Banner
Film Features

  • Oscar wild

    The glamour of Sunday's awards ceremony will be a potent symbol that Hollywood is back at work, writes Michael Dwyer in Los Angeles.

  • The luck of the Irish?

    Having received the best actor Oscar for My Left Foot in 1990, Wicklow resident and Irish citizen Daniel Day-Lewis well deserves to win again for his tremendous portrayal of an avaricious oil prospector in There Will Be Blood.

  • BEST PICTURE

    Two robust US period dramas, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men, lead the Oscar field with eight nominations each. Both are up for the most coveted award, best picture, and one of them will take it.

  • BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

    The Coen brothers are the front-runners for their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.

  • BEST ACTRESS

    Laura Linney (for The Savages) is the only US contender on the shortlist. The other nominees are from England (Julie Christie, Away From Her), Australia (Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth), Canada (Ellen Page, Juno) and France (Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose).

  • BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

    Sentiment will be on the side of Hal Holbrook, who is 83 and receives his first Oscar nomination for his touching portrayal of a lonely widower in Into the Wild.

  • BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

    This is the cliffhanger in the acting categories. Cate Blanchett, also nominated as best actress for Elizabeth, took this award for playing Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (2004), and is shortlisted for her adventurous portrayal of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There.

  • BEST ACTOR

    The nominees include three Oscar winners, Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood), George Clooney (as a morally conflicted lawyer in Michael Clayton) and Tommy Lee Jones (the father of a missing Iraq war veteran in In the Valley of Elah), along with Johnny Depp, on his third nomination, as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and first-time nominee Viggo Mortensen (a Russian gangster in Eastern Promises).

  • BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

    Unusually, women writers have taken three of the five nominations in this category: Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl), Tamara Jenkins (The Savages) and Diablo Cody (Juno). They are joined by Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) and Brad Bird (Ratatouille).

  • BEST DIRECTOR

    Four of the five best picture nominees are represented here, with Julian Schnabel (for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) replacing Atonement director Joe Wright.

  • screenwriTer

    Donald Clarke on those controversial ****

ReelNewsBack to Top

  • Best of French films old and new in Cork

    The 19th Cork French Film Festival opens next Thursday with Céline Sciamma's well-regarded Water Lilies, in which three teenage girls compete for boys and places on the synchronised swimming team.

  • Ledger's role goes to three stars

    Director Terry Gilliam reportedly has come up with an ingenious solution for completing The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which was in production when leading actor Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose last month.

Film ReviewsBack to Top

  • Rambo

    Rambo may be ridiculous, but Sly delivers the gratuitously violent goods, writes Donald Clarke

  • Be Kind Rewind

    WHEN Michel Gondry, the French director of deranged pop videos, followed up Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with the amusing but hopelessly muddled Science of Sleep, many observers decided that, though undoubtedly a director of strange genius, he might be best advised to leave the screenwriting to others.

  • The band's visit/Bikur ha-tizmoret

    ONE can imagine worse things than a Middle Eastern version of Local Hero. That is what Eran Kolirin has delivered here and, though the film is slight and a tad naive, it's never less than charming. You'd have to be a cad of the highest order to dislike it.

  • My blueberry nights

    CHOSEN as the opening night film at Cannes last May, My Blueberry Nights proved more insubstantial than an amuse bouche before the festival served up a menu heavy on serious issues.

  • U2 3D

    THE UK Film Council is hosting a discussion in London this afternoon on the challenges and opportunities presented by 3D cinema.

  • Waz

    RECALLING Margaret Thatcher's opinion that there is no such thing as society, the serial killer on the rampage in Tom Shankland's debut feature is driven by the disillusioned view that there is no love. If you can imagine Saw crossed with Sophie's Choice, you may begin to get the measure of this unsparingly violent police procedural thriller.

  • The edge of heaven/Auf der Anderen Seite

    HEAD-ON, the last dramatic feature from Fatih Akin, gained quite a following on its release three years ago. The film did a good job of mapping certain connections between Germany's Turkish community and the old country, but, to me, it seemed a tad hysterical and immature in its cultural references.

  • Black Water

    THIS low-budget Australian horror film is not without its charms. Taking its cue from the similarly titled Open Water - in which real sharks appeared to eat real Americans - Black Water puts a small group of smug idiots in a dinghy and propels them into crocodile-infested waters.

VideoDVDBack to Top

  • O brothers

    THE COMPLETE COEN COLLECTION: 1984-2004

    Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen 18 cert *****

  • NewDVDs

    The latest releases reviewed

Browse Cinema Listings
Event Listings
Rock/Pop
Clubs
Roots
Traditional
Jazz
Classical
Art
Children
Dance
Comedy
Readings
Theatre
Archive
Click a date to view the paper on that day
PreviousNext
MTWTFSS
Advertisement