Movie of the Week – Love & Friendship
Director Whit Stillman adapts Jane Austen’s epistolary novella Lady Susan in energetic fashion with Love & Friendship. Kate Beckinsale delivers a career best performance as Lady Susan, a recent widow forced to find a husband due to the law of the time denying women inheritance. The dialogue is some of the wittiest you’ll hear all year and Tom Bennett is particularly hilarious as a bumbling toff.
Money Monster
The Jodie Foster directed Money Monster casts George Clooney as an Eddie Hobbs type TV financial guru taken hostage by a viewer who blew $60,000 on a bad tip. The satire never quite lands as smoothly as it should but the performances of Clooney, Julia Roberts, and especially our own Caitriona Balfe, make it just about worth a watch.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
The stinker of the week is soulless sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, which throws out the content of the original book in favour of a convoluted and snooze-inducing time travel plot. A shame to see Disney produce something this cynical so soon after the wonderful Jungle Book.
The Godfather
The Lighthouse continue their Pacino season with the controversial Cruising, in which Al plays a cop working undercover in the ’70s New York gay club scene, tonight, and The Godfather, which needs no summary from me, on Tuesday.
Bride of Re-Animator
Cult ’80s horror sequel Bride of Re-Animator plays late tonight at the Lighthouse. One of the better horror sequels, this one’s a lot of fun, with a great over-the-top performance from Jeffrey Combs.
The Sacrifice
The Irish Film Institute finish their Tarkovsky season with a screening of his final film, 1986’s The Sacrifice, tomorrow afternoon. Not his best, but well worth seeing on the big screen.
Lamb
On Tuesday at the IFI you can catch a rare screening of an Irish movie that deserves more attention – 1985’s Lamb, featuring an early starring role for Liam Neeson as a Christian Brother who flees to England with one of the boys in his care to save him from abuse. Actor Hugh O’Conor, who played the young boy, will take part in a post-screening Q+A session.
By Eric Hillis of themoviewaffler.com
