Film enthusiasts are in for a treat this Saturday as cinemas across the Republic mark National Cinema Day by reducing ticket prices.
The initiative, supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, will see cinemas cut the price of admission to €5, including premium seats, screens and 3D screenings.
Last year, there were 217,000 admissions on National Cinema Day, making it the busiest cinema-going day of the year.
Some of the movies showing this weekend include Irish titles such as the horror Oddity, directed by Damian McCarthy, along with Kneecap which continues to perform very strongly at the Irish box office, and the acclaimed documentary Mrs Robinson.
Other popular titles screening include Deadpool & Wolverine, It Ends With Us, Alien: Romulus and Inside Out 2. Some cinemas will also be showing throwback films, such as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope at Omniplex and The Terminator at Movies@.
If you’re not sure which movie to catch, check out our reviews of the films on the big screen this weekend.
Alien: Romulus ★★★☆☆
The umpteenth effort to recapture the grim magic of the first two Alien films fares better than most predecessors, but it is still pretty thin stuff. What sets Romulus apart, happily, are fine lead performances from Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson as plucky colonist and gentle android. The series has barely revealed such humanity – and pseudo-humanity – since the first episode. Read our full review by Donald Clarke here
Blink Twice ★★★☆☆
There is a great deal going on in Zoë Kravitz’s ambitious, intermittently successful directorial debut. What we have here is The White Lotus by way of Get Out. After 103 minutes of sunlight, drugs, high-style violence and (mostly) sublimated sexual desire, the viewer could be reasonably permitted a lie down in a dark room. Read our full review by Donald Clarke here
Cuckoo ★★★★☆
There are eerie shades of Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness (minus that film’s 17 different endings) in Tilman Singer’s spooky sanatorium thriller. Singer, who scored a disconcerting horror-festival hit with Luz, goes big – maybe too big – with this wild follow-up. Read our full review by Tara Brady here
Deadpool & Wolverine ★☆☆☆☆
The film itself confirms what the tiresome promotional material had long threatened. Deadpool & Wolverine, the first Marvel Cinematic Universe flick to get an R certificate in the US, is, despite that supposed confirmation of mature content, the most relentlessly juvenile entry in a sequence that has rarely been confused with Ingmar Bergman’s Faith trilogy. Read our full review by Donald Clarke here
Inside Out 2 ★★★★☆
There is, as there was in the first film, a profound sadness at the heart of Inside Out 2. The new emotions kick out the old – notably Amy Poehler as Joy and Phyllis Smith as Sadness – while we watch Riley suck up to the cool girl and display a cold shoulder to old chums. Maya Hawke plays spiky Anxiety. Ayo Edebiri voices sour Envy. Paul Walter Hauser is a huge, blushing Embarrassment. Read our full review by Donald Clarke here
It Ends With Us ★★★☆☆
For all the meet-cute romance, Justin Baldoni’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s hugely popular book, It Ends With Us, is not a romcom: it’s a drama about the intergenerational nature of domestic violence. Starring Blake Lively as the film’s heroine, loyal book fans will be pleased with this otherwise pretty popcorn movie. Read our full review by Tara Brady here
Kneecap ★★★★☆
The fictionalised biopic of west Belfast’s best-known hip-hop disrupters adroitly manages the balance between provocation and reconciliation. Michael Fassbender, reminding us of his performance in Steve McQueen’s inexpressibly different Hunger, turns up as republican volunteer in this film that offers practical evidence that progress is possible. And also that progress can be a blast. Read our full review by Donald Clarke here
Mrs Robinson ★★★☆☆
Aoife Kelleher, director of the much-liked One Million Dubliners, has done the nation a service with this tasteful celebration of the first woman to hold the office of Uachtarán na hÉireann. Centred around a wide-ranging interview with Mary Robinson, the film catches Ireland at a cultural fulcrum. Read our full review by Donald Clarke here
Oddity ★★★★☆
The writer and director Damian McCarthy is one of Ireland’s most exciting emerging talents. You can learn a lot about the mechanics of fear from the Bantry film-maker’s nifty second feature. Eschewing the weighty grief-is-the-real-horror vogue for old-school enchanted objects and evildoers, Oddity is pleasingly pitched between 1970s Amicus Productions pictures and Goosebumps for grown-ups. Read our full review by Tara Brady here
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