Four new films to see this weekMovie of smash-hit musical Wicked is well-cast and spectacular. Plus moving and evocative Irish documentary Housewife of the Year, solid IVF drama Joy, and fascinating feminist doc WitchesSun Nov 24 2024 - 05:00
Paul Mescal’s response to meeting King Charles was a masterclass in diplomacyGladiator II star said meeting the English king at the film’s British premiere was ‘not on the list of priorities’Sun Nov 24 2024 - 05:00
Amy Adams: ‘There is so much women normalise in relation to pain and sacrifice’In Nightbitch, Marielle Heller’s new film, the star plays a woman crushed by childrearing. It’s not the only pressure women are under, she saysSat Nov 23 2024 - 05:15
‘Lots of guests got tattooed’: Jack Reynor and best man Sam Keeley on his wedding, making speeches and remaining friendsIrish actors Jack Reynor and Sam Keeley met before being cast in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did and remain very close, to the point that Keeley was recently best man at Reynor’s weddingFri Nov 22 2024 - 05:30
The Movie Quiz: With which sweets does Elliott lay his trail in ET?As part of Irish Times Food Month, 10 delectable questions to satisfy every cinema-going gourmetFri Nov 22 2024 - 05:00
Wicked director Jon Chu: ‘Everyone’s whispering behind your back at what a terrible decision this is or that was’Turning the $1bn stage musical into a Hollywood blockbuster brought high expectations for the maker of the Oscar-winning Crazy Rich AsiansThu Nov 21 2024 - 05:15
Housewife of the Year: A wistful celebration of a generation of Irish women who competed for £300 and a gas stoveCiaran Cassidy’s fine documentary is filled with much sadness but also allows a fair degree of celebrationThu Nov 21 2024 - 05:00
Wicked review: Yes, it’s a nightmare in digital wax, but you’ll leave the cinema in buoyant moodCynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are well paired. It’s easy to shake off the outside world and soar along beside themTue Nov 19 2024 - 20:00
The Borrowers review: Gate’s Irish-set adaptation is solid good fun for the whole familyMary Norton’s story will entertain children while adults can convince themselves of its literary statusMon Nov 18 2024 - 09:21
Four new films to see this weekMescal and Washington are solid in otherwise second-hand Gladiator II. Plus charmingly festive Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, vibrant doc Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, and rigorous if cold drama In CameraSun Nov 17 2024 - 05:00
Are celebrities preparing Donald Trump takedown speeches ahead of awards season? Don’t bet on itIgnore the right-wing blowhards: awards ceremonies are rarely as politically partisan as they like to pretendSun Nov 17 2024 - 05:00
Steve McQueen: ‘It was always Saoirse Ronan and her mother. So there was this bond. There’s this kinship’ Director’s film Blitz, starring the Irish actor, focuses on a tight family of three trying to keep heads aloft as the bombs fall in London in 1940Sat Nov 16 2024 - 05:15
In Camera: Debut feature unnerves, provokes and intriguesA film that steers away from didacticism, this is a deliberately puzzling, oblique affair that never runs when it can sneakFri Nov 15 2024 - 05:00
The Movie Quiz: Skellig Michael made its first appearance in which Star Wars film?Plus: Connie Nielsen is back in Gladiator II. Who else returns from the first film?Fri Nov 15 2024 - 05:00
Gladiator II: What the critics say about Paul Mescal’s performanceThe word on the Irish actor’s performance was consistently positive, not so much for the film itselfTue Nov 12 2024 - 12:00
Gladiator II review: Don’t blame Paul Mescal, but there’s no good reason for this jumbled sequel to existRidley Scott’s sequel to his own historical epic fails to rise above second-hand status, despite valiant efforts from a fine castMon Nov 11 2024 - 14:00
Sonny Boy: A Memoir by Al Pacino – A meandering but not unengaging memoir from Hollywood’s enduring oddballThe star reflects on his ‘difficult’ reputation, his baffling and hilarious money troubles, and how drinking ‘saved his life’Mon Nov 11 2024 - 05:00
