February | 2014 | the m0vie blog

Stalker Premiere, Dundrum 26th February 2014

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Darren

I’m always glad to support Irish film here, so I thought I’d pass on the details of the premiere of Mark O’Connor’s new film, Stalker. The director’s third feature film, with a cast including John Connors (King of The Travellers), Barry Keoghan (Between the Canals, Stay) and Peter Coonan (Love/Hate), the movie is premiering this Wednesday, February 26th at 7pm in Movies @ Dundrum. Tickets are reportedly selling fast, but are available on-line here.

There will be a Q and A with cast after the film. Stalker came second in Galway Film Festival and won the Underground Film Festival 2013. The trailer is below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: dundrum, film, mark o'connor, Movie, premiere, stalker | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Hollow Pursuits (Review)

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Darren

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

Hollow Pursuits is another demonstration of just how far Star Trek: The Next Generation has come in its third season. It’s a show comfortable enough with its cast and setting that it’s willing to look at the Enterprise from a completely fresh angle – to examine what it must be like to work on the Enterprise in the shadow of Geordi and Riker and Picard, getting none of the glory and making none of the decisions.

Hollow Pursuits is the first time we’ve really seen a dysfunctional member of the Enterprise crew, with Dwight Schultze showing up as Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Reginald Barclay. Barclay is a character unlike any the franchise had produced to date, and Schultze is incredibly charming in the role. It’s no wonder that he went on to become one of the franchise’s most loved guest stars, recurring several times over the course of The Next Generation, popping up in Star Trek: First Contact and even visiting Star Trek: Voyager a few times.

Straight to the point…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: barclay, dwight schultze, fan fiction, fantasy, hollow pursuits, Holodeck, holodiction, ownership, privacy, privacy rights, reg barclay, Reginald Barclay, sally caves, sarah higley, star trek, star trek fans, star trek: the next generation, trekkers, trekkies, virtual reality | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Beyond the Edge

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

The story of Edmund Hillary is a fascinating one, rendered skilfully in 3D by Leanne Pooley. While Beyond the Edge leans just a little bit too heavy on pop psychology to dig into is subjects, and while the documentary could use a bit more room to breathe, it is a very effective illustration of exactly what the Hunt expedition accomplished in scaling Everest in May 1953.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: beyond the edge, documentary, edmund hillary, Everest, film, Mountaineering, mountains, non-review review, review, the summit | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Locke

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

Lock a character in a tight space for an extended period of time, crank up the pressure, watch the results. It’s a tried and true method of generating compelling drama – albeit one that depends on a wide range of variables. Films like Phone Booth and Buried demonstrate – to varying degrees of success – the appeal of such a format. If you can get a good actor in a tight space for an extended period of time and crush them, the results are inevitably fascinating.

At the same time, it’s a very delicate cocktail. The set-up has to be convincing, the script has to be tight without being contrived, the direction needs to be spot on, the performance needs to be perfectly modulated. Steven Knight’s sophomoric feature-length film manages to maintain this fine balance for Locke‘s eighty-five minute runtime. Essentially an hour-and-a-half locked in a car with Tom Hardy, Locke is a powerhouse of a feature, an utterly compelling and heartrending watch.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: car, commute, film, jameson dublin international film festival, jdiff, locke, Movie, non-review review, review, steven knight, tom hardy | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Double

Posted on February 22, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

The Double calls to mind a very old school of BBC television production. In fact, it’s not too difficult to imagine The Double as an artefact from the BBC archives, a piece of eighties low-key dystopian science-fiction existential horror, like a slightly more polished (and colourised) companion piece to their 1954 production of 1984. By translating Dostoyevsky’s story from late nineteenth century Russia to a vision of the future from eighties Britain, writer and director Richard Ayoade has crafted a wonderfully unnerving psychological black comedy.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, jameson dublin international film festival, jdiff, jesse eisenberg, mia wasikowski, Movie, non-review review, review, richard ayoade, the double | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Zero Theorem

Posted on February 22, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

The Zero Theorem is a mess. Of course, this isn’t a surprise. Part of the charm of Terry Gilliam is the way that the director seems to wallow in chaos and disorder – dysfunction and mess are two of his calling cards as a director. However, The Zero Theorem often feels more like a scrapbook of half-composed ideas than a finished film, packed with some interesting ideas and wonderful visuals, blended to a story and script that lack any real subtlety or nuance or insight.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: brazil, dystopia, Movie, non-review review, oppression, review, terry gilliam, the zero theorem | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Tin Man (Review)

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Darren

Tin Man is an interesting piece of science-fiction situated towards the end of the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Michael Piller’s focus on character general shifted the show a little bit away from science-fiction high-concepts, with Tin Man feeling like something of a companion piece to the science-fiction mystery of The Survivors. It’s a story about the wonders of the universe, a rather eloquent (and underrated) celebration of the limitless potential that exists out in the cosmos.

This no the Tam or the place…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: harry groening, high concepts, romulans, science fiction, star trek, star trek: the next generation, Television, the next generation, tin man, tin woodsman | 15 Comments »

Non-Review Review: A Long Way From Home

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

A Long Way From Home is a fairly simple story about a mid-life crisis by a British and Irish couple who have retired to France. Elevated by a bunch of wonderful central performances from Brenda Fricker, James Fox and Natalie Dormer, along with director and writer Virginia Gilbert’s willingness to embrace the story’s simplicity, A Long Way From Home is a slow-moving character study and mood piece. Containing little in the way of surprises or twists, it’s an endearingly sweet glimpse at a marriage threatened by the fifty-year itch.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: a long way from home, brenda fricker, france, james fox, jameson dublin international film festival, jdiff, Marriage, natalie dormer, non-review review, review, virginia gilbert | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Captain’s Holiday (Review)

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Darren

Captain’s Holiday is another one of those infamously troubled episodes from the third season that turned out fairly okay, considering all the meddling and tinkering unfolding in the background. That said, it’s more like Ensigns of Command than Yesterday’s Enterprise, but it’s still a watchable and entertaining episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also probably the strongest comedy episode so far.

Then again, when the show’s other comedy “highlights” include The Outrageous Okona and Manhunt, you can see why this might seem like damning with faint praise.

A hidden gem?

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: captain's holiday, comedy, gene roddenberry, Ira Steven Behr, jean-luc picard, picard, risa, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation, time travel, tng | 10 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

The vampire genre has been around for a reasonably long time. The literary genre that was formalised by Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the dawn of the twentieth century, even if it drew on a rich selection of local beliefs and superstition. And yet, despite that, there really hasn’t been too much radical done with vampires in recent times. The last attempt to do something a bit provocative and game-changing with vampires occurred with Anne Rice’s discovery that you could easily shape vampire narratives into creepy romances – a technique refined by Stephanie Meyer to considerable commercial and popular success.

As such, Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive is fascinating because it manages to push the archetype a little further. It builds off those sorts of vampire romances and vampire fantasy epics in order to tell a more novel sort of story. Only Lovers Left Alive is a wonderful piece of mood based around two powerful central performances, taking one of cinema’s oldest monsters and finding a way to make them interesting again.

Only Lovers Left Alive is the most original vampire movie in what feels like an eternity.