The Swallow ★★★★☆

Directed by Tadhg O’Sullivan. Starring Brenda Fricker. G cert, limited release, 69 min

Touching, difficult film from an Irish original casting Fricker as an artist contemplating missing acquaintances by the sea in Co Clare. O’Sullivan confirms his skills in montage as he works in surprising secondary media. The painter looks in the mirror and sees young Fricker from The Ballroom of Romance. Late excerpts from the 1946 recording of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, with Orson Welles and Bing Crosby, confirm the source of the film’s title. But it is Fricker’s steady, enigmatic presence that sticks in the brain. The narrative is static. But the emotional momentum is palpable. Full review DC

Steve ★★★☆☆

Directed by Tim Mielants. Starring Cillian Murphy, Tracey Ullman, Jay Lycurgo, Simbi Ajikawo, Emily Watson, Douggie McMeekin, Youssef Kerkour. 15A cert, general release, 92 min

Murphy, producer and star, has rejoined Tim Mielants, kinetic director, for a follow-up to their justly celebrated Irish drama Small Things Like These. Sadly, the chemistry does not quite spark this time. Based on Max Porter’s novel Shy, Steve brings us to a school for troubled students in a leafy corner of England. Murphy is the eponymous teacher. Tracey Ullman is a senior colleague. The agitated camera, running when it need only trot, becomes a character in itself. The film means well, but the ramshackle storytelling does little for the sketchily drawn characters. Full review DC

Girls & Boys ★★★★☆

Directed by Donncha Gilmore. Starring Liath Hannon, Adam Lunnon-Collery, Francis O’Mahony, Oisin Flynn. 15A cert, general release, 86 min

It’s impossible not to think of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise: two young strangers, Charlie and Jace, sit beside one another in a library at Trinity College Dublin and then wander around on Halloween night, trading confidences that grow more intimate as the city blurs into the cinematographer Fionnuala McCormack’s enchanting neon version of the capital. But Liath Hannon and Adam Lunnon-Collery make something fresh of the material. Their chemistry is the film’s engine: like Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, they build a bond through small talk and banter, until the night yields a memory that will linger. Full review TB

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey ★★★☆☆

Directed by Kogonada. Starring Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. 15A cert, gen release, 110 min

Robbie and Farrell play Sarah and David, improbably radiant singles nudged into an allegorical road trip by a wacky, metaphorical car-rental agency headed by Kline and Waller-Bridge. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey arrives trailing endless arch gestures – emotional, visual, cinematic, the works – and fully aware that it is less a love story than a story about love stories. Or maybe a story about that. Kogonada’s eye for exquisite composition remains unparalleled: crane shots transform urban alleyways into magical places; raindrops bounce off puddles. No film since The Umbrellas of Cherbourg has made such lyrical use of brollies. For all this beauty, the journey itself is strangely inert. Farrell grounds the film’s more fanciful turns. But this journey goes nowhere. Full review TB