Ian McKellen: ‘The records of my early performances are painful'Revered but not widely known for his stage acting, Ian McKellen’s role as Gandalf in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films made him a star – which is handy, he says, if you’re ‘rather shy’Fri Jun 12 2015 - 06:00
The Look of Silence review: an optician peers into the heart of darknessJoshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to ‘The Art of Killing’ is another stunning, hugely unsettling documentary about Indonesia’s dark pastThu Jun 11 2015 - 23:24
Donald Clarke: Remembering screen legend Christopher LeeActor associated with Hammer productions of Dracula enjoyed rich and varied careerThu Jun 11 2015 - 15:16
Insidious Chapter Three review: the balding ghost is back in the ventilation ductThe horror franchise just keeps on rolling, but at this point, you may as well pay somebody to slap you in the face with a damp ragTue Jun 09 2015 - 13:03
Donald Clarke: On some testing Leaving Cert questionsShould we explain the best way of poisoning reputation in fewer than 140 charactersSat Jun 06 2015 - 01:00
Chris Pratt: 'Jurassic Park was part of my childhood. I don’t want to just pimp it out.'Chris Pratt made his name playing an ordinary guy in ‘Parks and Recreation’. Now, as the star of ‘Jurassic World’, he’s got a new park to run around inFri Jun 05 2015 - 07:00
Once Upon a Time in America review: a fistful of misogynySergio Leone’s 1984 gangster epic is offensively sexist and a bit of a narrative mess. But the lush imagery still boggles the eye, and Ennio Morricone’s seductive score could be his most beautifulFri Jun 05 2015 - 00:09
Listen Up Philip review: bright lights, big, big egosNew York’s ghastly nattering nabobs of narcissism are dissected in an enjoyable seriocomedy that ultimately lacks true wit or savageryThu Jun 04 2015 - 16:00
Donald Clarke: By ignoring TV the pope is reaching for the remotePope Francis shut himself off from the cultural oxygen of his parishioners by shutting himself off from TVSat May 30 2015 - 01:00
San Andreas review: The end of the world should be more fun than thisThe Rock’s latest apocalyptic adventure is chock full of CGI bombast and empty characterisation – then Kylie Minogue turns up...Fri May 29 2015 - 17:10
Electric Boogaloo: How Cannon’s trashy movies helped define the early era of VHSA new documentary tells the tale of Cannon Films and firebrand producers Menahem Golan and Yoram GlobusFri May 29 2015 - 10:00
Results review: all hail the beautiful people – notAndrew Bujalski’s latest features Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders as two superior but oblivious gym bunniesThu May 28 2015 - 21:00
Danny Collins review: a dialled-down Al Pacino saves the dayWe’re used to seeing Pacino waving his arms and bellowing like a drowning drunk; instead, this might be the veteran actor's best performance in 20 yearsThu May 28 2015 - 17:52
Timbuktu review: terrible truths delivered in an engaging, often very funny voiceThis award-winning film starts out like an absurdist travelogue before morphing into an angry tragedy of a Tuareg family grappling with fundamentalismThu May 28 2015 - 14:12
Irish co-production ‘The Lobster’ wins Cannes Jury PrizeJacques Audiard’s Dheepan’ wins Palme d’Or to gasps in the auditoriumMon May 25 2015 - 09:56
Donald Clarke: When Gerry met Charles‘Imagine if the two men were French. They might have had to kiss one another’Sat May 23 2015 - 13:50
Cannes 2015: who’ll bag the Palme d’Or?It looks like a three-horse race led by Todd Haynes’s ‘Carol’, starring Cate Blanchett, and László Nemes’s ‘Son of Saul’. Could Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s stunningly beautiful ‘The Assassin’ sneak through to win?Sat May 23 2015 - 07:15
Love: powerful atmospherics; far too much orgy-based sex in 3D | Cannes ReviewWhereas 50 Shades of Grey didn’t offer much you could properly call sex, arch provocateur Gaspar Noé’s latest is very much the real bananaFri May 22 2015 - 12:04
The Assassin: the work of an obsessive tinkerer | Cannes ReviewHou Hsiao-hsien latest is the best-looking film in Cannes this year, but its beauty is both a strength and occasional weaknessFri May 22 2015 - 11:28
Sheila Vand: ‘We began playing a bunch of terrorists. We have to break that mould.’Iranian-American actress Sheila Vand, star of stunning vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, tells Donald Clarke about breaking the mould in the mythical Bad CityFri May 22 2015 - 11:20
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night review: An Iranian vampire in CaliforniaDrifty easy plotting and the grainy monochromeFri May 22 2015 - 04:45
Chimes at Midnight: Welles still runs deepYou can’t talk about Orson Welles without using superlatives. Let us continue the tradition by naming Chimes at Midnight as the best ever Shakespeare movieThu May 21 2015 - 08:00
Marguerite & Julien: unconvincing, mildly hilarious | Cannes ReviewQuite how this ludicrous French incest romp found itself in the main competition at this year's festival is anyone’s guessTue May 19 2015 - 12:03
Sicario: the slick mayhem of secret drug wars | Cannes reviewEmily Blunt and Benicio del Toro battle it out, while Denis Villeneuve shows his action chops ahead of his Blade Runner sequelTue May 19 2015 - 11:57
