My Review of In The Name Of The Father (1993)

 

Written by Terry George And Jim Sheridan

Directed by Jim Sheridan

Gareth Peirce: "You got 15 years of blood and sweat and pain from my client - whose only crime was that he was bloody well Irish. And he was foolish, and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

Okay, continuing to watch more Irish movies this month, I went back to rewatch one that I had only seen once and not for the longest time. It's one of the more political themed and based on a true story. It's also got one of the best performances from Daniel Day-Lewis.

Taking on the role of Gerry Conlon, Day-Lewis played a man who started the movie being mistook for an IRA sniper. Gerry wasn't of course but he did steal from a prostitute and he had a rather strained relationship with his father, Giuseppe (Pete Postlethwaite). The latter didn't approve of a lot of Gerry's life choices.

Anyways the main crux of the film came down to Gerry and three of his friends - Paul Hill (John Lynch), Carole Richardson (Beatie Edney) and Paddy Armstrong (Mark Sheppard) being falsely accused the Guildford pub bombings and the Woolwich pub bombing. Undergoing police brutality and a trial, all four of them were given harsh sentences.

However, it wasn't just those four who received harsh sentences. Even poor Guiseppe ended up being a consequence of a corrupted system that wanted results for two high profile bombings. We saw through the interrogations that the police were concerned more with getting a conviction, even if it meant that they put the wrong people away.

In the confines of prison, both Gerry and Guiseppe had to deal with their own issues towards one another while Gerry also made other friends inside. Guiseppe died during his sentence and the movie also had Gerry working with solicitor Gareth Peirce (Emma Thompson) to get his sentence overturned. 

Gareth herself had to deal with both corruption and incompetence in order to help Gerry and the others regain their freedom. It's a bittersweet ending for Gerry, having lost his father and spent fifteen years of his life for something he didn't do. 

- There's some strong supporting performances from Paterson Joseph, Marie Jones, Gerard McSorley and Corin Redgrave.

- Gabriel Byrne had an executive producer role but distanced himself from the film due to creative liberties that Jim Sheridan took.

- Standout music: Bono and Gavin Friday's In The Name Of The Father and Sinead O'Connor's You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart.

- Chronology: The bombings too place in October and November 1974. The Guilford Four were released in 1989 and Maguire Seven in 1991.

In The Name Of The Father (1993) might take creative liberties with the events that really transpired but I will admit that Jim Sheridan's directing was great. There's excellent performances from Daniel Day-Lewis, Pete Postlethwaite and Emma Thompson.

Rating: 8 out of 10 

My Review of A Dark Song (2016)

 

Written And Directed by Liam Gavin 

Solomon: "H-hoo. I've seen things. I've seen gods. Demons. I let gods rain silver on me. And the dead and the damned - Most of us are damned you know?"

Sophia: "Have you seen anything that *scared* you?"

Solomon: "It all scares me."

Okay, this was one of those films I half watched a while back but for some reason I was in the mood to go back and give it a proper viewing. It's was something alright.

A movie that focused on a grieving mother named Sophia Howard (Catherine Walker). She's lost her son and was desperate to have some communication with him, even though he was dead. This would be where occultist Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram) stepped in.

It's been a while since I've truly loathed a character in a movie as much as I did Solomon. He's a vile character from start to finish and his abuse of Sophia genuinely made this a rather uncomfortable movie to watch. It also didn't help that Sophia seemed to be a bit too gullible at times.

Solomon subjected Sophia to a series of demeaning tasks (including one that went too far) before the latter finally snapped at him for good. I actually cheered when Sophia stabbed the annoying git and spent far too much of time wanting him to die a horrible death.

Saying that as awful as Solomon was to watch as a character, at least he knew his supernatural stuff. Sophia did get to talk to her son but also had to face some demons and do exactly to Solomon what he did to her. Personally, I think he deserved a lot worse.

- The book that Solomon was using as a guide was The Book Of Abramelin to summon a guardian angel.

- Solomon wanted to be invisible so he could away from people for the rest of his life.

- The movie premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh before getting a theatrical and digital release a year later.

- Chronology: Although this was filmed in Ireland, it was set in rural Wales.

A Dark Song made for an uncomfortable double hander before two desperate characters. Sophia was likable but often too gullible for her own good and Solomon crossed the lines between disillusioned and despicable. The scares are good as was the occult use.

