Irish Film Institute -REVIEW ROUNDUP: THE MAN WHO WANTED TO FLY, AT ETERNITY’S GATE, 3 FACES

REVIEW ROUNDUP: THE MAN WHO WANTED TO FLY, AT ETERNITY’S GATE, 3 FACES

Three new films open at the Irish Film Institute on the 29th of March 2019: Irish documentary The Man Who Wanted to Fly, drama At Eternity’s Gate starring Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh and Iranian film 3 Faces.

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

THE MAN WHO WANTED TO FLY
“Working with cinematographer, Dave Perry, and a lovable cast of characters, director Frank Shouldice has fashioned a marvellous feel-good movie and a compelling portrait of life in rural Ireland.”
4/5 – Irish Times

“The Man Who Wanted To Fly is a thoughtful, unassuming film about one man’s ambition to take to the skies”
4/5 – RTÉ

“Frank Shouldice’s irresistible documentary follows the fortunes of a County Cavan Icarus, Bobby Coote, who’s dreamt of flying for half a century.”
4/5 – Irish Independent

“If you are in need of a charming little movie to raise your spirits though, ‘The Man Who Wanted to Fly’ is just the ticket. We guarantee you’ll be beaming by the end of it.”
4/5 – Entertainment.ie

AT ETERNITY’S GATE
“Schnabel, himself a painter, is going for an internal portrait, and At Eternity’s Gate comes as close to that as we could have hoped. Very worthwhile. Not exactly fun.”
4/5 – Irish Times

“Dafoe is brilliant as the unfortunate artist: he was nominated for an Oscar, and ought to have won instead of Rami Malek.”
5/5 – Irish Independent

“Dafoe is inspired in the kind of performance that makes an actor being cast as a famous figure seem inevitable in hindsight.”
indieWire

“An unbridled portrait of the painful but productive final years in the life of Vincent van Gogh, a role inhabited with the acrid lucidity of madness by Willem Dafoe.”
Hollywood Reporter

“There have been many films about Vincent Van Gough, but none as extraordinary as Julian Schnabel’s version, starring Willem Dafoe in a monumental, career-best performance that lets us feel we’re living Van Gough’s life and not just watching it.”
4/5 – Rolling Stone

“Dafoe delivers an impassioned and believable performance, his deeply lined face capturing the mix of agony and ecstasy – to borrow a phrase from another artistic biopic – that this tortured artist must have felt.”
Washington Post

3 FACES
“Unquestioned patriarchal tradition and desperate responses to its oppressive power are dramatized in the Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s sly and defiant metafictional road movie.”
New Yorker

“Panahi’s sympathies are clear, but his humanity is boundless.”
NPR

“With ‘3 Faces,’ the caged Panahi is determined to sing someone else’s song, and in times like these, such generosity of spirit is its own quietly fierce act of cinematic defiance.”
Variety

“Charming Iranian cinema at its purest.”
Hollywood Reporter

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