Paper Souls

Belgian director Vincent Lannoo displays a more whimsical side to his usual blackly comic preoccupations in this absurdist Parisian rom-com.

Paul (Stephane Guillon) is a depressed novelist, still mourning the death of his wife 5 years previous. But that’s not why the start of the movie finds him in a cemetery. He’s there to observe Madame Thomassin (Marie-Jeanne Maldague) deliver an acerbic graveside eulogy for her late husband; said eulogy being the handiwork of Paul. Afflicted with writer’s block he has not written anything except eulogies since his wife died. Thomassin’s niece Emma (Julie Gayet) approaches him to write about her late husband Nathan (Jonathan Zaccai), a photojournalist killed in Mauritania a year before, as an 8^th birthday present for her son Adam (Jules Rotenberg), who is in denial that Nathan is dead. Paul accepts the job, despite pressure from his neighbour Victor (Pierre Richard) to hop in bed with the attractive widow. And then Nathan appears at his door…

From the first strains of a clarinet-heavy jazz score there’s a definite Woody Allen vibe off of this French/Belgian co-production, but not in the sense of Sophie Lellouche’s Paris-Manhattan. Whereas Lellouche successfully set up Allen scenarios, only to channel the vibe without the one-liners, TV writer Francois Uzan’s screenplay is at times riotously funny. Claudine Baschet’s Hortense, who keeps her stuffed dead cat on display, and listens to Paul’s eulogies about her on her iPod is a delightful supporting character. But it is Pierre Richard who steals the show as Paul’s elderly Jewish neighbour Victor, whose research into the Warsaw Ghetto is continually derailed by his need to meddle in Paul’s love life with endless ‘helpful’ nagging. Victor’s trip to the shops with Paul is a minor masterpiece. And that’s before addressing the return of amnesiac Nathan from the dead.

Paper Souls plays the return of Nathan, rudely interrupting the romance of Paul and Emma, totally deadpan. The question of how Nathan could have been mistakenly buried alive sees such daft reactions as local guide Diarra (Alain Azerot) musing that sometimes in Mauritania people come back, if they have a door to close. The treatment of totally nonsensical moments as perfectly normal at times emulates Allen’s similar treatments of the fantastical in Purple Rose of Cairo and Deconstructing Harry. And, to boot, Lannoo stages some wonderful slapstick as Paul attempts to sneak Nathan around Paris, without Emma or Adam seeing him, in an attempt to jog Nathan’s memory. Paper Souls then does something rather unusual. It leaves comedy behind and embraces full-blown magic realism. It’s a bold move, and is quite a gear change, but it achieves an affecting ending.

Paper Souls showcases a fine supporting turn from Pierre Richard (in what would be the Alan Arkin/Donald Sutherland role in a remake) and manages to combine rather good comedy with unexpected and affecting drama.

3.5/5

It Follows

Writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s acclaimed indie horror finally arrives, and its gut-knotting sense of dread proves well worth the wait.

Early morning in a normal suburban street, the camera pans around and observes a young woman fleeing her house, it pans as she warily crosses the road and then dashes back into the house for her car keys, before driving away. At the beach she calls her father to apologise, before reacting in despairing horror to something we don’t see. We do see her mangled corpse. As cold opens go it’s very startling, and introduces a sense of unease that never quite leaves us during innocuous scenes of our heroine Jay (Maika Monroe) swimming in her backyard pool, hanging out with sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), and friends Paul (Keir Gilchrist) and Yara (Olivia Luccardi). It also underscores the bizarre reaction of boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary) to a childish game during a date. And then Hugh passes something on to Jay…

‘It’. ‘It’ follows you. You must never let ‘It’ touch you. And you can only get rid of ‘It’ by passing it on to someone else… David Robert Mitchell’s first movieThe Myth of the American Sleepover was acclaimed for its originality. It Follows displays admirable directorial precision on his part, but influences are everywhere in his script. ‘It’ has a touch of the Terminator, as well as a Romero zombie, and even seems like a nod to Cronenberg’s horror of sexual infection Shivers. Rich Vreeland’s fantastically menacing synth score tips its hat to John Carpenter, as does a key element of ‘It’. But Mitchell isn’t overwhelmed by all these touchstones. He plays around with archetypal nice guy Hugh and bad boy Greg (Daniel Zovatto), as they aid and hinder Maika’s attempts to escape from being relentlessly pursued by ‘It’.

It’s hard to give a flavour of It Follows without ruining part of its appeal, the slow drip-feed of information about ‘It’. The uncertainty over the nature of ‘It’ allows a number of bravura sequences of agonising suspense, the highlight being the camera panning 360 over and over as ‘It’ steadily approaches an oblivious Jay. Cinematographer Mike Gioulakis creates such a dreamy atmosphere in early scenes with Jay that Mitchell is able to sustain for a very long time a knife-edge balance between suggesting that Jay is merely hallucinating in response to a trauma, and the white-knuckle ride that this horror is very real. White knuckle are needed to prevent niggling questions like if an implied foursome and threesome don’t pass it on far enough, why not just drive to O’Hare and sleep with someone about to fly to Europe?

It Follows features another strong performance by Maika Monroe, makes great use of decaying Detroit locations, and is powered by spine-tingling dread and terror, but loses its way slightly towards its grand showdown finale.

4/5

JDIFF 2015: 15 Films

Booking opened for the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival at 7.30pm tonight, so here are 15 films to keep an eye on at the festival.

