Angeline Ball Movies

Deliverance and Tailor of Panama director John Boorman returns to the director's chair for this tale of a hawkish businessman who slowly finds his life being taken over by the twin brother he never knew he had. Liam O'Leary (Brendan Gleeson) is a no-nonsense real-estate developer who isn't above greasing the politician's wheels a bit to get the permits he needs. His 20-year marriage to Jane (Kim Cattrall) has been stale for over a decade, and his adolescent son, Connor (Brian Gleeson), has most recently taken to communism as a means of showcasing his rebellious streak. Though Liam still dotes on his aging mother (Moira Deady), it's plain to see that his sister, Oona (Sinéad Cusack), is the favored child in the family. One day, stuck in traffic on the way home from work and frustrated at his inability to obtain planning permission for a multi-million pound stadium, Liam is shocked to see his spitting image approach his car and begin cleaning the windshield while begging for change. Now, after discovering that he was not only adopted but has an identical twin as well, Liam finds his life rapidly being taken over by a cunning doppelganger who has had enough of life on the streets, and has finally found a means of turning his luck around by simply stepping into the shoes of his more successful counterpart. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

First-time Irish writer/director Sean Walsh spent ten years making Bl,.m (Bloom), an adaptation of James Joyce's infamously difficult 1922 epic Ulysses. Set in Dublin on the day of June 16, 1904, the film attempts to make a visual reconstruction of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style. Following all the major themes of the original novel, it's bookended by the internal monologue given by the sexually driven Molly (Angeline Ball). Stephen Rea plays her husband, the introspective Jewish-Irishman Leopold Bloom. Hugh O'Conor plays the philosophical young writer Stephen Dedalus. Bloom premiered at the 2003 Taormina Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Directed by Harley Cokliss, An Angel for May follows a modern boy (Matthew Beard) living in Yorkshire, England, and his dog, who cross through a brick wall leading directly into the early 1940's. Tom (Beard) looks very strange to Sam Wheeler (Tom Wilkinson), who owns the property which Tom managed to land on. Sam, who lives with his adult daughter, Alison (Julie Cox), also provides shelter for a traumatized waif named May (Charlotte Wakefiled). May, who had been buried under the rubble when her entire family was killed in a bombing raid, sleeps with the dog outside and refuses to come inside the house even for meals. However, after she spends some time with Tom, she quickly progresses. Tom, meanwhile, is intent on finding his way back to the future. However, once he gets there, he realizes that he left something very important back in the past. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

After suffering a brutal rape, Marie (Katharina Wressnig) becomes agoraphobic, refusing to leave her house and remaining oblivious to events in the outside world. Though young women are being found dead and mutilated on local freeways, Marie takes in boarders, one of whom is Tom (Peter Sarsgaard), a cryptic young man who works as a cook on an offshore oil rig. Despite Marie's paranoid musings -- Tom begins lugging around garbage bags and locking the kitchen door to cook various meat dishes -- the two form a relationship. This relationship is first interrupted by the arrival of Marie's flirtatious sister Mignon (Angeline Ball) and then by Tom's sudden disappearance. Ironically, his absence gives Marie the ability to finally leave the house and thus get on with her life. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

John Boorman, who won the 1998 Cannes Film Festival's Direction award for this film, previously won the same Cannes award almost three decades earlier for his Leo the Last (1969) about an alienated aristocrat in a London slum. Shot in widescreen color (but printed in sharp black-and-white), The General is a biographical portrait of ruthless Irish crime lord Martin Cahill, shot down outside his home by a single assassin on August 18, 1994. After this opening, the film then unfolds as a lengthy flashback of the events that led to his death, sketching in the raw beginnings of the youthful Martin (Eamonn Owens of The Butcher Boy) and moving into the Dublin slum of Hollyfield to show the adult Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) and his link to a local cop, Inspector Ned Kenny (Jon Voight). Various thefts enable Cahill to support his wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy), his four children, and his sister-in-law Tina (Angeline Ball). As the years pass, Cahill rises as a mobster, bamboozling cops, constructing airtight alibis, pulling off a near-impossible jewel heist, and setting up a menage a trois with Frances and Tina. (Both actresses were seen previously in Alan Parker's The Commitments). ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

This British-Dutch-Hungarian biographical drama combines incidents from the life of novelist Feodor Dostoyevsky with a dramatization of his short novel The Gambler. The character of Polina in the novel was based by Dostoyevsky on Polina Suslova, his 1862-63 lover. In the tradition of Dennis Potter, this film mixes fiction with reality, opening in 1870 with a woman and child seeking someone in a casino at the German resort of Baden-Baden.

