Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Making her feature film debut, the Northern Irish playwright Stacey Gregg directs the heck out of Here Before , a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, highly accomplished slow-burn Belfast-set psychological thriller with a knockout twist. Andrea Riseborough, who works with women film directors as much as their male counterparts, gives an unsettling performance as Laura, a mother whose daughter died in a road traffic accident and who becomes obsessed with Megan (Niamh Dornan), the young daughter of her new next-door neighbour, Marie (Eileen O’Higgins) who has moved in her tattooed partner, Chris (Martin McCann). Chris makes an immediate impact on Laura’s son, Tadhg (Lewis McAskie), a surly boy who attends Dunmurry Primary School along with Megan. They shoot hoops in the makeshift basket outside Laura’s home. Tadhg (pronounced Tie) wants to get a tattoo. ‘Not until you’re eighteen,’ snaps his mother. Laura’s husband, Brendan (Jonjo O’Neill) is less than impressed. He’s a blue-collar guy, ev...

  Nancy is one of those films that you might think is based on real events. It tells the story of a couple, Leo and Ellen Lynch from Oswego, New York (Steve Buscemi and J Smith-Cameron) whose young daughter Brooke disappeared whilst out shopping thirty years ago. Suddenly they are contacted by a young woman, Nancy Freeman (Andrea Riseborough) who believes she might be their missing little girl. Naturally, there’s a DNA test. However, it isn’t based on fact. The writer-director Christina Choe gives us one of cinema’s great or, if you prefer, shabby fantasists, one who doesn’t act with guile but who falls into deception. For Nancy, an online fake identity is as real to her as an offline one. The past is something you tell to yourself before relating it to others. That’s what makes it real. Nancy knows she has a talent. But it isn’t validated by ‘The Paris Review’. The magazine responds with a note, one of many stuffed into the glove compartment of her car. We are introduced ...

Pictured : Kate Winslet as photographer Lee Miller in the drama ' Lee ', set in the years 1938-1945.  The film is written by Liz Hannah , John Collee and Marion Hume and directed by Ellen Kuras . Still courtesy of Roadside Attractions (US), Sky (UK)  Cinematographer Ellen Kuras ( Summer of Sam , Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ) forged a career in directing for television on series such as Ozark , Brave New World and The Umbrella Academy . Lee , which follows seven formative years (1938-1945) in the life of American photographer Lee Miller, played by Spotless Mind co-star Kate Winslet, is Kuras’ first film for the big screen. Scripted by Liz Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee, Lee plods from incident to incident, focussing on the background to some of Miller’s celebrated photographs taken during World War Two. It even has that most contrived of devices, the older Lee (Winslet in convincing make up) being interviewed at home by a young man (Josh O’Connor) and re...