The film follows Bill Furlong, played by Cillian Murphy, a coalman in County Wexford in the early 1980s along with his wife and their daughters. Furlong uncovers abuse occurring in his local convent and is pushed into making a decision that will either sacrifice his morals, or ruin his reputation. Murphy’s brilliant performance anchors the film and so much of what is impactful results from what goes unsaid. 

When Bill tells his wife, Eileen, about how one of the girls in the convent came up to him –begging and crying for him to help her- Eileen asks “What do we have to answer for?” This is the primary tenet of the film. ‘Small Things Like These’ tries to address the questions that arise around cases of historic abuse: How could this happen? How could it go on for so long? Why didn’t anyone try to stop it?

While other films have tried to convey the harrowing experiences of those who were confined within the Magdalene Laundries, ‘Small Things Like These’ offers the perspective of the bystander and how it feels to watch something that you know is profoundly wrong but feeling so utterly suppressed that you cannot or feel you should not help. The central irony of the story is that Bill is a man who cares deeply about his family but lives in a dysfunctional society where the institution of the family is more venerated and protected than the human beings that actually constituted it.

The film ends with an unusual tonal shift as Bill leads the girl he had rescued from the convent smiling into the living room to his wife and daughters. I think this dreamlike ending is an acknowledgement of how Bill’s bravery was truly exceptional. Due to fear and coercion, the Laundries operated throughout the 20th century largely unopposed. Indeed, many of the Magdalene Laundries shut down because they were no longer commercially viable and as such, the advent of the domestic washing machine did more to abolish these institutions than the Irish State ever did.

The film explores how women are pushed into loneliness, igniting rivalry amongst themselves, due to India's patriarchal society. Mira's mother, Anila, regretfully married her husband in her early twenties. Anila's husband fits within the stereotypical working and absent male figure, while Anila becomes the housewife. The lack of love and attention Anila receives gradually initiates loneliness with her. Thus, when Mira's ambiguous boyfriend, Sri comes into the picture, Anila feels underlying contempt and jealousy of their relationship, despite her love for Mira. Sri seemingly takes advantage, turning the mother and daughter against each other in a bid for his attention.

The male characters suffer almost no consequences, adhering to the patriarchal system, upholding an ideology of male dominance. Sri is underaged for the majority of the film, which leads to question his anatomy. I have to put forth what may be a controversial query: Shouldn't his morality at least be put into question, despite his age, due to his awareness of his own disruptive actions. There is a tension between Mira and several male classmates which builds throughout the film, where the boys are first excused of taking upskirt photographs, their actions being  infuriatingly dismissed as 'boys will be boys.' 

Girls Will Be Girls is a poignant film that raises this question: Why are girls, especially those like Anila, never allowed to actually experience girlhood, while boys are often excused for their misbehaviours? I believe girlhood should be explored as a means for empowerment and self-discovery. 

The current deadly and illegal assault on Palestine – particularly in Gaza – orchestrated by Israel, with the cooperation of Global North governments such as that of the UK and the US, has led to untold suffering: tens of thousands of Palestinians have been murdered, family histories have been erased, universities have been demolished, hundreds of thousands of people have been driven out of their homes, and many more are facing famine and both lack of access to water and electricity.  

Saleh Bakri’s performance as Basem El Saleh, a schoolteacher living in the West Bank in and around 2014, is excellent, as is that of the other leads: Imogen Poots as Lisa, a British volunteer working in a school in Nablus, and Muhammad Abed Elrahman as Adam, a student of Basem’s.    

The chemistry between Bakri and Poots is believable, tender, and sweet, and earlier in the film Poots gives a convincing performance of someone who is clearly out of their depth – given the way that Palestinians are treated with contempt by Israelis in every aspect of their lives.   

There are moments in the film which are gut-wrenching: when Adam’s brother, Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri) is shot by settlers, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, as well as when Basem offers himself up for arrest instead of Adam towards the end of the film.   

The movie does a brilliant job of portraying, through their own eyes (the director, Farah Nabulsi is herself Palestinian), the way that Palestinians are unable to approach justice and are prevented from speaking for themselves. This film feels like an attempt at reversing that, in a small way, telling a Palestinian story from a Palestinian perspective: giving an impression of the totalising force that they are subjected to. Watching it will make you feel angry and sad, and while there are glimmers of hope, they are few and far between. 

The Substance gets inside of you and becomes alive, coursing through your veins. It’s inescapable, like a substance.

Prepare to cover your eyes at times, as your brain can’t quite handle what it is witnessing. It escalates in intensity consistently throughout with little rest. This escalation may be higher than what many viewers are used to, it’s a ride.  

The movie is in a category of its own. It makes the viewer experience an assault on all their senses, yes, even taste as you feel slightly unwell from some of the visuals. A sensory overload with its extreme close-ups and loud, almost ASMR sound which involves everything from an obnoxious man eating a slimy prawn cocktail, to a syringe entering someone’s spinal cord repeatedly.  

It’s an uncomfortable watch as a result, yet I believe this to be the movie’s intention, especially in line with the theme of the objectification of the female body in Hollywood and the media. This discomfort caused by many gruesome scenes and the story which unfolds makes the viewer think about the ridiculousness of body image expectations women experience daily, as well as the pressures of an aging female body. 

The first is its tricksy, malleable premise; a young girl, long thought missing, returns to her parent’s home after a decade. The mother is overjoyed, reawakened to life. The father, however, cannot believe the girl is his daughter. How do ordinary people respond to this kind of grief? 

There’s a great tension around a third of the way through any film – the break to the second act, as it were – where it reveals the different paths the story could take. Whether the premise is played straight, whether the premise is subverted, or if it will go in a different direction. The film seems to ask – as we ask too – what kind of story am I? 

Reawakening presents multiple possibilities. It could be that the father is hiding something, and knows this girl is not his daughter for a fact. It could be that he’s struggling to reconcile his life’s purpose, looking for his daughter, with that task’s completion. Or, it could be about something else, something truer. As the layers of this story unfold, it tells us how to read it, and what it believes about the world. 

