Film Review

The 80’s nostalgia trend has had a good moment in the sun, buoyed by the success of Stranger Things. For several years we have had innumerable shots of kids riding bicycles, 80’s pop needle drops and carefully placed ephemera of the period…

Say what you like about Zack Snyder, say he knows what his job is. Under European law the director is considered the author, that is the guiding force, of a film. Just as a literature author will be in charge of both the technical and…

Heartbreaking are the times for those living in Dublin. Whether looked at through the prospective property buyer’s eyes or those hoping to rent, Home Truths: Stories From The Housing Crisis is a short film by Eamonn Dillon that highlights…

Ogres have layers. So does this movie. Shrek, that magical, weird, upside-down fairytale experience by Dreamworks turns 20 this year. What is it about the title green swamp dweller that's so appealing and led to him spawning three sequels?…

Amy Adams, playing agoraphobic child psychologist Anna Fox, absent-mindedly speaks the lines to the black and white film she is watching on her television. This could almost serve as a sufficient summary of Joe Wright’s sub-Hitchcockian…

Fans of the horror genre will no doubt be familiar with filmmaker Alexandre Aja. The French director made a splash in the early 2000s with High Tension (also known as Switchblade Romance in the UK), a hyper-violent, nasty yet well-made and…

Fried Barry is the directorial debut of Liverpool-born South Africa-based director Ryan Kruger. The movie - dubbed this “Ryan Kruger thing” in the opening credits - is an expansion of his 2017 experimental short of the same name. Made over…

Political filmmaking is a rich catalogue in the history of German cinema. As far back as the Weimar era, political concerns find a revolutionary outlet in the Expressionist masterpieces of filmmakers like Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. In Nazi…

An aspiring performer goes to Hollywood to pursue her dreams but ends up being forced into drug abuse and prostitution: this is not an uncommon narrative arc used to highlight the murky spaces that cloud the entertainment industry. Irish…

Sony Pictures Animation has been a studio worth following over the past decade. They may have had that awkward misstep with The Emoji Movie, but they've also made plenty of stellar animated films. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the…