Blue Valentine: A review
Please don’t consider going to see this with your spouse of ten years, the one with the crows feet, the stressful job and the flagging libido. Because this might just hammer the nail in your relationship.
Roisin Kiberd
Catfish: A review
Tech-phobes left cold by The Social Network will find vindication in Catfish, a slow-burning documentary about the online friendship between a documentary filmmaker, Nev, and a young artist named Ali.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams: A review
Granted unprecedented access to the oldest artworks on Earth, Herzog finds ample fuel for favourite themes- man amongst the elements, inhospitable landscapes and the odd close-up of a particularly photogenic reptile.
Submarine: An interview with Richard Ayoade and Craig Roberts
You will know him by his plaid shirt and supremely fuzzy hair. Familiar to most for his role as nerd icon Moss in The IT Crowd, Richard his first steps into comedy), the half-Norwegian, half-Nigerian actor/director has also directed videos for Vampire Weekend and Arctic Monkeys, helped to create the late-night curiosity Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, and once co-authored something called AD/BC: A Rock Opera. And now he’s written and directed his debut film…
Wake Wood: An interview with director David Keating
Hammer Horror gets a green makeover in this month’s film release Wake Wood, a low-budget but decidedly high-impact Irish horror with a plot that draws on everything from Polanski to Pet Sematary. A recently bereaved couple arrive in the friendly, oddly claustrophobic town of the title, where the locals offer solice but at a terrible price.
13 Assassins, a review
Suddenly the Wu-Tang’s Samurai leanings make more sense. Audience familiar with the work of Takeshi Miike (Audition and Ichi the Killer probably being among his best-known of his eighty-four-strong filmography) will come to 13 Assassins prepared for quick-fire violence, intermittent gore and an all-round twisted view of humanity. But the epic scale of this recent outing, the strange, operatic grandeur of the set pieces and the even stranger moments of humor in between are what surprise viewers., and what make the film’s two-and-a-half-hour duration fly by in a hail of arrows and exploding dojos. Holed up in the small, top-floor Screen 1 of the IFI, I winced, I giggled, and I was utterly spellbound.
An incredibly lazy and satisfying way to learn about cinema
Sometimes I’m at a loss what film to watch next. This is where the Crush of the Month method comes in. You might also call it the Fangirl Approach. Rather than think in terms of genre or director or overall ouevre, you just select one specific actor/actress to become obsessed with short term, go to IMDB and work your way through their filmography.