The story then leaps backward to 1866 St. Petersburg, where impoverished student Anna (Jodhi May) accepts a stenographic position with cantankerous 45-year-old Dostoyevsky (Michael Gambon), who lives with his epileptic stepson Pasha (William Houston). Dostoyevsky is writing serialized installments of Crime and Punishment. He has only 27 days to write a minimum of 160 pages on another novel for the publisher Stellovsky (Thom Jansen), who has covered his gambling debts. If Dostoyevsky doesn't meet this deadline, Stellovsky will acquire the rights to all of his current and future books. Anna quits but later comes back so she can pay for her father's funeral. In the process of getting Dostoyevsky's imagination to paper, Anna soon understands that The Gambler is autobiographical -- the tale of a young couple Polina (Polly Walker) and Alexei (Dominic West) at the casino in the fictional German resort Roulettenburg, where Alexei's gambling obsession has put him in debt. As the work on The Gambler continues, an attraction develops between the author and the secretary, and scenes from the work-in-progress are featured.

In real life, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina did indeed take shorthand on The Gambler, and she went on to become Dostoyevsky's second wife in 1867. Appearing as a gambling grandmother is movie veteran Luise Rainer. Scenes of St. Petersburg, Baden-Baden, and Roulettenburg were all shot in Hungarian locations. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

In the mid 1960s, scores of refugees from India illegally came to England looking for a better life and found themselves living the very lives they sought to escape. This British drama, chronicles the daily existence of one household of these illegal refugees. The tale centers on Amir who journeys to a grungy northern English industrial town via vegetable crate with only a few dollars to his name. He ends up staying in a ramshackle house with 17 other illegals, all of them men. They lead a dreary life working in a factory filled with others like them. The only bright spot in their lives is a weekly outing to the local cinema that shows Indian films during the daytime. Occasionally a whore visits the house and provides the men with sexual release. The leader of the house is Hussein Shah, a traditional patriarch. Upon his arrival, Amir is befriended by Sakib, a student who shows him the basic ropes of English living. Despite their humble lives, the men get on well. But one day, Hussein brings home a new illegal alien, a lovely blonde woman from Ireland and trouble ensues. The woman is unmarried and pregnant. To help her, Hussein allows a marriage of convenience between the woman and his smart-alecky nephew Irshad. The baby is born, but more trouble ensues when Hussein begins objecting to the woman's free-spirited ways, and his nephew's lack of respect. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This sprightly British drama speculates upon the origins of the anonymous painting, Two Nudes Bathing, which hangs in the Louvre. The painting depicts two beautiful, naked young women engaged in a tender act. The tale begins as a portrait painter makes his way to the home of the parsimonious Comte who wants his daughters painted au naturel without the usual frills and frippery. One of the women is preparing to marry. Comte wants to remember them as they are, pure, beautiful, and unsullied by the touch of a man. For years he has been obsessed with guarding their virginity, and even though he commissions the painter to depict them, the artist is not allowed to talk to, or make eye-contact with the lovelies. While they pose, the young women are guarded by a tongueless old woman. Still, these precautions do not prevent the curious maidens from asking the artist about sex at every opportunity. At first the artist hesitates, but soon he tells them what they want to know. Though the painter involves himself with a lusty servant girl, he cannot help but spy on the maidens while they bathe. The result is the notorious painting in which the nude girls are depicted with one of them daintily holding the nipple of the other. Naturally, the finished work causes quite a stir in Comte's prudish household. The American version has been edited down to 35 minutes. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Back in the Russia of 1918, Duncan's life was saved by fellow Immortal Drakov (Peter Firth).Out of gratitude, Duncan (Adrian Paul) promised never to fight or interfere with Drakov, no matter what the circumstances. 74 years later, Drakov, in the guise of security advisor Arthur Drake, has embarked upon a killing spree to prevent the signing of an international peace treaty. Duncan recognizes "Drake" and knows full well what he is up to -- but, bound by his promise, he can do nothing. Alas, by honoring his word, Duncan has placed two innocent lives in dire jeopardy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi