REVIEW ROUNDUP: THE SISTERS BROTHERS, HAPPY AS LAZZARO, LAST BREATH and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Four films open at the Irish Film Institute on April 5th 2019: Jacques Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers, Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy As Lazzaro, heart-stopping documentary Last Breath, and Stanley Kubrick’s classic A Clockwork Orange.

Read on for a selection of reviews or pop in to make up your own mind.

THE SISTERS BROTHERS

“Reilly’s tender performance as a man trying to move with the times is beautiful, while Phoenix delivers laughs and pity as the loose cannon”

4/5 – RTÉ

“There’s some terrific back and forth between Reilly and Phoenix, nonetheless, and Benoît Debie’s cinematography is a wonder”

3/5 – Irish Times

“The English-language debut from the French director is an all-American delight, starring Joaquin Phoenix and John C Reilly perfect as sad, squabbling siblings”

4/5 – Guardian

“This alcohol-soaked Frontier road trip constantly reinvents itself at every turn in fun, witty and ultimately touching ways”

3/4 – Roger Ebert

HAPPY AS LAZZARO

“Happy as Lazzaro, like its elusive protagonist, is dreamy, lightly comic and unfailingly nice”

3/5 – Irish Times

“Alice Rohrwacher’s enigmatic drama is an unsettling and moving satire about the unquestioning toil of peasants’ lives”

5/5 – Guardian

“Alice Rohrwacher’s follow-up to 2014’s ‘The Wonders’ could be a biting social commentary, a religious parable or a beguiling, supernatural tale. Perhaps it is all three”

5/5 – Independent

“Easily among this year’s finest films and laced with an unapologetic social message”

4/4 – Roger Ebert

https://youtu.be/8NQUOYO1tow

LAST BREATH

“Last Breath is a dramatic, sometimes moving film which tracks the lives of deep sea divers working on the seabed in the North Sea”

4/5 – RTÉ

“Dive disaster doc stretched to its limits”

3/5 – Irish Times

“Cinema’s latest man-v-nature survival story is a rattling about a diver in trouble that is careful not to apportion blame”

3/5 – Guardian

“Last Breath milks the extraordinary drama of its real-life survival tale, but it can sometimes feel like the theatrics – cliffhangers, surging orchestration – are overdoing it”

3/5 – Irish Independent