THE PRICE OF DESIRE (8.15pm Thu 19^th Mar, Savoy)

Writer/director Mary McGuckian’s first film since The Man on the Train in 2011 opens the festival. Orla Brady stars as Irish modernist designer Eileen Gray, with Vincent Perez as legendary architect Le Corbussier. The film examines how Le Corbussier arrogantly attempted to minimise the contribution of Gray to a landmark piece of modernist architecture, the E-1027 house. Co-stars include Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe and Alanis Morrisette (!).

THE WATER DIVINER (7.30pm Fri 20^th Mar, Savoy)

Russell Crowe makes his directorial debut with a WWI tale about the slaughter of the ANZAC in Turkey. Crowe’s farmer Joshua Connor travels to Gallipoli in 1919 in search of his three sons, missing in action since 1915. He is aided in this likely fool’s errand by Istanbul hotel manager Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) and heroic Turkish major Yilmaz Erdogan (Once Upon A Time in Anatolia).

99 HOMES (8.30pm Fri 20th, Cineworld)

Writer/director Ramin Bahrani tackles the collapse of the sub-prime bubble in this tale of Florida real estate. Michael Shannon is a heartless real estate agent who is the Mephistopholes to the Faust of Andrew Garfield’s unemployed contractor. First he evicts Garfield, then he offers him a job, and Garfield, though conflicted accepts… Yes, Shannon gets to let rip; according to him Bahrani kept polishing his set-piece rant throughout shooting.

BARRY LYNDON (1.30pm Sat 21^st Mar, Savoy)

Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Thackeray’s picaresque romp Barry Lyndon is now 40 years old. Kubrick’s obsession with using only natural light was enabled by John Alcott, Ken Adam’s production design recreated the splendour of the 18^th century, and a mischievous sense of humour belied the 3 hour running time and symmetrical compositions. Star Ryan O’Neal and producer Jan Harlan will be interviewed afterwards by Frank director Lenny Abrahamson.

LISTEN UP PHILIP (6.30pm Sun 22^nd Mar, Cineworld)

Writer/director Alex Ross Perry breaks through with his third film. Jason Schwartzman is an obnoxious writer splitting up with Elisabeth Moss as he simmers over the reception of his second novel. His retreat in his mentor’s country home is interrupted by the arrival of Krysten Ritter. But can he get past his ego to notice her? Bret Easton Ellis vouches for this, but remember Greenberg, exercise caution.

THE CROWD (8.15pm Sun 22^nd Mar, Lighthouse)

King Vidor’s 1928 silent movie The Crowd might be one of the earliest examples of a studio deliberately losing money in order to gain prestige. A portrait of urban alienation and ennui, whose influence can be seen in Orson Welles’ disorienting presentation of a vast office space in his 1963 film The Trial, this will have live accompaniment from Stephen Horne. A rare screening not to be missed.

THE TRIBE (6.00pm Tues 24th, Lighthouse)

Festival director Grainne Humphreys noted that Ukranian film-maker Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s The Tribe is being screened because it reinvents the way you think about cinema. There are no subtitles, just sign language, as a young boy is initiated into the brutal gang culture of a boarding school for the deaf thru intense, complex long takes. Grigoriy Fesenko is the innocent who falls for Yana Novikova and upsets the vicious hierarchy.

FORCE MAJEURE (8.15pm Thu 26th Mar, Cineworld)

Force Majeure is a pitch-black Swedish comedy-drama from writer/director Ruben Ostlund (Play) that has been hailed by Bret Easton Ellis as one of 2014’s finest films. If you want to see a man, specifically Johannes Kuhnke, running away from a threatened avalanche when he should be saving the day (so  his wife Lisa Loven Kongsli expects), then check out this droll study of total cowardice and family bickering.

GLASSLAND (6.30pm Fri 27th Mar, Lighthouse)

Director Gerard Barrett and star Jack Reynor, fresh from Sundance plaudits, will present Glassland. Barrett was the writer/director of Pilgrim Hill and he stays firmly within his comfort zone for another dark drama. Toni Collette’s alcoholism pushes her towards death, and her taxi-driver son Reynor into a dangerous clash with the Dublin criminal underworld of human trafficking. Barrett’s film-making has broadened in scope, but his vision remains grindingly bleak.

PRESSURE (9.00pm Fri 27^th Mar, Cineworld)

Cineworld plays host to director Ron Scalpello, writers James Warren and Alan McKenna, and, most importantly, Talking Movies favourite Danny Huston, for a screening of their suspense thriller Pressure. Huston and Matthew Goode lead a small cast in a claustrophobic thriller as oil-rig repair workers trapped in a deep-sea pod after an accident who turn on each other. Huston is always effortlessly charismatic, and this is an acting showcase.

LET US PREY (10.40pm Fri 27th Mar, Lighthouse)

Liam Cunningham gets to be even more unhinged than his drug dealer in The Guard in Brian O’Malley’s tense horror. He lets rip with gusto as a mysterious stranger known only as Six, pitted against the forces of law and order in an isolated rural police station, led by rookie cop Pollyanna McIntosh. This has been described as a supernatural Assault on Precinct 13. Bring it on!

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (1.00pm Sat 28th Mar, Cineworld)

Olivier Assayas’ autobiographical Apres Mai also screened at JDIFF, and his follow-up psychodrama Clouds of Sils Maria was recently in the news for Kristen Stewart’s supporting actress Cesar win. Juliette Binoche’s famous actress is locked in conflict with Chloe Grace Moretz. Binoche is returning to the play that made her name, but her part is now taken by Moretz. Did you say Gallic All About Eve?

A LITTLE CHAOS (6.15pm Sat 28^th Mar, Cineworld)

Alan Rickman unexpectedly returns to directing after a 17 year absence for his second feature. His sumptuously appointed period drama sees Kate Winslet’s landscape designer employed by Matthias Schoenaerts to work on the gardens of Versailles for Rickman’s exacting Louis XIV. But jealousies, both sexual and professional, dog her steps as she attempts to introduce a little anarchy into this ordered world revolving around the Sun King.

FAR FROM MEN (11.00am Sun 29th Mar, Savoy)

The difference between what Viggo Mortensen and Peter Jackson did after LOTR is enough to make you weep. Here the polyglot Viggo speaks French as a schoolteacher in colonial Algeria who develops an unusual bond with a dissident he must transport. Writer/director David Oelhoffen brilliantly transplants many Western tropes to Algeria’s war with France, but surely there are also echoes of Albert Camus’ Exile and the Kingdom?

THE LAST MAN ON THE MOON (2.00pm Sun 29th Mar, Savoy)

The Last Man On The Moon is the story of Eugene Cernan, an actual cowboy who became not just any old astronaut, but the only man to walk on the moon twice, and also the last moonwalker. Its spectacular footage, which regrettably includes CGI recreations of his spacewalks, will be on the Savoy’s biggest screen, with directors Gareth Dodds and Mark Craig interviewed afterwards.

JDIFF 2015: A Chair with Wings

The programme for the 2015 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival promises a number of international guests, including Julie Andrews, Kenneth Branagh, Russell Crowe, Kim Cattrall, Alan Rickman, Ryan O’Neal and Danny Huston, and intriguing films from diverse countries and eras.

 

The JDIFF 2015 programme was officially launched this morning by Festival Director Grainne Humphreys, who invoked The Accidental Tourist’s image of travel writing as giving the reader a chair with wings. The ‘Around the World’ programme features nearly 140 films from nearly 40 different countries across 11 days. Humphreys invoked the Festival’s mission to amplify and complement the world cinema which is available to Irish audiences, noting that 70 to 75% of the films screened at the Festival will never be screened again in Ireland. And when such one-off screening opportunities have in the past few years included such titles as the riveting Russian WWII movie White Tiger and Aleksandr Sokurov’s Faust it only underscores the importance of the Festival.

 

The Festival, in response to audience feedback, is expanding into new venues Movies at Dundrum, The Pavilion, and Riverbank Arts Centre, and introducing some double screenings. It is also ramping up its Picture House outreach project in hospitals and care homes, a project whose patron is Oscar-winning actress Brenda Fricker. A final new venue will be the Bord Gais Energy Theatre which will host the finale interview with Julie Andrews. That closing gala screening of The Sound of Music with Andrews, and Kenneth Branagh’s unveiling of his latest blockbuster directorial outing Cinderella, is indicative of a desire to make the Festival accessible to the most casual of cinemagoers rather than the intimidating preserve of cinephiles.

Julie Andrews and Kenneth Branagh will both receive Voltas, and there are many other guests in attendance between the 19^th and 29^th of March. As previously mentioned hereabouts Russell Crowe will be presenting his directorial debut, The Water Diviner, in which his character travels to Gallipoli in 1919 to search for his soldier sons, missing since 1915’s bloody landing on the Turkish peninsula. Another actor-director, Alan Rickman, will present his new movie A Little Chaos, in which Kate Winslet attempts to introduce a little anarchy to the gardens of Versailles under the watchful eye of Rickman’s King Louis XIV. Actor-producer Kim Cattrall meanwhile will give an acting masterclass to the students of the Lir Academy, and introduce episodes of her new satirical Canadian TV series Sensitive Skin co-starring Don McKellar.

The 40^th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s period epic Barry Lyndon is marked by a screening in the Savoy with both star Ryan O’Neal and producer Jan Harlan, with Lenny Abrahamson leading a public interview afterwards, while O’Neal will also be on hand for a screening of Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 neo-screwball comedy What’s, Up, Doc? And if all that weren’t enough to get you excited a Talking Movies favourite, the effortlessly charismatic Danny Huston, will do a Q&A after his new suspense thriller Pressure, in which he and Matthew Goode are trapped in a deep-sea station where mind-games soon jeopardise survival.

A strong line-up of Irish features encompasses genres from horror to rom-com, biopic to gangster. The Festival will be opened by Mary McGuckian’s The Price of Desire, a beatiful and compelling depiction of Irish modernist designer Eileen Gray’s collaboration with Le Corbussier on an iconic piece of archiecture, with stars Orla Brady and Vincent Perez in attendence. Love/Hate actor Robert Sheehan will be attending a screening of his new film The Road Within, and will participate in the Actors in Conversation event, part of this year’s Screen Test programme. Gerard Barret and Jack Reynor, fresh from Sundance glory, will present Glassland, in which Toni Collette’s alcoholism pushes her son Jack Reynor into a clash with the Dublin underworld. Game of Thrones star Liam Cunningham lets rip against the Gardai in Brian O’Malley’s tense Let Us Prey, a homage to John Carpenter’s ouevre, while Conor McMahon dispenses with the comedy of Stitches for straight horror in From the Dark in which a couple in a farmhouse are terrorised. Also featured in the programme are Pat Murphy’s Tana Bana, Ivan Kavanagh’s The Canal, and Vivienne De Courcy’s colourful Dare to be Wild.

