Irish Film Institute -REVIEW ROUNDUP: MARY SHELLEY, WHITNEY AND THE DEER HUNTER

REVIEW ROUNDUP: MARY SHELLEY, WHITNEY AND THE DEER HUNTER

Two new releases and one returning classic grace our screens from Friday the 6th of July. Mary Shelley is a biopic starring Elle Fanning as the leading lights in gothic literature, and it was shot in Ireland! Whitney is a new documentary about the famed singer from director Kevin MacDonald and Michael Cimino’s masterpiece The Deer Hunter returns for its 40th anniversary in a new 4K restoration.

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

MARY SHELLEY
“The director and her star make their point under the meticulously appointed cover of the film’s 18th-century setting, but they make it plainly, cleanly, and with fire”
Boston Globe

“A reminder that England in the early 19th century remains a rich repository of stories and characters, and era that can be made to feel charmingly quaint and bracingly modern, on both the page and the screen”
New York Times

“A welcome showcase for the considerable talents of Elle Fanning, who deftly shades the trials and tribulations of the young writer and her complicated relationship with Percy Shelley”
Village Voice

“A passionate film about a woman’s ideas”
Hollywood Reporter

“Fanning holds the screen as someone intent on writing her own destiny”
Guardian

WHITNEY
“Whitney the performer, Whitney the person and Whitney the documentary are all captivating, and this opportunity to become engrossed in the mystery of her world should not be missed”
4/5 – RTE

“It’s a well-worn tale, but that doesn’t diminish the scale of its tragedy”
Village Voice

“It’s a sad story, and Whitney tells it well”
4/5 – Independent

“You don’t have to be a fan of Whitney Houston’s music to love director Kevin Macdonald’s sharp-edged, revelatory and seriously emotional documentary about her life”
Time Out

“[A] haunting, richly contextualized documentary portrait…”
Hollywood Reporter

“Entrancingly well-done”
Variety 

THE DEER HUNTER
“An astonishing piece of work, an uneasy mixture of violent pulp and grandiosity, with an enraptured view of common life — poetry of the commonplace”
New Yorker

“The film is ambitious and it succeeds on a number of levels and it proves that Cimino is an important director who deserves to be watched carefully”
Variety

“It is a heartbreakingly effective fictional machine that evokes the agony of the Vietnam time”
Roger Ebert

“Its feelings for time, place and blue-collar people are genuine, and its vision is that of an original, major new film maker”
New York Times

“This is Cimino’s masterpiece”
5/5 – Guardian

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