The second is the film’s lead, Jared Harris. Is there any contemporary actor with more on-screen integrity than Harris? There is something so calming, soothing, about his onscreen presence, that can turn itself to pride or ego in seconds. He’s been fantastic in much of the last decade’s best TV - Chornobyl, The Terror, Mad Men – but Reawakening gives him a rare star turn. It’s his integrity that is most terrifying; when a man fiercely believes in something he will allow himself to do all sorts of things he knows are wrong. This is the tension that holds the film together, that gives it the burst of a thriller. We know Harris will follow what he thinks is right; but what path is right? Is there a right path a family can take in a situation like this? Perhaps there is only one decision; whether to open or close the heart.

“Jack Grey, Jack Grey,

Get to your feet,

The mast is up,

The roots are deep.”

Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre is an eerie and cinematically striking British folk horror, set in 1970s Yorkshire, and based on the novel of the same name by Andrew Michael Hurley. 

Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark play husband and wife, Richard and Juliette,  who have recently moved to Richard’s childhood home in hopes of helping their troubled son Ewan, who has been experiencing auditory verbal hallucinations. The optimism quickly subsides when Ewan suddenly dies of an asthma attack, and Richard and Juliette are left heartbroken living in an isolated countryside house where malevolent forces seem to be at play. 

This is a film reflecting the different ways we deal with grief and trauma and the impact this can have on the ones we love, as Juliette turns to the supernatural in an attempt to bring their son back, Richard becomes consumed by his work as an archaeologist, uncovering the secrets of Starve Acre, the mysterious legends of the ancient oak tree, and confronting unresolved issues from his childhood. 

A recurring presence in the film is the hare, which first seems to be an innocent and craven animal. Juliette and Richard find the hare in their home, capture it and set it free but it is soon to return, eventually revealing itself to be a manifestation of the land's curse. The film leaves the audience shocked and disturbed, as the couple are psychologically and physically consumed by the hare, welcoming its supernatural forces into their lives and resulting in an unforgettable conclusion. 

The film uses muted brown and green earthy tones, coupled with desolate landscapes capturing the beauty and isolation of the Yorkshire countryside. The sound design masterfully blends a serene woodland soundscape, with the piercing instrumental that keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

Whilst Starve Acre succeeds in creating a deep sense of unease through its haunting soundtrack, beautiful visuals and gripping performances, its slow-burn pacing and ambiguous narrative misses the mark in satisfying those seeking a conventional, jump-scare horror experience. Although the film is certainly worth a watch, it may not be worth repeat viewings.

We here to become human again, to enjoy the things that is not in our reality

The film opens on stage. The players take their bows before exiting, removing their costumes and getting back into their prison uniforms. Removed from the dreamy lighting of the stage to the harshly lit hallways of the prison, our actors escorted back to their cells. This is Sing Sing. 

Greg Kwedar’s 2023 drama Sing Sing follows the true story of Divine G (Colman Domingo) who is serving time in the Sing Sing correctional facility for a crime that he did not commit. While in prison, Divine G becomes a founding member of the RTA: Rehabilitation Through the Arts. The movie follows these men as they stage their original comedy Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code and eagerly seek to find joy amongst the dehumanising landscape of Sing Sing maximum security prison. 

The most striking feature of Sing Sing is the setting. The usual cinematic zeal of the prison landscape is stripped down to its rawest form to reveal hurt and vulnerable men seeking to find comfort in each other. To escape the usual violence that follows them like a shadow. None of these men fall victim to stereotypes of ‘men behind bars’. These are men who discuss their love for Shakespeare, quoting verses from memory. Men who earnestly discuss the ramifications of time travel in their play. Men who insist on playing the role of Freddy Krueger in said time travel play. They dream about seeing their mothers again. Their wives, their children. Dreams of cherry water ice dripping down their chin. Of mowing the lawn. 

While most of Sing Sing’s run time is filled with more upbeat moments of connection between the members of RTA, it is punctuated by brutally silent moments of reflection on the US prison system. They come quickly and without warning. The most cutting example is the short scene in which Divine G walks defeatedly back into his cell after it has been trashed by guards in a routine search that is especially cruel. His typewriter thrown to the ground. His small locker emptied and overturned. His bed covered in his torn books and manuscripts. The silence of such sequences forces the audience to reflect on these injustices in the US prison system. It is easy to forget the setting of the film and Kwedar has no problem reminding us.

By far the most powerful moment of the film is the end credits. Audition clips from earlier in the film are played again except now they introduce us to the men behind such powerful performances:

                Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin as himself.

                Sean “Dino” Johnson as himself.

              Jon-Adrian 'JJ' Velazquez as himself. 

Most of the film’s cast are alumni of the real RTA programme in a tear-jerking reveal.

A visually vibrance which hides feelings of longing and inadequacy underneath. I Saw the TV Glow is an abstract film that challenges not only identity binaries, but the cinematic experience.

Owen is a young teenager who seemingly exists in a small, quiet town. However, we see strobe lighting and bright colours throughout, such as the glow from the tv, from chalk on the streets, and from vending machines in the school canteen. The two recurring colours, however, remain blue and pink. A binary.

Everything is a mirror. A binary, constantly in twos and moving fast. Yet, this is what the film asks us to question. The film tackles binary through the exploration of its themes and characters. The character Maddy’s physical appearance and costume changes from light pastels and crop tops to more masculine centred clothing, such as a suit and having their hair cut short highlights this.

It wants us to see what lies under the binary. The glow is the opening, the film invites the spectator to come into a world beyond the screen, beyond the voyeur position of us and them. It asks us to dismantle our ‘roles’ as the audience member.

As Owen opens their chest, looking for their missing heart, all we see is tv static through a mirror. They smile, an acceptance of a fake reality they have been living. Their perception warped. The lights figuratively and physically shine a light on a ‘truth.’

I Saw the Tv Glow attempts to challenge perception, of truth and roles within not only society, but the film going experience. Who are we as a spectator and what are we supposed to take from films in general?

