When Mary Robinson was young, she used to look out the window of her home in Victoria Terrace, Ballina, and wonder if she could change the world. Her opportunity to do so came in 1990 when she was elected president of Ireland. Aoife Kelleher’s documentary, Mrs Robinson (12A), is a timely tribute to her as…

man goes to a concert with his teenage daughter. It looks like the formula for a fun night – right? Wrong. Trap (12A) is an M Night Shyamalan film so you won’t be surprised to learn that it morphs into something of a Kafkaesque nightmare. Josh Hartnett plays the main role. Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka is…

The silly season is upon us with its customary crop of seasonal treats. Noah’s Ark (G), is an animated film in which a pair of mice called Vini (a poet who suffers from stage fright) and Tito (a guitarist) become stowaways on the eponymous ark, using the beauty of words and song to ensure they…

There are more twists and turns in The Weekend Away than the road from Dublin to Ballyjamesduff. It’s about a young woman who goes missing after a night out with her best friend in Croatia. Who’s responsible? At one stage I suspected four different people. It was none of them! Okay so it’s popcorn entertainment…

The Catholic Media Conference in Atlanta has just released details of three films which may be of interest to readers. The first, Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist, embarks, as the CMC puts it, “on a global journey to rediscover and revive the transformative power of the Eucharist.” Produced by Jim Wahlberg and directed…

The Irish Film Institute is commemorating Bloomsday (June 16) this year with a showing of the film Adam and Paul, Lenny Abraham’s debut. 

Shanghai is the Promised Land. From the surrounding villages and townships, they come, Junior Franz Liszts pitting themselves against the best of the rest from areas that expand like repeating decimals. Xia Yidi is eight. He’s the kind of lad you might expect to see playing with his toys. But when he puts on his…

If you uttered the word ‘Cheer’ to me before I saw Tanya Doyle’s Eat/Sleep/Cheer/Repeat, I’d have thought you were giving me an instruction to support someone. In actual fact it’s shorthand for cheerleading. For those of you who, like me, thought cheerleading was ‘an American thing’ here’s a corrective to that mindset. Though we’re still…

“That blasted book near killed me,” John McGahern said to me of his final novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun. He put more of himself into it than any of his other ones. That’s saying something. It has now been made into a film (Cert 15). I didn’t ‘get’ the book when I…

Few people have names more applicable to the way they lived than Amy Winehouse. How many hours did she spend in such establishments? She died at 27, thereby becoming a member of the ‘27 Club’, an ill-fated gathering of rock legends that also included people like Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Robert Johnson, Janis…