Manic (2001)

Over a decade later, Manic feels too familiar for its own good. An indie with an impressive cast – Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Don Cheadle – it spends its time in the walls of a psychiatric institution. Handheld, Dogme 95-style camerawork indicates the film’s insistence on naturalism, but the institution itself feels filmic, like any…

The Guard (2011)

Your typical cinematic cop tends to fall into one of three basic categories: corrupt, by-the-book, or somewhere in between, where they break the rules (and suspect’s bones) to get results. Irish “guard” – policeman – Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) doesn’t fit into any of these subsets. It’s not that he’s a bad cop, per se,…