The movie tells the story of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí, (all brilliantly played by themselves): three bored, lost lads living in West Belfast who bond over a shared love of the Irish language and rampant drugtaking. Like demented evangelists, the boys decide to start a rap group with lyrics in Irish to promote the language they feel is being ignored and forgotten, with very funny, raucous and at times chaotic results, all ably captured by director, Rich Peppiatt.

The film comically tackles so many of the hang ups of the troubles, poking an enormous whale’s backbone length of stick at our recent history, while showing how far we have moved on, but also showing how much we still have to go, with the boys attempts to promote the language overlapping with the collapse of the Stormont government over the implementation of the Irish language act.

This is not a film about the troubles - as Kneecap state at the beginning - this is a film about identity, something so important in the North of Ireland/Northern Ireland (point proven), but it’s hard to have a film set in Belfast that doesn’t touch upon the conflict. Several of the subplots comically tackle the sectarianism - never have I laughed so much at Tiocfaidh ár lá - and the menacing shadow of the hypocritical dissident paramilitary groups who refuse to go away. The film also tackles the effects of generational trauma, still so strong, twenty-six years after the GFA.

Yes, this film will offend those who ache to be offended, but it’s more about what unites us, than divides us, telling is that our art and music can rise above the identity politics that form so much of day-to-day life in the North, and that with a sense of humour, some belief and some banging bloody tunes, you can reach people.

Go get yourself Kneecapped. It’s worth it alone for a superb cameo by Gerry Adam.

The doc manages somehow to place itself rather firmly in its present, even with its ample opportunities for nostalgia. Each of the bandmates reference politics, ageing, and all four’s eventual purchase of “a very big house in the country”, despite the scathing lyrics they once sang and believed.

When the film does delve into the band’s past, it is honest about it. Blur acknowledge their many faults, their ever-precarious relationships with alcoholism, and their uncountable fallings out over the years.

In Damon, we are given a fascinating portrait of an extremely hyperactive man who shouts and swears at his bandmates, chain smokes, almost crashes his car, works so hard he literally falls asleep at the piano and yet, sits and sobs with his whole body when he plays the new album to his bandmates for the first time.

Though the film’s formal elements are not particularly artistic, it remains compelling due to its sentiments, its characters, and a lot of fantastic concert footage (though Irish fans will be disappointed by its very fleeting look at their Malahide Castle show), but most of all audiences will be struck by the doc’s tenderness. The hugs, the quiet compliments, and the reluctant pride.

To The End is a film about four grumpy and somewhat resentful men in their fifties, who, despite it all, love each other very, very dearly.

The premise: Hyun-soo and Soo-jin are an ordinary married couple expecting their first child until Hyun-soo’s sleepwalking takes over their lives. From there, Sleep twists and turns its way through black comedy, mystery and horror en route to an extreme, shocking conclusion that manages to be both absurd and completely believable.

You rarely, if ever, know what to expect with Sleep, yet the clues are woven in right from the earliest scenes. At the start of the film, Soo-jin grabs a power drill to defend against a potential intruder in her home — knowing this to be her weapon of choice, I should have anticipated the bloody climax. Instead, my unease grew each time the drill made an appearance, wondering just how far Soo-jin would go.

Despite the extremes of insanity showcased in Sleep, and the downright bizarre behaviour of the characters, it’s remarkably subtle in its handling of the subject matter. The film rarely feels the need to explain what’s going on, trusting the audience to figure things out for themselves. It doesn’t bash you over the head with its themes, but allows them to emerge naturally, something surprisingly rare and much appreciated.

The ending is also beautifully ambiguous and offers a lot for the viewer to chew on. Are we watching Hyun-soo, the professional actor, put on the performance of his life? Or was Soo-jin’s supernatural explanation right all along? Sleep invites you to ask these questions, and I thought about them the whole way home.

Overall, Sleep is an entertaining and disturbing watch that truly embodies the spirit of ‘til death do us part’, while exploring the lengths our superstitions can drive us to.

Blue Velvet is Lynch’s love letter to noir, exploring genre conventions by twisting it on its head and re-defines expectations.

The Queens Film Theatre recently ran a Noir Festival, re-screening classic examples of the genre. One of the films within the lineup was David Lynch’s 1986 Blue Velvet. The film itself is notorious for its shocking violence, body gore and alienation. In conforming to genre conventions, the film succeeds. The low lighting exposure, the mystery plot line, the morally ambiguous and curious protagonist. However, the most striking element is its use of contrast.

Upon re-watching the film on the big screen, the contrast doesn’t come from your traditional good vs evil, but by using comedy. The constant reference to Jeffrey’s, our protagonist, love for Heineken. To his nonchalant behaviour upon witnessing horrors, such as the decapitated ear he finds in a field, which acts as a catalyst for his journey. He picks up the ear, carrying it in a small paper bag he also finds in the field. Carrying it while walking himself to the police station. No screams. No shock. As if coming across a severed ear was commonplace.

The comedic moments make us laugh, but at the most inappropriate times. The Heineken gag is used again, when Jeffrey comes face to face with the antagonist of the film, Frank. Frank asks Jeffrey what beer he likes, and Jeffrey responds ‘Heineken.’ We laugh at the absurd nature of it. But it’s a nervous laugh, anxiety inducing as we fear what will happen to Jeffrey.

Blue Velvet is filled with these alienating moments. In one of its more violent scenes, Frank is assaulting Dorothy, our femme fatale character, while performing stomach twisting acts, he screams mommy while taking air from an oxygen mask. This is comedic, but in the context its terrifying and jarring.

The use of contrast solidifies Blue Velvet as a neo-noir, re-inventing the use of contrast through comedy and making the spectator laugh in such horrifying moments.

He’s a friend of a friend.

Director Osgood Perkins posits that evil is everywhere and all the love in the world can’t stop it from finding us. A young Lee Harker’s house is isolated, cold and quiet, but it still finds her; in the suburbs, Harker’s FBI partner is suddenly, violently killed and the killer’s house is empty but for plastic sheets, a fan. Subconsciously, as the film progress, our eyes are glued to the negative space – aided by the equal emphasis placed on fore- and background by the framing – waiting for evil to loom out at us. Then, it does.

