Volume 3, Issue 5
Agnes Brown
Anjelica Huston
The Irish value family life second only to land. Many of the best tales regarding Ireland and its people in recent years relate to the complexity of familial relationships. All too often, the film versions of these stories are either one dimensional or so accurate in portrayal as to be deeply disturbing. Let's look at one of each.
Agnes Brown, improbably starring Anjelica Huston, is an altogether too stage Irish work that could have been much better in the telling and raised above a pedestrian story replete with some of filmdom's favorite clichés.
Agnes is widowed and left to raise a passel of children, not an uncommon lot for women anywhere whose men work or fight in wars. The film is set in the late 1960's and we come across Agnes and her brood in the throes of the quotidian struggle for survival.
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Volume 3, Issue 4
Return to me
Directed by Bonnie Hunt
Every once in a while there is a film that warrants more recognition that what the box-office return reveals - as if that is any way to judge a film. Return to me is what filmmaking is all about, so don't look for it at the theater - get it at your video store.
The film is an art form that conveys human emotion. This slice of life in Chicago reveals the conviviality of family and friends in the melting pot of America. O'Reilly's Italian Restaurant is the center of this story of an Irish immigrant, the affable Caroll O'Connor, and his brother-in-law, Robert Loggia, the Italian chef who dotes on O'Reilly's daughter, played by Minnie Driver. Driver's character, Grace Briggs, is a lovely young woman who has a bad heart and is on the waiting list to receive a new one if time allows. And time is running out. As fate would have it, a heart becomes available through one of life's tragedies. This is a story of coping with the malady of life, hope and love.
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Volume 3, Issue 4
Angela's Ashes
Directed by Alan Parker
Angela's Ashes is so stark that a viewer will not wish to recall it in any part but will involuntarily. Transferring the Frank McCourt best seller to the screen was fraught with enormous problems that had to be overcome by director Alan Parkman in order to make a film that would be as wildly popular in the US market as his work in The Commitments. It was an impossible task.
Unquestionably, Ashes is a film that pulls incredible beauty out of abject poverty and it is a tale that compelled millions of American readers to keep the book at the top of the New York Times list for months.
When, then, did it turn into such a box office shlub in the US? The faithfulness of the screenplay to McCourt's book may hold the answer.
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Volume 3, Issue 3
Dancing at Lughnasa
Intra-family plots, treachery and quandaries are not only the stuff of Ireland's greatest literature but also of its most colorful history. And while Dancing at Lughnasa was a bomb at the American box office because of its narrow focus, it succeeds as a story and film because of its microscopic look at a microcosm of Irish life.
The ubiquitous Meryl Streep creditably plays Kate Mundy, the oldest of five unmarried sisters living and struggling in Depression-era, pre WWII Ireland. While all the Mudy girls contribute to family sustenance through odd jobs and piecework, Kate's wages from teaching are the main income for the sisters and the beloved Michael, illegitimate son of one of younger sisters.
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Volume 3, Issue 3
War of the Buttons
Over the past 15 years so much cinematic effort has been put into historical, urban and political aspects of Ireland it seems filmmakers have forgotten about telling tales of rural, every day Ireland and its complex social elements. That's not the case and here's a look at two films that fill the bill.
War of the Buttons is a delightful, semi-sweet comedy about the conflict between two rival groups of boys from Irish villages and how they conduct their intense combat within the confines of a child's rules for war.
As the title suggests, buttons are the spoils of the war as well as the ammunition. The boys of each village are portrayed by an extraordinarily talented group of youngsters and the characterizations will be immediately recognizable to anyone who grew up among a bevy of comrades in slingshots.
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Volume 3, Issue 2
Boston Irish Film Festival adds credence to growing Irish "renaissance"
The Boston Irish Film Festival began as a one time event in April 1999 called Split/Screen at the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, MA. Running over two weekends, Split/Screen showcased approximately 25 Irish and Irish-related features, documentaries and short-films produced from the 1920s to the present day. Guest speakers included award-winning Irish filmmaker Cathal Black and renowned film scholar Kevin Rockett. The Second Annual Boston Irish Film Festival (Boston College and the Harvard Film Archive in March, 2000) featured musician Phil Coulter, novelist/screenwriter Colin Bateman, and filmaker Fergus Tighe as guests. This past April the Third Annual Boston Irish Film Festival was held at the Harvard Film Archive apparently establishing itself as a permanent event.
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Volume 3, Issue 1
An Ordinary Decent Criminal
Kevin Spacey, Linda Fiorentino
Michael Lynch is a suave, sarcastic and sexy man: an ordinary decent criminal who robs from the rich but lives with the poor. He loves his wife, Christine, her sister Lisa, his children, his gang and, above all, his unique way of life.
With hallmark panache, he dreams up robberies which rarely fail to endear him to the public. He challenges authority at every turn, a practice that culminates in the ultimate art theft from Dublin's most prestigious gallery and leaves the police, Interpol and the rest of the criminal fraternity dumbfounded.
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