Marie Jones Movies
Sixty-five years after making his screen debut as a young stoker in co-directors Noël Coward and David Lean's World War II drama In Which We Serve, Richard Attenborough perfects the balance between epic story and intimate tale with this drama starring Shirley MacLaine and Neve Campbell as a mother and daughter who find a relic from the past sparking an incendiary series of events. The year is 1991, and as a small American town mourns the passing of beloved World War II veteran Chuck Harris, his wife Ethel (MacLaine) numbs herself with alcohol to the point where she completely neglects her grieving daughter Marie (Campbell). Later, after Marie receives a telephone call from a boy in Northern Ireland who claims to have recently discovered a ring belonging to Ethel, a mystery nearly five decades in the making comes slowly into focus as the story drifts back into Chuck's wartime past and the days when he and Ethel first formed their powerful bond. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, (more)
Brian Kirk's gothic thriller Middletown excoriates the actions and attitudes of the Irish Catholic clergy by honing in on one psychotically deranged fire-and-brimstone preacher. Matthew MacFadyen is Gabriel Hunter, a priest fresh from missions work in Africa. After 15 years of service in the field, Gabriel returns to his hometown in Ireland to occupy the now-vacant pulpit. Once there, he re-encounters three members of his working-class brood: his father, Bill Hunter (Gerard McSorley); his younger brother, the service station attendant Jim (Daniel Mays); and Jim's expectant wife Caroline (Eva Birthistle), who runs the local speakeasy. The family welcomes Gabriel home, but from the first moments of his arrival, he projects a violent, hair-trigger temper; relentless, psychopathic bursts of unchecked anger; and a sadistic obsession with inflicting pain and cruelty on everything and everyone around him -- from squelching live mice beneath his heels to strangling the neck of a chicken that he seizes during a cockfight. From the pulpit, Gabriel uses sermons to relentlessly damn the members of his congregation for their sins, including all activity at the local pub, which he perceives as a den of iniquity. When Gabriel hears Caroline's refusal to have her child baptized, the statement pushes him completely over the edge and triggers a string of increasingly violent acts that will bring the entire community to its knees -- and threaten the lives and safety of Bill, Jim, Caroline, and the newborn baby. Daragh Carville authored the script. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matthew MacFadyen, Daniel Mays, (more)
In director Johnny Gogan's deliberately paced political thriller Mapmaker, an outsider in a small Northern Irish village finds himself embroiled in a old conflict between the IRA and the local forestry department. Hired by the Northern Ireland parish of Rosveagh to prepare a tourism map, cartographer Richie Markey (Brian F. O'Byrne) sets about his task, only to find some archeological sites are in danger of being destroyed. Raising his concerns with forestry manager Robert Bates (Brendan Coyle), Markey quickly suspects something sinister lies behind the destruction when Bates brusquely ignores his pleas. Shortly thereafter, Markey learns that a previous survey team failed in mapping the region when one of its members, one Peter Nolan, disappeared after being accused of informing on a couple of IRA men that were killed in connection to a soldier's death. Despite receiving warnings to stop his work, Markey carries on until he discovers Nolan's body and comes to the rather startling conclusion that his completed map may very well solve the mystery surrounding Nolan's death. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brian F. O'Byrne, Susan Lynch, (more)
- 2000
Mary McGuckian directs this bleak biopic about famed Manchester United soccer star George Best, who dumped his career down the drain with booze, brawling, and drugs. The film charts Best's (John Lynch) rise from Belfast, to fame, to dissipation. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Lynch, Ian Bannen, (more)
