Inferno
Hanks. Howard. Hell.
Tom Hanks spends most of the running time of Inferno with a look of pained confusion on his face. I can empathise; the third film based on the novels of Dan Brown…
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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
Insidious: Chapter 3
Further more.
The superior sequel is a rare beast in cinema and even moreso in the horror genre, where the effective original titles become parent to increasingly disappointing progeny. For me though, Insidious: Chapter…
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Into the Abyss
Dead men talking.
Werner Herzog is an unlikely confidante. Speaking to the inhabitants of one horse towns in Texas (with names like Cut and Shoot), his Bavarian accent still thick despite being a long-time resident…
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It Follows
Look behind you.
It Follows is a film that really did follow me on the walk home, making me eye fellow pedestrians with deep suspicion. Its concept is simple but inherently creepy – the entity…
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Jack Goes Boating
Plain sailing.
You could see why Jack Goes Boating would be an attractive first project for an actor turned director. Based on a stage play by Robert Glaudini (who adapts his own work for…
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Jack the Giant Slayer
Fee-fi-ho-hum.
The second fairytale film adaptation I’ve seen this year, Jack the Giant Slayer is certainly better than Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters…though not by very much. The film begins with two children…
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Jackie
First Lady.
The word icon is bandied around a little too much in celebrity culture but its use to describe Jackie Kennedy Onassis is perfect. Young, glamourous and married to a President that danced,…
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Jane Eyre
Eyre on the side of caution.
So, yet another adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic novel hits the screens. Helmed by up and coming director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre), scripted by Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe) and starring bright young…
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Jaws
The original and best.
The best film to hit cinemas this week (and perhaps all summer) is thirty-seven years old, had a troubled production and featured a notoriously unreliable star known as Bruce, or on occasion,…
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Jersey Boys
East Side Story.
Jersey Boys is a Tony Award winning stage show about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, working class boys who grew up in Jersey and found fame and fortune thanks to the…
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John Wick
Puppy love.
John Wick is a man whose reputation precedes him. According to one impressed comrade, he once took down three guys in a bar using only a pencil. A fucking pencil! While we…
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Jonah Hex
A comic misadventure.
In general I’m in favour of the shorter feature film. Over the past few years I’ve sat through a lot of bum-numbing epics that would have benefited from a harsh edit (Cameron…
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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
Rock solid.
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is ostensibly a sequel to the 2008 Brendan Fraser adventure Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Really though, the only connecting factors between the two films…
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Just a Sigh
Grief encounter.
Many great relationships have begun on trains; Jesse and Celine in Before Sunrise, Laura and Alec in Brief Encounter, and perhaps less romantically, Bruno and Guy in Strangers on a Train. It’s…
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Just Go With It
Just go away.
Hollywood giveth and Hollywood taketh away. On the one hand the cinema is full of noble, conquering heroes; the kind of men you’d be proud to count among your number. Then on…
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Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
Sounds like teen spirit.
Until very recently I was only vaguely aware of the name Justin Bieber; I was even under the misapprehension that the Bieber effect hadn’t really made it as far as our own…
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Kill List
Frighteningly good.
Walkouts and fainting spells are jolly good publicity for a horror film. From Dracula in 1931, through Psycho and The Exorcist, a good swoon has proven good for business. Even outside of…
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Killing Them Softly
Softly does it.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that when Brad Pitt isn’t showing up in the latest celebrity gossip magazine or playing second fiddle to his wife’s left leg, he’s actually a bloody good…
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