The Devil – glibly referred to as Mr. Downstairs – is a huge, ram-horned shadow that lurks in corners throughout, not hiding so much as barely perceptible but is suddenly right there, right behind Lee. Does that make him her shadow? He lingers as Lee’s mother, Ruth, tries to save her from the evil that has forced its way into their home.

Parents will do anything to protect their children, and Ruth is no exception. In a nightmare-inducing twist, it’s revealed that Longlegs took advantage of her love for Lee, forcing her into being his accomplice. But it’s in her continuing action that holds the turn – Ruth’s love is corrupted into something all the more sinister as time progresses, her barely disguised glee in her murder-monologue is utterly skin-crawling. She killed, and she killed, and she killed, but it’s all for you. Aren’t you grateful? Don’t you understand?

When Lee pleads for her to stop, she snarls don’t call me mom! while unsheathing a ritual dagger. And the daughter this was all for pulls the trigger.

Longlegs is an unflinching look into the complex interplay between love and evil, and how the latter can so easily corrupt the former. They are both all around us, in the places where we never think to look and, sometimes, even right below our feet.

He’s a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. Oh, he’s everywhere, Mr Downstairs

As Gerwig explores what feminism entails, Barbie puts forward essential ideas about womanhood and equality with a light touch.

Moreover, Barbie explores what it means to ‘only exist within the warmth of [someone’s] gaze.’ It underlines how women have existed under the male gaze for centuries, which leads women to be self-conscious and self-effacing. Barbie highlights this while also reckoning with how fragile, fluid, and impressionistic our identities are, and how they are both personal to us and interlinked with the society in which we exercise and perform identity.

Barbie is not only a reclamation, but for those of us who have grown up with Barbie dolls, it offers closure, as ‘the stereotypical Barbie’ performing the Eurocentric standards of beauty challenges the system she is a part of, recognising beauty as a fluid concept rather than an ideal. In this way, Gerwig explores the differences between being a creator and the product that is created, between reality and the ideal, as she underlines the power that comes with being questioning, creative, and imaginative.

With songs that are beautiful and coherent to the film, with costumes that are nostalgic for the accessories of the Barbie doll, Barbie is smart, witty, and sarcastic. I recommend letting the credits roll till the end so you can listen to Billie Eilish’s ‘What Was I Made For?’, a song that sheds light on the themes explored in Barbie but is also endlessly tender and evocative.

The movie often breaks the fourth wall and invites the audience to be part of the ‘Barbieland’; it's loud, wholesome and heartwarming, all the while exploring feminism, the nightmares of patriarchy, and arguing for equality. A classic Greta Gerwig film!

 Aftersun seems like a story we’ve heard before; a young, divorced dad, struggling with drugs and his mental health, tries to be a good father to his daughter on their holiday to Turkey. Though, as Jack Underwood notes in Not Even This, a book on his experiences as a father: we’ll always need another love poem, or another death poem, for there will always be something more to say.

As Sophie records her summer with Calum on her camera, the film cuts from scenes of them lounging beside the pool to the future, where Sophie watches that same footage interspersed with ​​scintillating and disorienting flashes of a rave. Calum’s and Sophie’s summer resort, which appears to be a haven, struggles to hold on to its idealistic image. Scenes play out in mirrors, water, or in her camera, an uncertain world seen through reflections, uncertainty, and fragments of memory. The pace of the story is slow, but inside the spare dialogue, we become aware of a bubbling tension, and a developing tenderness, between Calum and Sophie.

Subthemes unspool through the narrative; one that stands out to me is the sexual curiosity, and mortification, of the eleven-year-old Sophie. In a summer resort populated with young lovers, an observant child becomes an audience to a world without sexual inhibition. Troubling scenes are well delivered with a lightness of touch – Calum forgetting to go to sleep with his clothes on, and sleeping on Sophie’s bed instead of his own, while the child puts a blanket on him.

The film is filled with melancholia, wrapping itself in an eerie calm, but this is sprinkled with realistic humour; an effort to keep a brave face for and by the child. Childishness and humour appear when the story can’t bear to speak up and tell itself. Paul’s and Frankie’s acting is something truly wonderful, so that we understand through silences; our sadness filling the gaps in the storytelling.

The film breathes so silently and delicately that we wait for the moment where it all explodes – but it never comes. There is no closure, no neat ending. All we’re left with is the façade of calm where we began. It is a testimony against exposition, while a story, a very real one at that, shines its way through just the same.

The film follows a council of women elected by the rest of the women in the isolated Mennonite colony to make the final decision for them all after everything they’ve suffered at the hands of their abusers: ‘Stay & Fight’ or ‘Leave’.

The film is pieced together mainly through conversation between the women of the council, where we learn of the atrocious acts committed against them, from toddlers to elderly women, and of their reservations as they decide what is to be done. The women are torn as they care for the boys who are not yet the men that abused them and don’t want to leave them behind, but they also know that if they stay, they endanger their own lives and that of the women that come after them. They know that things will not change. The ambiguous ending itself is an extended act of the female imagination, leaving the viewer and reader only with the hope that the women are safe after everything they have faced.

The director, Sarah Polley, does an excellent job of focusing the film on the women and women alone, with the narrator of the film being an unnamed woman, and with the only adult man to speak was the minute-taker August. She also does a great job with the dialogue, with hard-hitting dialogues and impactful moments that drove home the pain these women experienced and their hope for the future. Cinematographer Luc Montpellier also does a wonderful job with setting the tone for specific scenes using light, colour, and elemental settings really pulling you in to the story and making you feel the full impact of the women’s plight and their varied range of emotions from grief to anger and finally to hope.

Darren Aronofsky’s auteurship wants both his characters and the spectators to suffer as much as possible. The pseudo-suffering in the film comes through overly dramatic scenes where Charlie binge-eats. These sequences are entirely voyeuristic, yet excessive in nature. Aronofsky is relying on a stereotypical portrayal of someone struggling with obesity. The emphasis on the ‘whale’ appearance of Charlie through the cinematography, animalising him, as well as the forceful metaphor of the Moby Dick essay, constantly draw on Charlie being ‘the whale.’ 

