Previous Week
Indian territory
Wes Anderson's new film, The Darjeeling Limited - a train movie featuring three brothers on a bonding exercise - follows the quirky pattern of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, and adds a vital new ingredient. The director tells Michael Dwyer about his passage to India
A two-fisted movie premiere
Stars Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones, Patrick Bergin, Finbarr Furey and Gail Fitzpatrick will be at Cork Opera House next Monday for the charity premiere of Strength and Honour, written and directed by Corkonian Mark Mahon. Proceeds from the premiere will benefit Cork's Marymount Hospice.
American Gangster
Ridley Scott's gangster epic is a classic rags-to-riches tale, writes Donald Clarke
Beowulf
There are, I believe, children who have yet to emerge from the attic after fleeing from Robert Zemeckis's unintentionally terrifying The Polar Express. They had best stay there.
The Jane Austen Book Club
Coincidentally opening here on the same day as movies adapted from stories by popular living novelists - Maeve Binchy (How About You) and Monica Ali (Brick Lane) - The Jane Austen Book Club throws together avid admirers of the English writer who died 190 years ago and whose six novels have proved a magnet for film producers.
Brick Lane
Brick Lane opens on a prologue depicting the carefree life of young Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) in her native Bangladesh, sharing a close bond with her sister as they play in the fields and streams.
How About You
How About You is one of three recent movies dealing with people spending the last years of their lives in residential homes, and all three were made by directors much younger than their principal characters: Away From Her (directed by Sarah Polley, 28), the imminent The Savages from Tamara Jenkins (45), and this film by Anthony Byrne, the 32-year-old Irish director of the stylised musical, Short Order.
Prête-Moi Ta Main
The title of I Do signals a wedding vow, but the original French title, Prête-Moi Ta Main, translates as Lend Me Your Hand, suggesting a temporary little arrangement. And so it transpires in this appealing romantic comedy devised by its leading actor, Alain Chabat.
