A quiet little village, and especially a pretty young woman, falls under the spell of a charming, somewhat roguish stranger who suddenly appears one day. Read More »
Tag Archives: Ireland
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977) Joseph Strick, Bosco Hogan, T.P. McKenna, John Gielgud, Drama
Stephen Dedalus is a young man growing up in Ireland in the early part of the 20th century. Read More »
My Left Foot (1989) Jim Sheridan, Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Alison Whelan, Biography, Drama
Christy Brown is a spastic quadriplegic born to a large, poor Irish family. His mother, Mrs Brown, recognizes the intelligence and humanity in the lad everyone else regards as a vegetable. Eventually, Christy matures into a cantankerous writer who uses his only functional limb, his left foot, to write with.
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I Went Down (1997) Paddy Breathnach, Brendan Gleeson, Peter McDonald, Antoine Byrne, Action, Comedy, Crime
Fresh out of prison, Git rescues a former best friend (now living with Git’s girlfriend) from a beating at the hands of loan sharks. He’s now in trouble with the mob boss, Tom French, who sends Git to Cork with another debtor, Bunny Kelly, to find a guy named Frank Grogan, and take him to a man with a friendly face at a shack across a bog.
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True North (2006) Steve Hudson, Peter Mullan, Martin Compston, Gary Lewis, Drama, Thriller
The skipper of the Scottish trawler PD-100 has worked for more than thirty-two years to buy his fishing vessel but is bankrupt and near to lose his ship to the bank.
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The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) Ken Loach, Cillian Murphy, Pádraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham, Drama, History, War
In 1920, rural Ireland is the vicious battlefield of republican rebels against the British security forces and Irish Unionist population who oppose them, a recipe for mutual cruelty. Medical graduate Damien O’Donovan always gave priority to his socialist ideals and simply helping people in need. Just when he’s leaving Ireland to work in a highly reputed London hospital, witnessing gross abuse of commoners changes his mind. He returns and joins the local IRA brigade, commanded by his brother Teddy, and adopts the merciless logic of civil war, while Teddy mellows by experiencing first-hand endless suffering. When IRA leaders negotiate an autonomous Free State under the British crown, Teddy defends the pragmatic best possible deal at this stage. Damien however joins the large seceding faction which holds nothing less than a socialist republic will do. The result is another civil war, bloodily opposing former Irish comrades in arms, even the brothers.
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Queen and Country (2014) John Boorman, Callum Turner, Caleb Landry Jones, Pat Shortt, Drama
Year 1952. Bill Rowan is 18, dreaming his life away at the family’s riverside home, waiting to be called up for two years conscription in the Army. He swims each morning and yearns for a pretty girl who cycles past at that time on the tow path across the river. This idyll is shattered by the harsh realities of boot camp. He meets Percy, an amoral prankster, and together they plot the downfall of Sergeant Yeomans, their rigid tormentor. Percy and Bill are rivals and antagonists, but gradually forge a deep friendship. After basic training many conscripts are shipped out to fight the Chinese in the Korean War, but Bill and Percy are assigned to the claustrophobia of a closed, prison-like training camp where they act as instructors.
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High Spirits (1988) Neil Jordan, Peter O’Toole, Daryl Hannah, Steve Guttenberg, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
When Peter Plunkett’s Irish castle turned hotel is about to be repossesed, he decides to spice up the attraction a bit for the ‘Yanks’ by having his staff pretend to haunt the castle. The trouble begins when a busload of American tourists arrive – along with some real ghosts. Among the tourists are married couple Jack and Sharon. Sharon’s father holds the mortgage on Castle Plunkett, so she’s hoping to debunk the ghosts. Jack, on the other hand, after meeting pretty ghost Mary, is very eager to believe. Can there be love between a human and ghost? Jack and Mary are going to try and find out.
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