Rating: 7 out of 10 

My Review of Whistle (2026)

 

Written by Owen Egerton 

Directed by Corin Hardy

Chrys: "What if I don't want to die?"

Ivy: "Then you shouldn't have been born."

So far this year and with one exception, every 2026 movie I've watched so far had been in the horror genre. That might not change any time soon as there's other movies I need to catch up this month.

This one was released last month but I caught up with it late last night. You've got a bunch of high school students, a religious hypocrite and a cursed whistle. The ideas were perfectly sound but the execution left a little bit to be desired.

The cursed whistle in question turned out to be a death whistle. If you want to die, just blow into it and death would soon follow. This was explained by occult collector Ivy Raymore (Michelle Farley). She explained it following the death of her grandson, Mason (Stephen Kalyn). It was needed exposition for this movie.

The group of students who had the misfortune to deal with the cursed whistle were a mixed bunch. There was Chrys Willet (Dafnee Keen), who had substance issues as well as dead parents. She was living with her cousin, Rel Taylor (Sky Yang). Throw in a jock named Dean Jackson (Jhaleil Swaby), his girlfriend Grace Browning (Ali Skovbye) and a love interest for Chrys named Ellie Gains (Sophie Nélisse).

With this group, they are mostly decent characters but largely they're scrambling to beat the cursed whistle while also having to deal with an annoying youth pastor/drug dealer Noah Haggerty (Percy Hines White). As a human antagonist, Noah's pretty annoying to watch, which did make his comeuppance a bit more satisfying to watch.

The love story between Chrys and Ellie drove some of the second half of the movie. The two of them were able to work together to outsmart the cursed whistle and there's decent chemistry between Dafnee Keen and Sophie Nélisse.

- A mid credit scene had a new student blow the whistle in front of the whole school. Nick Frost briefly appeared as the teacher Mr. Craven.

- Olmec alluded to Mexico, which was where the whistle originated from. Chrys was short for Chrysanthemum.

- Standout music: Divinyls Back To The Wall.

- Chronology: Months passed between the opening kill to the main story to the aftermath of the story.

Whistle (2026) was an okay teen horror film. Decent enough cast, main love story and scares. It's diverting, won't tax your brain but I'll be surprised if it's on anyone's favourite horror movie list by the end of the year.

Rating: 6 out of 10 

My Review of The Van (1996)

 

Written by Roddy Doyle 

Directed by Stephen Frears 

Bimbo: "I'm going to kill it."

Larry: "What?"

Bimbo: "I'm going to kill the poxy van."

In the final part of The Barrytown Trilogy and I'll admit that while I do like this movie, it's probably my least favourite of the three. Saying that, it's still a worthy watch.

As someone who's not a big football fan, I also have some flashbacks to how much of a big deal Ireland's performance in the World Cup in 1990 was for the country. It's a bit of a plot for this movie as well.

The focus here was on a baker named Brendan "Bimbo" Reeves (Donal O'Kelly). He lost his job but gained a van and decided to go into business with his friend, Larry (Colm Meaney). The business being to sell fish and chips to the locals. As business ideas went, it was a guaranteed success.

In fact for a good portion of the movie, there was a good team up with Bimbo and Larry as well as the former's daughter, Diane (Neilí Conroy). That was until the van itself got shut down due to poor hygiene, thanks to the rather officious health inspector, Des O'Callaghan.

There's a breakdown in friendship between Bimbo and Larry and there was also a look into the former's marriage to Maggie (Ger Ryan) but again, the focus was largely on Bimbo and Larry. The latter in particular resorted to extreme measures in order to get their friendship back on track.

- Again because of rights issues, Colm Meaney had to play Larry instead of Jimmy Rabbitte Sr.

- Neilí Conroy's brother, Rúaidhrí also appeared as Kevin and Brendan O'Carroll popped up as Weslie.

- Standout music: Frederick Loewe's Wand'rin' Star.

- Chronology: Once again, we're in Barrytown, Dublin, during the 1990 World Cup.

While it is the weakest of The Barrytown Trilogy, I still would recommend watching The Van. It's a good enough closing story to this trilogy of films and both Colm Meaney and Donal O'Kelly are on good form.

Rating: 7 out of 10 

My Review of The Snapper (1993)

 

Written by Roddy Doyle

Directed by Stephen Frears

George: "Sharon, please, I have to talk. I'm tormented!"

Sharon: "You're tormented? You've made me the laughing stock of Barrytown, I can't go out without being jeered at. You're tormented? You prick ya!"

