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Film Review: The Story of Looking
★★★★☆ In the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown, prolific director and cinephile Mark Cousins adapts his book of the same name into a visual study of the art of looking at the world. Cousins’ films are always personal, but underpinned by his imminent cataract surgery, The Story of Looking is among his most deeply felt.…
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Film Review: Rose Plays Julie
★★★★★ In Rose Plays Julie, the latest from dynamic duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, a child of adoption studying veterinary medicine decides to seek out her biological mother and father. Her journey of discovery and resolution in holding her parents to account makes for haunting viewing. With their regular collaborator Aidan Gillen, Molloy and…
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Film Review: Prisoners of the Ghostland
★★★☆☆ Sion Sono’s debut film in the English language is an East-meets-West genre medley centred on the hero monomyth, and crucially the samurai movie’s influence on both the modern western and post-apocalyptic actioner. Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage gets to do his thing, and that’s always welcome. Prisoners of the Ghostland is an oddball movie that leaves…
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Four films for students on a rainy day
We have had more than enough sitting at home throughout the last year. Now is the perfect time to get vaccinated and catch up on traveling and social activities you’ve been missing out on. However, as much as you’d like to avoid staying in your room – there are certain circumstances that make it unavoidable.…
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Film Review: Herself
★★★★☆ A Dublin-set kitchen sink drama for the modern era, Phyllida Lloyd’s strong third feature, Herself, is as much an indictment of the grinding bureaucracy failing to house and protect women abused at the hands of their partners, as it is the men who inflict such despicable physical and psychological trauma. Fans of social realism will…
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Film Review: The Servant
★★★★★ The first in a trilogy of Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey collaborations that also includes Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1970) and re-released this week in glorious 4K, The Servant (1963) is a tense psychological drama that studies the theme of servitude, whilst also offering a brutal indictment of the British class system. James Fox stars as Tony, a wealthy…
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Film Review: The Lost Leonardo
★★★★☆ Ten years ago, London’s National Gallery exhibited a heavily restored Salvator Mundi, allegedly painted by Leonardo da Vinci, the attribution of which is fiercely contested. Tracing the painting from discovery to its eventual record-breaking private sale, documentarian Andreas Koefoed’s latest is about how art can become a vector for vanity, status and raw power.…
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Film Review: Wildfire
★★★★☆ In the months leading up to the UK’s departure from the European Union, troubled Kelly (the late Nika McGuigan) returns to her and her sister Lauren’s (Nora-Jane Noone) Northern Irish hometown after disappearing a year ago, unearthing a decades-old truth about the death of their mother. Broken borders abound in director Cathy Brady’s feature…
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Film Review: Annette
★★★★★ “Counterintuitive, baby,” Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard sing to each other early on in Leos Carax’s latest Annette – and indeed it is. As with every good musical, there’s a grasp of the magnificent ridiculousness of the whole conceit. A full joyful embrace of the freedom and the rigours of the form, “We’re scoffing…
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Film Review: Second Spring
★★★★☆ Degenerating health and the nearing horizon of mortality are handled sensitively in director Andy Kelleher’s lyrical debut fiction feature. Second Spring is a film about endurance and acceptance, tackling its subject matter with quiet poise where a lesser film might have fallen to mawkish sentiment. Archaeologist Kathy Deane, (Cathy Naden) is passionate, intelligent and attractive,…
EIFF 2026