Hokum (2026)

I've been a fan of writer-director Damian McCarthy since I was fortunate enough to see his first short film, "Hatch", screened at a horror movie festival years ago. With this, his third full film, I am delighted to say that he is three for three when it comes to his feature filmography. He also seems to have developed a confidence in his own abilities with each success. That explains why he can stand by a film titled Hokum, considering all of the ways in which the definition of that word could be used against him by those who may not appreciate this as much as I did.

Adam Scott plays Ohm Bauman, a writer struggling with his latest work, and struggling to keep going through life accompanied by what may be some spirit caused by a past tragedy. He heads off to an isolated hotel in Ireland to deal with both of these things at once, soon becoming involved in some unnerving incidents that tie the history of the building to his own mental state. 

At the heart of Hokum is something very traditional and familiar. It's the kind of cosy, supernatural-tinged, mystery that wouldn't feel out of place if seriously edited down and presented on the BBC during the Christmas holiday season. What McCarthy does with the various elements, however, is brilliant and impressive. He takes time to layer everything throughout, leading viewers by the hand to a finale that somehow grows in power and impact as you spend more time thinking about it.

Using the same visual style that he delivered so well in Oddity (which was a slight step away from the way he depicted things in Caveat), McCarthy is happy to keep viewers right alongside his main character as events play out. There are no big twists here, not if you've seen one or two other tales in this vein, but a lot of the enjoyment comes from watching McCarthy work so expertly with the tropes and audience expectations. Then you get the extra reward once you've spent some time noticing how McCarthy dotted every i and crossed every t.

Scott is fantastic in the lead role, happy to portray his figure as someone unbothered by others taking a dislike to him. He's a grump, to put it mildly, but transforms throughout the runtime as viewers learn about the parts of his life that he's tried to keep buried deep within himself for many years. Florence Ordesh is a small ray of light in the role of Fiona, although she's sadly not onscreen for too long, and Peter Coonan, Michael Patric, and Will O'Connell do well as other hotel staff members. There's also a wonderful turn from David Wilmot, playing a man with his own dark past that makes him either very useful or very dangerous. 

I don't want to give in to recency bias, but I am tempted to sit Hokum just slightly above the previous two features from McCarthy. I initially viewed it as simply being on a par with those, another blend of the macabre and the dark comedy that McCarthy handles so well. It just has a bit more to it though, and I think it's a near-perfect slice of horror that has surprising depths of emotion contained within the heart of it. 

9/10

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Mubi Monday: Calm With Horses (2019)

Let's be completely honest from the start here, Calm With Horses is nothing that we haven't already seen done, and done well, in dozens of other dramas from the UK and Ireland. Thankfully, this has atmosphere and performances that make it very much worth your time.

Cosmo Jarvis plays Arm, an ex-boxer who now works as the muscle for a notorious local family. He's often alongside Dympna (Barry Keoghan), and the family appreciates that he will do whatever is asked of him. Until he becomes hesitant about dealing with Flannigan (Liam Carney), a man accused of a transgression that gives him a death sentence. Stuck between his employers and his own morality, Arm is also struggling to be a good father, and trying to accept that his ex-partner, Ursula (Niamh Algar), is ready to move away from the area to somewhere that could be much better for their young son.

While I have seen Jarvis in a number of different movies over the years, I have not singled him out for praise, although he was been consistently good, and great in Lady Macbeth. This is probably his best performance yet though, strong and ready for violence, but also aware of how much better life can be when people can be softer and peaceful with one another. Everyone else here is very good (Keoghan and Algar just as you'd expect, and Carney, David Wilmot, Ned Dennehy, and Anthony Welsh all perfect in their respective roles, whether they're acting scared, scary, or slightly oblivious to the violent world that is just one side-step away from them), but the film belongs to Jarvis.

This might be the first feature directed by Nick Rowland, but he helps himself enormously by trusting Joe Murtaugh to adapt Colin Barrett's short story, as well as assembling a cast of superb talent. Getting Jarvis in place was probably the most important part, a solid anchor point that everything else can be attached to, but everything is treated with due care and a faith in the material.

It may not be the most cinematic work, and there isn't anything I want to highlight, but everything is in service of the script and the acting in a way that is reassuring. Everyone behind the camera has done their job in a way that doesn't call attention to their valuable contributions, and that is sometimes a lot harder to do than it might seem.

Grim stuff, but not without a fleeting ray of sunshine breaking through the gathering clouds, Calm With Horses is a film I would happily recommend to anyone after something moving and powerful. There are one or two moments that come close to being too uncomfortable to sit through, but Murtaugh and Rowland know just how far to take things, and how to keep the central character riveting as he tries to hold in the anger that is constantly beating him up internally.

9/10

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Mubi Monday: Good Vibrations (2012)

This is the story of Terri Hooley, a man with a passion for music so great that he ended up opening a record store in Belfast, and forming a label, that would support, and hugely influence, the punk music scene in Belfast. Not that either business made any money. Profit was never a motivation for Terri. It was always just about the music.

Hooley is certainly someone who deserves to have their life story shared and celebrated, whether you read any books written about him or (like me) just watch this movie. Taking place during the infamous years of bloodshed and death in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles, Hooley did his best to stay apart from everything he viewed as unnecessary distractions from the music. It was a view that ended up being infectious, allowing him to gather together a number of like-minded individuals, all of them using music in different ways to the same ends. Escape. Whether that is physical or mental.

With the role of Hooley played by Richard Dormer, Good Vibrations is a film lifted by that performance and, appropriately, the music pumping through it. Dormer has a blast, portraying Hooley with charm and savvy, if a lack of business sense, and there’s a lovely supporting role for Jodie Whittaker, playing his partner, Ruth. Aside from the people portraying some key figures in the industry, Kerr Logan as Feargal Sharky and Kieron Forsyth as John Peel, the cast also has consistently solid turns from Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, Karl Johnson, and many others. 

Directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn do a fine job of capturing the time and the place, and conveying that feeling of stumbling on to some life-changing music, and the script, by Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson, keeps the humour, that seems to have been a central part of Hooley’s nature, juxtaposed alongside the very real threat posed to so many people in Northern Ireland during that time. 

It may not be an essential story, although it will inevitably be essential to those impacted by it, and it may not be a standard feelgood film, with the highs and lows leading to a fairytale happy ending, but Good Vibrations mixes the authentic with the fantastical and perfectly illustrates that way in which we can all be transported from mundanity by one great song that resonates through our entire body. It also has a predictably great soundtrack.

You could say that . . . it's well worth keeping an eye open for it.

8/10

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Mubi Monday: Little Joe (2019)

Emily Beecham plays Alice Woodard, a young woman working for a corporation that specialises in developing new species of plants. One of those plants, referred to as "Little Joe" in a reference to her own son (Kit Connor), is designed to respond to care and attention, much like a pet or well-behaved (and very stationary) child. Alice takes one home, although that's very much not allowed, and soon starts to worry about what the plant might be doing in order to ensure its continued survival. There are also co-workers acting strange, by either getting too emotional (in the case of Bella, played by Kerry Fox) or not seeming very emotional at all (in the case of Chris, played by Ben Whishaw).

The first film I have watched that was directed by Jessica Hausner, who also co-wrote the script with her regular collaborator Géraldine Bajard, this certainly won't be the last time I explore her filmography. Hausner and Bajard have taken an interesting premise, a quirky way to rework some material very reminiscent of the paranoid '50s sci-fi classics, and given themselves a huge boost by utilising a great cast in the main roles. It also helps that they have reframed the ideas in a very relevant, almost cutting-edge, environment. This is a film about plants, about emotions, about personality, and about the scientific ways in which all of those things can be manipulated.

