Absolutely brilliant

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds) is a widower with two kids in an Irish seaside town. He experiences strange visions. His father-in-law is dying in a nursing home. He volunteers at the annual literary festival. The arrogant famous writer Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn) is a married womanizer who is trying to rekindle an affair with fellow writer Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle). Lena and Michael develop chemistry as the two men struggle for Lena.As a horror movie, it's not a scary one. This is something much more an old slow quiet moody ghost story romance with some jump scares. Aidan Quinn's character is really off-putting and I wish his scenes with Iben Hjejle can be cut back. I also wish the kids are bigger parts of the movie. The saving grace is Ciarán Hinds and the power of his performance. He's quite compelling in every scene he's in. I do wish it ends with more drama.

A curious movie in which Ciaran Hinds, a recent widower with two young children, begins to have experiences that involve ghosts of people he knows or, in one case, a soon-to-be ghost. The visions or whatever they are tend to occur at night but are terrifying.The story takes place in the Irish city of Cobh, where a writer's festival is taking place. (Yes, in Ireland, at least, serious writers are still taken seriously.) Hinds is hired as a limo driver and guide for a young British blond,Iben Hjejle, who is desperately trying to shed herself of the attentions of a self-indulgent American writer and former lover, Aidan Quinn.With no one else to turn to, and in anguish, Hinds befriends Hjejle and tells her of his visions. Hinds has also written some stories about ghosts, autobiographical we presume, and Hjejle takes his manuscript to London with her, after leaving Hinds with a warm good-bye kiss and inviting him to visit her at any time.It has a few shocking moments, not particularly well done. But it's an adult movie, in no way insulting, with some agreeable directorial touches, good performances, and fine casting. Hjejle is attractive without being a glamorous young sexpot. And Ciaran Hinds has the face of Humphrey C. Earwicker, the face of everyman. He looks as if he'd just stepped out of a factory that made toothpaste tubes.It's neatly photographed, it captures Ireland's rainy temperament, and has several other virtues but it's sluggish, a kind of slice of life, in which events take place deliberately but accidentally, the way they do in reality. They don't rush after one another as they do in most films. I doubt that it will appeal to everyone but if you have patience and time, you should find this an interesting diversion.

During the past few years, Ireland has largely made news due to its economic collapse. But one of the other things to come from the Emerald Isle was Conor McPherson's odd movie "The Eclipse". It focuses on a recently widowed man (Ciarán Hinds) who starts seeing eerie things while developing a relationship with a writer (Iben Hjejle). I should say that the movie has an overall interesting plot, contrasting the man's eerie visions with his struggle with an obnoxious author (Aidan Quinn) for the writer, but has sort of a vague, abrupt conclusion. As with a lot of thrillers, it seems like the sort of movie that they probably made knowing that it wasn't going to be any kind of groundbreaking movie. Still, a few scenes are certain to make you jump!

The Eclipse has lots of good things about it, but in the end, the pieces don't hold together. Part of the problem is the editing and writing. There are many long shots - beautiful - with the most peculiar music playing, a mixture of bad Benjamin Britten and Philip Glass, and it goes on and on, setting a vague, angsty, weird mood. The story is a wisp, and the writing, while good, doesn't fill the film. The interior sets as well as the gorgeous Irish country side are beautiful, but some scenes are so badly shot that you can hardly see what's going on.I kept watching because - besides expecting a payoff - the acting and characters are appealing. Hinds is great - he holds a lot in, myriad emotions flicker across his face, he clearly has a large interior life. The female lead grew on me, although her character is odd and prickly. Quinn, fabulously good, plays a character who's just a plot device to get the others in the right places, but he's so vivid, full-realized, pathetic and despicable at the same time, that the plot should have served him better. When the three leads get together, the film changes, and it's charged, strong, unpredictable, real, surprising.We care about the emotional subject - unresolved grief, the spiritually or psychologically open states we can find out selves in, and how to move on and in to our lives. But it's as if half the film got left on the editing floor - the half with more acting and less music. It's like there are holes in the movie, filled with music. I know there was more there, but we can't see it. Worth checking out anyway for the acting.