Los Angeles Times film reviewer Kenneth Turan wryly observed that Liam, director Stephen Frears's British film about an Irish family in 1930s Liverpool, "does a better job of re-creating the ambience of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes than that film did." Avoiding the dramatic and visual monotony that makes Alan Parker's 1999 film of Angela's Ashes such an unrelievedly dreary … [Read more...] about Liam: The Shock
of Recognition
Film Review
Liam: The Shock
Film Forum: James Joyce in Love
For many years, the conventional wisdom about Nora Barnacle, James Joyce's longtime companion and eventually his wife, was that she was an ignorant but "country cute" peasant from Galway with an unaccountable hold on the great writer, whose work she disdained. How could Joyce have lived all those years with a woman who refused to read Ulysses? Her very name was an excuse for … [Read more...] about Film Forum: James Joyce in Love
Film Forum: When Brendan Met Trudy
The first original screenplay by Irish novelist Roddy Doyle is automatically a cinematic and literary event. When Brendan Met Trudy offers many quirky delights, but it is an uneven and ultimately disappointing film. Doyle's oddball yarn about a movie-obsessed Dublin schoolteacher (Peter McDonald) who falls in love with a thief (Flora Montgomery) is dragged down on screen by its … [Read more...] about Film Forum: When Brendan Met Trudy
Film Forum: That Sinking Feeling, Titanic Town Goes Under
Titanic Town, the fictional story of a Northern Ireland woman who mounts crusade for peace in 1972, is not the first movie to attempt to trade on James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic. The European film The Chambermaid on the Titanic barely managed to beat Cameron to the screen but had its title changed to The Chambermaid in 1998 U.S. advertising. That probably discouraged … [Read more...] about Film Forum: That Sinking Feeling, Titanic Town Goes Under
Film Forum: No Non-Irish Need Apply?
Ethnic casting issues in movies. Our moviegoing experience would be much diminished if we had never had the chance to see Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, Greer Garson as Mrs. Miniver, Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, or Kenneth Branagh as Henry V. We would have been equally impoverished if we had not seen Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara … [Read more...] about Film Forum: No Non-Irish Need Apply?