Ireland
Rose Plays Julie review - a sombre story of rape, adoption and a search for identitySaturday, 18 September 2021
Rose (Ann Skelly; The Nevers) is adopted. The name on her birth certificate is Julie and the possibility of a different identity – different clothes, different hair, different accent - beckons. If she could embrace this second life, she thinks, she... Read more... |
End of Sentence review - an American father and his estranged son reconcile in IrelandSaturday, 15 May 2021
It’s not until the final moments of End of Sentence that Frank (John Hawkes) lets himself laugh – he’s swimming in the icy waters of an Irish lake - and what a relief it is to hear. Icelandic director Elfar Adalsteins’s debut feature (Sailcloth, a... Read more... |
Album: Imelda May - 11 Past the HourTuesday, 13 April 2021
11 Past the Hour opens with its title song, a delicious, twangy, string-laden Nancy Sinatra Bond theme that never was. The album closes with a lyrically empowered torch song, “Never Look Back”, which rises and rises over a marching band drum tattoo... Read more... |
LFF 2020: Nomadland review - Francis McDormand gives a career-defining performanceTuesday, 20 October 2020
Chloé Zhao’s The Rider was a film of rare honesty and beauty. Who would have thought she’d be able to top the power of that majestic docudrama? But with Nomadland she has.To call it a loose adaptation of Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America... Read more... |
The Other Lamb review - a surreal portrait of an abusive cultSaturday, 17 October 2020
“Thank you, Shepherd, for allowing us to be your wives. Come down upon me and fill me with yourself.” Collective ecstasy – and a lot of wool – is the order of the day in this cult led by Michael, aka Shepherd (Michiel Huisman; Game of Thrones; The... Read more... |
Rialto review - beautifully acted but relentlessSaturday, 03 October 2020
What news on the rialto? Not much of particular buoyancy or light in the Peter Mackie Burns film Rialto, which takes a grimly focused view of a married Irishman's struggle with his same-sex leanings. Adapted by Mark O'Halloran from his 2011 stage... Read more... |
Three Kings, Old Vic: In Camera review - Andrew Scott vividly evokes generational painSunday, 06 September 2020
The world premiere of Stephen Beresford’s new hourlong play, livestreamed to home audiences in four performances as part of the Old Vic’s In Camera series, was postponed a couple of times due to Andrew Scott undergoing minor surgery. Thankfully, the... Read more... |
The Deceived, Channel 5 review - who's fooling who?Thursday, 06 August 2020
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again, except somebody had renamed it The House at Knockdara. This was the title of the first novel by Michael Callaghan, Cambridge literature don, aspiring writer and serial seducer of his female students.... Read more... |
Album: Fontaines DC – A Hero's DeathThursday, 30 July 2020
Be careful what you wish for. Turns out the dream that most bands yearn for isn't all it's cracked up to be. Fontaines DC's debut album, Dogrel went large (and won a Mercury Prize nomination and BBC 6 Music's Album of the Year). They toured like... Read more... |
Ailish Tynan, Iain Burnside/Allan Clayton, James Baillieu, Wigmore Hall online/BBC Radio 3 review – alone togetherSaturday, 20 June 2020
Loneliness haunts the solo song – not simply all those solitary wanderers and defiant wayfarers of the Lied tradition, but the forsaken lovers and questing pilgrims who fill the folk-song repertoire of many lands. So, amid the general poignancy of... Read more... |
Artemis Fowl review - flash bang nothingSaturday, 13 June 2020
It’s taken over 18 years for Artemis Fowl to reach the big screen, with Miramax originally buying the rights in 2001. Finally, Disney have brought the world’s youngest criminal mastermind to life, but was it worth the wait? Well, the fact it’s... Read more... |
'In a country of marvellous communicators': violinist Katherine Hunka on life with the Irish Chamber OrchestraSunday, 17 May 2020
As a musician I spend so much time on the road that a day spent at home is a rarity. And now, with the restrictions we all face, and concerts an impossibility, I am becoming a keen gardener and making a lot of soup. It is also a time of reflection.... Read more... |