No, the real suffering of the film comes subtly. At one point, Charlie drops a key to a door. He grabs a claw mechanism to try and grab it, but ultimately fails to obtain the key. We don’t get an excessive bending-down sequence. Instead, Charlie admits defeat, showcasing the everyday horrors he faces. Most important, though, are the relationships, the ones Charlie builds and breaks, bends and molds, each person suffering with the looming fact that Charlie is going to die. Hong Chau’s performance as Liz is a personal highlight, in an intense and constant battle between saving her friend and ultimately ending his suffering. 

We suffer, particularly through the actors’ performances, the raw and intensity of them. This drives the film, and it relies on its performers to work. Eventually, we find empathy, proving a more worthy use of the art of suffering, beyond excessive grotesqueness. 

Lydia Tár is an archetype of power, another ‘great artist’ in a line of controversial maestros. This film could be a portrait of the mastery of a powerful abuser, from the brazenly familiar titling to the self-important opening credits; it could be enraptured by the inevitability and ineffability of the powerful, the talented, the spectacular. This is not the story director Todd Field tells, however. He fragments that narrative, inverting an almost biopic-like structure by condemning and exposing Tár instead of empathising with and exalting her.

A second structure emerges as a result, bending the film’s genre with ghostly off-screen screams. Like any skilled abuser, Tár frames the narrative to portray herself as victim to this tragic haunting: "I was attacked," she flippantly lies about injuries accidentally sustained while pursuing a new victim. In the end though, when faced with the reality of her predatory behaviour, Tár runs vomiting from the scene, her composure and control vanishing as the spectre of her actions condemn her.

Like a conductor’s second hand, one half of this story shapes the other, and when Tár’s exploitation is exposed, the destruction of her reputation, an abuser’s main asset, becomes inevitable. She goes from European cultural icon to uppity Staten Islander conducting at video game conventions.

Like any life cycle, abuse perpetuates and grows beyond itself. On a visit to a river in the Phillipines, an exiled Tár is told that crocodiles lurk in the water, leftover from a chaotic Hollywood production. They are the consequences of spectacle, of abuses of power, and much like the ghosts of victims, legacies of historic abusers, and Tár’s regenerating potential for further abuse, Field warns us: “They survive.”

At the end of the credits, Luke McManus’ documentary North Circular tells us that “Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.” North Circular builds a mosaic of its titular road which runs across Dublin’s North Inner city, from the westerly neighbourhoods of Phoenix Park to the estates and warehouses of the Docklands.

Locals gather in pubs, listening intently to old songs played by local artists, both professionals and enthusiasts. The camera explores ruins of old institutions, mental hospitals, and Magdalene laundries, haunting communities still. The film rests on hidden details, carvings on walls, statues, pillars; here, a face, near cartoonish with mouth wide open, hidden on a street corner. New squatters make a home in an abandoned terraced house, while taking the time to keep the prized possessions of its deceased former resident carefully filed away. These places, these communities, the eccentrics and pubs, families and soccer teams, their shameful pasts and uncertain futures, these are what North Circular is concerned with. In gorgeous black-and-white photography, the film builds these stories into the size of myths, of the land Empire built and left behind, of the people who came, stayed, and struggled to live.

But what is black-and-white photography if not a myth-making device? When we see it, we think of something timeless, something disconnected from the current world, already past. Whatever moment has been filmed, has already gone. This photography plays on the nostalgia inherent in the film medium, aestheticizing the very nature of the image; that the image captures what had already passed. McManus seems to have created, in this form at least, not just a portrait of this community, but a eulogy to it.

This is ironic, considering how the film focuses in on a campaign that saved one of the North Circular’s iconic pubs, the Cobblestone, and how it ends on a gig by the musician Gemma Dunleavy, whose upbeat music breathes new pride to these neighbourhoods. This road is alive with life, despite the gentrification. Though, perhaps this nostalgia comes with a focus on the music of this island. After all, many of our great songs, the ones that people remember, are dirges for the dead.

Ben: This is a beautiful film, not only in its images, its rich readings in Irish and English, but in the very structuring by which it enacts the poetic worldview Ní Ghríofa unfolds.

All her life, her poetry, she says, has been circling down and down, deeper and deeper into the same themes; she wonders what there will be after a lifetime of this. Many poets might say this anxiously, but her eyes widen with excitement. 

The film itself is a deepening circule, the viewer floating in the ‘underground river’ — a metaphor through which she later describes the mysterious surfacing of experience into poetry.

The centre of the film, and Ní Ghríofa’s experience, is her granny Mai’s house in rural Co. Clare. She speaks of the silence there; the voices of crow, clock, fire; all the stories told. The ordinary sings, here and throughout the film, in shots of concrete walls, Lego, hands folding clothes and tapping out rhythms of words. She “prais[es] the unique work women do“. She chants lost female voices: the daughter of an Ascendancy family watching her house burn, and the song of Eibhlín Dubh. 

Almost embarrassed, she says these voices speak through her, ghosts in her throat. But her vision of life works by mystery, not mastery; to which end the visuals of the film work in harmony, with lingering close-ups turning the most ordinary things strange, into art. Seethe lichen-spotted black railing in Kilcrea, a red ribbon tied round it…

The film beautifully translates her work, convincing me that poetry and film must work together much more often than they do, to create from the melody of words and images, a song.

Hilary: I’m entirely in agreement Ben. The cinematography by Kev L Smith is strangely lush and magical; and you can wince at that description but there is no other way to elaborate on it. The drone scenes of Ní Ghríofa lying in a dense, grassy field are perfect accompaniments to dialogue by the poet herself, and needs no further explanation, where in other contexts they may seem gratuitous. She is a tantalizing subject, and her purple lips and hazel-green eyes are in director Ciara Nic Chormaic’s generous and fluid camerawork for 80% of the film. Here is a raven-haired delicate beauty, articulating the dissection of a body preserved in formaldehyde in an anatomy lesson, or describing her spiritual connection and channeling of Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill the 18th century Irish noble woman, who wrote the poem at the core of Ní Ghríofa’s novel A Ghost In The Throat. The Irish and English are expressed in a gorgeous counter-point with subtitles which enrich each other.

