Fricker, Brenda

A Time to Kill

You wouldn't know it by watching the Batman movies they collaborated on, but this smart adaptation of John Grisham's novel proves that director Joel Schumacher and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman have some talent when the right project comes along. Schumacher had previously directed Grisham's The Client, and brought equal craft and intelligence to this story about a young Southern attorney (Matthew McConaughey, in his breakthrough role) who defends a black father (Samuel L. Jackson) after he kills two men who raped his young daughter. Sandra Bullock plays the passionate law student who serves as McConaughey's legal aide and voice of conscience in the racially charged drama. Added to the star power of the lead roles is a fine supporting cast, including Kevin Spacey, Ashley Judd, and Oliver Platt. --Jeff Shannon

John Grisham's bestseller A Time to Kill hits the screen with incendiary force, directed by Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever, The Client). Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey and Kevin Spacey portray the principals in a murder trial that brings a small Mississippi town's racial tensions to the flashpoint. Amid a frenzy of activist marches, Klan terror, media clamor and brutal riots, an unseasoned but idealistic young attorney mounts a stirring courtroom battle for justice. The superb ensemble also includes Brenda Fricker, Oliver Platt, Charles S. Dutton, Ashley Judd, Patrick McGoohan, Chris Cooper and both Donald and Keifer Sutherland. These and other talents make A Time to Kill "one of the year's most powerful films" (Jeffrey Lyons, SNEAK PREVIEW/ABC WORLD NEWS NOW).

Angels in the Outfield

This effects-heavy, 1994 remake of the 1951 film starring Janet Leigh and Keenan Wynn is all computer-generated pizzazz, with none of the charm or imagination of the original. Aimed squarely at children this time, the story focuses on a boy who gets some divine intervention on behalf of his favorite ball club. Christopher Lloyd plays the head angel, and Danny Glover is good as the team's manager, but the real star of the film--for better or worse--is the software that makes a glowing, celestial presence on the field seem real. --Tom Keogh

Catch the movie that flew over the fence and into the hearts of millions of cheering fans! It's Disney's ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD, the feel-good film of the year about a young boy praying for a father -- and a struggling baseball team praying for a pennant. Danny Glover plays George Knox, the frustrated coach of the California Angels, a ragtag team of major-league misfits who are down on their luck. But things begin to look up when 11-year-old Roger, their biggest fan, starts giving Knox some winning tips from a real live angel named Al (Christopher Lloyd). The team miraculously climbs back into the pennant race ... all the while learning to believe in themselves. With its heavenly mix of outrageous comedy, dazzling special effects, and amazing baseball action, Disney's ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD is an entertainment home run for the whole family!

So I Married an Axe Murderer

Mike Myers's first feature role without his Wayne's World wig is a performance at odds with the best interests of the movie. Myers plays a single guy who always manages to find something seriously wrong with each of his girlfriends. His new love (Nancy Travis), a butcher, may be the perfect woman, except for one thing: she might be a "black-widow" killer who prefers dispatching husbands with a sharp instrument. Robbie Fox's original script has a fine shape and strong, black-comedy material within it. But Myers creates unnecessary dissonance by playing a variety of characters (including an irascible Scotsman like the one he often played on Saturday Night Live) and accenting his skills as an improvisational comic (such as impersonating the soothing cadences of a massage therapist). It's not that Myers isn't funny doing all that, but it has nothing to do with the movie. Directed by Thomas Schlamme (Miss Firecracker). --Tom Keogh

My Left Foot (Special Edition)

Dramatization of the life of Christy Brown, an artist paralyzed by cerebral palsy.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 16-AUG-2005
Media Type: DVD

Daniel Day-Lewis won a much-deserved Oscar for his wily, passionate performance as Irish artist and writer Christy Brown, whose cerebral palsy kept him confined to a wheelchair. Filmmaker Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father) adapts Brown's own autobiography for this spirited piece, focusing on the sometimes-difficult fellow's formative years in his large family and in love with sundry women. Day-Lewis is inspired, and Brenda Fricker (also a recipient of an Oscar for her part in this movie) is almost luminous as Christy's dedicated mother. So, too, are Ray McAnally as the hero's stormy father, and Hugh O'Conor (The Young Poisoner's Handbook) as the child Christy. All in all, this is a complete pleasure for viewers. --Tom Keogh

The Field

After scoring an art-house hit and Oscar nominations for his previous film, My Left Foot, Irish director Jim Sheridan made this ambitious and hard-hitting drama, set in Ireland during the 1930s, about one man's obsession with a plot of land that his family has tended for generations. The results are decidedly mixed, and it's obvious that this kind of tragic allegory is better suited for the stage (where it originated as a play by John B. Keane). What makes the film worthwhile is the Oscar-nominated performance by Richard Harris as "Bull" McCabe, the fiercely stubborn man who's nurtured a prime field of rented land for decades, only to lose it when the owner auctions the land to an unwelcome American (Tom Berenger). Rather than sacrifice his life's work to this brazen invader, McCabe wages a personal war with powerfully tragic results. It's unfortunate that this potent drama never really connects on an emotional level, but Harris is never less than fascinating in a role that seems to virtually consume him as an actor. His performance approaches greatness, even when the film falls somewhat short of its dramatic ambitions. --Jeff Shannon

