• Mission: Impossible – Fallout

    “I’ll figure it out.” Ethan Hunt’s reassurance, repeated through Mission: Impossible — Fallout, is the mantra of the eternal optimist, one embodied perfectly by Tom Cruise, contemporary blockbuster cinema’s most industrious instrument of can-do energy, only but one of the diligently-spinning cogs in Christopher McQuarrie’s meticulously constructed, if occasionally overwhelmed, return to the Impossible brand. If the traditional, Bondian image of espionage (pre-Daniel Craig anyway) is that of effortless ease — a silencer under a dinner suit, a wry one-liner with alcohol on the breath — then in Cruise we get the opposite: intelligence work as aerobic overkill. Under the instruction of the Impossible series’ five distinct directors (McQuarrie…

  • Belfast Film Festival Presents: Spaced

    Plan 9 Film Club, as part of the Belfast Film Festival, host a night at the Black Box on April 22 dedicated to cult UK sitcom Spaced. Running for two seasons from 1999-2001 on Channel 4, it was the big breakthrough for creative minds Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson & Edgar Wright, who, as we all know, have went on to write, direct and star in some of the finest comedies in recent years. It also gave early exposure to the likes of sitcom favourites Mark Heap, Nick Frost, Julia Deakin and NI comedian & actor Michael Smiley. Tickets are available from the Film Festival for £5. Doors open at 7pm, with…