Irish Film Institute -REVIEW ROUNDUP: 2001, THE IMAGE YOU MISSED, POPE FRANCIS AND UNDER THE TREE

REVIEW ROUNDUP: 2001, THE IMAGE YOU MISSED, POPE FRANCIS AND UNDER THE TREE

Four new films open Friday August 10th at the IFI.

2001: A Space Odyssey in a new unrestored 70mm print, Wim Wenders documentary Pope Francis: A Man of His Word, Icelandic pitch-black comedy Under the Tree and Donal Foreman’s new film The Image You Missed.

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

THE IMAGE YOU MISSED
“A wonderful film from an intriguing, restless talent”
4/5 – Irish Times

“Avoiding the mawkish and sentimental, The Image You Missed is a highly-skilled work of art, with a reflective, uncompromising approach to biography.”
4/5 – RTE

“While Foreman’s film may be more structurally conventional than his father’s work, it’s also personally braver for its vulnerability, and raw in its desire to address questions of identity and the pain of absence. An intriguing generational bridge.”
4/5 – Hot Press

“There is to this movie a touch of the ineffable; in its efforts to come to terms with one filmmaker, The Image You Missed brilliantly brings to bear another”
Scannain

“It is a film full of vulnerability and bravery that showcases questions of identity.”
Film Ireland

POPE FRANCIS: A MAN OF HIS WORD
“An eminently watchable study”
Irish Times

“A non-denominational sermon, under the cinematic care of an artist first, Pope Francis fanboy second.”
RogerEbert.com

“It slyly dispenses with that old canard that we must know the artist intimately to feel moved, humbled and astonished by his art.”
LA Times

“Whether he’s washing the feet of prisoners in America, visiting sick children in Africa, or praying with hurricane victims in Asia, Pope Francis doesn’t merely preach empathy, responsibility, and accountability, he lives it.”
Entertainment Weekly

“It is a pleasure to watch the present-day Francis interact with people all over the world and articulate his hopes for improving the lot of the poor.”
Hollywood Reporter

UNDER THE TREE
“[Director] Sigurðsson is the best approximation to a 21st century Billy Wilder that contemporary cinema has to offer”
5/5 – Irish Times

“Director Sigurðsson turns the screws as far as he can in this blackly absurdist tour de force”
4/5 – RTE

“You know about good things and small packages; this is a dark and startling thing in a brightly wrapped package, and the brightness is all the more misleading because the action takes place during Iceland’s radiant summer”
Wall Street Journal

“A blacker than black comedy that is so savage you often don’t know whether to shudder or laugh”
LA Times

“Each character resonates as a problematic individual whose foolishness escalates first into drama, then tragedy.”
Hollywood Reporter

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
“2001 lingers on the mind like a tall, black riddle”
5/5 – Time Out

“It is an extraordinary, obsessive, beautiful work of art”
4/4 – Chicago Tribune

“The film creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music. It is meditative. It does not cater to us, but wants to inspire us, enlarge us.”
4/4 – Roger Ebert

“It’s an overpowering experience, awe-inspiringly photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth, groundbreakingly enhanced by Douglas Trumbull.”
5/5 – Guardian

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