Joseph Walsh
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Film Review: ‘The Fairy’
★★★☆☆ Flawed, modern day fairytale The Fairy (La fée, 2011) is the third film from comic-collaborators Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy. Dom works in a small hotel just outside of Le Havre. One night a barefoot, luggage-less woman named Fiona walks in claiming to be a fairy and offers Dom three wishes. After asking for two…
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Film Review: ‘Killer Joe’
★★★★☆ It’s been six whole years since US master director William Friedkin (best known for 1973’s The Exorcist) last brought his talents to the big screen, but he’s now returned with his exposé of hick life Killer Joe (2011), starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple. In the depths of Texas live the dysfunctional Smith family. The eldest…
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Film Review: ‘Think Like a Man’
★★☆☆☆ Many films are based on books but rarely is it a self-help book – but that is exactly what director Tim Story has done with Think Like a Man (2012). Based on the best-seller of the same name by comedian and relationship guru Steve Harvey this romantic comedy sees four diverse thirty-something men have…
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Film Review: ‘Planet of Snail’
★★★★☆ South Korean director Yi Seung-jun’s heartfelt documentary Planet of Snail (2011) presents the moving tale of Young-Chan, a soulful individual who lost both his sight and hearing as a child and since then has only been able to communicate through his sense of touch. Fortunately for Young-Chan, he met his wife Soon-Ho, also disabled…
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Film Review: ‘Lay the Favourite’
★★☆☆☆ British director Stephen Frears’ career boasts many successful films including Dangerous Liaisons (1988), High Fidelity (2000) and The Queen (2006), but in recent years his output has been disappointing. Lay the Favourite (2012), starring Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall and Catherine Zeta-Jones, shows little evidence of changing that trend. Hall plays Beth, a naive stripper…
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Interview: Pat Healy, star of Ti West’s ‘The Innkeepers’
Following the success of 2009 indie-horror The House of the Devil, American director Ti West brings us The Innkeepers (2011), a new horror starring Pat Healy (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [2007]) and Sara Paxton (The Last House on the Left [2009]). The Yankee Pedlar Inn is closing down, in…
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Film Review: ‘Late September’
★☆☆☆☆ Director Jon Sanders’ third feature Late September (2012) is a lumbering, tiresome arthouse experiment that cheaply muses on the relationship of a couple who realise, after forty years, that their marriage is failing. Shot over a 24-hour period, the film follows Ken (Richard Vanstone) and Gillian (Anna Mottram) in and around their picturesque cottage…
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Film Review: ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’
★★☆☆☆ Previously known for some rather mediocre films, director Dana Lustig returns with A Thousand Kisses Deep (2011) – a thought provoking, if somewhat overly ambitious, sci-fi drama starring Jodie Whittaker of Attack The Block fame and Dougray Scott who recently appeared as Arthur Miller in My Week with Marilyn (2011).Mia (Whittaker) is a troubled…
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Film Review: ‘Fast Girls’
★★★☆☆ Kidulthood (2006) writer Noel Clarke join forces with Lenora Crichlow, Lily James and Bradley James in New Zealand-born director Regan Hall’s Brit-flick Fast Girls (2012). Whilst this isn’t much more than a feel-good sports movie, Hall’s underdog tale provides good entertainment value for those looking ahead to this summer’s London Olympics.When Shania Andrews (Crichlow),…
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DVD Review: ‘Battle of the Pacific’
★★☆☆☆ Japanese director Hideyuki Hirayama offers audiences Battle of the Pacific (2011) – a flawed, but at times moving, account of a group of Japanese soldiers in Saipan at the end of WWII who continue to fight on even after their emperor has surrendered. Hiayama’s film is better known amongst Asian audiences as Oba: The…