Show Clint Eastwood some respect. His new film Juror #2 is no dudThe way Warner Bros has handled the veteran star’s 40th film as director is in keeping with Hollywood studios’ new approach to the movie economySun Nov 10 2024 - 05:00
Four new films to see this weekSaoirse Ronan in in elaborate but conventional WWII drama Blitz, plus superior family film Paddington in Peru, static adaptation of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, and peculiar ‘Legoised’ Pharrell Williams doc Piece by PieceSun Nov 10 2024 - 04:45
Bird director Andrea Arnold on Barry Keoghan: ‘I thought he had the most incredible face. Wow. What a man’The English film-maker talks about tough shoots, her working-class background and working with Irishmen Keoghan and Robbie RyanSat Nov 09 2024 - 05:15
The Movie Quiz: What three Oscars has Meryl Streep won? Plus: What was the first film Clint Eastwood directed in which he did not act?Fri Nov 08 2024 - 05:00
‘This feels categorically mental’: Paul Mescal stunned by celebrations at Gladiator II premiereActor attends Irish premiere of Ridley Scott film at Light House Cinema in DublinThu Nov 07 2024 - 20:55
Piece by Piece review: Pharrell Williams’s life story, told through Lego. Kind of weirdThe peculiarity here is how little this documentary differs from the average pop hagiographyThu Nov 07 2024 - 05:00
The Piano Lesson review: Denzel Washington’s project is admirable, but this film can’t shake off its stage originsDanielle Deadwyler and Samuel L Jackson are outstanding in the third instalment of the star’s effort to bring August Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle to the screenWed Nov 06 2024 - 05:00
‘It’s a joke, you c**t’: Tony Hinchcliffe, Bernard Manning and the problem with trying to hide behind humourComedian’s gag at Trump rally again showed that rendering an idea through a joke does not automatically inoculate the teller from responsibility for implied beliefsSun Nov 03 2024 - 05:00
Bill Nighy: ‘My grandmother kind of raised me. She was a proper Irish woman, a Catholic. I was to be a priest’Love Actually actor talks about running away as a teenager, begging in Paris and breaking into actingSat Nov 02 2024 - 05:30
The Movie Quiz: In what Irish town is Cillian Murphy’s Small Things Like These set?Plus: What was the only Netflix title among this year’s Oscar nominees for best picture?Fri Nov 01 2024 - 05:00
Out of Character by Alison Steadman: A lively and undemanding memoir by an actor only a monster could fail to loveThough there is grist and insight here, for the most part this is a saunter through a largely happy lifeFri Nov 01 2024 - 04:58
Anora: A stripper, Russian heavies and an oligarch’s son – what more do you need for a knockout comedy?Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner doesn’t waste a single one of its 140 minutes. No wonder it’s the favourite for the best-picture OscarThu Oct 31 2024 - 05:00
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story review - A perfectly decent doc lifted by throat-catching momentsStory of ‘hero’ actor who found new purpose as disability campaigner after catastrophic accidentWed Oct 30 2024 - 05:00
Four new films to see this weekBold trans drama/musical Emilia Pérez and Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut The Room Next Door. Plus a lyrical Senegaelse documentary and an avant-garde depiction of an avant-garde painterSun Oct 27 2024 - 05:00
Halloween is American? Another chance to yell corrections into English earholes is always welcomeThe ancient festival has become merely the end point for a month-long orgy of horror-related consumer bingeing. At least it keeps Christmas at baySun Oct 27 2024 - 05:00
Cillian Murphy: ‘You had the Kerry babies, the moving statues, no abortion, no divorce. It was like the dark ages’The Oscar winner reunites with Eileen Walsh, his Disco Pigs co-star, for Small Things Like These. For young Irish abroad, was its Ireland worth returning to?Sat Oct 26 2024 - 05:15
The Movie Quiz: Which of these horrors is not of the same literary universe?Plus: For the season that’s in it, a Halloween quiz guaranteed to give you the heebie-jeebiesFri Oct 25 2024 - 05:00
