Matthew McNulty Movies

For years, scholars have debated the nature of the relationship between surrealist painter Salvador Dali and poet Federico Garcia Lorca; director Paul Morrison's Little Ashes delves into their personal interaction and their acquaintanceship with Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel, with whom Dali made L'Age d'Or and Un Chien Andalou. In 1922 Madrid, bohemian lifestyles are flourishing -- from the arrival of jazz music to the en vogue teachings of Sigmund Freud. As the tale opens, Salvador Dali (Robert Pattinson) is only 18, but his dreams of artistic glory lie poised in front of him; his outré personality and social attitudes soon draw the full-fledged attention of two from the in-crowd -- Lorca (Javier Beltrán) and Buñuel (Matthew McNulty). For a temporary period, the three become the most "in" clique in all of Spain and find themselves virtually defining the currents of modernism; however, Buñuel then leaves for Paris, and Salvador and Federico are thrust together even closer than before -- so close that one night, their relations suddenly cross the line from platonic friendship to something far more intimate. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Two English G.I.s find themselves blamed for the widespread corruption of the War in Iraq in this timely drama. Mark (Gerard Kearns) and his friend Shane (Matthew McNulty) are a pair of British soldiers who are sent to Iraq, where they've been assigned duty as guards in a holding facility for Prisoners of War. While the official command is that the prisoners are to be treated with care and respect, Mark and Shane soon learn this isn't always the practice, and that it's considered a good thing to occasionally rough up prisoners so that their compatriots will understand not to get cross with the British. While incidents of violence and humiliation are the exception rather than the rule, that changes after the base commander is killed in a terrorist attack, and Corporal Gant (Shaun Dooley) decides the prisoners should pay for the acts of the Iraqi insurgents. Before long, random torture and abuse of the prisoners is commonplace, and when Shane returns home, he shows photos of his misdeeds to his girlfriend Shelly (Naomi Bentley). When Shelly learns that Shane has been unfaithful to her, she hands Shane's photographs of the abuse of prisoners to a reporter, and soon Shane, Mark and their comrades are at the center of an international scandal. The British military is willing to back Gant and his superiors who condoned the abuse, but they're not about to defend soldiers like Mark and Shane, and soon they've been made scapegoats for crimes they committed but did not instigate. The Mark of Cain won the "Movies that Matter" Award (a prize sponsored by the international human rights group Amnesty International) at the 2007 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide