John Boland

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
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 6, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 6, 2020
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 23, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 9, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 9, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 9, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 27, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2019
60% Road to Brexit (2019) I chuckled a few times at the codology, while feeling it could have been much funnier. - Irish Independent EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 1, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 25, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 22, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 14, 2019
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 18, 2018
100% Gun No. 6 (2017) The film made for chilling viewing. - Irish Independent EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 12, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 1, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 4, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 14, 2018
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 23, 2018