Joseph Walsh
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Special Feature: Cineworld aquires Picturehouse
Today it was announced that multiplex chain Cineworld had acquired Picturehouse Cinemas, a company renowned for their quality programming showcasing the best of independent, foreign and cult cinema. Many may be shocked and concerned by this announcement, and despite the best efforts of Picturehouse to promote the move as a positive one, members and loyal…
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Film Review: ‘You Will Be My Son’
★★★★☆ Awash with a macabre Bacchian tone, Gilles Legrand’s intense family drama You Will Be My Son (Tu Seras Mon Fils, 2011) sees renowned French-Danish actor Niels Arestrup play a mercantile vineyard owner in a story set amid the fertile fields of Saint-Émilion, in the south west of France. Prestigious winemaker Paul de Marseul (Arestrup)…
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Film Review: ‘Gremlins’
★★★★☆ Cult American director Joe Dante’s classic children’s horror fantasy Gremlins (1984) – rereleased in cinemas this week by Park Circus for a very special digital mini run – holds a very special place in the hearts of children of the 1980s (alongside Flight of the Navigator [1986] and Ghostbusters [1984]), for its darkly comic tale…
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Film Review: ‘Celeste and Jesse Forever’
★★☆☆☆ Written by and starring The Social Network’s Rashida Jones along with fellow co-star Will McCormack, Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012) is a post-modern and (at times) comic twist on contemporary relationships, directed by Lee Toland Krieger. The opening photo-montage shows us that Jesse (Andy Samberg) and Celeste (Jones) were once a happy couple who…
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Special Feature: The FilmCraft Series
Unlike other art forms, cinema is a collaborative process more than any other. It involves directors, editors, writers, artists, costumes designers to name but a few different cogs, each of whom contribute their own element to a production. When we go to the cinema, from the latest arthouse release to the new Hollywood blockbuster, we…
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Film Review: ‘Laurence Anyways’
★★★☆☆ Winner of the Queer Palm at this year’s Cannes and Best Canadian Feature at Toronto, 23-year auteur in the making Xavier Dolan offers us an unconventional love story in Laurence Anyways (2012), demonstrating the pitfalls of his unrestrained approach to filmmaking. The opening shot shows the staunch strut of a woman walking down the…
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Film Review: ‘Trouble with the Curve’
★★☆☆☆ Outside Academy Awards hopeful Trouble with the Curve (2012), helmed by Clint Eastwood’s longstanding producer and friend Robert Lorenz who now directs the aforementioned American cinema icon, is a token sports-cum-family drama about the woes of a legendary, ailing baseball scout now entering the twilight years of his illustrious career. Protagonist Gus Lobel (Eastwood) is…
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Film Review: ‘Great Expectations’
★★★☆☆ Charles Dickens and Christmas go together like holly and ivy, or Nigella Lawson and a festive lunch. With that in mind, the release of British director Mike Newell’s new adaptation of Dickens’ much-loved literary classic, Great Expectations (2012), couldn’t be timelier. Sadly, however, it could have been better. This well-known and frequently adapted piece…
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Film Review: ‘Cinema Komunisto’
★★☆☆☆ The power of documentary filmmaking can often be found in its ability to make you fascinated and entertained by subjects that you either know very little, or absolutely nothing about. Sadly, this is not quite the case in Mila Turajlic’s directorial debut Cinema Komunisto (2010), which focuses on the history of former Yugoslavia through…
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Film Review: ‘Silver Linings Playbook’
★★★☆☆ Academy Award nominee David O. Russell follows up his bruising boxing drama The Fighter (2010) with Silver Linings Playbook (2012), a similarly bittersweet tale of mental illness and obsession starring The Hangover franchise’s Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Resident Philadelphian Pat Solitano (Cooper) has lost it all – including, it would seem, his mind.…
