Console best movie i've ever seen.

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Fatboydim I had heard so many good things about this film. Poignant, sad, funny, gentle etc etc. However it's a missed opportunity. Pat Shortt portrays a man who is "Childlike". Whether he has some form of autism or not is not made clear, because it's a vague portrayal. Essentially the character never gets angry, rarely shows much emotion other than a general soft confusion. Smiles inanely a lot of the time. Does pointless jobs. As a portrayal of someone with Learning Difficulties it's lacking. People with LD, whether it's through severe epilepsy,Autism or Downs... have a range of emotions. In particular anger, frustration and a pent up sexual frustration. They get lonely, sad and also laugh and cry. Josie just grins. There was a real opportunity with this film to explore some of the issues people with LD face... Instead we got cardboard cut outs. All the characters may as well have worn t-shirts with, sad, sad and lonely, sad and lonely and drunk, sad and lonely and bully, sad and lonely and misunderstood. Every single character in the film was depressed, and had the same general malaise about them. The film has been praised for it's realism, I live in a small Irish town... during one of the most economically depressed times... and mostly people cover up their sadness... we'll all have a good moan and bitch, but the banter and humor is always there. None of the characters gradually revealed their inner thoughts or emotions... they were on display all the time. The only exception to this - everyone is miserable and showing it rule - was a cameo from the always reliable, George Costigan. It's certainly not a tragicomedy. I laughed only once - Josie's attempts to clear up after teenagers. As a drama it also lacks variation, because little happens and the incident that leads us to the film's inevitable conclusion is so slight that a viewer is bound to ask... Why now? After all Josie doesn't change at any point in the film. When he dances with a girl... it doesn't go far enough... When he watches the film with the teenage boy ... it doesn't go far enough... Both presented opportunities for the dramatist that he failed to follow through on.Yet it is enough for Josie to share the same fate as the puppies... And because the puppies are included we know that's the way Josie will choose to resolve his issues. I'm trying to be subtle in this review... but why bother? The film isn't... even the last frames of the film are hokey... a Horse that has been tethered in a field is now loose and free. Good grief!I have also heard good things about Mark O'Haloran's Adam and Paul - Again directed by Lenny Abrahamson - I'll give it a go at some point... but I don't hold out much hope. At the end of the film I just felt bored and disappointed.

Pascal Zinken (LazySod) Josie works in a garage in a small town. He mans the gas pumps, sells the oils and the magazines to the travelers. Only, the town is so small and the road is so little traveled that he hardly has anything to do. Josie has also lived in this town all his life and has worked in this same garage for almost just as long. When his boss asks him to take on the weekends as well he is up for the task - and when his boss offers to send a kid as a helping hand he accepts that kid too. All in all, Josie is a very easy guy that takes the world for what it is. Too bad the world does not fully understand that.Although somewhat predictable this film is a rather interesting one. The way the actors play out their roles make up for a glimpse of the grim reality people like Josie live in. All he wants is do good, all he gets is evil. The message is clear from the very start of the film but never starts to bore too much. This is purely due to the way the different characters get together and depict the pretty little village the film plays in - the message fits the persons and the town perfectly. When the ending comes it is dark and dreary, but fitting and only logical.9 out of 10 good people making bad choices

mikelez82 Garage is a 2007 realist (even hyper-realist) film by Irish director Lenny Abramson. The film centers on the daily life of Josie (a petrol station worker who lives in a small Irish village) and the social relations he holds with his neighbor villagers.One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the interpretation of Pat Shortt embodying the naïve Josie. The protagonist of the film is an adorable simpleton who enjoys his banal life and his boring employment at the petrol station. Despite of his utter solitude, everything seems to be alright for Josie, even when he is deliberately mocked he seems to be absolutely happy. He enjoys the pleasures of this routine but it will change when a teenager is designed to help him at the petrol station.The portrayal of Josie is carried out by means of using the camera as a mere spectator in the story, as an objective eye that witnesses the events. It shows us Josie as he really is, without taking into account the subjective point of view of the rest of characters, giving the film an intimate and melancholic mood.Another remarkable issue is that, with a low budget and an ordinary plot, Abramson achieves to tell a warm story, full of humanity, halfway between comedy and tragedy, in which a little piece of reality can be seen.Abramson takes great delight in using long sequences full of long shots, so the movie depicts the Irish countryside with a lot of outdoors sequences.Perhaps, the only negative thing about this film is its slow speed (regarding that it is only an hour and twenty minutes long). At some points this paused rhythm makes the movie tedious and difficult to bear, but it also seems that it is what the director intended: to make the audience stop and enjoy watching the details of each shot.

Noelia Rodríguez Sotelo Josie's innocence in Garage Garage is an interesting film which is marked by its symbolism and the typical Irish environment. Although Garage is a current film, it has many basic features of this type of melancholic film. Many melancholic elements of the film are personified on the protagonist, Josie. This character, in contrast, develops a different and decadent progression along the film. Josie is a charming and happy man who works in a gas station and he is the typical person who does not aspire to a great life, only a monotonous and superficial life. But when he meets a young boy, Josie experiments other pessimistic part of his life. This progression is a mixture between Josie's optimistic and superficial life and the pessimistic and, also, natural events of the life in which Josie is involved.On the one hand, Josie's progression as an adult is clarified along the film but, from my point of view, the lack of music in the film marks calm and monotony.On the other hand, in the middle of the film the music appears and this is the clue for the audience that the story, in this point of the film, is going to change. This change is the difficult progression in Josie's life, when the events are developing in a fluent way. In this sense, Josie begins to discover many unusual things in his life. For this reason, the actual Josie's personality is discovered and his innocence is clear in this point of the film. In my opinion, the innocence of this character is the essence of the film but, the point in which the pure Josie's innocence begins to harm the society, Josie is condemned.Apart from this, when the spectators watch this film, they are assimilating a terrible feeling of sadness and melancholy in relation to Josie's story, and especially, because of his pure innocence condemned by a corrupted society of this Irish village. The great turning of the story when the music appears in the film shows the second and decadent part of Josie's life and, from my point of view, many symbols appear along the film but actually, the audience realize of the symbols of the film, almost at the end of it, which are being used as a leitmotiv in the film and this is the most important clue of the film in order to understand the real and innocent Josie's life like the animals in the film. Animals, in this case, are a great symbol of basic instincts, innocence, isolation… and in my opinion, Josie and the animals suffer a parallel life.