Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Having directed episodes of the hit Netflix show, Jessica Jones , as well as the British TV series Happy Valley and Scott and Bailey , the Irish writer-director Neasa Hardiman makes her feature film debut with the highly generic eco-thriller, Sea Fever. In it, a fishing boat out of permitted waters makes an acquaintance with a glowing multi-tentacled sea creature, whose venom causes human eyes to shoot out of their sockets. That, you might say, is more like it. However, Hardiman is not much interested in gore. Rather she imagines said creature as the guardian of fishing stocks, present to warn humans of the dangers of over-fishing. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, she is saying, so much so that they are fit to burst. Her heroine is shy, socially awkward biochemist and behavioural scientist, Siobhan (Hermione Corfield). She observes patterns, draws and concludes and exclaims, ‘that’s not right’. She also avoids birthday cake. After a reluctant parting from her petri-dish, s...

  I have come late to the Wonder Woman party. By the time I caught up with the big screen version of the popular DC Comics series, on Thursday 13 July 2017, the film had already grossed 373 million dollars at the US box office, making it at the very least the highest grossing live action movie directed by a woman. Well, it is a superhero movie, you say. They have built-in audiences. Perhaps - but you remember Catwoman starring Halle Berry in the title role, directed by Pitof. No, you don’t because it tanked – as did Tank Girl and Aeon Flux . This is because filmmakers don’t know how to make female centred superhero movies that audiences believe in. The defining gesture that Diana ( Gal Gadot ) makes in the new Wonder Woman movie is the crossing of her arms in front of her face – a big ‘x’, a whacking great ‘no’.   ‘No’ means ‘no’, people. This is a message that we can – and should – believe in. Wonder Woman has at least one scene that should become iconic. ...