The Castle follows a three-generation Lithuanian household in Dublin, worn down by Ireland’s carelessness and hostility to the hopes and dreams of immigrants.
An unfulfilled family man finds some solace in the company of a male prostitute in the new feature film from director Peter Mackie Burns and writer Mark O’Halloran.
Director Daniel F. Holmes follows Irish footballers at the Homeless World Cup, showing how sport can give a sense of purpose to those who’ve suffered hardship and misfortune.
“For me, the double act managed to win me over, I believed in the cousins and rooted for them because they believed in one another,” writes Luke Maxwell.
“The scope of the action feels like Slattery is manipulating clockwork miniatures in a grey diorama of Dublin, winding up a situation and letting it go off.”
“Captivating and infuriating, a real love-it-or-hate-it movie,” writes our reviewer.
“There’s an impulsiveness to director David Freyne’s filmmaking that throws emotion and action at the audience with a beating-heart intensity,” writes our reviewer.
“The film that these people are auditioning for is not the film that we are watching. What we are seeing is closer to O’Brien’s backstage ‘making of’ feature,” writes Luke Maxwell.
Endless Sunshine on a Cloudy Day “cleverly uses the grammar of internet vlogs to move us through the narrative … it is a poignant picture but it’s not a morbid one”, writes our reviewer.
Vivarium is “a monstrous-child kind of horror film … that doesn’t overstretch its high-concept”, writes our reviewer.
While it’s “not a new story”, Calm With Horses has “a number of strong performances that make it a worthwhile variation on this tried-and-true setup”, writes our reviewer.
“Tom Sullivan’s Irish-language Famine drama is a briny story of purgatorial survival,” writes our reviewer, of this film premiering this week as part of the Dublin International Film Festival.
