Donald Clarkepreviews the must-book movies and events at this year's Dublin International Film Festival.
The Cottage
Friday, February 22nd, 11pm. Irish Film Institute
Paul Andrew Williams's first film, London to Brighton, was a deeply unsettling thriller that occasionally allowed in moments of black humour. A glance at the poster and synopsis for The Cottage, his second feature, suggests that the young director has now lunged towards a broader class of comedy. The picture stars Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith as two hopeless hoodlums who kidnap a mobster's daughter (Jennifer Ellison, would you believe?) and drag her away to a remote locale. Unhappily for all concerned, something beastly lurks in the woods. Sounds like fun.
Pandora's Box
Sunday, February 24th, 2.30pm. Savoy 1
A tantalising prospect. For some years now, 3epkano, the Dublin-based experimental musical collective, have brought their considerable talents to bear on providing live scores for classic silent films. Following success with F W Murnau's Faust and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the gang now launch themselves at the beautiful existential nightmare that is G W Pabst's Pandora's Box. Catching a good print of this singular film in the nation's biggest cinema is reason enough to leave the house on a Saturday afternoon. The presence of live accompaniment makes it an essential experience.
Eden
Sunday, February 24th, 8pm. Savoy 1
The festival closes with the world premier of Declan Recks's film version of Eugene O'Brien's lethally acerbic play following the degeneration of the relationship between a youngish couple in an insular provincial town. Recks and O'Brien worked together on the television series Pure Mule and there is, thus, every chance that the onstage magic will translate successfully to the screen. Eileen Walsh and Aidan Kelly, the film's two stars, are expected to be on hand to lap up applause and add to the party atmosphere that generally attends Irish premiers.
Joy Division
Sunday, February 17th, 4pm. Screen 2
Following last year's excellent Control, fans of Manchester's least optimistic rock group are offered another chance to lose control, get torn apart, savour unknown pleasures and ... erm? Well, you get the drift. Grant Gee, director of a well-regarded film on Radiohead, delivers a documentary charting the band's progress from the aftermath of punk to the troubling uncertainties of Thatcherism's first wave. Hugely praised on the festival circuit, Gee's film has as much to do with the history of Manchester as with Ian Curtis's unhappy decline.
The Other Boleyn Girl
Saturday, February 23rd, 8pm. Cineworld 17
Justin Chadwick, who brought fresh energy to the costume drama with his direction of the BBC's Bleak House, goes back a few more centuries to tell the tragic story of Anne Boleyn's overlooked sister. Worth seeing to experience some of the season's more interesting casting choices. Scarlett Johansson takes on the title role of Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman plays Anne and where's our Jonathan? Eric Bana has a crack at Henry VIII. Suitable for the whole family, I bet.
The Orphanage
Monday, February 18th, 8.30pm. Cineworld 17
One of several prominent pictures scandalously left off the long-list for best foreign language film in this years Oscars, Juan Antonio Bayona's Spanish horror produced by the mighty Guillermo del Toro follows a woman as she returns to the orphanage in which she grew up. Calling to mind the great British ghost tale The Innocents (and other versions of Henry James's Turn of the Screw), the picture finds the heroine's adopted son encountering a gaggle of malicious imaginary friends. An American remake is, inevitably, in production.
Dublin on Screen
From Saturday, February 16th. Various venues/times
Mindful of their duty to reach out beyond the core festival audience, the organisers of this year's bash have joined forces with Dublin Library Services to present a programme celebrating the city's cinemas. Various boffins and dignitaries - among them, politician Mary Banotti, writer Gerry Stembridge and critic Tara Brady - will be sauntering down to their local library to discuss the importance of a nearby picture-house. The season begins in Pearse Street Library Administration Headquarters with academic Dr Kevin Rockett, Sunniva O'Flynn of the Irish Film Archive and Neil Connolly, administrator of the Lighthouse Cinema, on city-centre cinemas.
The Surprise Film
Sunday, February 23rd, 6.30pm. Savoy 1
What do the following pictures all have in common: 300, The Squid and the Whale, The Usual Suspects? Well, duh. These are some of the pictures that have turned up as the surprise film on the last night of DIFF (or its predecessor, the Dublin Film Festival). The organisers have traditionally done a very good job of keeping the title secret and, as a result, the build-up in the Savoy 1 has always been deliciously tense. But beware. Tickets for the surprise film always sell fast, so book as soon as possible.
Battle in Seattle
Saturday, February 16th, 11am. Savoy 1
Sending out reminders of such dramas of dissent as Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, Stuart Townsend's feature debut as director goes among a variety of people - the mayor, a police officer, several protestors - caught up in the violent disturbances that surrounded the World Trade Organisation's 1999 gathering in Seattle. Townsend, the Irish star of such movies as About Adam and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, persuaded Charlize Theron, his life-partner, to appear in the picture and also managed to draw Michelle Rodriguez, Woody Harrelson and Ray Liotta to the project.
