Paul Kelly Movies

Two siblings hit the road in hopes of mending their broken family in this independent comedy-drama. Billy (Derek Cecil) is a twenty-something slacker who lives in a run-down Brooklyn tenement; he doesn't have a job or a proper apartment, but in exchange for running odd jobs the landlord lets him have a room in the basement. Billy doesn't have many friends and his closest companion is his pet rat, who he's named Frank, after his father. Billy's abusive, emotionally distant and hard-drinking dad abandoned the family when he was a young boy, and in many respects Billy has never recovered from the trauma. One day, Billy receives a very unexpected visit from his younger sister Lisa (Fiona Dourif). While Lisa wasn't as scarred by Frank's abandonment, she still feels the hurt and can't make sense of her relationships with men. After abruptly breaking up with her fiancée, Lisa finds Billy and tells him its time they tracked down Frank (Kevin Hogan) and clear away the emotional debris that's been weighing them down for years. Billy reluctantly agrees, but finding Frank is harder than they expected, and when they do locate him, nothing goes the way they hoped. Frank The Rat was the first feature film from writer and director Jim Cozza. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A devastated father struggles to find answers after a bomb detonated in the peaceful Irish town of Omagh claims the life of his twenty-one year-old son in this topical docudrama from writer/producer Paul Greengrass and director Pete Travis. In 1988 a group who referred to themselves as the "Real IRA" set a bomb that took the lives of thirty-one people in the Northern Ireland town of Omaga. In the aftermath of the explosion, soft-spoken mechanic Michael Gallagher (Gerard McSorley) was forever changed by the loss of his twenty-one year-old son. Determined not to let the same grim fate befall his neighbors, Gallagher took it upon himself to become the official spokesperson for the victim's families, challenging the government's official stand on terrorism and providing a voice for the grief-stricken families of the innocent victims killed in the blast. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Australian singer and songwriter Paul Kelly stars in (and wrote part of the musical score for) this unusual musical, which combines folk and country influences with the aboriginal sounds of the Outback to tell the story of a lost child and the divergent efforts to find her. A simple farmer (Paul Kelly) and his wife (Kaarin Fairfax) are the proud parents of a beautiful little girl (Memphis Kelly). One night, Father tells the girl a bedtime story in which dreamers answer the siren song of the moon; fascinated by the story, the restless girl wanders out of the house in the night to follow the moon, and in the morning her parents discover she is gone. After the father reports his daughter missing, the authorities put together a search party, including Albert (Kelton Pell), an Aborigine police offer with remarkable tracking abilities. The farmer, however, is a prejudiced man, and objects to having a black man on the search team, no matter what his abilities may be. Offended, Albert leaves the police force behind, and sets out to find the girl on his own; soon, the girl's mother joins him, convinced that Albert's knowledge is more valuable than her husband's ignorance. Produced for Australian television, One Night the Moon received its American premier at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The intertwined lives of four couples living in and around Sydney, Australia, form the structure for this drama masquerading as a whodunit. Andrew Bovell freely adapted his play, Speaking in Tongues, opening up the action, as the geography and topography of Sydney and its suburbs become major characters as well. The film opens with a shot of what looks like a corpse entangled in a thick stand of branches -- the title plant, which grows in profusion in Australia. Bovell and director Ray Lawrence take their time in explaining whose body that is and then slowly reveal, with no help from a number of red herrings, how it happened to be there. The principal players are Valerie Somers (Barbara Hershey), a psychiatrist with issues over her child, a murder victim; her husband, John Knox (Geoffrey Rush), an aloof professor whom she suspects of infidelity; Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia), a police detective cheating on his wife, Sonja (Kerry Armstrong), who is a patient of Valerie's. Zat's mistress, Jane O'May (Rachael Blake), is someone he met at a dancing class his wife dragged him to; she is estranged from her husband, Pete (Glenn L. Robbins). Their neighbors, Paula (Daniela Farinacci) and Nik D'Amato (Vince Colosimo), try to stay neutral in the O'Mays' split; she works days as a nurse and he's unemployed and minds their children. Suspicion around the disappearance of one character manages to enmesh all of the others. Bovell's stories are about secrets, real and imagined, and how they can poison relationships. The film virtually swept all the major awards at the Australian Film Institute's annual ceremony, though its reception in the States was mildly respectful. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Oliver Stone takes on professional football, a sport whose grace and delicacy are a good match for his filmmaking style. Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino), the head coach of the Miami Sharks, won back-to-back championships four years ago. But new team owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) has little enthusiasm for the finer points of the game and is concerned only with the bottom line. The longtime strongman of Tony's team has been "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid), a 39-year-old quarterback, but Christina balks at renewing his contract. When Cap is injured during a game, third-string rookie quarterback Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx) goes on in his place and becomes a major star. But Beaman is mostly interested in fame and money, and he has little regard for Tony and his teammates. Any Given Sunday also stars James Woods as the team's doctor, LL Cool J as a star running back, Jim Brown as a former football great turned Sharks' defensive coordinator, Ann-Margret as Christina's alcoholic mother, Bill Bellamy as a wide receiver, Elizabeth Berkley as Tony's favorite prostitute, and Charlton Heston as the football commissioner. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Outwardly respectable Australian wife and mother Carmen Duncan harbors a secret past. A former German terrorist, Duncan is sought by both the authorities and her former associates. One of these, IRA assassin Michael Aitkens, insists that Duncan share some of the loot she's squirreled away. She escapes Aitken's clutches, with both the money and her 15-year-old daughter Annie Jones in tow. Thus do the two female leads become the "moving targets" of the title--though unlike other targets, Duncan has the will and the wherewithal to fight back, and fight back hard. This tight little Australian chase thriller, which boasts a to-die-for rock music score, was based on When We Ran, a novel by Keith Leopold. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide