MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a three-hander that broaches big themes, but doesn’t transcend dry academia
Film round-up: April 10, 2025
The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
Maiwene Barthelemy and Clément Faveau in Holy Cow
[IMDb]
DAN GLAZEBROOK eavesdrops on the bourgeois intelligentsia and the stories it tells itself at this moment of crisis
JAN WOOLF is bowled over by a major retrospective for the YBA artist
LEO BOIX, ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review Night Stage, Two Women, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, and Fuze
KATHRYN JOHNSON recommends the work of Norman Kaplan that was a tool in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a bold feminist subversion of classic folktales that are ubiquitous in the Irish imagination
Holy Cow (15)
Directed by Louise Courvoisier
★★★★
SHOT in France’s Jura region with non-professional actors, Louise Courvoisier’s debut feature is touching, elegiac and funny. A coming-of-age drama about friendship, integrity and post-industrial agriculture, it also reveals the agonies of making a wheel of Comté cheese.
A splendidly chaotic opening scene sets the tone. It features a cow sitting in a car, a man in a ragged vest lugging a beer barrel through a rural gala, and a drunken 18-year-old, Totone, performing a naked jig on a tabletop.
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LEO BOIX, ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review Night Stage, Two Women, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, and Fuze
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review The Six Billion Dollar Man, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Goodbye June, and Super Elfkins
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review The Ceremony, Eddington, The Life of Chuck, and The Thursday Murder Club
The Star's critics MARIA DUARTE and MICHAL BONCZA review Backlash: The Murder of George Floyd, The Uninvited, The Surfer, and Motel Destino