Dahomey director Mati Diop: ‘I felt I had the responsibility to make sure a new wave of African cinema exists’The French-Senegalese film-maker won this year’s Golden Bear in Berlin for her breathtakingly imaginative new releaseFri Oct 25 2024 - 05:00
Dahomey review: Mati Diop’s fascinating hybrid documentary lays out its argument in sharp fashion French-Senegalese film-maker chronicles return of 26 historically significant objects – out of many thousands – to Benin from French authoritiesThu Oct 24 2024 - 05:00
Emilia Pérez review: Bold, brassy, groundbreaking entertainmentChutzpah is in plentiful supply in Jaques Audiard’s extraordinary telenovela-shaded narco-trans musical starring Zoë Saldaña and Karla Sofía GascónWed Oct 23 2024 - 05:00
Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton take seats at Abbey in Dublin for Aidan Quinn and Steve Buscemi one-offStars take part in reading of Sam Shepard’s play Ages of the Moon for Irish national theatre’s Love at First Sight seasonSun Oct 20 2024 - 22:25
World war zed: How Gen Z's Americanisms are hijacking Hiberno-English‘Zee’ is an Americanism. So how come it seems to have been used in Ireland since Jack Lynch was taoiseach?Sun Oct 20 2024 - 05:00
‘Trump called us human scum this morning’: Apprentice stars Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan on being in the line of fireThe lead actors in a new film about Donald Trump’s early business days on why the former US president’s reaction to it is a kind of validationSat Oct 19 2024 - 05:30
Actor Kate Gilmore: ‘I look at myself – no mortgage, my car is falling apart, I have no money in the bank’Irish actor Kate Gilmore has taken on what might be her greatest challenge yet: performing alone on stage in Disco Pigs, creator Enda Walsh’s experimental new play at the Peacock Theatre in DublinSat Oct 19 2024 - 05:00
The Movie Quiz: To date, only one Mike Leigh film has been Oscar-nominated. Which one?Plus: Who comes after Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, Lewis Teague and David Cronenberg?Fri Oct 18 2024 - 05:00
The Wild Robot review: This superb family film could become a classicLupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal star in what is the best feature cartoon from a major studio in yearsThu Oct 17 2024 - 05:00
The Apprentice film review: Ivana Trump taunts Donald for his orangeness. Then this drama’s most disturbing moment happensDonald Trump’s moments of outright villainy get extra level of unease from flatness of his portrayal elsewhere in Ali Abbasi’s filmWed Oct 16 2024 - 06:00
Four new films to see this weekA homage and critique of Hong Kong action cinema in elegiac Stuntman, plus evocative Irish drama King Frankie, sci-fi romcom Timestalker, and a bland return to Stephen King’s ’Salem’s LotSun Oct 13 2024 - 05:00
Toxic fandoms are increasingly out of control. Just ask Amandla Stenberg about what happened to The AcolyteDownvoting and discriminatory language have only become more vigorous in the age of franchise streaming showsSun Oct 13 2024 - 05:00
Find Your Eyes: ‘Oh Lord, will it be like this all the way through?’ we ask at first. But this tricky piece rewards surrenderDublin Theatre Festival 2024: In this unclassifiable performance piece, Benji Reid creates a seductive amalgam of theatre, choreography and photographyFri Oct 11 2024 - 09:04
The Movie Quiz: Who was the first former SNL regular to win an acting Oscar?Who belongs with fellow authors JG Ballard, Patrick McGrath, Stephen King and William S Burroughs?Fri Oct 11 2024 - 05:00
King Frankie: An intriguing reminder of the Celtic Tiger delusions that hung around Ireland for decadesPeter Coonan works hard at creating two believable versions of the same troubled personalityThu Oct 10 2024 - 05:00
Blitz first look: Could Saoirse Ronan be on track for a double Oscar nomination with her new film?In Steve McQueen’s movie, the Irish star plays a distraught mother during the Luftwaffe’s raids on London during the second World WarWed Oct 09 2024 - 19:30
