Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Animals , the second feature from Australian director Sophie Hyde ( 52 Tuesdays ) is about that generation, specifically two young women approaching thirty, aspiring writer Laura (Holliday Grainger) and practising hedonist Tyler (Alia Shawkat) who share a Dublin flat. They have nothing jobs as Baristas in a cafe we never visit. Why do we never see them at work? Well we don’t see them in a rest room either, except, well, taking drugs. They too live in fear of not paying the rent, but they don’t talk about it much. It is the elephant in the room, well, outside it, a well-connected elephant with access to bailiffs and young men in the goods removal business. You can almost understand why hedonism is an option, so you don’t think about how unfair it is, how even political parties ‘for the many, not the few’, have lost the plot. The source material is Emma Jane Unsworth’s 2014 (second) novel adapted by the author and relocated from Manchester to Dublin, because some of us don’t want...

The Intervention is an actors’ movie, in as much as star names get to play against type, there are some highly emotional scenes and zero special effects. It also has the most predictable, least surprising narrative arc of any independent film that I have seen. No surprise therefore that it has been picked up for distribution by Paramount in a deal worth $2.5 million. It is written and directed by Clea DuVall, who has starred in such films as But I’m a Cheerleader , Wildflowers , How to Make A Monster , Armed Response and (one you may have heard of) Argo . You can see from her mostly B movie list of credits why she thought she could do better – and actually, I think she does. The film has a female-heavy cast headed by Melanie Lynsky, Cobie Smulders (on crutches), Natasha Lyonne, Alia Shawkat and DuVall herself augmented by Jason Ritter, Ben Schwartz and Vincent Piazza. The women are more recognisable than the men and pull heavy duty in the comic-dramatic scenes. The set up is that Ann...

  Pictured : Tech billionaire Slater King ( Channing Tatum ) admires his guest Frida ( Naomi Ackie ) in a scene from the luxury island thriller, ' Blink Twice ', co-written and directed by  Zoë Kravitz . Still courtesy of MGM-Amazon Studios (US) / Warner Bros. (UK) What is the deal with a private island? Does someone even have the right to sell an entire landmass? How much of the surrounding ocean count as the owner’s waters, for fishing and such? Don’t they have an obligation to provide basic services, not just for guests but their staff as well? These were some of the questions that occurred to me after watching Blink Twice , an American takedown of toxic masculinity written (with E.T. Feigenbaum) and directed by actress-turned-director Zoë Kravitz. However, these are not the questions that interest her. Kravitz focusses on one: how can men get away with abusing women? She looks at what gives them licence, the enablers. Wealth is one. Bullied women living their worst life...