Breathe (12A) The ‘jolly hockeysticks’ depiction of England that we’ve seen in films like Notting Hill gets a retro airing in this grace-under-pressure tale of a man afflicted with polio. He was the longest living ‘responaut’, i.e. a person depending on a machine to breathe. The main problem with the film from an ethical point of…
The Death of Stalin (15A) This hilarious black comedy puts one in mind of the Irving Berlin apothegm, “The world would not be in such a snarl/Had Marx been born Groucho instead of Karl”. The cast become cartoon figures as the politburo is transformed into a comedy of (t)errors. With the exception of Dr Strangelove, where Peter Bull was…
The Quiet Architect (PG) I don’t tend to get very worked up about buildings. I’ve always seen them as things you go into when you want to get in out of the rain. This fascinating documentary from Mark Noonan made me re-think that. Kevin Roche is Irish but he’s spent most of his life ‘stateside’. He designed over…
Return to Montauk (PG ) Max (Stellan Skarsgard) is a writer from Berlin. He’s doing a promotional book tour in New York. Seventeen years ago he had a brief romance with Rebecca (Nina Hoss). Neither of them realised how much they cared about each other at the time. He meets her again now. You don’t have to be Einstein…
Reese Witherspoon could probably have phoned in her performance in this romantic comedy about a woman with two precocious daughters trying to make a new start in life as an interior decorator as she approaches the big four-oh. It won’t tax your brain unduly but if you like Witherspoon, who tends to hoover up the…
The break-out from the Maze prison in 1983 was ultimately unsuccessful – most of the 38 prisoners who escaped were either captured or killed – but it could be argued that it galvanised the powers-that-be towards the Good Friday Agreement which occurred more than a decade later. This brilliant film is set in the aftermath…
Ever since January, when this independent film about a struggling rap singer premiered at Sundance – ‘indie’ works tend to shine there – it’s been the talk of the industry. It was taken up by the distributor Fox Searchlight and the rest is history. Not being a great lover of rap music – I’ve never…
Everything Everything (12A) Maddy has spent most of her 18-year life cooped up in her custom-built California home. Her world is the internet. She can’t go outside the door because she suffers from a rare condition SCID (Severe Combined Immuno Deficiency). Translated into English, that means her immune system doesn’t work. Any virus could kill…
A bullet rings out in the night sky. It’s been discharged from a toy gun by a black man in a hotel room. Shortly afterwards the room is stormed by policemen. The people in the room are thrown against a wall. For the next hour they’re insulted, assaulted and threatened with death. Then murder occurs…
An Inconvenient Sequel (PG) He walks like John Wayne. He talks like Dr Phil. Who is he? He’s Al Gore, the man who once said, “I used to be the next President of the United States.” That didn’t happen but something else did. He found a life outside politics. A life of lecturing on ecology,…