Irish Film Institute -REVIEW ROUNDUP: AMANDA, JOJO RABBIT, LITTLE WOMEN, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY…

REVIEW ROUNDUP: AMANDA, JOJO RABBIT, LITTLE WOMEN, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY…

Welcome to a new year at the IFI, and hello 2020!

Below you’ll find a roundup of all recent releases at the IFI, including Amanda, Jojo Rabbit, Little Women and Long Day’s Journey into Night 3d. 

You can read on to find out more about these titles, or pop in to make up your own mind!

AMANDA
“For all that emotional content, Amanda is a pleasingly unsentimental film, never more so than in its understanding of children. Isaure Multrier is never cutesy-pie nor broadly drawn in foot-stamping or pouts or tantrums. She’s as complicated a being as any of the adults on screen. In fact, the final impactful sequence suggests even more so.”
4/5 – Irish Times

“In the case of the hapless David doing his best against the odds, what we get is a compelling study of goodness. See Amanda at the IFI.”
4/5 – RTÉ

“It tells a familiar story furrowed by quiet emotional conviction, much of it in Lacoste’s unhurried, unaffected turn.”
Variety

“Hers’s stamp as a contemplative miniaturist with an eye for the inner life is unmistakably on display in this involving, typically graceful piece.”
Screen International

“A low-key family drama with a shattering tragedy at its heart, Amanda is a quietly moving celebration of human resilience from French writer-director Mikhael Hers.”
Hollywood Reporter

JOJO RABBIT
“The horror of the Reich is here, loitering as it would on the edges of the child’s consciousness. It may not be perfect, but Jojo Rabbit is an honest film.”
4/5 – Irish Independent

“There is genuine zest in the unease of “Jojo Rabbit,” and it’s weirdly convincing as a portrait of childhood under surreal strain.”
New Yorker

“Taika Waititi scores again thanks to his signature style of comedy, excellent cast, and message of love and hope.”
Collider

“There’s some sort of strange magic residing in Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, a film that really shouldn’t work – but does, with remarkable results.”
10/10 – Slashfilm

“Combined with larger-than-life characters, splintering tragedy, and a unique coming-of-age journey Jojo Rabbit conveys a message about love’s ability to conquer loneliness, and that’s a message that’s fervently needed”
Paste Magazine

LITTLE WOMEN
“Saoirse Ronan leads the line with great authority — her Jo is fiercely energetic, but paradoxically shy. Florence Pugh is another huge cinematic talent, and this film would be worth watching for Jo and Amy’s histrionic battle of wills alone”
5/5 – Irish Independent

“One-hundred-and-fifty-year-old literature never felt so alive. Greta Gerwig’s jostling, clamouring adaptation of Little Women is a rare achievement.”
4/5 – Guardian

“As one might hope, Gerwig’s interpretation does right by the material, sticking to the original period and setting and assembling a dream cast to play the March siblings.”
Variety

“Gerwig and her girls know the hearts and minds of the sisters through and through. “Little Women” is about them above all else.”
indieWire

“Gerwig has taken a treasured perennial of popular American literature and reshaped it for a new generation, which should give the captivating film a long shelf life.”
Hollywood Reporter

“If this isn’t the Little Women you remember, either on page or screen, that’s understandable. But it’s likely the one you felt, and that’s more important.”
5/5 – Time Out

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT 3D
“Forget the big brand space opera: here’s the season’s pre-eminent work of event cinema.”
4/5 – Irish Times

“That phrase “the magic of cinema” has been rather devalued in an age in which the wonders that we see in the movies are available to anyone with a glimmer of imagination, sufficient computer-processing power and a halfway-decent CGI budget. It’s a vanishingly rare occurrence to see something on screen and be unable to wrap your head around how it was achieved. But in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Chinese writer/director Bi Gan’s transcendent memory trip of a movie, some kind of sorcery is at work”
4/5 –Observer

“There are touches of Kafka, also of Tarkovsky, to this dream-like and beguilingly non-literal film that concludes with an audacious 3D sequence that explains everything, and nothing.”
5/5 – Irish Independent

“There is such artistry and audacity in this new film from 30-year-old Chinese director Bi Gan.”
5/5 – Guardian

“In one sublime feat of cinematic prestidigitation, Bi forges new possibilities by which movies can defy the constraints of logic and represent the unrepresentable.”
LA Times

“Writer-director Bi Gan, 28, takes you on a rapturous ride through the night that will knock you for a loop, especially with a sexy, violent, 50-minutes climax that now stands as the 3D Shot of the Century”
4/5 – Rolling Stone

“A densely layered and slowly mesmerizing cinematic feat.”
Hollywood Reporter

 

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