The Out of the Past season is always a Festival highlight and this year showcases Richard Brooks’ 1967 version of In Cold Blood starring Scott Wilson and Robert Blake as the killers immortalised by Truman Capote’s investigation of their brutal crime, PJ Hogan’s 1994 Abba-loving Australian comedy Muriel’s Wedding which made a star of Toni Collette, Jean Renoir’s Partie de Campagne based on a story by Guy de Maupassant, Arthur Hiller’s The Americanisation of Emily starring Julie Andres and James Garner in a tale written by Paddy Chayefsky, and King Vidor’s silent classic of urban alienation The Crowd with live accompaniment from pianist Stephen Horne.

The Reel To Reel documentary strand features a trio of intriguing titles. The Last Man On The Moon will see directors Mark Craig and Gareth Doods in attendence for a Savoy presentation of their account of the Eugene Cirnan, the only man to travel to the moon twice. Fellow NHL fans will be as excited as Talking Movies to see the engaging and moving Russian documentary Red Army, about the greatest ice hockey team ever assembled in the 1980s Winter Olympics and their playing careers in North America. From Germany meanwhile The Decent One unveils the private documents, journals and photographs of the SS comander Heinrich Himmler to present an intimate portrait of a family man quietly engaged in genocide.

The bread and butter of the Festival is its eclectic selection of features. The prolific and inimitable François Ozon’s latest film is The New Girlfriend, Olivier Assayas follows up autobiographical Apres Mai with the Cesar-winning psychodrama Cloud of Sils Maria, and Wim Wenders returns with The Salt of The Earth. Actor Mads Mikkelsen takes on the Old West with some Refn-like brutality in The Salvation, director Liv Ullman takes on August Strindberg’s iconic play Miss Julie, Noah Baumbach addresses the effects of technology on individual lives more successfully than Jason Reitman with While We’re Young, Jason Schwartzman antagonises everyone as an obnoxious writer in Listen Up Philip, and another Bret Easton Ellis 2014 favourite Force Majeure makes its debut here.

The full programme will be available on the festival website jdiff.com at 7pm tonight with online booking opening at 7.30pm. Tickets can be booked at the Festival Box Ofiice on 13 Lower Ormond Quay from 26th February, or at Ticket Offices in Cineworld or the Light House from 14th March.

The Caretaker

Gate regulars Marty Rea and Garrett Lombard are joined by Michael Feast for a rendition of Harold Pinter’s breakthrough play.

An unnamed figure enters a ramshackle room and sits, looking around him with disfavour before leaving. Two other men then enter the room, one obviously proprietary towards it. And so begins the archetypal Pinterian battle for control of a space. Aston (Marty Rea) is the man at home in this disaster of a living space, who has, as a kindly gesture, invited in Michael Feast’s tramp Jenkins, or is it Davies? Davies is as garrulous as Aston is taciturn, and after some hesitation makes himself at home; even carping about the draught from a window next to the spare bed. But he soon finds himself left at a loss by the arrival of the first man we saw – Mick (Garrett Lombard), who actually owns this decrepit London house, is suspicious of Davies’s motives, and interrogates him with rapid-fire repeated questions.

Director Toby Frow lets the action unfurl at slightly too slow a pace initially, but when Mick and Davies meet sparks begin to fly. Lombard is vividly vicious as the game-playing teddy-boy, his harassment of Davies pure Pinter. And that’s before he turns the tables on Davies later with a magnificently indignant and absurd riff on interior decorating. Feast is tremendously nimble as Davies. Wheedling, whining, conniving, charming, he contradicts himself on a sixpence if he thinks there might be advantage to it. And he suspects that there might be considerable advantage in driving a wedge between the two brothers. Mick owns the house, and Aston is meant to be restoring it, but he makes no progress, obsessing over tools. Aston offers Davies the job of caretaker, but Davies, anticipating Pinter’s 1963 screenplay The Servant, has his sights set higher.

But in Pinter’s world, outlined by Davies in a speech about Aston, nothing is as it seems… Francis O’Connor’s set assembles a mighty amount of useful junk which Aston will never use, while rafters shoot out above the audience. Aston saved Davies from a cafe dust-up, but Davies is unnerved by Aston’s lengthy monologue about how his odd ideas got him electro-shock therapy. Now his broken gait keeps pace with his slow-moving ideas, and Mark Jonathan’s lights dim to just a spot on a mesmerising Rea as he trails away. Now all he has is an ambition to build a shed, which would be the starting point for restoring the house. But the grasping Davies is equally deluded; his refrain about his papers being in Sidcup, where he’ll never go, eventually renders Sidcup as illusory as Moscow in Three Sisters.

Pinter’s landscape of overt menace and covert battles for dominance hidden in subtexts and non-sequitirs can be deathly when played too slow, but once they get going these three actors traverse that landscape artfully.

3.5/5

The Caretaker continues its run at the Gate until the 21^st of March.

Ennio Morricone: My Life in Music

Film composer Ennio Morricone belied his 86 years for a sprightly concert conducting some of his most beloved scores in a sold-out Point last Saturday.

Morricone was conducting the full Czech National Symphony Orchestra, some 86 musicians, backed by the 76 singers of the Kodaly Choir of Debrecen in Hungary. He began with the piano-led title theme from The Untouchables with its unusual wailing brass, before segueing into a suite of rich string-led themes from his last collaboration with director Sergio Leone, Once Upon a Time in America, and then his lengthy theme for frequent collaborator Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Legend of 1900, which combined lush orchestration with surprising diversions into cabaret and blues to musically recreate the feel of years going by on a cruise ship. Morricone’s fondness for bundling so many themes into one set caused more than a few disruptive moments where the audience determinedly applauded, drowning out the start of the next tune, leading my sometime co-writer John Healy to suspect rhythmic holding patterns in later segues…

Morricone has scored an unreasonable amount of films and TV miniseries, most of them Italian, so he showcased his less familiar work with a selection from the late 60s and early 70s, including H2S and Metti, una sera a cena. Two themes from Love Circle had an unfortunate tendency to lapse into 70s romance pastiche, but Maddalena and The Sicilian Clan were unfamiliar works which stood out; utilising electric guitar and drums gave a rockier feel akin to Lalo Schifrin’s Dirty Harry score, and Sicilian Clan in particular managed to combine romance and menace simultaneously. Morricone’s final pre-interval set showcased his career-defining work with Leone with the slowly building choral and orchestral splendour and jagged guitars of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite, and ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’.

After the interval Morricone unveiled three more sets of themes. Collaborations with directors Tornatore, Brian De Palma, and Gillo Pontecorvo were highlighted in the choice of themes from Cinema Paradiso, Malena, Casualties of War, The Battle of Algiers, and Burn! all. While those scores for Tornatore and De Palma are all about tugging at the heart-strings thru lush strings, the edgier music for Pontecorvo is all about percussion – indeed the ironically joyous ‘Abolisson’ from Burn! was performed with no fewer than five percussionists. Morricone also conducted more scores from obscure Italian films, with the jokey percussion instrumentation and mock-suspense melody of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and the distorted keyboard and jaunty melody of La classes operaia va in paradise particularly noteworthy. Morricone’s final set was inevitably The Mission: ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’, ‘Falls’, ‘On Earth as It Is in Heaven’.

The maestro spoke only thru his music, but his three encores; ‘Here’s to You’, ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’, ‘On Earth as It Is in Heaven’; said it all. Morricone is one of that select band of composers whose music has escaped the films they were meant to complement to take on a life of their own. Whether it’s the inimitable whistling of Leone’s Wild West or the quasi-sacramental effect of his famous oboe solo Morricone has transcended the medium.

4/5

JDIFF: 2015

Jameson are ending their sponsorship of the Dublin International Film Festival in grand style as Russell Crowe and Kim Cattrall have been confirmed as guests.

Russell Crowe’s new movie The Water Diviner will screen on Friday 20^thMarch, and the Academy award-winning actor will introduce it and participate in a post-screening Q&A at the Savoy Cinema. Crowe makes his directorial debut with a timely WWI tale about the formative trauma for the Antipodes of the slaughter of the ANZAC in Turkey. TV writer/producers Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios provide the screenplay, which is a step away from their usual crime caper comfort zones, in which Crowe’s farmer and water diviner Joshua Connor travels to Gallipoli in 1919 in search of his three sons, missing in action since 1915. He is aided in this likely fool’s errand by Istanbul hotel manager Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) and heroic Turkish major Yilmaz Erdogan (Once Upon A Time in Anatolia), while familiar Australian faces like Damon Herriman (Justified), Isabel Lucas and Jai Courtney (Jack Reacher) round out the cast.

Grainne Humphreys JDIFF Festival Director says, “The Water Diviner is an impressive, beautifully shot epic war drama. Russell Crowe has created a powerful portrait of loss and redemption with fine performances, not least his own as lead. It’s a pleasure to welcome Russell to Dublin for the festival screening of The Water Diviner and present the film to his many Irish fans”.

Tickets will be officially on sale for The Water Diviner as of today and can be purchased online http://bit.ly/1McTsGv or www.jdiff.com or at their Box Office which is now open Monday to Friday 11am – 5pm on 13 Lower Ormond Quay.

The 13^th Jameson Dublin International Film Festival takes place from 19^th – 29^th March 2015. The full line-up for the Festival programme will be announced on Wednesday February 25^th at www.jdiff.com. The JDIFF 2015 Season Ticket is currently available to purchase at €245 along limited edition merchandise. Also new this year is the Bring A Friend Season Pass, two season tickets for €425.

The Water Diviner will be released in cinemas by Entertainment One on 3^rd April 2015.

Meanwhile Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall will be attending JDIFF to screen exclusively to Irish audiences episodes of her new Sky Arts TV series Sensitive Skin, and will also be participating in an elite master class at The Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art.

Episodes of Sensitive Skin will screen in Movies@Dundrum, with Cattrall in attendance. This Canadian black comedy, based on the critically acclaimed 2005 British series of the same name starring Joanna Lumley, stars Cattrall as Davina, a former model and actress in the midst of a middle age crisis. Feeling as though she is losing her zest for life, she struggles with sexual temptation and professional jealousy, while trying to cope with her fear of the future alongside her husband, Alan (Don McKellar – Slings and Arrows). The couple have sold their comfortable family home and moved into an ultra-modern condo in downtown Toronto in an effort to stay relevant and start again. Unfortunately, their insecurities quickly take them on a path they could never have anticipated.  Cattrall has executive produced the series along with McKellar who has directed all episodes to date. Cattrall says: “I am very much looking forward to attending the Dublin International Film Festival and screening my new show Sensitive Skin. I have always felt welcomed and at home during my visits and I am looking forward to the Festival.”

