Breakthrough (12A) In January 2015 a 14-year-old boy called John Smith was playing with two friends on a frozen lake in Missouri when the ice broke and he fell through, hence the title of the film. The term has a secondary religious reverberation because he underwent a kind of spiritual ‘breakthrough’ as well. John was…
Tolkien (12A) We’re in World War I. A soldier stands in the trenches in the heat of battle. Memory and desire percolate in his brain. He has a fever. He’s looking for a lost friend. His mind wanders back to the past – to the poverty of his childhood, the death of his mother, finding…
Float Like a Butterfly (15A) Imagine, if you will, Rocky Balboa on a beach. As a young woman. And Irish. And a gypsy. Difficult, I know. But it’s what we get here. The feisty spirit of the travellers is endearingly captured in this heartfelt tale of a teenage girl who proves better able to take care of herself…
Bel Canto (15A) Julianne Moore may not be Maria Callas in the singing department but she’s no slouch as an actress. In this ambitious adaptation of Ann Patchett’s acclaimed novel of the same name she plays soprano Roxane Coss. She’s interrupted in the middle of a private concert she’s giving to international dignitaries in a palace…
At Eternity’s Gate (12A) Hollywood has never really understood artists. Kirk Douglas won an Oscar nomination for essaying the role of Vincent van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life in 1956 but his performance was way over the top. Jacques Dutronc presented him in a much more nuanced manner in Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh in 1991.…
Cold Pursuit (16) Why would one of the most beloved actors of our country, someone who received a tsunami of reverence for the dignified manner in which he dealt with the freakish death of his wife Natasha some years ago, commit career suicide through a racist rant? Unless you’ve been living under a stone in recent…
The only thing that’s likely to surprise you at this year’s Oscar ceremonies is the fact that for the first time since 1989 it won’t have a host, only presenters. Other than that you don’t need a crystal ball to forecast what’s going to happen. The favourites in all the main categories are so odds-on…
If Beale Street Could Talk (15A) Anyone who saw Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight would have been impressed by the quiet charm Trevante Rhodes brought to the role of the character called Chiron. (As you may remember, three actors played him in various stages of his life). Stephan James reminded me a lot of him as Alonzo in Jenkins’ latest opus.…
Green Book (PG) Dull would he be of soul who could fail to warm to the black and white communion of Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and Tony Lip (Viggo Mortenson) in this feelgood road movie. As a treatise on racism, though, it’s hackneyed. Likewise as a buddy-buddy feature, the tropes are overly familiar. I didn’t admire…
When I was growing up, the ‘intellectuals’ argued that the true comic geniuses of the cinema were people like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I always preferred Laurel & Hardy though – probably because I don’t think one should intellectualise comedy. They had a gift for improvisation that should be the envy of the so-called…
Aubrey Malone