Kissing Candice (18) Midway through this psychedelic odyssey – the hell that is modern Ireland – I found myself thinking how much Ann Skelly, its main star, resembled Lady Lavery. And how, if Lady Lavery was the iconic image of a more halcyon time, Skelly could go on to become the face of the not so…
The Happy Prince (15A) Rupert Everett has been fascinated by Oscar Wilde for most of his life. He’s acted in many of his plays on Broadway and played his alter ego in films like The Importance of Being Ernest and An Ideal Husband. He also played Wilde himself in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss on the West…
Edie (12A) “Too late for chips?” the 83-year-old Edie (Sheila Hancock) asks her cook in a fast food restaurant. “Never too late for you, Edie,” he replies in what becomes a lightbulb moment for her. This is a sweet little film about a self-professed ‘geriatric’ trying to roll back the years. It’s “never too late”…
Citizen Lane (G) Such was the esteem in which art dealer Hugh Lane was held, if he even looked at a painting in a gallery, its value escalated. He lived in a period of literary rather than artistic ferment in Ireland. There were more people like W.B. Yeats than his brother Jack. “I’m going to revive…
I Feel Pretty (12A) Namechecking the endearing Natalie Wood tune from West Side Story in its title, this comes to us with the oldest message in movies: it’s the inner person that counts in matters of the heart rather than the outer one. Renee Bennett (Amy Schumer) is a kooky IT worker who’s a bit on the…
The Cured (15A) If we draw a line from, say, King Kong to The Elephant Man, we can see a pattern. The mistreated ‘beasts’ become the victims of corporate forces trying to wipe them out. In such cases our sympathies lie foursquare behind such pariahs. The problem with The Cured, which focuses on a group of…
Michael Inside (15A) Prisons are places where small criminals become big ones. Such a transmogrification is demonstrated in graphic fashion in this tale of a meek 18-year-old from a North Dublin housing estate who’s given a two month sentence after being found with a stash of cocaine worth €2,000. Michael McCrea (Dafhyd Flynn) is a carrier…
Mary Magdalene (12A) Whatever we may say about the Biblical epics of yore, they exuded power. Even the run-of-the-mill (or should I say De Mille) ones. The problem with Garth Davis’ Mary Magdalene is that it tries so hard to be ‘authentic’ it sacrifices the iconic benchmarks of scripture to subdued sidebars. It’s a plodding film…
Unless (15A) What would make a normal young girl from a privileged home in Toronto drop out of college to live on the streets without telling anyone why? That’s the central conundrum surrounding this captivating moodpiece from Alan Gilsenan which begins – appropriately – with a song from Canada’s prime avatar of angst and alienation,…
The 90th anniversary of the Oscar ceremonies is being held this year in the Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles on March 4. Sadly, the possibility that home favourite Saoirse Ronan will reprise her Golden Globe victory for Lady Bird has been ruled out by the bookies. They make Frances McDormand the hot favourite for Three Billboards…