Eighth Grade - a social media film for our times
Thu, Apr 18, 2019
OSCAR NOMINATED already, Eighth Grade is the debut feature from YouTube star Bo Burnham, and while it is easy to be apprehensive of a movie from a 27-year-old stand-up comedian, this is a strikingly good debut.
Read more ...Album review: Fontaines D.C.
Thu, Apr 11, 2019
IMAGINE A song which sounds as though it were written by Shane McGowan, but performed by The Velvet Underground. That song is 'Dublin City Sky', the closing track on Fontaines D.C.'s debut album.
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The Sisters Brothers - dark, funny, and nihilistic
Thu, Apr 11, 2019
THE SISTERS Brothers is French director Jacques Audiard’s English-language debut. Audiard first came to attention in 2005 with The Beat That My Heart Skipped, and enjoyed wide acclaim for 2009's magnificent A Prophet.
Read more ...Dumbo - Tim Burton's bad run of movies continues
Thu, Apr 04, 2019
DUMBO IS the first of three Disney live action remakes out this year, the others being Aladdin and The Lion King, and the company seems to have taken a different approach to each one.
Read more ...Liam O’Flaherty’s Hollywood sojourn
Thu, Apr 04, 2019
BORN ON The Aran Islands in 1896, Liam O’Flaherty was to become one of the most distinguished and prolific writers of 20th century Ireland. His first book, Thy Neighbour’s Wife, was published in 1923 and was followed by an avalanche of novels, short stories, and poems in English and as Gaeilge, as well as travelogues.
Read more ...Looking back on a flurry of locally produced plays
Tue, Apr 02, 2019
A FLURRY of locally-produced plays have graced Galway’s stages over the past few weeks, the most of impressive of them being Brú Theatre’s Selvage at the Mick Lally Theatre, written and performed by James Riordan and deftly directed by Lara Campbell.
Read more ...Album review: White Denim
Thu, Mar 28, 2019
IN SOME corner of a foreign field - Austin, Texas, to be precise - it will forever be the 1970s, but what kind of seventies depends on what White Denim album you are listening to.
Read more ...Us - Jordan Peele dives further into horror
Thu, Mar 28, 2019
IN 1986, Adelaide wanders away from her parents in a theme park, and into a seemingly abandoned house of mirrors. Inside there, she is confronted by her doppelgänger who spends the rest of her life stalking her in visions.
Read more ...People of the Tribes: Meet Cayla.
Thu, Mar 28, 2019
Hi, my name is Cayla O’Neill Ruane, I was born in Galway 16 years ago and I have been living in the small village of Oughterard ever since. I have never been what someone would describe as ‘normal’, being an only child growing up, I always had to find ways to entertain myself without needing anyone around. I would read, create my own stories and act them out with my vast collection of dolls or make dances to show my mom when she got home from work. Living in Oughterard was difficult when I was younger, I didn’t have a lot of friends at school and there were very little activities for someone like me to participate in. Instead,I looked forward to the trip into Galway each weekend, as there was always so much to do and see in the city, even though it was through the confines of a Tesco shopping trolley.
Read more ...Album review: Ye Vagabonds
Thu, Mar 21, 2019
THROUGHOUT THESE last couple of years, Ye Vagabonds have steadily built a following and a fair measure of respect, culminating in their nomination for a 2018 BBC Folk Award on the strength of their self-released debut album.
Read more ...Under The Silver Lake - obnoxious and crass
Thu, Mar 21, 2019
UNDER THE Silver Lake has been billed as The Big Lewbowski mixed with Blue Velvet. It is directed by David Robert Mitchell, director of It Follows, my favourite film of 2014. It also boasts a quality cast and a really great trailer.
Read more ...Album review: Stella Donnelly
Thu, Mar 14, 2019
THE SOUND, the look, is deceptive, disarming. The singer is all smiles and kookiness, the songs seemingly frothy, jubilant, catchy, 1980s style indie-pop. It's the sweetness that attracts.
Read more ...Captain Marvel - the most fun you can have in a cinema
Thu, Mar 14, 2019
CAROL DANVERS - Captain Marvel's true identity - is not very well known to non-comic book readers, but, over the last decade, she has become one of Marvel comic’s best characters.
Read more ...Trevor Conway and the poetry of fear
Thu, Mar 14, 2019
HAVING PUBLISHED his first collection with Salmon, Trevor Conway has taken the courageous decision to self-publish his second, Breeding Monsters, which, in every way, looks as good as the books currently emerging from any of the main Irish poetry publishers.
Read more ...Album review: Maria Somerville
Thu, Mar 07, 2019
MARIA SOMERVILLE'S earliest songs were melancholy, atmospheric, meditations, based around the guitar. In the years since, her music has metamorphosed into electronica, but those qualities of mood and emotionally drenched sonics remain.
Read more ...The Hole In The Ground - a mother and son horror
Thu, Mar 07, 2019
SINGLE MOTHER Sarah has moved to an old farm house in the Wicklow mountains. Her son Chris is unhappy in his new school and misses his father. She does her best, but the isolation is clearly getting to her.
Read more ...Nicole Flattery and the essence of absurdity
Thu, Mar 07, 2019
THE FIRST paragraph in the first story of Nicole Flattery’s first collection, Show Them a Good Time, reads: “The schemes were for people with plenty of time, or people not totally unfamiliar with being treated like shit. I was intimate with both situations. Management interviewed me - bizarre questions through an inch of plexiglass: How long, in hours, have you been unemployed? Did you misspend your youth throwing stones at passing cars?"
Read more ...Dark Souls III: A modern classic
Fri, Mar 01, 2019
Dark Souls III is the final game in the Dark Souls trilogy and what a bang to go out on. I personally have put many hundreds of hours into this game and it is no question why. This game is the end of the trilogy. It wraps up all of the best bits of all of the games and brings it together for a splendid ending for both the main game and DLC’s.
Read more ...Far Cry 3: The game that made the series what it is today
Fri, Mar 01, 2019
Far Cry 3 is a game about a guy called Jason who abandons his friends, carves bullets out of his arm with a stick and gets superpowers from tattoos. My favourite part about that sentence was that it was mostly true. The only part that wasn’t mostly true was the superpowers stuff but it's close.
Read more ...Melissa McCarthy shines in Can You Ever Forgive Me
Thu, Feb 28, 2019
LEE ISRAEL is a once famous biographer who is struggling to sell her new book, a biography of Fanny Brice. When bills pile up she looks for things to sell. She has several letters from different celebrities and authors, and she can get a decent price for them.
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