Movie of the week – 8½
Fellini’s 8½ has been lovingly restored by the BFI and opens this week at the Irish Film Institute. It’s a stunning portrait of artistic procrastination, inspired by Fellini’s bout of writer’s block. Marcello Mastroianni delivers one of the most iconic performances in European cinema as a film director who can’t summon up the enthusiasm to make his next movie. It’s a film that’s often imitated, never bettered.
Far From the Madding Crowd
The highlight of the week’s new releases is the latest adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. Danish director Thomas Vinterberg approaches the very British material with a very European eye, and the result is a ripping melodrama that even those normally allergic to period drama (like myself) will be won over by. Stuffy it ain’t!
Unfriended
Unfriended is a smart and innovative little horror movie that plays out in realtime on the screen of a laptop. That sounds like an idea destined to fail but the movie pulls it off, finding new ways to generate tension from its seemingly limited premise.
Monsters: Dark Continent
Monsters: Dark Continent is a terrible sequel to the great low budget Monsters from 2011. This time the action takes place in a middle eastern setting and most of the film plays out like a third rate war movie, with none of the smart subtext that made the original such a winner.
Samba
One of the worst movies of the year arrives in the form of French immigration drama Samba, a well-meaning but shockingly ignorant examination of the plight of immigrants that features racist elements that you wouldn’t have seen in a movie from the ’30s, let alone 2015.
By Eric Hillis
