TICKET TO PARADISE ★★★☆☆
Directed by Ol Parker. Starring George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Maxime Bouttier, Billie Lourd, Lucas Bravo. 12A cert, gen release, 104 min
Golly, a Working Title romcom with top-flight talent at the top of the bill. Is this 1998? Clooney and Roberts play a divorced couple who reluctantly join forces to thwart their daughter’s apparently unsuitable marriage. Nobody would pretend this is sparring to compare with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, but both actors know how to bristle convincingly. The jokes land with satisfactory regularity. The Bali locations are lovely throughout. But a middle-ranking Working Title romcom — more Wimbledon than Notting Hill — may not be enough to revivify a spluttering genre. DC
RÓISE & FRANK ★★★★☆
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Directed by Rachel Moriarty, Peter Murphy. Starring Brid Ni Neachtain, Cillian O’Gairbhi, Lorcan Cranitch, Ruadhán de Faoite. PG cert, gen release, 84 min.
Ni Neachtain is resigned and unwavering as Róise, a middle-aged woman reeling from the death of her husband when she encounters a shaggy dog whose personality seems eerily familiar. Could it be the aul fella in mutt form? The film toys with whimsey, but it is always at home to emotional honesty. There are worthwhile arguments about the nature of bereavement. Part of a still developing renaissance in Irish-language filmmaking, the picture really does justify the most dreaded phrase in cinema promotion. It is “fun for all the family”. DC
CLERKS III ★★★★☆
Directed by Kevin Smith. Starring Kevin Smith, Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Sarah Michelle Geller, Ben Affleck, Justin Long. 15A cert, gen release, 100 min
After suffering a heart attack, Randal (Anderson), the sweariest of all clerks, enlists his patient chum Dante (O’Halloran), trusty dope-peddling sidekicks Jay (Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith), and Satan-worshipping new-to-the-crew Elias (Fehrman) to make a movie about his life behind the convenience store counter. The sequel to the 1994 and 2006 Clerks films takes the writer-director back to his New Jersey roots. What follows is precisely what fans expect and want: an impromptu hockey game, ill-advised sex with an old girlfriend, pop culture references, dirty jokes, and general silliness. Think fanservice with a smile. TB
FUNNY PAGES ★★★★☆
Directed by Owen Kline. Starring Daniel Zolghadri, Matthew Maher, Miles Emanuel, Maria Dizzia, Josh Pais. 16 cert, gen release, 87 min
A high school student and aspiring cartoonist is mentored by an entirely inappropriate art teacher. Produced by the voguish entities that are A24 and the Safdie brothers, this winningly mordaunt New Jersey comedy and Cannes Film Festival favourite concerns the underground of underground comix. Lots of other cool people - including Andy Milonakis and Louise Lasser - pop up in the margins. Writer-director Owen Kline, the son of Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, strikes a pleasingly discordant tone, the like of which has not sounded since Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb. Get ready to flinch. TB
