Irish Film Institute -REVIEW ROUNDUP: A BUMP ALONG THE WAY, BAIT, THE DAY SHALL COME

REVIEW ROUNDUP: A BUMP ALONG THE WAY, BAIT, THE DAY SHALL COME

New releases at the IFI on Friday October 11th are: A Bump Along the Way, Bait, and The Day Shall Come.

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

 

A BUMP ALONG THE WAY

 

“It is social realism taken to the next level”

“Each character feels fully fleshed out and real”

“I don’t know where Shelly Love gets her instincts from but she guides things with such an unerring sense of ease that many would kill for”

“This is the sort of film I love cinema for, a beautiful little surprise, much like the titular bump, I expect big things from everyone involved”

4/5

Entertainment.ie

 

Bump marks quite the arrival for first-time director Shelly Love and writer Tess McGowan, their film’s intergenerational appeal marking them out as a partnership with plenty to say, and a great way of saying it”

3.75/5

RTE Entertainment

 

“Lovely, warm performances from Bronagh Gallagher and Lola Petticrew are at the heart of this pregnancy comedy set in Derry in Northern Ireland”

“She lets the audience understand her mingling of dread and pride at being a mum again, just when she assumed that nothing would ever again happen to her”

3/5

The Guardian

 

“The dialogue throbs with an authenticity that never gets in the way of the light comedy”

“Gallagher…cackles her way through the wilder moments and finds layered sadness in the quieter exchanges”

4/5

The Irish Times

 

BAIT

 

“Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin’s breakthrough feature is a thrillingly adventurous labour of love – a richly textured, rough-hewn gem in which form and content are perfectly combined”

“It’s a genuine modern masterpiece, which establishes Jenkin as one of the most arresting and intriguing British film-makers of his generation.”

“It’s the visuals, however, that lift Bait into the realms of timelessness and transcendence”

Bait looks set to become one of the defining British films of the year, perhaps the decade”

5/5

The Guardian (KERMODE)

 

“Without the roughness and even crudity of Jenkins’ homemade effects, this ‘montage’ gesture would not have been plausible…but within the stylised visual language he’s using, it works very well”

“What an intriguing and unexpectedly watchable film”

“Bait is an experiment- and a successful one”

4/5

The Guardian (BRADSHAW)

 

“Bait comes along to remind you that, against the monopolisation corporatisation and homogeneity of the contemporary film industry, cinema can still be magic and light”

“The gorgeous retro-effects, bolstered by disjointed post-production sound and eerie glitches, recreate the new wave thrills”

“Every frame makes for a sensational tableau”

5/5

The Irish Times

 

“…it’s impossible not to enjoy, with even greater admiration, his film’s formal style – the product of a hand-cracked 16mm Bolex camera (from the 1970s) and a DIY development process that often involved dipping the film stock into coffee, washing soda and vitamin C powder”

The Times

 

THE DAY SHALL COME

 

“A circular firing-squad of full-on crazy, Chris Morris’s “The Day Shall Come” barges into American counterterrorism tactics with sledgehammer satire and a numbingly repetitive plot”

NY Times

 

“He’s perfected a brand of cultural and political commentary that’s both uniquely incisive and uniquely silly”

“Morris… has…crafted a knotty, unlikely humane farce that, while set in the US, doesn’t task itself with making broad, self-evident statements”

“The Day Shall Come is a short, sharp film at just 87 minutes, smartly bowing out before risking overkill, and while there’s anger kept at bay throughout…there’s a finale that drives home a devastating truth”

“The work of a satirist with so much to say yet with an awareness that saying less leads to so much more”

4/5

The Guardian

 

“The mix of traditional camera shots and long shots that are voyeuristic in nature works well”

“Rather than revert to lazy impressions, it holds a mirror to us and worryingly it is a rather plane mirror”

4/5

Entertainment.ie

 

The Day Shall Come marks an interesting move away from comedy at the expense of terrorists, towards comedy at the expense of those who are expected to defend us against terrorists”

Totally Dublin


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Arts Council of Ireland