Mark Conroy 151 posts 0 comments

It’s difficult not to compare Audrey Diwan’s brutal, bracing Happening to Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always or Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Granted, given they are all three accomplished dramas detailing…

When Titane won the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, there were murmurs in some circles that the result was akin to Crash’s controversial victory at the 2005 Oscars. This is to say that, as there were so many worthy…

C’mon C’mon. This isn’t just the title of writer/director Mike Mills’ fourth, and probably best, feature. It’s also a mantra for both its characters and just about anyone who inhabits the screen for even a nanosecond. The words are first…

While I would mostly recommend it, I’m not sure if there is a more frustrating film this year than Tomás Ó Súilleabháin’s Arracht. We sincerely hope this becomes a landmark for Irish-language cinema, but the more generic storytelling makes…

Bob Viddick, the grunting, grizzled and scruple-light hitman from the frenetically fun Copshop, informs us at one stage that he received a degree “from the university of common sense”. Is this a good line? It would be a struggle to…

Technological anxieties concerning relationships with artificial beings really have had something of a stranglehold on the world of grounded, sci-fi dramas recently. Spike Jones’s Her, which concerned a lonely Joaquin Phoenix and his…

Remember when Captain Marvel was set in the 1990’s for some inexplicable reason? I say inexplicable, it at least gave the filmmakers lots of chances to make so-so jokes about video rental shops and dial-up internet. Now, it’s the turn of DC…

Talking Heads, perhaps then the most critically lauded band in the US, released the concert film Stop Making Sense in 1984. While some relationships were beginning to fracture, the new-wave four-piece were riding high on an imperious streak…

The live-action family film has not had a great few years, it must be said. Paul King’s excellent Paddington films were two of the few bright sparks during a time when the genre was beset with rapping chipmunks and an endless supply of…

Christopher Nolan has a habit of using projects to cleanse his palette of the more typically populist outing that preceded it. Following each entry of his massively successful Dark Knight trilogy, he gave us admittedly large-scale but…