Tag Archives: Review

WOMEN TALKING review

Jessie Buckley

Jessie Buckley

The reviews are in for WOMEN TALKING, starring Jessie Buckley. This important film tells the story of a community battered by rape and patriarchal ideas, as a mainly female cast debate the repercussions of the brutality meted out to them. Sarah Polley’s sober, sombre ensemble picture stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, among others, as traumatised female members of a remote, patriarchal religious colony, reminding us that the world of Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE really does exist more literally than you think.

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Irish Film

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TOWN OF STRANGERS review

Town of Strangers

Town of Strangers

TOWN OF STRANGERS is set in the town of Gort in County Galway, perhaps best known for being the site of Coole House, the home of Lady Gregory and the Irish literary revival of Yeats, Synge, O’Casey and Shaw. None of that is mentioned, however: director Threasa O’Brien focuses on its 21st-century distinction of having Ireland’s highest percentage of migrants. O’Brien auditions for people to come and be involved in her documentary, and these “audition” scenes evolve into being the central part of the film itself: where people simply talk about their lives, where they’ve come from and what they expect of Gort.

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Irish Film

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AFTERSUN review

Aftersun

Aftersun

Charlotte Wells’ moving debut feature AFTERSUN details a father-daughter vacation at a cheap resort in Turkey. There’s something unknowable about Calum (Paul Mescal), and maybe this is because Sophie (Frankie Corio) is a child, and he’s her dad, and she’s just about coming to the age where she’s separating herself and becoming her own person. As both a gorgeous ode to the faultlines of memory in family life, and a single, heartbreaking portrait of a father and daughter set to prematurely part ways on a number of levels, AFTERSUN is a genuinely standout feature debut.

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Irish Film

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THE WONDER review

The Wonder

The Wonder

In the new film version of Emma Donoghue’s richly absorbing novel THE WONDER, we confront what the march of history and colonialism has done to Ireland. The film opens in 1862, ten years after the Great Hunger, in a windswept midlands village where a local girl called Anna O’Donnell is somehow hale and hearty after forty days of refusing food since her eleventh birthday. THE WONDER will is now available on Netflix via link below.

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Irish Film, Irish Television

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HOLE IN THE HEAD review

Greystones filmmaker Dean Kavanagh made his cinema debut with his first narrative feature, HOLE IN THE HEAD, at the Irish Film Institute on Friday, August 12. The experimental director used the ongoing pandemic and repeated lockdowns of years past to both create and film his piece, using the natural landscape of Wicklow as one of many backdrops to his story.

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Irish Film

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JOYRIDE review

JOYRIDE sees Irish teen Mully (Charlie Reid) unwittingly setting off on a cross-country roadtrip with struggling mother Joy (Olivia Colman) after he steals the taxi cab she was planning to take. Neither of their lives are going too well; Mully has run away from his father James (Lochlann Ó Mearáin) after swiping the charity money raised in his mother’s honor which James had stolen. Meanwhile, Joy is desperate to leave her life behind and give away her new baby (whom she later names Robin). With both their futures unclear, the pair sets off on a journey across Ireland in pursuit of a happier life.

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Irish Film

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DERRY GIRLS Season 3 Review

The Irish teens are back for one last adventure! The beloved Northern Irish comedy returns for one last season tonight on Channel 4. Season three picks up on the eve of GCSE results day. There’s talk of a film next, but McGee says that’s not been officially confirmed: “I think I have an idea for one. I need to take a break first.” It might also be tricky to get the cast back in the same room again. Coughlan in particular seems ready to move on, and tells us she’s “definitely played Clare for the last time.”

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Irish Television

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HILLWALKERS review

HILLWALKERS is a 2022 Irish backwoods horror thriller film about a group of hikers that trespass onto private land leading to intense violence at the hands of the owners. Written, directed and edited by Tom Cosgrove (Haunted; Haunted II; Dead of Night 2001), making his feature directorial debut. Produced by Ama Fosua Addo, Caoillte Cahill and Niall Reynolds.

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Irish Film

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