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Top Five Irish Movies You May Have Missed

Oh, St. Patrick’s Day. Of all the misappropriated and commercialized Saints days, you are my favourite.

After a night of Pogues music and beer you can chew, you might choose to unwind by watching The Commitments or, if you’ve gotten a bit riled up, In The Name of the Father. But maybe you’re looking to expand your horizons when it comes to the cinema of the Emerald Isle. Here are a few Irish gems that may have passed you by.

Bloody Sunday (2002)

Based on Don Mullan’s book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday (cue Larry Mullen Jr), an account of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland, 1972. Spare, harsh, and riveting, the film shows how outrage is born among a group of people who can’t actually believe what is happening to them. Directed by King of Bourne Paul Greengrass and starring trusty James Nesbitt (Waking Ned Devine, Hyde).

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Once (2006)

If you haven’t gotten around to this one, get there–it’s the perfect remedy to a hangover. Admittedly, it helps if you like music, as a large part of the film is tied up in performance. But this gentle, quiet story replaces sex with art, and makes that enough, which in turn makes it the most romantic movie of 2006. I read recently that stars Glen Hansard (of The Frames) and Marketa Irglova just broke up in real life, which is a shame. But John Carney’s microscopic-budget little-movie-that-could will surely hold up over time.

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The Butcher Boy (1997)

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that my love for Patrick McCabe’s novel The Butcher Boy literally knows no bounds. I was fully prepared not to like the movie, because it seemed an impossible feat to translate the fierce, darling insanity of Francie Brady onto the big screen. But McCabe cowrote the screenplay with director Neil Jordan, and Jordan hit it out of the park. Eamonn Owens, in his screen debut, gives one of the best performances ever delivered by a child actor. Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, V For Vendetta), Brendan Gleeson (see number one), and Ian Hart (Backbeat, Hollow Reed) keep Owens on his toes. Oh, and Sinead O’Connor shows up as the Virgin Mary.

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The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006)

Ken Loach directed this gut-wrenching little masterpiece. It’s the story of two brothers caught up in the split in the Republican movement precipitated by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. It’s almost redundant to describe Loach’s work as unflinching, but it’s a tall order, with a subject matter as frequently romanticized/demonized as the IRA, to play it straight. (Case in point: remember when Rose McGowan told reporters at the TIFF press conference for Fifty Dead Men Walking that she would have supported the IRA? Yeah, I know.) The intensity of the first half hour approaches the edge of tolerable, but Loach reigns it in tight. Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Red Eye), Padraic Delaney (The Tudors), and Liam Cunningham (Dog Soldiers, Hunger) keep you pinned to your seat, even when you’d rather bury your face in your hands.

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In Bruges (2008)

OK, fair enough–this one doesn’t take place in Ireland. (It takes place, of all places, in Bruges.) But it represents all that is right and good in Irish film today. We’ll start with writer/director Martin McDonagh, a celebrated Irish playwright (whose play The Pillowman might be the best piece of dramatic literature written in this century). McDonagh understands drama in a way that is fervent and unrelenting. But he’s also completely hilarious. Enter Irish favourites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two hitmen sent to Bruges by their boss, played by Ralph Fiennes, to get out of a hot situation. This movie is brutally, devastatingly, fantastically good. Farrell and Gleeson make an extraordinary duo, and as the movie flops and writhes its way toward the conclusion, their characters leave off the actors playing them. It’s tough to forget that Colin Farrell is Colin Farrell, but you will here. And the payoff is huge.

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