Nicolas Cage has been flying under the radar for so many years now we could be forgiven for forgetting just how great an actor he is. With two Oscar nominations in his quiver (one converted) and a plethora of other awards, his career should be the envy of many more hyped talents. Fighting off charges…
John Mulderig From the moment of his election in early 2013, Pope Francis naturally became one of the world’s most newsworthy individuals. But it was especially in the latter half of his pontificate that he proved an intriguing figure for moviemakers. Both documentarians and the creators of feature films were drawn to him over that…
Two worlds. In one of them a tinpot Don Corleone called Power (Aidan Gillen) presides over a ruthless drugs ring. In the other, shellshocked ex-Afghanistan soldier Danny (Luke McQuillan) makes a bid for shared custody of his son with his long-suffering wife Gill (Jade Jordan), aided by kind-hearted social worker Kate (Louise Bourke) after a…
Richard Burton was the twelfth of thirteen children born in the Welsh village of Pontrhydyfen 100 years ago. His mother died two years later. Richard Jenkins – his birth name – would probably have spent his working life ‘down the mines’ like his father and most of the other male inhabitants of the village were…
The release of Seong-ho Jay Hang’s The King of Kings (PG) makes perfect timing for Easter. Telling the story of Christ in animated form through the voices of household names like Oscar Isaac, Kenneth Branagh and Uma Thurman, it has Charles Dickens, of all people, as the narrator. Many people won’t be aware that Dickens…
On April 9 1945, one of the truly remarkable human beings of modern times, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was executed at Flossenbürg, a concentration camp situated in Upper Bavaria. In the Gregorian calendar, April 9 is the anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus (probably 30 CE). Bonheoffer would have known this, walking to the scaffold. His last…
An Taibhse (The Ghost, 15A) Is this Ireland’s answer to The Shining? An attempt to reprise the success of Kneecap? An imaginative horror film it has a man and his daughter working as caretakers in a spooky Georgian mansion during a harsh post-Famine winter. What’s next on the national landscape – a gaeilgeoir version of…
Have you ever seen a convent of nuns that comprises a former beauty queen, a drug dealer whose life was – literally – saved by the Bible, a nun who wears a tattoo, one who swears, one who jokes about the decapitation of John the Baptist, one who sways her hips as she dances to…
How important is art in films? Are we living in a world where money rules OK and everything else gets squashed into the background? One of the first films I saw when I came to Dublin was Vittorio De Sica’s earthy Bicycle Thieves, a ‘cinema verité’ story of a man and his son living on…
We’re an hour into Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths (12A) before a character says to Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), “Why are you so angry?” It’s a question you’re entitled to be asking yourself from the first minute of the film. Leigh doesn’t spoon-feed us with answers to it. Hurt people hurt people. There’s a suggestion she may…
Aubrey Malone