My only complaints are that, having never heard of the author as Ben has, I would have loved more enticement to precede the film. At about forty minutes there was suddenly a close narration about the novel itself. I thought, ‘Wow, I would have loved this in the beginning!’, a help to lead me down this fascinating fairy trail. The only other actor in the film is a re-enactor in an eighteenth century dress. She is always portrayed in out of focus footage, and is inoffensive as far as re-enactors go. The question is, could the film do without her? I believe, yes. I also felt the lack of John Daly’s minimalist music score and found myself wanting more. Besides that, this was a film that never woke up from the dream submerged in Ní Ghríofa’s writing process and world, and really at the end, it never needed to.

The plotline hammers you with the lesson: capitalism is bad, the rich worse. However, the visuals highlight the poignancy of rich people suffering a shipwreck, and we end up rooting for them and their survival. Though the movie announces a scathing take on capitalism, its plotline depends on the sentiment that all is forgiven in adversity if we stick together. 

It is unsurprising then that many of the ‘jokes’ are insensitive yet delivered as punch lines. We are supposed to laugh at humanity’s expense as intersectionality brutally collapses. One of the characters, Therese, is in a wheelchair and has a speech impediment. She is only able to say the German phrase ‘in den wolken’ (‘in the clouds’), and exclaims it repeatedly in moments of distress. Given that the rich are painted as entitled and annoying, it is suggested that Therese is much the same as her fellow customers. 

However, when the camera focuses on Therese, we see a woman struggling to save her own life. When Therese asks for help, it is not entitled, like the group of rich men who can’t be bothered to catch a fish, but depend on women for their lives. The other survivors abandon and neglect Therese, and only when they hear her scream her phrase do they turn to rescue her – is this supposed to be funny? As a terrible attempt at dark humour, it is hugely insensitive and ableist.

One of the characters, Dimitry, accuses the only main Black character, Nelson, of being a pirate. Given Nelson has not been shown on screen before, we are made to question this. Even though this is narratively plausible, this does not excuse that Dimitri’s accusations towards Nelson are not supported by any evidence except his ignorance. Although this scene is pertinent and invites the audience to engage, it is presented as a ‘joke’. Unsurprisingly, towards the end, all seems forgiven as Nelson shaves a relaxing Dimitry’s chin. As a satire on society, Triangle of Sadness could have more impact if only it understood its own politics.

From the title drop to the end credits, Chan-wook plays with an impressive amount of genre-hopping fire: a tense detective mystery, a surreal erotic thriller, and (at times) a pretty sweet romantic comedy.

Seo-rae is a classic femme fatale: mysterious & seductive, dangerous & uneasy. Both Park’s script and Tang Wei’s performance, however, take the best of the trope and elevate it. Stories of obsession are too often also stories of dehumanisation, but Decision to Leave refuses to depersonalise its protagonist’s object of fascination. At times, Hae-Joon’s obsession is surface level (isn’t obsession always?) but Seo-rae never is. Exactly what she is feeling isn’t always clear, but it’s clear she is feeling with a vicious depth.

Obsession is rendered in a number of striking ways: Seo-rae turns a corner, and the detective is lying in wait, invisible to her but rendered sharp and hungry to the audience; Hae-Joon is going about his business, and a phone vibration stills him, another text to analyse; she leans forward to apply chapstick to his lips, and they’re both frozen for a moment, because – it turns out – they’re both consumed.

Despite the vast and uncompromising scenic moments, and the intricate, stylish plotting, this is an incredibly restrained film. The mystery reveals itself slowly but never ploddingly. Sex is superseded by a subtler sensuality, and violence – while horrifying – is seen mostly through its aftermath. At its very best, Decision to Leave uses this restraint to forecast the delicious perils of coming undone.

It stops and starts, conforming to no consistent register; an aesthetic undermined by the intrusion of distant voices and decaying newsreel and the sense that time is out-of-joint. It is a retelling of gay history through someone who somehow navigated its centre while living on its peripheries. Most importantly, it is a film about trauma, of war, of repression.

Its subject, Siegfried Sassoon (as played by both Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi in twin performances across time), is a poet reduced by history to the twin states of War Poet and Tragic Homosexual. Sassoon was changed by the first world war, and Capaldi has never given a greater performance than as a man who has lived through his life the long-way-round carrying its ghosts upon his back. In its wake, he cannot say what he means, nor can those around him. He becomes increasingly self-denying, blaming the cruelty of others for the cruelty he begins to enact himself. Still, he wants to touch and to be touched in return, but he cannot articulate what kind of touch he needs just as he cannot decode that which is wanted of him. This is his problem, that he sees everything as a problem of language, rather than addressing the need for sensation. He cannot just ‘be’, as he feels his being to be irreparably compromised, subject to enclosure and confusion, salvageable only in increasingly-meticulous and outmoded artistic expression and a pivot towards outward respectability. This is perhaps why Terence Davies, a man unashamed to publicly-articulate his lifelong struggle with a uniquely queer loneliness, has been able to produce a film of such unprecedented empathy, with a paucity of easy answers.

Benediction is unafraid to depict pain through the ageing of faces, the confusion of want and Siegfried’s refusal to be happy. There are moments of extraordinary tenderness and understanding though, of quiet solidarity. So much is communicated within the slightest gestures, and the phenomenon of humanity is never condemned or seen as anything other than a phenomenon. There may be ghosts, but Davies knows that cinema is made from ghosts. Benediction draws pure cinema from verse.

This is a quiet movie, guiding your hand through the countryside of Ireland and its people with gentleness and care. Set in 1981, a young girl named Cait leaves her impoverished, emotionally cold family to stay with a childless couple for the holidays. Cait is a withdrawn observer who struggles to make friends, but during her time away she feels deep affection, perhaps for the first time, and must reconsider the definition of family.

