Cartoon Saloon’s latest animated feature tells the story of young Parvana’s life under the Taliban. “There is hard work and humanity in every frame,” writes Luke Maxwell.
Frank Berry’s “heartbreaking” drama follows the downward spiral of a naive teenager who, sent to prison, finds the opposite of redemption, writes Luke Maxwell.
A struggling stand-up comedian teaches life skills to a group of oddballs as part of a back-to-work programme in this “squirmy and appealing black comedy with a bleeding heart”, writes Luke Maxwell.
“Whenever I felt as though I had a handle on director Niall McCann’s tricks or the limits of the film’s form, there was another surprise waiting for me,” writes Luke Maxwell.
A reluctant banker goes rogue in this Dublin-set thriller. The debut picture is “a little sloppy in its plotting, but never dull and always visually pleasing”, writes Luke Maxwell.
This new film dramatises Charles Dickens’s writing of A Christmas Carol in a style that’s “silly and sincere all at once”, writes Luke Maxwell. In it, Dublin does a fine job as a stand in for 1840s London.
The film-makers have crafted an “intriguing knot out of their shoestring budget”, which brings the audience “uncomfortably close to these desperate characters, but we want to be there”, writes Luke Maxwell.
And cinema-goers in Coolock like it weird. “Guests in Coolock would … ask for a little tub of the [nacho] cheese so they can dip their popcorn into it,” says Sinead O’Neill of Odeon Cinemas.
