Cinema Roundup 10th October

0The Lighthouse continues its comprehensive Stanley Kubrick season with the director’s 1964 cold war satire Dr Strangelove on Wednesday. The movie features a top of his game Peter Sellers in no less than three roles, including the title Nazi scientist. A rare comic outing for Kubrick, Strangelove is packed with great performances and memorable lines, like “You can’t fight in here, this is the war room!”

Staying with the Lighthouse, Hollywood Babylon are screening two particularly dark fairy tales there over the weekend. Ridley Scott’s fantasy Legend, starring a young Tom Cruise, plays Saturday night, while the following afternoon sees the 80s sequel Return to Oz, a flop on its release but re-evaluated since then, screens at the Smithfield venue.

The Irish Film Institute gets the Halloween ball rolling early with a Wednesday screening of 1948’s Daughter of Darkness, an overlooked British/Irish slice of dark drama, featuring the debut of Irish actress Siobhan McKenna, who would go on to appear in Doctor Zhivago.

The highlight of this week’s new releases is the troubles era thriller ’71. Rising star Jack O’Connell plays a British soldier left behind by his unit on one of Belfast’s more troublesome nights in the early days of the conflict. It’s the first time the Northern Ireland situation has formed the basis of an out and out genre movie as opposed to a serious drama, which makes it a strange watch, but an effective one nonetheless.

Gold is a cliched but charming new Irish comedy drama about a father who connects with the daughter he walked out on, and features a great turn from David Wilmot (who also appears in ’71) in his most substantial role yet.

Last year’s horror hit The Calling now has a spinoff, Annabelle, featuring that movie’s creepy doll. I never thought it possible to make a movie about a killer doll boring, but somehow they’ve managed it.

The latest adaptation of a dystopian young adult novel is The Maze Runner, which is better than most of these, but as it’s merely the first in a series, the open ending leaves you feeling somewhat cheated.

The Calling gives veteran actress Susan Sarandon a rare leading role as a small town sheriff investigating a series of gruesome murders. The snowy setting and female lead might evoke Fargo, but this is a dull by the numbers thriller.

A new low budget Irish movie, A Day Like Today, is premiering at the IndieCork Film Festival next weekend on the 19th of October. Director Gerard Walsh told NewsFour, “The film was made for just €450 in 10 days and it is based all around the city centre. The film tells the story of a chance meeting between a homeless man and a woman in an unhappy marriage, throughout the film we follow the pair as we delve deeper and deeper into their pasts.”

Check out the trailer below


 

By Eric Hillis

Image: Movie of the Week, Dr Strangelove