The new Woody Allen movie, Melinda and Melinda, which has earned Allen his best reviews in years, will have its first Irish screening at the 49th Cork Film Festival, ahead of its release here in late January. Coincidentally, the Cork event closes this year with one of the best films shown at Cannes this year, Agnès Jaoui's Look At Me (Comme une Image), which plays like an Allen serious comedy transposed to Paris in its sophisticated treatment of the romantic and creative complications among two generations of culturally steeped bourgeoisie, writes Michael Dwyer.
As already announced, the festival, which was launched in Cork last night and runs from October 10th to 17th, will open with Inside I'm Dancing, Damien O'Donnell's enthralling picture of disabled young Dubliners, played by Steven Robertson and James McAvoy. The festival will also screen Michael Mayer's accomplished film of Michael Cunningham's novel, A Home at the End of World, in which Colin Farrell plays a sexually ambiguous young man living with a gay friend (Dallas Roberts) and an older woman (Robin Wright Penn), both of whom fall in love with him.
Further attractions include Marc Foster's Finding Neverland, featuring Johnny Depp as Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie; Jonathan Demme's potent remake of The Manchurian Candidate, starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep; Zhang Yimou's hit martial arts movie, Hero (pictured above); Eric Rohmer's Triple Agent; and Marco Bellochio's gripping political drama, Good Morning, Night, dealing with the 1978 kidnapping of the former Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro.
www.corkfilmfest.org