As part of her visit to the Festival, Cattrall will be the focus of a master class hosted by The Lir Academy for their students. Following the success of Stanley Tucci’s Q&A to the students last year this will be the second year that The Lir will host these master classes. Loughlin Deegan, Director of The Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art, says, “This growing partnership between The Lir Academy and JDIFF is of enormous benefit to our students who get to meet with and learn from some of the finest actors in the world. Kim Cattrall in particular will have much knowledge to impart from a fascinating career that has balanced TV and film work with an on-going and recently renewed interest in working in the theatre.”

Sensitive Skin will air in the UK and Ireland on Sky Arts 1 on Wednesday 1^st April.

Founded in 2003 by the much missed Michael Dwyer, the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival continues to lead the way in the presentation of outstanding Irish and international film. Over the past 13 years the Festival has hosted over 500 major guests along the way – from Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, Daniel Day Lewis, and U2, to Al Pacino, Mark Wahlberg, Glenn Close, Joss Whedon, Danny DeVito, and Richard Dreyfuss. The Festival has screened world cinema from 52 different countries, a total of almost 1,500 films, of which 300 were Irish features including world premieres of Once, Ondine, In Bruges, Calvary, The Stag, and The Secret of Kells. In addition ongoing International out of Festival events have showcased Ben Affleck, Quentin Tarantino, Bryan Cranston, and Ennio Morricone.

Selma

Selma brings to vivid life the struggle for civil rights in 1965 Alabama with a fiery performance from David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr.

Four schoolgirls are murdered in a church bombing in Selma. Any prospect for justice is defeated by the refusal of Registrar (Clay Chappell) to allow people like Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) to register to vote (on ever shifting sands of spurious tests), thereby ensuring all-white juries. And so MLK (Oyelowo) rolls into town to whip up a mass demonstration to pressure LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) to put aside the Great Society and pass a Voting Rights Act instead. Little does he know that as well as facing the obvious threat of Alabama Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth), his henchman Col. Al Lingo (Stephen Root), and the vicious Selma Sheriff Jim Clark (Stanley Houston), he will face the shadowy threat of J Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker) attempting to turn King’s wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) against him. Can MLK stay the course?

Oyelowo oozes charisma as he delivers three set-piece speeches during this film. But he also shows us a vulnerable side to King; riven by guilt over the deaths of protestors drawn by his rhetoric, self-doubt about whether his leadership will achieve civil rights, and shame at his infidelities. The other black leaders Ralph Abernathy (Colman Domingo), James Orange (Omar J Dorsey), James Bevel (Common), Bayard Rustin (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), Andrew Young (Andre Holland), John Lewis (Stephan James), James Forman (Trai Byers), Rev. Williams (Wendell Pierce), and Rev. Vivian (Corey Reynolds), are, perhaps inevitably, less particularised; but the ensemble is equal to the challenge laid down by Oyelowo’s lead performance. Selma is especially interesting when it explores conflict between these men; with egoism and principle equally important in arguments over leadership and non-violence; and when Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch) arrives in town.

But Selma has heavy baggage. Director Ava DuVernay’s Oscar snub is not that outrageous. Even if she did rewrite Paul Webb’s script as much as claimed she’d deserve a nod only for writing. The ones hard done by are Oyelowo and cinematographer Bradford Young; who once again does extraordinary things with warm shadows in MLK’s intimate moments of doubt. But the depiction of LBJ, as uninterested in civil rights and conniving at J Edgar sending a sex-tape to Coretta, has been hauled over the coals by Maureen Dowd, and her central charge; “Filmmakers love to talk about their artistic license to distort the truth, even as they bank on the authenticity of their films to boost them at awards season”; rings uncomfortably true. Rather David O Russell’s ‘Some of this actually happened’ than claiming your fictions are truer than history.

Selma is an extremely moving, often upsetting, chronicle of an extraordinary event, powered by a magnificent lead performance, but it’s not history and must be taken with much salt.

3.5/5

Patrick’s Day

The enfant terrible of Irish cinema writer/director Terry McMahon follows up Charlie Casanova with another exercise in epating les bourgeoisie.

Patrick (Moe Dunford) was born on St Patrick’s Day. And so every year his devoted mother Maura (Kerry Fox) has made a ritual of getting him a silly hat or glasses, going for a meal, and taking a photo. But this year she loses her son. He finds himself in the company of suicidal air hostess Karen (Catherine Walker), who takes him back to her hotel room; across the corridor from his; and deflowers him. But the reason Patrick is a taciturn virgin at 26, and seems mildly out of it, is that he has mental health issues. But as Karen is drawn into Maura’s attempts to control her son’s life, along with Garda Freeman (Philip Jackson), the question is posed – who is truly crazy here? Patrick and Freddie (Aaron Monaghan) in the psychiatric hospital or the ‘sane’ world outside?

