Garage (2007)

Highly Recommended

Ireland/UK

Feature Film

Director: Leonard Abrahamson

Writer: Mark O'Halloran

Cinematographer: Peter Robertson

Composer: Stephen Rennicks

Cast: Pat Shortt, Conor Ryan, Anne-Marie Duff, Tommy Fitzgerald, John Keogh, Andrew Bennett, Tom Hickey, Denis Conway, George Costigan

A sweet and agreeable if rather slow and terribly lonely middle-aged man, who has spent his entire life in the same small western Irish town, and most of it working at the same small, independent petrol station, forms an unlikely friendship with a confused 15-year-old boy, who has recently started working at the garage on weekends, in Abrahamson’s subtly written, expressively shot, and affectingly acted character study. Iain.Stott

Read More

Mrs Brown (1997)

Cautiously Recommended

UK/Ireland/USA

Feature Film

Director: John Madden

Writer: Jeremy Brock

Cinematographer: Richard Greatrex

Composer: Stephen Warbeck

Cast: Judi Dench, Billy Connolly, Geoffrey Palmer, Antony Sher, Gerard Butler, Richard Pasco, David Westhead

Three years into her period of mourning, Queen Victoria sends for John Brown, a no-nonsense Scotsman who was a favourite servant of her late husband; gradually, an unlikely friendship develops, much to the chagrin of just about everyone else, in Madden’s beautifully acted and quietly moving if slightly cold and disjointed film. Iain.Stott

Read More

Return to Glennascaul: A Story Told in Dublin (1951)

Not Recommended

Ireland

Short Film

Writer/Director: Hilton Edwards

Cinematographer: Georg Fleischmann

Composer: Hans Gunther Stumpf

Cast: Michael Laurence, Orson Welles, Shelah Richards, Helena Hughes, John Dunne, Isobel Couser, Ann Clery

Strikingly shot and gently humorous, this otherwise rather stilted ghost story – involving a pair of gentlewomanly hitchhikers, a great old house, and a beloved antique cigarette case – is perhaps most notable for its impeccably delivered narration from Orson Welles. Iain.Stott

Read More

Waveriders (2008)

Cautiously Recommended

Ireland/UK

Feature Documentary

Director: Joel Conroy

Writers: Joel Conroy, Lauren Davies

Cinematographer: Daniel Trapp

Narrator: Cillian Murphy

Featuring: Kelly Slater, Richard Fitzgerald, Gabe Davies, Chris Malloy, Keith Malloy, Dan Malloy, Rabbit Kekai, Kevin Naughton, Craig Peterson

Joel Conroy presents a diverting and stylish if slightly unfocused look at Irish surfing, from pioneering Irish Hawaiian and Irish Americans to today’s professional and soul surfers on the west coast, mixing standard talking heads, stylised archive, and arresting action footage. Iain.Stott

Read More