John Boland

John Boland's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Irish Independent
Publications:
Irish Independent
Movie Reviews Only
T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
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No Score Yet | Nazi sa Ghaeltacht (2020) |
Ludwig Mühlhausen had used an academic sojourn there in 1937 to spy for the Nazis. By the end of the film, I learned that he certainly had. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Aug 6, 2020
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100% | Anthony (2020) |
There were tremendous performances from Toheeb Jimoh as Anthony, Rakie Ayola as mother Gee and Julia Brown as Katherine. This was yet another outstanding drama from McGovern. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Aug 6, 2020
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No Score Yet | Seamus Heaney and the Music of What Happens (2019) |
Highlighting his wife, his three children and his brothers, Adam Low's film was celebratory rather than analytical, though there was room, too, for the occasional wry remark. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Dec 10, 2019
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No Score Yet | Meat: A Threat to Our Planet? (2019) |
The question mark in the title, Meat: A Threat to Our Planet?, was redundant because there was no doubt from the outset of Liz Bonnin's investigation that our avid consumption of animal meat was very bad indeed. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Dec 10, 2019
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No Score Yet | Cyprus Avenue (2019) |
Yes, the viewer was also asked to ponder such notions as the role of religion, the importance of reconciliation and the lingering legacy of hatred and violence, but the central character was such a one-dimensional cut-out that he soon became tiresome. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Sep 23, 2019
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No Score Yet | We Need to Talk About Ross (2019) |
Amid all the backslapping, you got no real sense of just how funny Howard's awful anti-hero can be in his take on contemporary Ireland. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Sep 9, 2019
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No Score Yet | 50 Years of the Troubles: A Journey Through Film (2019) |
[It is ]an interesting evocation of a boyhood spent in Belfast by movie critic Mark Cousins, though you had to get beyond his mannered and somewhat arch vocal delivery. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Sep 9, 2019
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87% | Untouchable (2019) |
In her admirable film, director Ursula Macfarlane persuaded some of these women to tell their stories about [Harvey] Weinstein -- the majority of their recollections offered haltingly and with considerable signs of distress. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Sep 9, 2019
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No Score Yet | Keepers of the Flame (2018) |
Some of this was interesting... but the film had moved a long and unfocused way from its starting point about pension injustices and had turned instead into yet another laboured exercise in historical navel-gazing. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Aug 27, 2019
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100% | The Day Mountbatten Died (2019) |
Journalist Olivia O'Leary was eloquent, too, especially when observing that all of us on these two islands have the responsibility to ensure that conditions "do not encourage the breakout again of sectarian tensions". - Irish Independent
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| Posted Aug 26, 2019
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60% | Road to Brexit (2019) |
I chuckled a few times at the codology, while feeling it could have been much funnier. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Apr 1, 2019
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No Score Yet | Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect (2017) |
Mark Noonan's outstanding documentary, Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect [was]...made two years ago but screened this week to mark the recent death of the visionary Irishman who found fame in America. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Mar 25, 2019
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100% | Katie (2018) |
As the final credits rolled, it was hard not to feel that we still don't know what makes our greatest sportswoman tick. That, though, seems to be the way she wants it, and good luck to her. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Jan 22, 2019
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80% | Brexit (2019) |
Benedict Cumberbatch gave a bravura turn as Leave's chief strategist Dominic Cummings, though the viewer never learnt what made this Machiavellian character tick. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Jan 14, 2019
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No Score Yet | Barbra Streisand, Becoming an Icon (2018) |
Barbra Streisand: Becoming an Icon [is] an engrossing profile of the Brooklyn-born Jewish girl whose father died when she was a baby and whose witheringly stern mother saw her leaving home as a teenager for the bright lights of Manhattan. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Dec 18, 2018
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100% | Gun No. 6 (2017) |
The film made for chilling viewing. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Dec 12, 2018
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No Score Yet | The Flu That Killed 50 Million (2018) |
This documentary focused too much of its attention on British efforts to contain it and on British victims, too, but it was a powerful account of the epidemic that became known as the 'Spanish flu.' - Irish Independent
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| Posted Oct 1, 2018
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71% | Drinkers Like Me - Adrian Chiles (2018) |
The programme was an engagingly told cautionary tale for all of us who like a drink or two or more. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Sep 4, 2018
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No Score Yet | In the Name of Peace: John Hume In America (2017) |
This provided a glimpse of a more complex individual than the film was willing to countenance, and in the end we ended up knowing very little about the person it had come to praise. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Aug 14, 2018
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100% | Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) |
It's a startling performance, moving slowly but inexorably from barbed sweetness to outright rage, and it should take most viewers, especially men, right out of their comfort zone. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Jul 23, 2018
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