Declan Burke

Ireland

Journalist, Writer and Editor at Freelance

Author, editor and journalist, although rarely in that order. Novel: The Lammisters (@NoAlibisPress) “The funniest book of the year." ~ Sunday Independent

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Articles

Film review: The F1 movie is a fine vehicle for summer popcorn cinema

2 days ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

F1: The Movie ★★★★☆ Theatrical release For a mega-budget summer blockbuster, F1: The Movie (PG) opens with a surprisingly modest ambition: Formula One team boss Ruben (Javier Bardem) wants his old pal Sonny (Brad Pitt) to come out of semi-retirement to help the struggling APX team win just one race.
Film Review: 28 Years Later is ambitious - and blackly comic

1 week ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

28 Years Later ★★★★☆ Theatrical release And so to the cinema, there to take refuge from all the rage swirling about the world, where we discover – courtesy of (16s) – that a rage virus has infected most of the UK’s population, turning them into rampaging zombies who feast on human flesh. Happily, a self-sufficient community has kept itself safe on an island for the three decades or so since the virus first erupted in 28 Days Later (2002).
Film Reviews: How to Train Your Dragon makes superb use of Northern Irish scenery

2 weeks ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

How to Train Your Dragon ★★★★☆ Theatrical release You don’t have to be mad to live on the remote northern island of Berk, but it helps if you’re the kind of deranged Viking who enjoys nothing more than a good old dust-up with a fire-breathing beastie.
Film review: Documentary executive produced by Macklemore 'a gripping account of speaking truth to power'

3 weeks ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

★★★☆☆ Humans are the most rapacious predators on the planet, of course, but what if a human was to double down on his lethal potential by teaming up with a shark? That’s the basic idea behind Dangerous Animals (16s), which stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, an American surfer bumming around Australia chasing the next big wave. Enter Tucker (Jai Courtney), a bluff and good-natured captain of a charter boat that allows tourists to swim with sharks from the safety of an iron cage.
Film review: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs are remarkable in The Salt Path

4 weeks ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

★★★★★ Sometimes the only way home is to simply walk out your front door. (12A) opens with English couple Ray (Gillian Anderson) and Moth Winn (Jason Isaacs) being evicted from their farm, virtually penniless and with nowhere to go.
Film review: The Final Reckoning is trumpeted as the final Mission: Impossible movie

1 month ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

★★★★☆ (12A) opens in a decidedly gloomy fashion, however: not only is humanity suffering from innumerable wars and widespread famine, it’s also facing the existential threat of a ‘truth-eating parasite AI’, aka ‘the Entity’, that is on the brink of colonising the world’s cyber-structure and unleashing a nuclear holocaust.
Film review: Hallow Road is a bravura slice of dialogue-driven cinema

1 month ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

★★★★☆Every parent will do whatever it takes to prevent their child from making life-changing mistakes, but Hallow Road (15A) begins with a disaster already in train. When her daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell) rings at two a.m. to tell Maddie (Rosamund Pike) that she has knocked down a young woman on Hallow Road in the remote Ashfolk Forest, Maddie – a paramedic – immediately jumps in the car with Alice’s dad Frank (Matthew Rhys), keeping Alice on the phone so she can administer CPR by proxy.
Film review: Nicolas Cage is brilliantly cast in The Surfer

1 month ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

★★★★☆ A sport, a way of life, a philosophy for living: surfing lends itself to extravagant myth-making, which (15A) is happy to lean into as the movie opens, with our eponymous hero (played by Nicolas Cage) informing his estranged son (Finn Little) that life’s crucial moments are a lot like encountering a massive wave: ‘You either surf it,’ he says, ‘or you get wiped out.’ But when the Surfer returns home to surf the remote beach at Luna Bay, he discovers that the shore has been colonised by...
Film review: Sinners is one of the most entertaining movies of the year

2 months ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

Good and evil are flip sides of the same coin, at least according to (16s), which opens in Mississippi in 1932 with brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B Jordan) returning to their old stomping ground after learning the gangster trade in Al Capone’s Chicago. Smoke and Stack plan to use their ill-gotten gains to open a juke joint in the town’s old sawmill, a scheme the local white folk, and particularly the resident Klansmen, don’t look too kindly upon.
Film review: Darragh Humphreys is terrific fun in Fran the Man

2 months ago | irishexaminer.com | Declan Burke

‚ėÖ‚ėÖ‚ėÖ‚ėÜ‚ėÜFootball is a team game, but one man ‚ÄĒ Pele, Maradona, Fran Costello ‚ÄĒ can be the difference between a good side and a team of immortals. (12A) stars Darragh Humphreys as Fran, assistant manager of St Peter‚Äôs Celtic in the footballing heartland of Sallynoggin, a humble slogger who suddenly goes viral when he calls national treasure Brian Kerr a ‚Äėsnakey geebag‚Äô live on air during the televised draw for the FAI Cup.