Dark Skies
Watch the skies.
Two thirds of the way through Dark Skies, J.K. Simmons shows up as a haunted looking alien expert to give a potted history of alien interaction with humans. He tells us that…
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A life in
the pictures.
Films that stay with you.
Writing that looks a little closer.
Explore the collected reviews of Linda O’Brien.
397 REVIEWS · ONE CRITIC’S PERSPECTIVE
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Hail Caesar!
The infinite monkey theorem suggests that given an infinite amount of time, a monkey randomly hitting the keys of a typewriter will eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare. For me, Dawn…
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De Palma
De Palma’s Way.
The business that they call show is full of interesting, enlightening and eye-watering stories. Brian De Palma, a director who began his career with avant-garde shorts, discovered Robert De Niro and spent…
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Dead Man Down
Down and out.
On the face of it, Dead Man Down holds a lot of promise – re-uniting the director of 2009’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Niels Arden Oplev, with its star Noomi…
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Deliver Us From Evil
A less than special delivery.
Scott Derrickson may be known as a horror director but his scary sensibilities are tempered by a heavy dose of another genre – the police procedural. The Exorcism of Emily Rose was…
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Delivery Man
Return to sender.
The Apatow-manchild syndrome has become a virulent and infectious disease, eating away at modern comedy one tedious film at a time. Despite the ripe odour of deja-vu drifting from scripts, leading men…
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Detroit
Motel hell.
Kathryn Bigelow makes intelligent, provocative films that shed light on complicated political issues by presenting them in a character-driven microcosm. The most successful example of this was Zero Dark Thirty, which questioned…
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Devil’s Due
The devil’s doo-doo.
It’s vaguely worrying when a scene in which a pregnant woman cuts open her own belly can be about as horrific to watch as an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Now does this…
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Divergent
Growing pains.
Whatever happened to films about those difficult teenage years that didn’t take place in a post-apocalyptic society? Once upon a time, you couldn’t move for high school movies, whereas these days it’s…
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Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
Guillermo del Bore-o.
The film ratings board in the United States, the MPAA, are notoriously conservative. I had no idea though that they were such a bunch of scaredy cats. While the producers of Don’t…
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Don’t Breathe
The quiet man.
If you've ever lamented the bad decisions made by characters in horror films then you will find Don't Breathe particularly infuriating. The bad choices begin from minute one when a trio of…
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Dream House
I see dumb people.
The trailer for Dream House pretty much tells the entire story in the space of two and a half minutes. For once, I’m not mentioning this as a criticism. On the contrary,…
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Dreamcatcher
Tough love.
The latest film from acclaimed documentarian Kim Longinotto is far from an easy watch. Dreamcatcher follows the work done by Brenda Myers-Powell, co-founder of the eponymous organisation founded to help prostitutes get…
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Dreamtime, Revisited
Nice dream.
Dreamtime, Revisited is a quiet, meditative piece of filmmaking that acts as a tribute to the late poet and philosopher John Moriarty. Made by co-directors Julius Ziz and Dónal Ó Céilleachair, it…
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Drive
High octane.
Have you seen how many movies with the title Drive have been made? Lots! Ok so most of them are shorts and one is a documentary about women’s golf but it’s easy…
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Dunkirk
Nolan’s Battle Hymn.
From the moment that the first gun shots exploded from the sound system, I was enthralled by Dunkirk; a film that, in its ferocious intensity and dramatic economy, puts every other blockbuster…
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Easier with Practice
Hang up.
To love a film you don’t need to love the central character, or even like them. They must provoke some feeling though; to make an impact for better or worse. Herein lies…
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Easy A
A for effort, C for delivery.
At one point in Easy A, its heroine Olive (Emma Stone) declares that she wished she lived in an '80s movie. Having embroiled herself in a sexless sex-scandal thanks to a little…
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