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Jameson Cult Film Club Screening of Friday The 13th Part II in Dublin on October 22/23!

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Darren

Happy Halloween!

The Jameson Cult Film Club are hosting a screening of Friday the 13th Part II in Dublin over the 22nd and 23rd of October. It’s a great early Halloween treat, with the group turning a Dublin location into a perfect duplicate of the Camp Crystal Lake Training Centre for the screening. And the tickets are free! If you haven’t already signed up, you can apply for free tickets to the event on the Jameson Cult Film Club website. If you’ve been before, you know how much fun it can be. If you haven’t, you’re in a for a treat.

Also worth pausing to note just what a great horror film connoisseur choice Friday the 13th Part II is. The default choice – and one supported by other horror film series like Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween – would be to pick the first film in the series. However, this is the exception that proves the rule. Sure, you lose out on the Kevin Bacon factor of Friday the 13th Part I, but you get most of the wonderfully iconic aspects of the Friday the 13th film series. A very good choice, by all involved.

The full details are below, after the jump.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: film, friday the 13th, halloween, horror, jameson cult film club, jason, Jason Voorhees, Movie, slasher | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Annabelle

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Darren

Annabelle certainly looks pretty. Not the doll, of course. The doll looks like the children’s toy version of Jack Nicholson. There is something immediately and effectively intense about the figure at the centre of this horror spin-off, to the point where it’s hard to imagine anybody wanting the toy in their home in the first place. To paraphrase Stephen King’s criticism of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, it is not a question of if this doll will start killing people, but when.

However, the production design on Annabelle is quite striking. It very much a period horror film in the way that The Conjuring was a period horror film. This time, we are visiting the sixties rather than the seventies. There are lots of bright colours and stylish clothes, and the film works hard to capture the mood and aesthetic of the era – or, at the very least, the era as we remember it. Annabelle feels like a horror film effectively riding the waves of sixties nostalgia that has rocked popular culture in recent years.

Well, it’ll never be a collector’s item now…

Sadly, Annabelle is not pretty enough to distract from its rather fundamental problems. Its script has some good ideas, but no real idea what to do with them. So, instead, it falls back on a kitchen sink approach to modern horror. The script for Annabelle is a collection of sequences and stock elements copied wholesale from recent films like Insideous or Sinister or The Conjuring. While those films did not necessarily have fresh scares, they were blowing the dust off some very classic horror movie tropes.

Here, it feels almost like reheated leftovers.

A doll’s house…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: annabelle, film, horror, Movie, non-review review, review, scary, spin-off, the conjuring, tie-in | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Maze Runner

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Darren

The Maze Runner is a perfectly solid piece of young adult action adventure. It excels primarily as a piece of old-school science fiction, the kind layered with blunt social commentary and barely-veiled allegorical themes. The Maze Runner constructs a fascinating metaphorical maze for our heroes to explore. It works less well when it comes to making the audience care about the characters navigating it.

It’s alive inside…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: dylan o'brien, film, Movie, non-review review, r eview, the maze runner | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Mr. Turner

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Darren

Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner is a stunningly beautiful naturalistic period piece. It is a little messy and unfocused, indulgent and uneven, but such is life itself. Covering the life of J.M.W. Turner, Leigh takes an expansive look at the life of one of Britain’s most distinctive and influential painters. Mr. Turner is perhaps a little over-long and meandering, and occasionally just a little bit too sly for its own good, but it does feature a charmingly larger-than-life performance from Timothy Spall and fantastic cinematography from Dick Pope.

Portrait of the artist as Timothy Spall…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: art, artist, film, mike leigh, Movie, mr. turner, non-review review, review, Timothy Spall, turner, william turner | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: ’71

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Darren

Harrowing. Claustrophobic. Intense.

’71 is a powerhouse experience. Charting one night in Belfast for a young soldier separated from his regiment, there is a constant sense of dread pushing in from the edge of the frame. As one might expect for a movie set off the Falls Road in seventies Belfast, ’71 is paranoid and unsettled. It is a movie that constantly pushes the viewer to the very edge of their seat, offering an uncomfortable glimpse into something that would seem excessively brutal were it not anchored in historical fact.

71d

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 71, Belfast, falls road, film, Movie, non-review review, Northern Ireland, review, seventy-one, the troubles, Troubles | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Magic in the Moonlight

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Darren

Attending a Woody Allen movie can often feel like playing low-stakes roulette. An extraordinarily prolific director with an incredible body of work behind him, Allen seems capable of churning out films that run the gamut from joyless and pedestrian to magical and exceptional. Woody Allen movies are like trains; if you don’t like this one, there will inevitably be another along in a year or so. However, it feels strange that his fiftieth feature should land so near the middle of the pack.

Magic in the Moonlight is an enjoyable Woody Allen comedy. It lacks a mesmerising central performance like Blue Jasmine or the sheer charm of Midnight in Paris, but it is a well-made and enjoyable excursion. There is charm and wit to it, and it never drags too heavily. However, there is very little truly exceptional about it. Magic in the Moonlight is more of a parlour trick than a how-stopping illusion; delightful and diverting, but feeling a little too unrefined to be truly memorable.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: colin firth, Emma Stone, film, magic, magic in the moonlight, moonlight, Movie, noel coward, non-review review, review, Woody Allen | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Noble

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Darren

Christina Noble has done a lot of good in the world. She has helped 700,000 street children in Vietnam and Mongolia. She has devoted her life to charity pursuits. Travelling to Ho Chi Minh City in 1989, she made it her mission to help those who could not help themselves. She has done a phenomenal job of raising awareness and of improving the standard and quality of life of children who would otherwise be neglected or exploited. She is affectionately known as “Mama Tina” by the children she helps.

There is probably a great movie to be made about the life and times of Christina Noble. Sadly, Noble is not it.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: biopic, christina noble, film, ho chi minh city, mongolia, Movie, noble, non-review review, review, vietnam | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: A Most Wanted Man

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Darren

For better or worse, A Most Wanted Man is going to be overshadowed by the passing of its lead actor. Philip Seymour Hoffman was a giant, a performer with a wonderful gift for bringing flawed and real characters to life, and A Most Wanted Man serves as his last leading role in a major motion picture. It is impossible to talk about A Most Wanted Man without talking about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

It is a great performance, one that reminds the audience of why they loved Hoffman in the first place – Günther Bachmann is the sort of flawed human being that Hoffman played so well, given a great deal of depth by the late actor.

What’s on the table?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 9/11, a most wanted man, espionage, film, germany, John le Carré, Movie, non-review review, philip seymour hoffman, rachel mcadams, review, Robin Wright, thriller, willem dafoe | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Wizard of Oz (IMAX, 3D)

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Darren

“For nearly forty years this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart,” an introductory title card advises the audience, “and Time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashion.” Although the opening of The Wizard of Oz makes reference to the classic series of children’s stories written by Frank L. Baum, the text is just as applicable to the film itself. It has been seventy-five years, but The Wizard of Oz still has the power to warm even the most jaded and cynical of hearts.

Dorothy is modelling our snazzy red slippers. Order now to avoid disappointment…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: dorothy, film, Kansas, Movie, non-review review, oz, review, the wizard of oz | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Guest

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Darren

The Guest is a pulpy delight. It’s a glorious throwback to classic seventies horror, with writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingart perfectly channeling the mood and feel of classic seventies exploitation films. It’s affectionate and unapologetic. It is gleeful and grim. It is darkly hilarious and also brutally pulpy. The Guest is a film that knows exactly what it wants to be, and accomplishes that with great skill.