An Cailín Ciúin builds slowly, showcasing the world from the protagonist's perspective. Shot on 35mm with a 4:3 aspect ratio, there’s a claustrophobic feeling to the naturally lit shots of rooms and hallways that reflect the characters’ entrapment. Kate McCullough’s camerawork brings out the humanity in every frame, using static shots and slow zooms to rest on her subjects, pulling you further into the intimacy they feel. The little details that make a place special are brought out; the camera lingers on train-patterned wallpaper, soap smeared arms, a macaroon resting on a table. Most scenes are unaccompanied by score, soaking the audience in Cait’s silence, so when Stephen Rennicks’ beautifully minimalistic additions do come in, their impact is felt.

From its warm cinematography to its minimal script, An Cailín Ciúin lifts up quietness, gentleness, and small acts of love. The characters grow in compassion and understanding, proving how the little moments of life can make a big difference in deciding who to trust. From helping scrub floors to offering someone a tight embrace, Colm Bairéad’s film proves that sometimes you don’t have to say anything to tell someone you love them.

Happening is an adaptation of Annie Ernaux's memoir which traces her pregnancy and numerous attempts at trying to obtain an abortion as a university student. We begin with Anne, played by Anamaria Vartolomei, in the hazy end of a university semester and follow her to the cold hopelessness of seeking help to the fever pitch of the final act. Time in the movie is marked by captions reminding us how many weeks along the pregnacy is. The reminders externalise the urgency that bubbles under the surface of the narrative.

Happening is a dutiful portrayal of what illegal abortion is and never shys away from it, and yet never borders into a territory in which it is for our entertainment. The sunny hope of the first act wanes along with Anne's naivety that an abortion will be an easy thing to obtain. While a period piece, being set in rural France in 1963, it still resonates with stories that emerged during the Repeal the Eighth campaign in the Republic of Ireland in 2016 and stories that emerge from Northern Ireland even now.

The perniciousness of a misogynistic society is found in every interaction Anne has when she confesses she is pregnant. The GP who prescribes her an anti-miscarriage drug when she approaches him for an abortion. The married male friend who attempts to sleep with her as she is already pregnant. The friend who stops talking to her after finding out she is intent on getting the abortion. The abortionist who tells her she'll stop the procedure if she makes a sound, to the prudish girls in the shower room asking if the rash Anne has is syphilis. Yet, these are also the people who save her. The abortionist who takes her hand as she inserts the wand, the classmate in a prudish night dress gown who hands her the scissors to cut the umbilical cord and calls the doctor.

It is pieces of media like Happening that remind us why reproductive rights activists do what they do. Diwan’s film shines a harsh light on what it means to deny people autonomy, and above all, is one of the strongest tools that exists in a political movement: an unflinching story. 

Flipping from professions as a doctor to a psychologist to a photographer, Julie hasn’t a clue how she wants to live her life or who she wants to live it with, especially when she is given a glimpse into a life that could be permanent. When she’s faced with the possibility of having kids or pursuing a new partner, Julie does the only thing she knows how to: wait, and see where time leads her. 

“Time” here is presented in twelve chapters, the only structure we can rely on in a story full of chaos and uncertainty. Each chapter is accompanied by a title that foreshadows the content to come, allowing the audience to set their expectations before entering a scene. Unlike Julie, we get the luxury of knowing what’s to come. 

The film wanders with Julie around the streets of Oslo following each reckless decision she makes. Kasper Tuxen’s camerawork, much like our protagonist, is rarely stationary, gently mirroring the character's movements, shaking ever so slightly on shots that would traditionally remain static. Trier’s script honestly appeals to a generation who feels pressure to reach a place of certainty about their futures. Julie is constantly waiting for some greater alternative, some confirmation of what’s important, but sometimes what’s best is right in front of us. Sometimes it’s not enough to wait for certainty–we must compromise, make shortsighted decisions and figure it out in the process. 

The Worst Person in the World celebrates wandering, confusion, and processing. The film settles on a comma rather than a period, suggesting that what is most important is not finding an answer, but holding close to those who share in your questioning. 

It is a film that has the courage to force its audience to draw its own conclusions, to question its own responses without guidance. Mikey Saber, played by Simon Rex, is our eyes -- we follow his worst-made-plans, his predation. He is in many ways the hero his country and his country’s cinema deserves, a hole without a donut who can only break what he touches. Rex is fearless, making himself the literal butt of the joke whilst performing every action with the kind of manic intensity that calls to mind both Jerry Lewis and Johnny Knoxville. 

Few directors know how to zoom in like Sean Baker, both in terms of deployment of the lens and in his innate understanding of the small boring particularities and immoralities that define a country in slow decay. He is a director of rare empathy, the kind of courageous empathy that enables him to show people as they are. There is an innate courage of depiction that unifies all of his work, a love of humanity that acknowledges the contradictions and cruelties of humanity as part of that love. We hear Trump & Clinton on the television, but we witness a ‘flyover town’ wherein none of that makes any difference -- a world either ignored, dismissed, or used. 

This is a film that evokes Jesse Stiles’ observation that “if anything could mean nothing at all while signifying everything at once, then this must be the centre of America.” It is the only film on record with a title that evokes both a dog’s penis and the U.S. national anthem. And it is very, very funny.

A joyful romance set across two neighbourhoods and the surrounding country of director Clio Barnard’s beloved Bradford, the film depicts the kind of lovers we don’t often see on camera. Ava is a teaching assistant and recent grandmother, hiding the abuse of her late husband from her son. Ali is a techno-obsessed British-Asian musician living with his younger wife as they hide their separation from his family. When Ali and Ava meet the chemistry crackles; the spark between the two leads, Claire Rushbrook and Adeel Akhtar, is the thing that movies are made for. Together, Ali and Ava see a future they didn’t realise was missing.

Ava listens to country and traditional Irish music, and she lights up when she talks about it, filling her with images of her father singing in the pub. Ali retreats to music in times good and bad, dancing to the heavy beats coming from his large boxy headphones, the movement and energy keeping him alive and connected to the world around him. Ali and Ava get to know each other through their music, teasing each other about their preferences, sharing what it means to them.

