Best in show
Overwhelmed by this year's Dublin International Film Festival line up? Not to worry -- film critic Paul Whitington has done all the hard work for you. Here are the movies you can't miss
FESTIVAL PICKS: From top, Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood; Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in In Bruges; Nicole Kidman and Zane Pais in Margot At The Wedding; Giovanna Mezzogiorno in Love In The Time Of Cholera; and a rock 'n' roll experience with U2 3D
Friday February 08 2008
In any festival, a balance has to be struck between arthouse and mainstream, between the esoteric and the easily accessible, and in her first year at the helm Grainne Humphreys has assembled a varied and busy 10-day programme. She could hardly have chosen a more appropriate or popular opening film than In Bruges, which gets its European premiere next Friday at the Savoy.
Playwright Martin McDonagh's feature debut, the film is a very dark crime comedy starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, and was warmly received at the Sundance Festival.
There will be equal anticipation for the gala screening of There Will Be Blood on Saturday, February 16. Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil has been wildly acclaimed by American critics, who have even compared it to Citizen Kane.
It's dominated by an extraordinary central performance by Wicklow's own Daniel Day Lewis, and both actor and director will be at the Savoy for a discussion following the screening.
Earlier on Saturday, the Savoy will again be the venue for a screening of Battle In Seattle, Stuart Townsend's directorial debut based around the riots that erupted at the World Trade Organisation's Seattle summit in 1999. Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson star.
At Cineworld, meanwhile, also on Saturday, Brazilian director Paulo Morelli's City Of Men will be shown. Another harrowing trip into the pitiless world of Rio de Janeiro gangs, it's the concluding part of a saga that started with 2002's City Of God and the spinoff TV series, City Of Men.
In The Screen, D'Olier Street, at the same time, California Dreamin', a comic farce about the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, by the late Cristian Nemescu will be shown. Nemescu, the youngest of the new wave of hugely talented Romanian directors, was killed in a car crash while this film was in post production.
Among the treats on Sunday will be a screening of Margot At The Wedding, Noah Baumbach's eagerly-awaited follow-up to his acclaimed 2005 black comedy, The Squid And The Whale. The film will plough the familiar Baumbach furrow of embarrassment and social unease, and Nicole Kidman delivers a memorable performance as a spiteful and insanely judgmental writer.
Sunday also sees a screening of Grant Gee's riveting documentary, Joy Division, at The Screen, D'Olier Street.
One of two new Estonian films at the festival, Autumn Ball is a thrilling and unsettling movie from Vieko Ounpuu that charts the lives of six inhabitants of Soviet-era tower blocks who are united by a feeling of loneliness. It will be shown at The Screen, D'Olier Street, on Monday, February 18.
Another coup for this year's festival will be the European premiere of U2 3D, a remarkable concert film that uses the latest in digital 3D technology to render on film the experience of a live U2 performance. Nine pairs of special digital cameras were used to shoot a series of concerts during the South American leg of the band's Vertigo tour. More than 100 hours of footage were edited down to 84 remarkable minutes that give viewers the sensation of floating around the stage and into the crowd. It screens at Cineworld on Wednesday, February 20.
Javier Bardem is the toast of Hollywood after his stunning performance in No Country For Old Men, and he stars in this lavish adaptation by Mike Newell of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's epic novel, Love In The Time Of Cholera. It will be shown in Cineworld on Thursday, February 21.
Also at Cineworld, and also on Thursday, veteran British auteur Mike Leigh will be on hand with actress Sally Hawkins for a discussion after the screening of his latest film, Happy Go Lucky, in which Hawkins stars as a happy-go-lucky London primary school teacher.
One of Movies@Dundrum's festival screen-ings is the director's cut of Blade Runner on Friday, February 22. This is not to be confused with the 1990s director's cut.
The result of the application of digital technology to Ridley Scott's science-fiction masterpiece has been described as practically three-dimensional.
And finally, a word about the festival's outdoor screenings: six films that will be shown in the Dublin locations where they were shot.
Among them will be Educating Rita, at Trinity on February 21, and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, in Smithfield on February 23. n
The Dublin International Film Festival runs from Friday, February 15 to Sunday, February 24.
For more information, visit www.dubliniff.com
- Paul Whitington
