HeadStuff

At a time of significant political and sociological division, Alan Hopkins’ A Knock at Your Door  is an important work. The short film follows the experience of Alex (Jonathan Heed). Alex presents battered and bruised on James (Diarmuid Noyes) and Florence (Yemisi Olinloye)’s doorstep. Florence, a nurse, is eager to assist and protect Alex.

The latest instalment in the saga by Infested director Sébastien Vaniceck – is relentless in terms of “gags” per minute. By gags I mean the industry term for gore effects, because in terms of the film’s emphasis it continues the tone of Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise or even the 2013 remake. It leans into the gore, and the grim nasty tone, rather than the comedy aspect of the franchise (aside from Maude Davey’s hilarious performance as the senile grandma).

The title Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie sounds like an attempt to weed out the die-hard fans of the web series and subsequent sitcom that birthed it, but it overcomes pigeonholing by being both very smart and very funny.

We don’t see so much of Ed Norton these days, but he breathes life into every role he takes on, somehow radiating equanimity even in chaos: his elegant, quietly self-ironizing performance in The Invite extends the soft gravitas he showed in A Complete Unknown (2024) and Birdman (2014). He is, as they say, ageing gracefully – and far moreso than some of his immediate contemporaries on the Hollywood circuit.

“Some things last a long time”, sings Daniel Johnston over the end credits of Blue Heron. Sophy Romvari’s touching debut feature builds on the themes of her short film repertoire to examine a life that sadly didn’t get to last a long time, namely that of her older brother. Blue Heron sounds like it should be a simple airing of dirty laundry but, under Romvari’s considered direction, it becomes something smarter and much more potent.

A year before Star Wars dominated cinema, sci-fi fans had another movie to satisfy their needs. That of course was Logan’s Run, which is very much a movie of its time. It is kitsch, laden with (some dodgy) special effects and of course has that ingredient of a hero to right all the wrongs. Perhaps the influence of the Cold War and the Vietnam War in the sixties on American audiences, had changed the Spaghetti Western style movie. And what audiences wanted their heroes to be.

The Devil Wears Prada was released the same year as High School Musical, She’s the Man, and The Break-Up, films that everyone knows because somebody somewhere is always rewatching. Of the four, it’s probably the closest to being a pop-classic (although She’s the Man has its loyalists). Glossy and fun, Frankel’s flurry through the Vogue-o-sphere picks up plenty of gossipy trinkets from the fantasy-land over which Anna Wintour, at the time, reigned supreme.

One “of the critic’s fundamental duties”, says Melissa Anderson, “is to honour the intensity of her response.” Anderson meets and exceeds that standard repeatedly in The Hunger, a gleaning of her film writings from the past decade and a half, now available from FilmDesk Books.

There is no denying the theatrical horror-inspired mastery of Nick Cave. Yet, at Malahide Castle on a muted Wednesday, the grass felt oddly bare. With nearly more lawn visible than people, it looked closer to a 50% capacity crowd. Whether due to weather or a quiet Irish boycott of Cave’s political stances, the empty space cast a distinct chill. Realistically, many Irish fans chose not to support a performer with questionable views during an ongoing genocide in Palestine.

The success of one of those recent youtuber-director-horrors everyone’s talking about, Obsession, appears to have led to a resurgence in Youtube essay videos analysing the trope of the nice guy in popular media – or, at least that’s what my algorithm is telling me.