Beecham, who I last saw in the excellent Daphne, is an excellent lynchpin for everything that occurs. She's very composed, but retains an ability to observe and empathise that some of the other main characters seem to lack. As her character reacts, or doesn't react, to various changes, it allows the viewer to consider just how things have the potential to be viewed in different ways as the situation develops. Whishaw is in his safety zone, very quiet and slightly uncomfortable when interacting with anyone else, but he's perfect in his role, and works very well alongside Beecham. Connor is a very good young actor, David Wilmot is very good in the role of Karl (basically . . . a team leader/boss), and Fox gives yet another of her many great performances as the alarmed and potentially paranoid Bella.

The beauty of Little Joe lies in, well, the beauty of Little Joe . . . and co. It's a visually gorgeous film, making use of sterile environments that contain some vivid splashes of colour, and both the shot composition and the ways in which the actors are placed/set to move throughout really provide a treat for the eyes, all while the intriguing ideas being sprinkled throughout the runtime provide a treat for those who enjoy intelligent sci-fi.

I can easily see many people hating this. Unlike the creation at the centre of everything, it's not an easy creation to love. And yet love it I did/do. Almost every scene has something to either draw your eye or get you thinking, and many scenes have both. And there's at least one moment that would easily rank for me as one of the best of the year. Hausner has assembled a hell of a collective to get this just right, and that ends up showcasing the fact that Little Joe sure can sing!

8/10

Calvary (2014)

Writer-director John Michael McDonagh made a pretty good impression, to say the least, with his first feature film, The Guard. A film mixing character study with Irish charm with police thriller elements, it was rightfully held up by many as one of the best from its year of release. Well, come the end of 2014, I expect Calvary to be in any such list.

Teaming up once again with Brendan Gleeson, McDonagh this time mixes entertainment with a scathing condemnation of the Catholic Church and a commentary on the state of Ireland as it is today, and the people who took it to that position. Yet, for all of the anger and cynicism in the script, everything is also offset, and beautifully so, by a message of positivity and forgiveness.

Let me actually get to the plot. Gleeson plays Father James Lavelle, a priest who hears a man in confession say that he’s going to kill him. But he’ll give the priest about a week to get his affairs in order. Killing a bad priest wouldn’t make much of an impact, but killing a good priest, that’s something. Such is the reasoning of the killer. Does this prompt Father Lavelle to rush to the police or flee? No. Instead, he goes about his duties in much the same way as before, all the while trying to help members of his parish (including the person that he knows is due to kill him). Father Lavelle is a good man. That much is made clear from the very beginning of the movie. He’s also a deeply flawed man, having battled with the demon drink through the years, but events in his past have made him what he is today, and that becomes obvious when he receives a visit from his daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly).

While I'd like to praise the entire cast here in a way that shows just how great everyone is onscreen, this is Gleeson's movie. As with The Guard, he takes a main character and makes him riveting to watch, even when there seems to be nothing happening. The fact that he's once again given such great support - this time by the likes of Reilly, Chris O'Dowd, David Wilmot, Killian Scott, Aidan Gillen, Orla O'Rourke, M. Emmet Walsh, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankole and Domhnall Gleeson (and one or two I have missed out, apologies) - is just a testament to the ability of McDonagh, or whoever he employs, to put together the perfect cast for his work.

While McDonagh also does a very good job with the direction, his strength lies in his writing. If Calvary was JUST an angry rant, using such great actors and providing such great entertainment, then I would still be praising the movie and writing a positive review. But it's so much more than that, and the realisation of the journey that the film has just taken you on will perhaps leave you stunned and moved as the end credits rolled. I can't stop getting a lump in my throat when I think about the film now, and I'm writing this review a day after seeing it. I can't recall the last time a movie affected me so profoundly.

It's not actually a masterpiece, and it may prove to be a very divisive film (when the central message seems to angry and skewed), but for me it's so close to perfect that it's getting the highest rating possible. I am keen to rewatch it soon, I am keen to own it, and I am keen for other people to give it a chance. And for anyone who does go along to view Calvary and finds it somewhat underwhelming, all I ask is that you don't give up on it until the whole tale has unfolded. Then decide how you feel about it.

10/10

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