What Richard Did. The best Irish film of this century.

Sometimes all it takes is a kick to change your life.

Richard Karlsen has it all. He's a good looking chap, has a loving family, friends who look up to him, skill with a rugby ball, a beach house and most importantly to him, he's very popular with the ladies.

It's the summer before he goes to college and he wants to make the most of it. He sets his sights on Lara and from here events conspire to change the course of his life.

To say anymore would spoil this magnificent film. 

It's main theme would be loss of innocence but the underlying stronger subtext is saying that if you have the money and the means you can more or less do what you want with impunity. Some may call this cynical but events ( specifically the Club Annabel death on which this is loosely based ) show it to to be the sad truth.

The acting, from a mostly unknown cast, across the board is superb. On paper Richard, played by newcomer Jack Reynor, sounds like someone people would love to hate but he's a really nice chap. Not clichéd at all. Treats the girls with respect and even looks after the younger lads, who in other films would be the butt of jokes. Its a layered performance. Even when he's being nice, you can see the gears turning in his head, and you get the sense that he could use violence as a solution to his problems

Róisín Murphy plays Lara, the girl Richard falls for. She's a nice girl, who gets her head turned when the rugby star shows an interest in her. Its not a showy role but she plays it well. Lars Mikkelsen (Brother of Mads) plays Richard's father. It's a fantastic performance. A man who will do anything for his son. The inner turmoil is clear in his eyes. A confession scene between father and son in the latter half of the film is devastating. The anger and grief is palpable and pours off the screen. It's one of the best things i have ever seen in an Irish film.

The film is directed by Lenny Abrahamson ( who directed the wonderful Adam & Paul and the Cannes award winning Garage ) and written by Malcolm Campbell. And its fantastic on both counts. Low key but explosive at points. Subtle yet cutting. Funny then horrific. It looks superb too. This is a Dublin we don't get to see on screen very often. D4 Dublin, all transatlantic accents and tree lined avenues. It makes a nice change from the poverty and crime we usually see.

A superb, shocking and evocative portrait of modern day Ireland.

Midnight Run. My favourite comedy.

"I got two words for you. Shut the fuck up!". The most quoted line in this comedy masterpiece says it all.

Ok, big statement here but i really think this is one of the funniest films ever made. Some may scoff and mention the likes of Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keating or such classics as It Happened One Night & Some Like It Hot. But I'm going to stick to my guns on this one. It's a perfect comedy. It delivers the big belly laughs and gives you characters that you make an emotional connection with and truly care about come the end credits.

It's a buddy comedy but differs from the norm in that the central pairing are on either side of the law. Robert De Niro plays Jack Walsh, a bounty hunter trying to bring Jonathan Mardukas, a mob accountant played by Charles Grodin, cross country. All the while trying to avoid rival unscrupulous bounty hunters and Mafia goons out to kill Mardukas as they believe he embezzled mob boss Jimmy Serrano played by the great Dennis Farina.

Its basically Planes, Trains And Auto mobiles with added gunplay and profanity and its every bit as good as that sounds. Walsh is a hard ass who slowly comes to like his charge, Murdukas is a criminal with a heart of gold who brings out Walsh's humanity and Farina is a permanently angry Mafia cliché who wants to stick pencils in peoples hearts.

De Niro is on flying form here. He plays up to his bad bastard image but then subverts it into something hilarious. You can actually see him transforming on screen. Charles Grodin is brilliant too. Hilarious and annoying in equal measure. Dennis Farina makes the most of a thankless part. He's plays the part of a violent gangster but makes sure his threats are sprinkled with a bit of fun so as not to ruin the mood of the film. There's also some great support from Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton ("HEY MARVIN!!") & Joe Pantaliono.

The film doesn't do anything new but what it does it does well. The interplay between the leads is a joy. The dialogue is sparkling. Profane but hilarious. Some films use the F word as a punchline but not this. It never feels gratuitous. The action scenes are shoddy but it all adds
to the charm.

Hopefully this review will explain why i like this film so much. As mentioned earlier its so well written and acted you really do care about the characters. That's so refreshing in this day and age when most comedy characters are crude caricatures. Just vehicles for a punchline. Look at The Hangover for example. Yes it's funny but can you honestly say you care about any of the leads? I thought so.

Django Unchained.

I was 15 the first time i saw a Quentin Tarantino film. It was Reservoir Dogs in a flea pit cinema in Tullamore. I couldn't believe my Father was bringing me and my friends to see this film we had heard so much about. It was supposedly the ultimate bloodfest. Something that earned you respect if you could sit the whole way through it. Happily it was something so much more than that. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time but i knew i was seeing something special. At a time when all i wanted in a film was violence and nudity, this paved the way for my love of pithy and fastly spoken, interesting dialogue. It was funny in a way i'd never experienced before. Profane sure but with a poetry to it as well. Suffice to say. i loved the film and still do.

Over the next 20 yrs QT tried his hand at a few different genres, war, blaxploitation, horror even Kung Fu to  varying degrees of success. I watched them all and loved even the bad ones. But as a big fan of westerns i always wondered if he would ever try his hand at one. It was too much to hope for. But then one day i was reading Empire and i saw the news i had been waiting for. QT was thinking of remaking Django, the spaghetti western starring Franco Nero.

Fast forward 4 or 5 yrs and the film was finally realised. And man it was worth waiting for. Its a remake in name only but he has made the film his own. And non QT fans will be happy to know that the film is in chronological order, something that has been a bugbear for quite a few.

Django is a slave who is rescued by Dr King Schultz who needs him to identify a three brother gang so he can, as a bounty hunter, legally kill them and claim the reward for their capture. Django goes along with this because the 3 brothers tortured him and sold his wife, Broomhilda, into slavery and this is the only realistic way he can ever get revenge on them and see his beloved again. Django and Dr King become friends and team up to get Django's wife back when they discover she has been sold to Calvin Candie, the owner of a Mississippi slave plantation called Candy Land.

Its a simple story. Its been told many times before but what transforms this into something special is the calibre of the acting and writing.

Jamie Foxx plays the title role in the film. He's economical with his words and actions but this means what he does and says has real power behind it. He's perfectly fine in the part but i cant help but wonder what original choice Will Smith would have done with the role. Kerry Washington plays the part of Broomhilda Von Shaft. A German speaking house slave and the love of Django's life. She's very good in a woefully underwritten part. Id be amazed if she has more than 10 minutes screen-time in the entire film. Christoph Waltz plays Dr King Schultz. A German ex dentist turned Bounty hunter. He is superb in his part and fully deserved his Academy award. In other hands this part could have been wildly over the top but Waltz gladly keeps the showiness to the minimum. Unlike Leonardo DiCaprio who plays slave owner Calvin Candy. He plays the part with snarling relish. Spitting racial epitaphs all over the place and wallowing in bloodlust. A lot of A-list actors would be terrified of this role but Leo really gets into it, throws all caution to the wind and is so much the better for it. But the main villain of the piece is the head house slave played by QT regular Samuel L. Jackson. He is what was known back then as an Uncle Tom. A black man who has sided with the slave owners to help subjugate his own people in an effort to make his own life better. You can see in him a lifetime of bitterness and self hatred and this makes him the real black heart of the piece. Its a career best performance and its a crying shame he wasn't recognised by the Academy for the part.

There is also fine support from the likes of Walton Goggins as slave driver Billy Crash, and Don Johnson as the first plantation owner to have to misfortune of trying to bump heads with our two heroes. And a lovely little cameo from Franco Nero as a man who knows full well that "The D is silent".

Tarantino as usual fills the air with his wonderful dialogue. It never feels forced or overwrought and best of all, you could just sit there and listen to it for ages. A dinner party scene with the main cast talking around a table lasts 20 minutes but feels like 5.

A cracking film that I'd recommend this to anyone. As long as they aren't squeamish!