Aubrey Malone
A still from 'Rob Peace' 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 singer giving the concert. Hayley Mills also appears. How refreshing to see the former child star still treading the boards at 78.
In Radical (12A) an idealistic teacher in an elementary school in an impoverished part of Mexico goes against the grain to try and inspire his pupils. By pushing the pedagogical envelope in the eccentric way he does he both bewilders and enrages the authorities by turns. The pupils are also discombobulated – but intrigued by his inventiveness.
It’s based on a true story. Starring Eugenio Derbez as the teacher, it’s like a Mexican version of Goodbye Mr Chips crossed with Dead Poet’s Society.
Kneecap (16) is that rare thing: the first Irish language film to premiere at the Sundance film Festival. Rich Peppiatt’s super-energised semi-fictional biopic of the anarchic Belfast rap group of the title doesn’t pause for breath. Its hip-hop aspirations will make it ideal fodder for younger audiences. African-American musicians, to whom it also gives multiple nods, will also rally to the call. As will disenfranchised folk everywhere.
Both written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rob Peace (15A) is a heartfelt drama about a Yale university graduate. He took to drug-dealing to try and raise the funds necessary to defend his father on a murder charge he was facing. Also based on fact, it ends tragically – I won’t saw how.
On a lighter note, Eli Roth’s Borderlands (12A) charts the (mis)adventures of an extra-terrestrial bounty hunter (Cate Blanchett, of all people). She recruits a motley crew of over-the-top assistants to try and locate the missing daughter of a powerful businessman called, appropriately, Atlas (Edgar Ramirez).
Jack Black plays a robot. Jamie Lee Curtis does one of her familiarly kooky roles as a mad scientist. Don’t take it too seriously. Even Roth calls this a “popcorn” movie.
Only the River Flows (15A) is a multi-faceted neo-noir thriller charting the path of a police investigation into a murder case in China in the 1990s. Showing at the Irish Film Theatre, it’s more a ‘why-they-dunit’ than a ‘whodunit’ so expect varying layers of character portrayals.
Ozi: Voice of the Forest (PG), finally, is an animated tale of an excitable orphan orangutan trying to save a forest from deforestation. (The film world has always been crying out for a film about an excitable orphan orangutan, hasn’t it?)
Many well-known Hollywood stars do the voices, Laura Dern and Hugh Bonneville among them. Shed a tear when you hear that of the recently deceased Donald Sutherland.
I always felt he was under-rated as an actor. Who else could go from M*A*S*H to Klute to Casanova? May he rest in peace.