Cemetery of Splendour: Ancient forces make for a seductive and refreshing film | Cannes reviewAlthough odder than squirrels in sombreros, this film is Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s most conventional yet and among his best workTue May 19 2015 - 10:46
Inside Out: a return to form for Pixar | Cannes reviewThis animated trip inside the mind is funny, sweet and wise enough to suggest that Pixar has got its groove backTue May 19 2015 - 09:13
The Measure of a Man: Vincent Lindon sets the acting bar | Cannes ReviewLong takes and a matter-of-fact treatment add up to a quietly savage treatment of the capitalist machineMon May 18 2015 - 16:22
Louder Than Bombs: achingly tasteful, well acted, frustratingly bland | Cannes ReviewNorwegian Joachim Trier’s latest features Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne, Jesse Eisenberg and very little elseMon May 18 2015 - 13:09
Cornucopias of delight still in prospect at 68th Cannes Film FestivalThe race for the 2015 Palme d’Or looks at this stage to be between ‘Son of Saul’ and ‘Carol’, two extraordinary pictures from two very different film-makersMon May 18 2015 - 01:00
Son of Saul: A work of high artifice from the heart of the Nazi killing machine | Cannes ReviewSon of Saul is potentially the last ever Palme d’Or winner to be shot and projected with film: it would be quite the way to goSun May 17 2015 - 15:35
Donald Clarke in Cannes: High and low culture fight it out‘We should savour our centres of cultural cinema: IFI, Light House, Triskel and Queens’Sat May 16 2015 - 01:00
Farrell meets Cannes press as The Lobster eyes top prize‘It’s the kind of film that being in it doesn’t mean I know any more about it’Fri May 15 2015 - 15:00
The Lobster: a spookily beautiful, treacle-black absurdist comedy | Cannes ReviewYorgos Lanthimos’s poisonously effective film may be about the tyranny of coupledom, or it may not...Fri May 15 2015 - 14:10
Our Little Sister: Fish, football and family tragedies | Cannes ReviewHirokazu Kore-eda has made a quiet and lovely thing; a bit more plot and structure would not go amiss thoughFri May 15 2015 - 13:59
The Tribe: ‘It somehow became the most celebrated Ukrainian film since the beginning of cinema’Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy talks to Donald Clarke about a compelling critical sensationFri May 15 2015 - 05:00
A Royal Night Out review: Support can’t save royal boreStrong fringe performances drowned out by broad characterisation of the princessesThu May 14 2015 - 18:30
Lambert and Stamp review: Collage of 1960s revolutionFine exploration of the cultural earthquakes of the decade, if slightly overlongThu May 14 2015 - 17:30
An: hard to love, impossible to dislike | Cannes ReviewNaomi Kawase’s latest hammers home the metaphors, but its conviction and intelligence also shine throughThu May 14 2015 - 14:21
Tale of Tales: from full-on horror to absurdist comedy | Cannes ReviewSalma Hayek and John C Reilly play a king and queen who, desperate for an heir, engage in a bizarre magical scheme involving a sea monsterThu May 14 2015 - 11:30
Catherine Deneuve adds glamour to low-key Cannes Film FestivalOpening film obscure, but the 68th festival has much to offer, writes Donald Clarke in CannesThu May 14 2015 - 11:16
Pitch Perfect 2 review: Hits all the right notesIt’s a chaotic mess but this sequel is also one of the funniest films so far this yearWed May 13 2015 - 16:11
From Fassbender's Macbeth to Farrell's Lobster: Donald Clarke's first picks for Cannes 2015The Irish Times will be keeping a close eye on all the happenings up and down the Croisette at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Meanwhile, here are a few of the movies whetting our appetiteWed May 13 2015 - 15:24
Mad Max: Fury Road review: a post-apocalyptic western of the highest orderYou wait 30 years for a new Mad Max to come along, then Charlize Theron turns up and steals the showWed May 13 2015 - 14:32
Mad Max 4: ‘The film you couldn’t kill with a stick’Interview: The French were the first to see Mad Max as a western on wheels, says director George Miller. Forty years later, he’s back in Cannes with the explosive fourth part, Fury RoadWed May 13 2015 - 08:15
Donald Clarke: Why won’t old bands leave us alone?‘We’ve bought houses, given birth and developed an interest in gardening. Stop trying to suck us back into the uncertain foolishness of adolescence’Sat May 09 2015 - 00:02
Donald Clarke: away with horse-trading, in with bets on next Labour leaderThe most unpredictable election in a generation, they said. TV coverage proved that, for sureFri May 08 2015 - 14:45
Kit Harington: when it Snows, it poursWork has been non-stop for London-born Kit, with a ‘Spooks’ spin-off just the latest of several movies. And then there’s a certain Northern Ireland-shot fantasy blockbuster called Game of Thrones...Fri May 08 2015 - 06:00
Girlhood review: good girl gone mauvaiseA black teenager finds true friendship when she falls in with the ‘wrong’ crowd in this energising French drama set amid the Paris banlieuesThu May 07 2015 - 22:00
Spooks: The Greater Good review: mid-ranking spy stuffCompetent cinema sequel to BBC spy series struggles to break out of its comfort zoneThu May 07 2015 - 21:00
Phoenix review: a preposterous narrative played with such sincerity all reservations are forgottenA scheming husband comes face to face with his supposedly dead wife in this high-end Germany melodramaThu May 07 2015 - 18:00