McMahon’s script is artificial and problematic. Karen’s dialogue, especially her use of ‘kiddo’ and her initial introduction, is the worst offender for ham-fisted dialogue, but there are also wearisome cinematic clichés that telegraph their arrival; like Maura knocking all her photos with Patrick off the wall. All give the impression that McMahon is scripting based on how people act in films rather than from any sort of observation of how people act in reality. Karen’s suicide attempt with pills is remarkably inept, and not deliberately so as is with Colin Firth in A Single Man, and her suicidal impulses are never explored and quickly forgotten. There’s a scene with a dog in which Patrick tosses a scrap of food into traffic for the dog to get, the dog of course gets hit by a car – why do that? Well, the script said to; so Patrick could bring the dog inside to the cafe where the manager recognises Patrick’s condition, saying his son had the same. This scene’s remarkable, contrivance aside, because it’s not clear at all what Patrick’s condition is…

Patrick seems off from the start, but maybe that’s the tranquilisers he’s on zoning him out. He has a regimen to control his schizophrenia. But then later it’s revealed that he has intellectual disability. He has a mental age of 14. But then a later anecdote indicates that at age 9 he couldn’t distinguish between fact and fiction. But then the schizophrenia is emphasised again… John Nash is a paranoid schizophrenic given to auditory and visual hallucinations. He’s also a mathematical genius whose invention of game theory earned him the Nobel for economics. Schizophrenia and intellectual disability are not connected. McMahon is depicting a thirtysomething woman having sex with a man with a teenage boy’s mind. Far from realising how dubious this is Patrick’s Day expects us to unfurl a banner with ‘Amor Vincit Omnia’ on it for the finale. And that’s before we get to the compound of Ken Kesey and RD Laing that is the presentation of the psychiatric hospital run by bad people and the madness of mother Maura constantly kissing her adult son on the lips.

We are meant to feel traumatised by Patrick’s treatment at the hands of authority figures in the third act. But it’s impossible to feel anything when it’s so obviously George Lucas’ proverbial cinematic gimmick of drowning a bag of kittens to make the audience cry – everything has been so contrived that McMahon has unintentionally achieved a Brechtian alienation. Dunford’s performance is one of blank bafflement alternated with childish surliness and childish exuberance. It’s not possible to care about Patrick’s distress because he’s scary – he has the force of a strong man, able to break noses with a single sharp punch, but the self-control of a petulant child – and the film doesn’t seem to realise that. Dunford, like Walker, Jackson, and Fox, is a good actor being incredibly ill-served by the script in which McMahon’s desire to provoke outweighs all else. RD Laing and Ken Kesey were of their time (and Adam Curtis has persuasively argued that Laing has had a baneful effect on modern medicine), and simply replicating their ideas is a startlingly outdated, unoriginal way to criticise Ireland 2015.

Patrick’s Day is technically very competent but its script is so troubling both aesthetically and morally that you wish Terry McMahon would just drop his auteurist ambitions and direct someone else’s screenplay next time.

0.5/5

2015: Hopes

 

The Water Diviner

Russell Crowe makes his directorial debut with a timely WWI tale about the formative trauma for the Antipodes of the slaughter of the ANZAC in Turkey. TV writer/producers Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios provide the screenplay, which is a step away from their usual crime caper comfort zones, in which Crowe travels to Gallipoli in search of his three missing sons in 1919. He is aided in this likely fool’s errand by Istanbul hotel manager Olga Kurylenko and official Yilmaz Erdogan, while familiar Australian faces like Damon Herriman, Isabel Lucas and Jai Courtney round out the cast.

 

Chappie

Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver are career criminals who kidnap the titular character and raise him as their own adopted son – but he’s a robot! Yeah… This peculiar feature is definitely a change of pace for writer/director Neill Blomkamp but it’s not clear from his first two features District 9 and Elysium whether he has the chops for a smart sci-fi crime comedy mash-up. District 9 was a gore-fest with a hysterically muddled message about apartheid, while Elysium was an embarrassing, illogical call to arms for Obamacare. Jackman’s been on a bit of a roll though so fingers crossed.

 

The Gunman

March 20^th sees Sean Penn attempts a Liam Neeson do-over by teaming up with Taken director Pierre Morel for a tale of a former special forces operative who wants to retire with his lover, only for his military contractor bosses to stomp on his plan; forcing him to go on the run. The lover in question is Italian actress Jasmin Trinca, while the organisation and its enemies have an unusually classy cast: Idris Elba, Javier Bardem, Mark Rylance, and Ray Winstone. Morel will undoubtedly joyously orchestrate mayhem in London and Barcelona, but can he make Penn lighten up?

 

Furious 7

The death of Paul Walker delayed his final film. Following the death of Han, Dom Torreto (Vin Diesel) and his gang (Walker, Jordana Brewster, Ludacris, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson) seek revenge against Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham as the brother of Fast 6’s villain). Chris Morgan pens his third successive Furious screenplay but, apart from dubious additions like Ronda Rousey and Iggy Azalea to the cast, the main concern is how director James Wan (The Conjuring) will rise to the challenge of replacing Justin Lin. Wan can direct horror but how will he handle Tony Jaa’s chaos?

John Wick

April 10^th sees the belated release of Keanu Reeves’ acclaimed low-fi action movie in which his sweater-loving retired hit-man wreaks havoc after his dog is killed; it being his last link to his dead wife for whom he’d quit the underworld. M:I-4 villain Michael Nyqvist is the head of the Russian mob who soon discovers his son Alfie Allen has accidentally unleashed a rampage and a half. Chad Stahelski, Reeves’ stunt double on The Matrix, directs with a welcome emphasis on fight choreography and takes long enough to make the action between Reeves and Adrianne Palicki’s assassin comprehensible.

 

Mad Max: Fury Road

Well here’s an odd one and no mistake. Original director George Miller returns to the franchise after thirty years, co-writing with comics artist Brendan McCarthy and Mad Max actor Nick Lathouris. Max Rockatansky is now played by Tom Hardy channelling his inner Mel Gibson, roaring around the post-apocalyptic Australian Outback with Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult. This does look like Mad Max 2, but it’s not a remake; merely an excuse to do Mad Max 2 like sequences of vehicular mayhem but with a huge budget for the mostly practical effects, and some CGI sandstorm silliness.

