Manchester by the Sea (15A) If there’s a more natural actor than Casey Affleck working in films today I’d like to hear about him. I wait for his films to come out like I once waited for those of Robert de Niro. He’s our new James Dean, our new Montgomery Clift. He understands the conflicts…
Live By Night (15A) The ‘myth kitty’ – if I may borrow Philip Larkin’s famous phrase – of this atmospheric crime flick ranges from The Godfather and Goodfellas through Scarface, The Road to Perdition and Chris Cooper’s Black Mass. A more immediate reference point might be Ben Affleck’s The Town, which mirrors it in its…
La La Land (PG) If you told me last year that Ryan Gosling would be playing the romantic lead in a musical, I’d probably have called for the men in the white coats to take you away. On second thoughts, though, this actor has been nothing if not diverse in his career thus far. Why…
Silence Martin Scorsese, who studied for the priesthood as a young man, has divided his directorial career between mainstream dramas and revisionist religious works like Kundun and The Last Temptation of Christ. Silence falls into the latter category. It’s been in gestation for many years and chronicles the fortunes of a 17th-Century Jesuit missionary called…
In a world where commercialism rules OK, Strange Occurrences in a Small Irish Village – ostensibly a documentary about the Marian shrine in Knock and the people who visit it but ultimately a commentary on the state of religion in Ireland today – was never going to wipe the more mainstream releases off the screen.…
The Birth of a Nation (15A)
“My children didn’t have the advantages I had growing up,” Kirk Douglas said once, “they were born rich.” What he meant was that his poverty-stricken youth made him more aware of the value of a dollar. How many pampered sons and daughters of the rich and famous would learn to appreciate the wisdom of his…
How can one explain the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the recent American election by a man with so many disgraceful characteristics as Donald Trump unless, as has been suggested, she herself was so passionately disliked by large sectors of the population? One wit suggested Donald Duck could even have beaten her. In the aftermath…
A United Kingdom (12A)
The Light Between Oceans (12A)
Aubrey Malone