If I ever compile a list of Top 10 Irish movies (and I really should at some point), I promise that this particular movie will be very high on that list. I've seen it a ridiculous amount of times and it's without a doubt the best movie in The Barrytown Trilogy. I genuinely mean that.

Had rights issues not been a thing, this would've been directly connected to The Commitments but alas they were, so the Rabbitte family became the Curly family for this movie alone. Don't worry, that doesn't negatively impact the overall story as such.

Our protagonist would be twenty year old supermarket worker Sharon (Tina Kellegher). She's just found that a drunken one night stand with her best friend's father has resulted in an unexpected pregnancy. Of course there's her own family to break that news to.

Ireland in the 1990s wasn't always the most progressive with issues like this but here, Sharon had a support system. Both her father, Dessie (Colm Meaney) and Kay (Ruth McCabe) accepted that they were going to be grandparents and Sharon's five siblings also seemed to be unfazed about her being pregnant as well.

Sharon even had the support of her friends - Yvonne (Karen Woodley), Jackie (Fionnuala Murphy) and Mary (Deirdre O'Brien). Except when it was revealed that it was Yvonne's creepy father, George Burgess (Pat Laffan) that slept with Sharon and was the father of her child. That certainly created an even split in the friends group.

Anyways, the rest of the film dealt with Sharon being something of a local pariah with tension in her own family before the movie ended up with her giving birth to a girl. Of all the names and in spite of her insistence that it was a Spanish sailor who did the deed, Sharon willingly chose to name the girl Georgina. I don't think she thought that one through to be fair.

- Sharon's siblings for the movie were Craig (Eanna MacLiam), Darren (Colm O'Byrne), Sonny (Peter Rowan), Lisa (Joanne Gerard) and Kimberley (Ciara Duffy).

- Brendan Gleeson popped up as Dessie's well meaning but slightly dim friend, Lester. 

- Standout music: Lick The Tins Can't Help Falling In Love.

- Chronology: Set in 1990s Barrytown, Dublin. The book came out in 1990 itself.

I absolutely love The Snapper. Yes, it's a topical film that came out at a rather pivotal time in Ireland but it's also a deeply funny and heartfelt movie as well. Both Tina Kellegher and Colm Meaney are brilliant throughout the whole thing.

Rating: 9 out of 10 

My Review of The Commitments (1991)

 

Written by Dick Clement And Ian La Frenais And Roddy Doyle

Directed by Alan Parker

Dean: "You don't think, eh, well, like maybe we're a little white - for that kind o' thing."

Jimmy: "Do ya not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud. I'm black an' I'm proud!"

Seeing as it's the month of March, I do want to try and get a few Irish films in as best I can and there's a certain trilogy that I've been meaning to review for a while now. Yup, it's The Barrytown Trilogy of course.

Starting with this one, what do you do with a group of strangers who want to form their own soul band? That was something that working class lad Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) was about to find out as he really wanted to break into the music scene and couldn't do it all by himself.

Nope, he needed a band who could play instruments and could sing soul music like he could. This band would be called The Commitments and it's members were definitely a lively bunch of people, who brought their own talent and chaos into the group.

The back up singers included Bernie McGloughlin (Bronagh Gallagher), Natalie Murphy (Maria Doyle Kennedy) and Imelda Quirke (Angelina Ball). All three women would be seduced by trumpet player Joey Fagin (Johnny Murphy). This caused a certain degree of tension within the group itself.

The rest of the group included lead singer Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong), guitarist Outspan Foster (Glen Hansard), keyboardist Steven Clifford (Michael Ahearne), alto saxophonist Dean Fay (Félim Gormley) as well as bassist Derek Scully (Kenneth McCluskey) and drummer Billy Mooney (Dick Massey). It's a large group of characters to focus on.

As a band, The Commitments actually did have talent and were even securing some good gigs until one of them lead to disaster and the band's eventually dissolution. There's a nice montage towards the end that showed how each of the groups lives changed and in most cases, for the better tbh.

- The other two movies in this trilogy are The Snapper (1993) and The Van (1996). Colm Meaney played Mr Rabbitte in this movie but different characters in the other ones.

- If you're a fan of The Corrs (it was the 1990s), Andrea had played Sharon Rabbitte while her siblings had smaller roles here.

- Standout music: Mustang Sally, Dark End Of The Street and Try A Little Tenderness.