Rory O'Shea Was Here

Out of Ireland

The enormous story of Irish emigration is well told in this documentary that mixes an adept historical overview and deeply touching personal stories with well-chosen archival material and gorgeously filmed modern footage. The troubled history of Ireland is covered by way of explaining why millions fled their homeland, and deserved attention is given to the uprising of 1798 and the Great Famine of the 1840s. The flood of poor Irish to the New World and their struggles to assimilate and eventually triumph is told with excerpts of letters, some of which are beautifully read by the noted playwright John B. Keane. Musician and folklorist Mick Moloney appears frequently to offer apt anecdotes and appropriate snatches of song, and historians provide perspective on the poverty and political repression at home that forced the Irish to cross a dangerous ocean to find a better life. Representative 19th-century Irish immigrants who found new lives in places as diverse as Massachusetts and North Dakota are profiled, and the contributions made in American society by the descendants of the millions who left Ireland are noted. As a striking blend of solid history and resonant personalities, Out of Ireland is a thoughtful presentation that also happens to be a pleasure to watch. --Robert J. McNamara

Veronica Guerin

Based on the true story of Irish journalist, Veronica Guerin, whose reporting on powerful drug lords cost Veronica her life.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 10-JAN-2006
Media Type: DVD

Ireland's most beloved and tragic contemporary hero/martyr gets the Hollywood treatment in the fact-based thriller Veronica Guerin, an average film made recommendable for a fine performance by Cate Blanchett in the title role. The life, work, and assassination of the slain Irish journalist is respectfully chronicled in this gritty, streetwise biopic by director Joel Schumacher, beginning with her 1996 murder (by Irish gangsters) and flashing back to her diligent efforts, begun in 1994, to expose the drug trade that plagued Ireland for most of the decade. Blanchett is flawless in a role that combines passion, courage, and recklessness in a way that doesn't sugar-coat Guerin's character or imbue her with artificial heroics. Unfortunately, Schumacher (who makes room for an unbilled Colin Farrell cameo) and a naggingly unsophisticated screenplay turn Guerin's complex story into a conventionally accessible thriller that sometimes seems too good to be true, which is ironic given that Guerin's story was fictionalized in the marginally better 2000 film When the Sky Falls, starring Joan Allen. Recommendable for Blanchett's performance and two memorably villainous roles for Ciarán Hinds and Gerald McSorley, Veronica Guerin is an adequate tribute that could and should have been exceptional. --Jeff Shannon

Omagh

The August 15, 1998 terrorist bombing in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh that killed 29 and injured hundreds of others is the raison d'etre for director Pete Travis's movie of the same name. But the bulk of this moving, beautifully-made film is devoted to the aftermath of the bombing, and American viewers still reeling from the atrocities of 9/11/01 and the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina may well find those events to be not merely compelling but hauntingly familiar. There's little suspense here; indeed, we know what's going to happen from the opening credits, when we see the bomb being made and planted in a car parked on the town's busy main street. Thereafter, people like Michael Gallagher (a fine, low key performance by Gerard McSorley) and his family must first deal with the excruciating agony of losing a loved one. But when weeks pass without a single arrest having been made, Gallagher and others form a support group and ask a simple question: Why? Instead of anything resembling justice, what they encounter are a host of incompetent, slow-reacting politicians and other officials offering little more than smarmy evasions. And that's not even the worst of it; in the most harrowing echo of 9/11 and Katrina, the film suggests that the folks in charge may even have ignored explicit warnings that the bomb (which was the work of a group calling itself "the real Irish Republican Army") was coming. Dramatic and moving without being the least bit sappy or sentimental, Omagh is a riveting, relevant piece of work. --Sam Graham

A gripping and emotional examination of the aftermath of the 1998 Real IRA bombing that killed 29 people in Omagh Northern Ireland.2005 BAFTA Award for Best Single Drama2004 IFTA Award for Best Actor (Gerard McSorley)2004 IFTA Award for Best Irish Film2004 Best European Film Award2004 Discovery Award Winner at Toronto International Film FestivalSystem Requirements:Running Time: 106 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/TRUE STORY Rating: NR UPC: 829567027721 Manufacturer No: SC0277D

Call Me - The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss

The only-in-Hollywood saga of Heidi Fleiss gets a breathless TV-movie workout in Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss, a romp through the call-girl follies of America's most famous madam. The Heidi story had enough trashy aspects to sink a garbage scow, and most of them are aired out in this tale of a respectable girl who rose through the ranks to become a successful businesswoman--and the holder of the most explosive little black book in Tinseltown. Experienced TV director Charles MacDougall must have noticed the story's similarities to GoodFellas, because he loads the movie with oodles of Scorsese-like flash and dazzle, complete with hyperactive camera and punchy songs. At least this makes the TV-movies values more fun than usual to look at, and Robert Davi seems to be having a ball as Fleiss's conduit into the sleaze world, director Ivan Nagy. (How Oscar-winner Brenda Fricker got involved in this we'll pass over.) Playing Fleiss is Sopranos co-star Jamie-Lynn DiScala, who certainly conjures up the right note of spoiled vapidity. The unrated DVD has nudity (DiScala's body double, we're talking here), but the movie gets stingy on naming names--as though the identities of actors and filmmakers who turned up in the little black book hadn't leaked out already. --Robert Horton

The story of a wealthy girl who grows up to be a successful business woman and Hollywood madam.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 6-SEP-2005
Media Type: DVD