French cinema icon Isabelle Huppert displays her comedic side in Jean-Paul Salomé’s crime caper The Godmother (La Daronne). The film starts out as a conventional crime drama with the cops looking to intercept a shipment of drugs, but ends up in some pretty wild territory. Huppert plays Patience Portefeux*, a translator with the Paris police….
Death of a Ladies Man is a Irish/Canadian co-production starring Gabriel Byrne as Samuel O’Shea, a Montreal based lecturer and a hard-drinking womaniser. He arrives home to discover his second and much younger wife having passionate sex with a stranger in their marital bed and asks for a divorce. But this is just the start…
The German Film Festival brings the best new films from Germany showcasing festival favourites, works of auteurs and the best new talent. This year’s program, presented in association with German Films, kicks off from 25 May at Palace Cinemas across the nation. Opening night is Next Door, the darkly comic directorial debut by Daniel Brühl…
Pablo Larraín is a Chilean filmmaker of distinctive style. Much loved in art house circles, his films are often marked by slow narratives punctuated by arresting visuals – and occasionally violence. His latest film to reach these shores, Ema (actually made in 2019) follows a similar pattern. Larraín’s Jackie (2016) was one of my favourite…
The Man in the Hat sounds like something from the pen of Dr Seuss. Rather this is a quirky and offbeat Tati-esque comedy about an unnamed man (played by Irish actor Ciaran Hinds) driving through the French countryside in his little Fiat 500. He drives through backroads and byways and small villages, and interacts with…
In 2015, Robert Eggers played with the intersection of the real and the fantastic in the horrifyingly effective The Witch. Now writer-director Emily Harris treads similar territory in the creepy Carmilla. Like The Witch, Harris explores the line between reality on one hand, and fear and superstition on the other. But where Eggers left a…
Spiral: From the Book of Saw is the ninth film in the Saw universe, and an attempt to reboot a franchise long thought moribund. It’s been over a decade since the torture porn franchise came to a conclusion with Saw: The Final Chapter, although there was the disappointing attempt at a belated reboot with 2017’s…
One for the adrenaline junkies, Those Who Wish Me Dead combines daredevil firies and ruthless assassins. The movie starts with a bang – literally and figuratively – setting up audience expectations. Two killers – Jack and Patrick Blackwell (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) – posing as utility operators, deliver an unforgettable message to a district…
Legendary music promoter and director Dave McLean joins The Blurb’s Patrick Scott to discuss his new film Schemers. The film tells how he came to promote and manage some of the biggest bands ever, like Nirvana, Iron Maiden and Placebo. He also regales on some extraordinary stories about the music business, as well as future…
The trashy Fatale is a latter day noir thriller that’s part Fatal Attraction and part Basic Instinct. But the longer it goes the more convoluted its plotting becomes and some plot twists become a little too unbelievable. Derrick (Michael Ealy) is a sports agent who has built a successful business with his best friend Rafe…
