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| Keaton in Birdman |
By Justin Kelly
Birdman
The critically acclaimed Birdman is the headline addition to
IMC Tullamore’s schedule this weekend, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dark
comedy is arriving to the Offaly cinema on the back of nine Academy Award
nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film boasts a
stellar cast, including Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Emma
Stone, and Naomi Watts.
The movie centres on Keaton’s character Riggan Thomson, a
washed-up Hollywood actor famous for playing the superhero Birdman years
earlier, who now must battle his egotistical demons to reclaim former glory on
the stage. Thomson plots a rousing return to the limelight in a Broadway play,
but has to balance family troubles and his own ailing conscience in the process.
Keaton has been nominated for the Best Actor award at next month’s Oscars for
his role in Birdman.
The supporting cast has also been recognised during awards
season, with both Stone and Norton receiving Oscar nominations in the male and
female Supporting Actor categories. Emma Stone, the rising female star of
Hollywood, impresses as Thomson’s drug addict daughter, while Ed Norton plays a
volatile method actor drafted into his Broadway play fold by Keaton’s
character.
The Guardian reviewed the movie earlier this month: “Birdman
is a hard movie to embrace unconditionally – it feels too knowing, too
immaculately timed a display of mastery to really breathe. Even so, there’s
plenty to enjoy and more still to admire,” Jonathan Romney wrote for the
English broadsheet. “Birdman has wings, for certain, even if you find the
feathers sticking in your throat now and then,” he added.
Birdman screens in Tullamore on Friday at 21:10pm and will
remain in that single slot for the duration of its run.
Colin Firth heads up the cast of Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman:
The Secret Service, and the British actor is joined on screen by Hollywood
legends Michael Caine and Samuel L. Jackson.
Matthew Vaughn is the same director that brought audiences Kick-Ass
and Layer Cake, and he has adapted Kingsman from Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar’s
comic book series called ‘The Secret Service.’ The film follows veteran Kingsman
secret service spy Harry Hart (Firth) as he recruits young streetwise Gary ‘Eggsy’
Unwin (Taron Egerton) as a possible Kingsman.
Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson’s character, a villainous millionaire,
plots a murderous campaign against millions of people, and the Kingsmen led by
Michael Caine are tasked with stopping the wealthy madman.
The sharply-dressed and gentlemanly Hart brings the
espionage genre into the line of quick-witted comedy, while the plot packs in
the action element. Mark Adams for the Mirror newspaper says “Colin Firth is
completely at ease as the upper-class spy; Kingsman is a dazzlingly slick piece
of bold and bloody entertainment, and while hefty in terms of running time at
more than two hours, it packs in espionage action.”
However, The Guardian reviewed the film as “a James Bond
pastiche in its bones, teeming with quips, easily dispatched henchmen and
umbrella-derived weaponry.”
Kingsman: The Secret Service opens in Tullamore on Friday
night at 20:30pm, and will run at the same time every night for the duration of
its run there. There are also daytime showing on Saturday and Sunday at 14:40pm
and 17:30pm.
The final film arriving at Tullamore this weekend is the family
fun flick Big Hero 6, directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams. Big Hero 6 is a computer-animated
superhero action-comedy produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. It tells the
story of a young robotics prodigy named Hiro Hamada who forms a high-tech team
of superheroes to combat a masked villain.
This animated film has been a commercial success, already
racking up almost $500 million at the Box Office worldwide, and it has also
been nominated for the Best Animated Feature award at the 87th
Academy Awards, which take place at the end of February.
Writing for Forbes magazine, Scott Mendelson reviewed the
film as follows: “Big Hero 6 is a perfect in-between entertainment/action film.
It is a kid-friendly superhero adventure, something noticeably less violent and
intense than the likes of Man of Steel or Guardians of the Galaxy, but no less
exciting or action-packed. It is also a visually gorgeous and richly
entertaining comic adventure movie.”
Big Hero 6 screens in 3D at 16:15pm on both Saturday and
Sunday, while the 2D version will hit the screens at 18:45pm on Friday evening,
and continues in that time slot each day for its residency at Tullamore. There
are also supplementary 2D screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 13:45pm and 16:20pm.
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