always a daunting task, it is…

  • Forbidden Fruit 2019 – Day Two

    June 3, 2019 - By 

    For the second time this weekend the grounds of IMMA are flooded by crowds upon crowds of festival-goers. Already it can be said that the second day of Forbidden Fruit will bear little resemblance to its opening day. There is less of an edge in the air and a jovial atmosphere covers Kilmainham like a warm blanket. As punters funnel into the fields surrounding the art museum it finally feels as if there is a level of cohesiveness to the festival’s crowd. The very earliest of ticket holders are greeted by the gentle pulsing rhythms of Irish Electronic artist Fehdah.…

  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters

    May 31, 2019 - By 

    The world is ending. And even if politicians don’t know it, blockbuster cinema does. Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the lizard king’s thirty-fifth film and the third in Legendary’s MonsterVerse (sigh) franchise, begins soaked in the visual vocab of disaster. Fire, rain, rubble, and parents screaming the names of buried children. In the background, skydiving trails signal the stand-out set-piece from 2014’s Godzilla, whose domestic drama has been swapped for Vera Farmiga and Kyle Chander’s estranged married couple and their daughter (Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown) dealing with the realities of a post-monster world. Sort of, but not really: King…

  • Aladdin

    May 30, 2019 - By 

    How is it possible for something to be both the same, and less? It’s a curious philosophical achievement Disney have found themselves excelling at since they decided to take their beloved animated properties out of Walt-style cryo-freeze and serve them back up to us, re-animated in flesh and blood. The latest in the mega-corp’s line of live-action simulacrums, Aladdin is a magic carpet ride that never gets off the ground, a weirdly lumpy Arabian Nights retread from Guy Ritchie, the obvious go-to guy for a fun, campy Middle Eastern romance. It’s much the same as you remember: Aladdin (Mena Massoud)…

  • Junior Brother – Pull The Right Rope

    May 29, 2019 - By 

    Imagine Joanna Newsom had gorged on grainy VHS tapes of Richie Kavanagh instead of the modernist compositions of Ruth Crawford Seeger, weaving guitar stabs and tambourine whacks to soundtrack drunken treks through rural Ireland. This verdant picture, brought forward by Kerry bard Junior Brother, glistens to life on his enchanting debut album, Pull the Right Rope, released through Galway’s Strange Brew label. Born and raised just outside of Killarney, the origin story of Junior Brother, the performance name Ronan Kealy nabbed from an early 17th century play he studied in college, is equally as pristine and adventurous as his music.…

  • Fixity – No Man Can Tell

    May 27, 2019 - By 

      Cork has fostered a healthy collaborative atmosphere among its musical populace in the last number of years, with an ever-expanding community of fusion groups, side projects, one-off jam sessions and young, experimental collectives sprouting to exchange ideas, explore new creative avenues and perform one-off collaborations never to be played again. One of those at the centre of it all is multi-instrumentalist Dan Walsh, whose monthly Cork Improvised Music Club night (formerly at Gulpd café, now at The Roundy) and previous work at the helm of improvisational outfit, Fixity, have done more than satisfy Cork’s thirst for psychedelic exploration. An…

  • Bitflower Bb – Mastalgia

    May 24, 2019 - By 

    The word “Mastalgia” is a medical term referring to the heavy, dull tight breast pain commonly experienced by most women, and usually without utterance. It’s also the name of the new six-track record from Dublin’s Bitflower Bb (the side project of DJ and producer Dream~cycles.) A lush, evocative blend of electronic and organic sounds, it’s a close, intimate collection of bedroom-pop songs produced throughout 2017-2018. Simultaneously dreamy and affecting, at times Mastalgia recalls the lo-fi experimental pop of Galway-native, Dublin-based Maria Somerville or the vast soundscapes of Grouper, but overall, it’s an undeniably unusual record.  The title’s reference to a private, interior…