Panel on International Film Criticism
Sunday, February 17th, 4pm. Irish Film Institute
Everybody knows that film critics are all really brilliant and, to a man and woman, know more about the art than the average chap in the street (ha ha!). Still, it will be interesting to watch a panel of the most distinguished reviewers and commentators discuss their profession in the Irish Film Institute. Are the blogs taking over? Do reviews have any effect on a films takings? This organ's Michael Dwyer will join Jason Solomon of the Observer, Todd McCarthy of Variety, Ted Sheehy of Screen International and Ciaran Carty of the Sunday Tribune to ponder the issues.
Funny Games US
Sunday, February 17th, 8.40pm. Screen 1
Funny-peculiar, rather than funny-ha-ha, I would venture. Michael Haneke, the great Austrian pessimist, has taken his terrifying 1997 art-thriller in which a middle-class couple were terrorised by nihilistic youngsters and delivered a virtual shot-for-shot English-language remake. It sounds like a bad idea, but altering the context transforms the drama in subtly interesting fashion. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play the complacent couple. Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt bring shades of Leopold and Loeb to the smug invaders. Recommended.
Happy-Go-Lucky
Thursday, February 21st, 9pm. Cineworld 17
In a real coup for the festival, Mike Leigh, the director of such classics as Vera Drake and Life is Sweet, will be flying in to introduce his brand new comedy. Happy-Go-Lucky, which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival just before its DIFF appearance, stars Sally Hawkins as a good-hearted primary-school teacher adrift in modern London. Expect wry humour, honest emotions and a sprinkling of pathos. Don't expect car chases. Following the screening, Lenny Abrahamson, director of Adam and Paul, will conduct an interview with Leigh.
U2 3D
Wednesday, February 20th, 8pm. Cineworld 9 and 11
Fancy getting kicked in the head by Bono? Well, U2 3D is your only man. Even those reviewers agnostic about U2 have raved about director Catherine Owens's achievement in using innovative digital 3-D techniques to replicate the experience of being in the front row at the band's recent Buenos Aires gig. Following the success of the 3-D version of Beowulf, the picture promises to secure the future of films that convincingly throw stuff in the audience's laps. The festival screening is a European premiere and the director will be in attendance.
There Will be Blood
Saturday, February 16th, 7pm. Savoy 1
Even before it escaped limited release in the United States, Paul Thomas Anderson's hypnotic epic, featuring Daniel Day-Lewis as an increasingly deranged oilman, had gathered a reputation as one of the great American films. Believe the hype. Day-Lewis redefines the parameters of cinema acting - could anybody else get away with a performance this broad? - and, aided by an insidious score from Jonny Greenwood, Anderson exceeds the lofty expectations set by his early films. The director and star (both Oscar-nominated) are expected to attend the screening. "I drink your milkshake!" That's their catchphrase.
My Kid Could Paint That
Sunday, February 24th, 2pm. Movies@Dundrum
Though highly praised in America and Britain, Amir Bar-Lev's intriguing documentary fell foul of the vagaries of cinema distribution and never made it to these shores. The picture deals with the controversy surrounding Marla Olmstead, an infant from New York, whose abstract paintings (or were they really hers?) have sold for thousands in American galleries. The closer Bar-Lev looks the more the story behind the prodigy unravels. My Kid Could Paint That is said to ask important questions about authorship and the difficulties of objectively assessing the avant-garde.
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx
Monday, February 18th. Time TBC. The Gravediggers Pub, Glasnevin
This faintly notorious, consistently bizarre outbreak of blarney from 1970, in which layabout Gene Wilder falls for Margot Kidder's blue-blooded Trinity student, is being screened at the famous Dublin pub in which some of its scenes were shot. The event is part of an exciting project that will see six Irish-shot films return to their roots. Other screenings include The Spy Who Came in From the Cold at Smithfield Market and The First Great Train Robbery at Heuston Station.
Waveriders
Friday, Febuary 22nd , 8.30pm. Cineworld 17
Even whey-faced milksops such as this writer can be made to feel like bronze leviathans when watching surfing on the big screen. Taking his queue from American classics such as Riding Giants and The Endless Summer, Joel Conroy sets out to investigate the world of contemporary surfing and, more particularly, the importance of Ireland and the Irish to the sport. Along the way, Conroy, who will attend the screening, discovers that it was the son of an Ulsterman who brought surfing back to Hawaii. Rad!
Battle for Haditha
Saturday, February 23rd, 11am. Savoy 1
After the critical success of Ghosts, his study of the cockle-pickers' tragedy in Morecambe Bay, Nick Broomfield once again forswears straight documentary for docudrama in this examination of a particularly unhappy incident from the ongoing Iraq conflict. In 2005, after a roadside bomb killed one marine and injured two others, enraged soldiers took terrible revenge on the neighbouring community. Four marines were subsequently charged with murder. Using handheld cameras and drawing closely on eye-witness accounts, the picture promises to offer worrying insights into this latter-day My Lai.
