Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

rdolan9007 I am trying hard to think why this film fails to be a great film, at least in my eyes. It seems to have the qualifications. It has a great cast, a powerful story, good direction and good pacing, and yet I feel strangely unenthusiastic about it. I am still unconvinced why it failed to make me like it more. I have only just watched it (half an hour ago) so maybe I am writing this review a little to soon to really guess at the answer to the above.Perhaps its the lack of subtlety in the film, which puts me off engaging with the characters. Maybe it is the strange lack of menace I had about the priest's (Brendan Gleeson) ultimate and very bloody fate. The acting by the way is fine throughout from most of the participants, except for a couple of the peripheal characters, which I found rather too quirky. Kelly Reilly however is very good as the priest's daughter, recovering from a suicide attempt; attempting to reconnect with her father. Chris O'Down is excellent at priest's unwarranted nemesis. Dylan Moran is good as he can be as an unsubtle and unsympathetic wealthy landowner. The beginning of the film does deliberately shock, where in confession an unseen and until the end unknown antagonist Chris O'Dowd, gives incredibly graphic detail about the sexual abuse he received, to the priest. I think this shocking start perhaps unbalances the film, and although the film does very well to live up to that start, it perhaps tries to hard throughout to keep that level of shock up. The ending however is genuinely gruesome, and deliberately provocative. I think it is there to try and make us reflect as society on the' indifference' people might have had to sexual abuse. The film overall also seems to make a point about how cynicism, greed and indifference allowed child abuse, by some of the priesthood in Ireland, to happen unhindered.I did find the ending moving especially when the daughter of the priest visits Chris O'Dowd in prison, presumably to accept his forgiveness. I do wish I liked this film more. It is brave, it is ambitious, and there is a who's who of Irish acting talent on display. Perhaps this film is just too pessimistic even allowing for the dark subject matter. You either have to like the characters, or its overall message, when a film is bleak in outlook. There are some lighter moments in the film especially with a fellow and incompetent priest, but there isn't much of it to go around in this film. Mind you the countryside is spectacularly brooding and beautiful. It is only a small compensation though to a well made but unfullfilling film.

paul2001sw-1 In John McDonagh's film 'Calvery', a priest is threatened by a parishioner, who announces his intention to kill him a week hence. We then see the priest having mostly one-to-one conversations with his troubled (and troublesome) flock; he knows which one wants to kill him (for the crimes of the church in general, not for his personal sins), but we do not. The setting is a somewhat archetypal west-coast Irish village. What's good about the film is its portrayal of a man clearly sincerely motivated by his belief and his sense of duty, nonetheless wrestling with a profound crisis of self-interest. That said, the story is contrived, almost deliberately stylised; I liked it, but the point remains elusive.

Tweekums As this film opens Father James is taking confession; an unseen voice tells him that he was abused as a child and he intends to kill Fr James the following Sunday. He does not blame Fr James for what happened to him; he just believes that it is appropriate that a good priest should die for the sins of a bad one. FR James discusses the matter with his bishop and says he knows who it was that made the threat but doesn't do anything to report him even after the bishop insists that such a threat isn't covered by the sanctity of the confessional. Over the following week he continues to minister to his parishioners although they aren't interested in what he has to say; taking Sunday communion seems to be all the religion they want. He also has his daughter, from before he took holy orders, come to visit him following a failed suicide attempt. During the week somebody burns his church to the ground; it would appear that the threat was serious.Given that this stars Brendan Gleeson in the leading role one might expect an enjoyable dark comedy like 'In Bruges' or 'The Guard' however this is much bleaker. There are some laughs to be had but for the most part there is just the feeling that protagonist Fr James is doomed and that most of the people he deals with in his rural Irish parish don't want him interfering with the way they live their lives but expect him to listen to their troubles without judging them. Brendan Gleeson is great in the lead role; he makes the characters just a little world-weary but still someone who wants to do what is right. The rest of the cast are pretty solid making us believe in their flawed characters… even if it is a little hard to believe that so many damaged people could reside in one small community in County Sligo. The setting, beautiful, rugged and somewhat bleak adds to the sense of foreboding. Overall I'd certainly recommend this although I'd caution that you have to be in the right mood; it certainly isn't a feel-good movie.

Leofwine_draca CALVARY is a disappointing and depressing Irish drama about a Catholic priest in Ireland struggling with life in the present day. He finds himself the subject of a death threat thanks to one of his congregation who was abused by another priest as a child and encounters characters with various hang-ups who seem to delight in taking their problems out on him.I had a feeling that this wouldn't make for much in the way of entertainment and I was right. CALVARY is a gloomy and pointless movie that seems to be destined to assuage Catholic guilt more than anything else. There's no real story here, just the main character interacting with other characters before an inevitable outcome. No shock, no surprise, no involvement, just endless nihilism.The one thing the film has going for it is Brendan Gleeson in the lead role. He's big and warm-hearted and keeps you watching despite his character's deficiencies. The supporting cast is less assured. Kelly Reilly is unconvincing as the supposedly sympathetic daughter character while Chris O'Dowd is out of place and acting rather than living his role. Aiden Gillen is reliably sinister. M. Emmet Walsh has a random cameo. I knew Domhnall Gleeson would show up somewhere and he doesn't have much to offer either. If I want gritty Irish realism I think I'll stick to something like ADAM & PAUL in future.