Movie of the week: Hannah & Her Sisters
Feast Your Eyes is a monthly event held at the Irish Film Institute that features a screening of a food themed movie, followed by a meal in the Institute’s Cafe Bar. This month it’s Woody Allen’s 1986 classic Hannah & Her Sisters, the culinary connection Dianne Weist’s occupation as a caterer and the recurring Thanksgiving dinner table scenes. One of the best of Allen’s ’80s output, the movie is packed with fantastic performances from an all star cast including Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Max Von Sydow, and of course Allen himself.
Full Metal Jacket
The Lighthouse cinema continues its epic Stanley Kubrick season with his 1987 Full Metal Jacket, for my money the best movie ever made about the Vietnam war. Featuring career best performances from Matthew Modine as a sarcastic smartass new recruit and R Lee Ermey as his foul mouthed drill instructor, the film is at times both hilarious and hard hitting in its portrayal of the conflict.
Interstellar
Christopher Nolan’s long awaited space epic Interstellar hits screens this week and it’s a surprisingly emotionally warm film from a director whose films often feel cold and detached. The plot is a mixture of hokum and dodgy science, but at its heart is a human story about a man torn between saving the human race and seeing his children grow up. See it in Cineworld’s IMAX screen – the visuals are quite something.
Russia’s entry for this year’s Oscars, Leviathan is a tale of corruption in post Communist Russia, focussed on a man’s attempt to stop his home being demolished by a crooked politician who has struck a deal with the Orthodox church. It’s well mounted and finely acted, but at 2.5 hours it does feel a little like a TV boxset binge.
The Skeleton Twins is a blackly comic tale of two thirtysomething siblings reconnecting after they both fail in their respective suicide attempts. At times it veers a little too much into mainstream comedy but on the whole it’s a sensitive portrayal of midlife ennui, with a great turn from comedian Bill Hader as one half of the duo, the other played by his former Saturday Night Live partner Kristen Wiig.
Say When is a middle of the road rom-com starring Keira Knightley as a woman child doing her best to avoid adulthood. Nothing here you haven’t seen before.
By Eric Hillis