- Chronology: Roddy Doyle's book came out in 1987 and it's set in the Northside of Dublin.

The Commitments gets The Barrytown Trilogy off to an excellent start. It's a riot of a film with a brilliant cast, a brilliant soundtrack and a nice exploration into the working class and aspirations for more. How can anyone not be entertained by this one?

Rating: 8 out of 10 

My Review of The Beauty: "Beautiful Betrayal"

 

Written by Ryan Murphy And Matthew Hodgson 

Directed by Michael Uppendahl 

Diana (re Cooper): "The rebirth has begun."

And we're into the finale - or will it be series finale? If it's the latter, then Ryan Murphy learned nothing when he ended the likes of Ratched and Grotesquerie on cliffhangers. Hopefully the same fate isn't awaiting this one.

To this finale's credit, it's an improvement on the penultimate with three plot strands being weaved into one another with decent results. Even the Bella plot suddenly became a lot more interesting as a result of this episode.

Bella met up with the hunky Conor (Carson Rowland) who offered to sleep with her to pass on the Beauty. Conor also took an extra dose and Bella became horribly mutated as a direct result. It's probably the most sci-fi looking moment we've had in the entire show.

Bella's grotesque transformation was not only pitiful to look at but it became another reason for Byron to grow a conscience. Yes, our villain of the piece finally realised that his little product was causing a 17% rate of damage. What also spurred this change of tack? Oh yes, Byron's dopey sons.

Being good looking did nothing to improve Tig and Gunther's IQ as they decided to inject Franny with the Beauty. Franny now looked like Nicola Peltz Beckham and she wasn't happy about being younger. In fact, her reasoning for it not only made perfect sense in general but it was the thing to get through to Byron. That also put both Byron and Tig at odds with each other.

Tig aligned with Diana and they had a reverse for the Beauty that Cooper was willing to try. The cliffhanger being everyone reacting to the reversed version of Cooper. Do we get Evan Peters back next season? Will there even be a next season? 

- Franny II was styled the same way that Isabella Rossellini was in Death Becomes Her. It was a nice nod.

- Ray was killed off screen and Gunther didn't seem to be part of Tig's attempts to usurp Byron.

- Standout music: Guns N' Roses Sweet Child O' Mine.

- Chronology: From where the penultimate episode left off.

Beautiful Betrayal made for a strong enough finale. The main plots looped together rather nicely but has the show done enough to get a second season? I bloody hope so.

Rating: 7 out of 10

My Review of The Beauty: "Beautiful Beauty Day"

 

Written by Ryan Murphy And Matthew Hodgson 

Directed by Michael Uppendahl 

Student (re Tina): "She got the shot."

To get this one thing out of the way first - I would have taken these last two episodes, condensed parts of this one and merged it with the last episode. This was a complete filler episode that probably needed to happen earlier in the season or not at all.

I mean it did pick up from where Cooper had been transformed into a pre-teen and Jordan doing her best to reassure. The reality was that Jordan had no idea if Cooper would ever grow up and I think Cooper knew that as well.

On the other hand, I liked the bond that Jordan has formed with both Jeremy and the Assassin. Some snarky banter, both of them seemed surprisingly sympathetic to Cooper's current predicament. Cooper remained determined to actually stop Byron in his tracks.

Then there's Beauty Day. It came and went and The Beauty itself was spreading like wildfire among the American population. The focus on most of this episode was on the unfortunate Bella Grant (Emma Halleen).

Bella wanted to get The Beauty having witnessed a formerly dumpy classmate named Tina get the desired results as well as an influencer she followed online. Bella's parents on the other hand weren't going to let her do, rightly pointing out the possible side effects of the treatment.

The last scene saw Bella being openly envious of her friend Ruthie (Annabelle Wachtel/Paige McGarvin) being turned so dramatically by the process. Ruthie explained to Bella there was another way fot her to get the treatment. Then the episode abruptly ended.

- Bella's father was using Ozempic and this episode was rather critical of that too.

- Emma Halleen who played Bella previously appeared in American Horror Stories episode, Bestie. 

- I think people were way too calm about Tina being aggressive and even that classmate starting his transformation in the middle of class.

- Chronology: A week since the events of Beauty Day.

Beautiful Beauty Day was pure filler as an episode. It's fine for what it is but it didn't need to be it's own episode. I would've merged these last two episodes together.

Rating: 6 out of 10