Jurassic World

Jurassic World opens its gates in June, boasting an all-new attraction: super-dinosaur Indominus Rex, designed to revive flagging interest in the franchise park. From the trailer it appears that in reviving this franchise new hero Chris Pratt has combined the personae of past stars Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill. Bryce Dallas Howard meanwhile takes over Richard Attenborough’s presiding over disaster with the best of intentions gig. Apparently there will be some animatronic dinosaurs, but the swooping CGI shots of the functioning park emphasise how far blockbuster visuals have come since Spielberg grounded his digital VFX with full-scale models.

 

Mission: Impossible 5

July sees Tom Cruise return as Ethan Hunt for more quality popcorn as Christopher McQuarrie makes a quantum directorial leap from Jack Reacher. Paula Patton is replaced by Rebecca Ferguson, but Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames all return, as do Robert Elswit as cinematographer and JJ Abrams as producer. The trademark stunt this time appears to be Tom Cruise hanging onto the side of a flying cargo plane, the villain is possibly Alec Baldwin’s character, and the screenplay is by a curious combo of Iron Man 3’s Drew Pearce and video game writer Will Staples.

St James Place

October 9^th sees the release of something of an unusual dream team: Steven Spielberg directs a Coen Brother script with Tom Hanks in the lead. Hanks plays James Donovan, a lawyer recruited by the CIA to work with the Russian and American embassies in London in 1961 after Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane is shot down. The Company hope to secretly negotiate a release for the pilot, and keep all operations at arms’ length from DC to maintain plausible deniability. Amy Ryan, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda, and Eve Hewson round out the impressive cast of this drama.

 

Crimson Peak

October 16^th sees Guillermo del Toro reunite with Mimic scribe Matthew Robbins. Their screenplay with Lucinda Coxon (Wild Target) sees young author Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) travel to the titular mansion of a mysterious man, who lives in seclusion in the mountains. Apparently del Toro has outdone himself with the production design of the mansion’s interior. The cast includes Supernatural’s Jim Beaver as Wasikowska’s father (!!!), Tom Hiddleston, Doug Jones, Charlie Hunnam, and the inevitable Jessica Chastain. But can del Toro, who’s not had it easy lately (The Strain), deliver a romantic ghost story mixed with Gothic horror?

 

Spectre

The latest Bond film will be released on November 6^th. In a hilarious reversal of prestige John Logan’s screenplay was overhauled by perennial rewrite victims and action purveyors Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Sam Mendes returns to direct as Daniel Craig’s 007 investigates the titular shadowy organisation, which makes a most welcome return after decades of lawsuits. Christoph Waltz may be Blofeld, Daniel Bautista is definitely his henchmen, Lea Seydoux and Monica Belluci are Bond girls, and charmingly Jesper Christensen’s Mr White links Paul Haggis’ Solace and Spectre. And Andrew Scott joins the cast! Perhaps Moriarty’s a Spectre operative.

 

Mr Holmes

Writer/director Bill Condon has been on quite a losing streak (Breaking Dawn: I & II, The Fifth Estate). So he’s reteamed with his Gods & Monsters star Ian McKellen for another period piece. Adapted by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher (Stage Beauty) from Tideland novelist Mitch Cullin’s work, this finds a 93 year old Holmes living in retirement in Sussex in the 1940s troubled by a failing memory and an unsolved case. Condon reunites with Kinsey’s Laura Linney, and intriguingly has cast Sunshine’s Hiroyuki Sanada, but this will be closer to ‘His Last Bow’ or Michael Chabon’s retired Holmes pastiche?

Mockingjay: Part II

All good things come to an end, and Jennifer Lawrence’s duel with Donald Sutherland’s President Snow reaches its climax in November with what director Francis Lawrence considers the most violent movie of the quadrilogy. Familiar TV faces join the cast, with Game of Thrones’ Gwendolen Christie as Commander Lyme and Prison Break’s Robert Knepper as Antonius, and Philip Seymour Hoffman takes his posthumous bow as Plutarch Heavensbee. The last movie shook up the dynamic of these movies with a propaganda war, so it will be interesting to see how Lawrence stages an all-out rebellion against the Capitol.

 

Macbeth

Arriving sometime towards the end of year is Australian director Justin Kurzel’s version of the Scottish play starring Michael Fassbender as Macbeth and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. That pairing enough is reason to be excited, but we’ll also get Paddy Considine as Banquo, Elizabeth Debicki as Lady Macduff, David Thewlis as Duncan, and Jack Reynor as Malcolm. Not to mention that Kurzel directed The Snowtown Murders and his DP Adam Arkapaw shot True Detective. Hopes must be high therefore that this will be both visually striking and emotionally chilling in its depiction of Macbeth’s descent into bloody madness.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The movie event of 2015 arrives on December 18^th. The original heroes (Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford) and their sidekicks (Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels) will all be making a welcome return after the passionless prequel protagonists. Director JJ Abrams has also cast a number of rising stars (Domhnall Gleeson, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Gwendolen Christie, Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar Isaac) and a total unknown (Daisy Ridley – allegedly the protagonist!) The trailer seemed to indicate that this trilogy might actually be some fun, but Super 8 showed that fan-boys sometimes forget to bring originality.