Brendan Gleeson

A couple of moderately-impressive action scenes can’t save Ron Howard’s ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ from being a complete wreck.

Suffragette Directed by Sarah Gavron Written by Abi Morgan United Kingdom, 2015 Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) directs the story of the British suffragette movement from the ground up. Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is a poor, working-class woman who has labored all her life for men at work and home. She toils for the survival of …

Song of the Sea is a beautiful film. Its vivid art style easily separates it from the prosaic sameness that currently grips much of mainstream animation. That’s the big advantage that animated films made by smaller outfits, such as Cartoon Saloon, have over the Disneys and Dreamworks of the world. But there’s a weakness to them as well, one that Song of the Sea stumbles on: a frustratingly muddled story approach.

Calvary Patrick Cassidy Varese Sarabande Records “You have to detach yourself.” That’s the advice Brendan Gleeson’s scruffy pillar of a priest gives to a fellow clergyman in Calvary, the second film from John Michael McDonagh, who’s quickly and quietly expanding beyond his notoriety as “Martin McDonagh’s brother.” Calvary dumps a truckload of guilt on the doorstep …

Director John Michael McDonagh wastes no time in establishing the stakes of Calvary. In a darkened confessional, Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) is told that he is going to die in a week. The man planning to kill the priest explains it is exactly because Father Lavelle has done nothing wrong that he is going to die. Of the two McDonagh brothers, John Michael is known for his irreverent comedy The Guard, but with this latest release he joins the ranks of the most fatalistic of Irish artists.

The Grand Seduction                                                                                                         …

Grabbers Directed by Jon Wright Written by Kevin Lehane Ireland, 2012 For a movie about aliens, Grabbers feels all-too-familiar. Reaching as far back as Ridley Scott’s Alien, Grabbers is a perfectly serviceable and well-cultivated collection of creature features, but, despite its earnest convictions, it lacks a certain novelty to garner any postmortem traction. The movie …