At her house, they wear their own headphones and dance to their own music, the sound mix sliding between their own tunes, shifting us from one perspective to another. Then, they share their music too; Ali listens to Bob Dylan, Ava Daniel Avery’s techno. The scope of their world expands with the experience of the other. Music helps them connect with the supporting characters too; in one memorable scene, Ali calms the suspicious children on Ava’s estate throwing rocks at his car by blasting a song they can all sing together. Through their music, the lovers share their worlds, and assert that we are all living in the same one.

On the surface this is a classic, pacy whodunnit with all the necessary ingredients: a missing family, encroaching criminal entities and a (literal) incoming storm. But it is also a complex representation of male violence and a quiet masterpiece of tension, from the claustrophobic island setting with its recurring motif of broken transport to the ever hovering threat of Dublin’s criminal underside.

Household items are intelligently used as narrative vehicles as well as talismans of the deceptive domestic situation between Tomás and his wife Siobhán, from a baby thermometer used as a murder weapon to a bottle of ketchup misplaced deliberately to gaslight Siobhán. In scenes in the house, the mise-en-scene produces excellent levels of tension, like one simmering shot while Tomás argues furtively on the phone while the baby cries and an egg burns on the stove.

It is rewarding to have the chance to watch an excellent Irish language film at our local independent cinema, and the film deliberately plays with language and power in interesting ways too. English is spoken by Tomás as he tries to convince a GP that Siobhán has postnatal depression, notably in her absence, and when his anger explodes on phone calls. English in Doineann is the language of male power and violence, whereas the tone of Irish dialogue is often measured and collected in comparison, especially in Brid Brennan’s focal performance as retired detective Labhaoise. This sense of antithesis culminates in the startling use of a perspective switch, a kind of halfway volta from which the film begins to feel more serious and resolute.   

Billed as ‘Storm’, it is worth noting that Irish speakers have taken to social media to point out that ‘Doineann’ translates more accurately to ‘Hurricane’. Yet Doineann, the film, is best described as the moments when a storm gathers: moment to moment this is a neatly assembled thriller that takes its time.

The film follows an audio journalist, Johnny, played by Joaquin Pheonix in a gentle Her mode, who minds his nephew Jesse (played by a brilliant and eccentric child actor named Woody Norman) for a few weeks while Jesse’s mother Viv (Gaby Hoffman), tends to her husband’s mental health crisis.  

In an interview, Mills mentions that they shot the film in black and white to let the film lean into its own sentimentality. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography stays close to the characters, focusing on the joyful intimacy of the ways we look and touch one another. Mills’ editing in C’mon is essayistic, cutting around the timeline to emphasise moments, and including Johnny reading real-world texts as he explores parenting. Throughout the film, Johnny interviews real kids from across America about their thoughts on the future. He’s constantly amazed by the kid’s emotional intelligence, their ideas, hope and energy. Listening to kids lets them know their voices are worth being heard.

Mills’ work is attuned into the everyday tragedy – or miracle – that we can’t understand everything about a person, no matter how much we love them. For much of the film Johnny struggles with his own situation, his past loves and his relationship with Viv. In becoming Jesse’s temporary parent, he’s forced to talk honestly about his own feelings to prepare Jesse for a life that will never turn out the way you think. It’s better, perhaps, to give kids the skills to navigate their feelings honestly in an unreliably beautiful world, than teach them that that same world will keep them safe.

Eight-year old Nelly’s (Joséphine Sanz) grandmother has just passed away, and she heads to her old house at the edge of a forest to help her parents clean out the old house, haunted with memories. Her mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), finds the process unbearable and despite Nelly’s best attempts to cheer her up, goes away for a few days. Lonely, Nelly finds herself exploring the woods next door, where she meets another young girl who looks exactly like her; also named Marion (played by Joséphine’s twin, Gabrielle).

In classic Sciamma fashion, however, the film’s fairy tale set-up is downplayed with naturalism, making the break from reality seem even more magical. There are no explanations or fairies; this is just what is happening. Scenes play out in long wide takes, with long gaps between dialogue and no music. Sounds are placed high in the mix, translating a huge amount of intimacy as in the scene where Nelly shaves her father’s face. You can almost feel the scrape of the razor on his skin. There’s something in it that speaks to the tactility of childhood, when all sensations feel new.

With Maman, Sciamma returns to the themes of childhood that run through her earlier work, but with a different focus this time. Like Sciamma’s break-out trilogy of films, Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood, Maman is a story about the journey between childhood and adulthood; but unlike those films, it tells its story in reverse. Nelly discovers the child in her mother, rather than vice versa. Through the magic of the film’s premise, she recognises her mother’s grief, and grows to understand her a little better.

The French Dispatch is an anthology film, its structure replicating that of the fictional magazine, modelled after the New Yorker. There are three feature articles about the fictional French city Ennui-sur-Blasé, some detours, and the odd scene following the editors of the magazine putting the issue together. Everything about the film is playful; each moment, shot, gesture, line of dialogue or production detail is packed with unexpected wit. The balance is delicate; having so many unexpected things happening on screen almost overwhelms. Yet for me, the ultimate effect is so seemingly controlled that it retains a singular vision. 

While the film structures itself around the articles, it’s really about the journalists who write them. Each section is framed by a journalist as they narrate their article, becoming a part of their subject’s lives whilst trying to stay subjective. These characters are observers first, whose relationships with their subjects, while meaningful, will always be fleeting and transactional. They try to hide in the stories they tell, but end up revealing themselves in their reporting. 

Bill Murray’s character becomes a guide to the reporters, looking after their interests while pushing them to reveal those hidden parts of themselves. These writers become his subjects in the process; Murray doesn’t get much screen time, but through his absence the film shows itself as his vision. All the chaotic flourishes and strange digressions become one with his erudite, detached persona; much like the director himself. 

Anderson’s films are a vibe unto themselves, but Dispatch feels like a culmination to his approach, an anthology that embraces its distractions and flights of fancy. For better or worse, it feels like he made it that way on purpose.