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In this adaptation of the John McGahern novel, about a middle-aged man who has returned, with his wife, to the countryside of his childhood, makeshift friendships are forged and life’s grand rhythms observed

‘Does anything happen, or is it the usual?” asks a regular loose cannon in Pat Collins’ rural-set Irish drama. “Not much in the way of drama, just the day-to-day stuff,” replies his writer friend. That’s very much the lay of the land in this film, with squirely novelist Joe Ruttledge (Barry Ward) serving as a proxy for John McGahern and his early-Joycean realism, and from whose lauded final 2002 novel this is adapted. By extension it speaks for Collins too, who remains a faithful follower of that approach – almost to a fault.

At some point in the 1980s, Joe and his wife Kate (Anna Bederke) – who is from some unspecified European country – have quit London to...

Netflix has debuted the trailer for the dark comedic thriller ‘Bodkin’.

The show follows a motley crew of podcasters who set out to investigate the mysterious disappearance of three strangers in a quaint, coastal Irish town. But once they start pulling at threads, they discover a story much bigger and weirder than they could have ever imagined. As our heroes try to discern fact from fiction — about the case, about their colleagues, and, most painfully, themselves — the series challenges our perception of truth and exposes the stories we tell ourselves to justify our beliefs or validate our fears.

Created by Jez Scharf, the show stars Sobhán Cullen (Dove), Robyn Cara (Emmy), Chris Walley (Sean O’Shea), David Wilmot (Seamus), and Will Forte (Gilbert).

Guest stars include Pom Boyd (Mrs. O’Shea), Fionnula Flanagan (Mother Bernadette), Áine Ní Mhuirí (Sister McDonagh), Charlie Kemp (Damien), Pat Shortt (Darragh), Ger Kelly (Teddy), Denis Conway (Sergeant...

"I've done it this time." Gravitas Ventures has released an official Us trailer for an indie drama titled Lost & Found, one of those films where various interconnected stories intertwine showing how we're all linked in some way. This one takes place at/around a lost & found office of an Irish train station. All the segments are inspired by true stories, and share a theme of something lost or found and characters that come in and out of each other’s lives. The ensemble cast of Lost & Found includes Liam O Mochain (who's also writer and director), Norma Sheahan, Brendan Conroy, Aoibhin Garrihy, Liam Carney, Mary McEvoy, and Sean Flanagan. This looks particularly cheap & cheesy, moreso than most of these interconnecting films. Here's the official Us trailer (+ poster) for Liam O Mochain's Lost & Found, direct from YouTube: Lost & Found is 7 interconnecting stories set in and around...

For someone afraid of loneliness, Eric (Alan McKenna) sure loves putting himself in positions that can’t help isolating him from the world. A land surveyor who specializes in remote areas and works by himself unless apprentice-of-sorts Olivia (Niamh Algar) can tear herself away from her thesis to help, his long hours and extramarital affair (also when Olivia can put down her studies) risk destroying a marriage already on the rocks. He must work to keep his family together and therefore alienate them in the process. He needs human interaction while doing so and therefore starts an affair that could very well leave him without wife and mistress. Eric is trapped in a never-ending existential crisis, saddened by nature’s destruction via cement and yet on the destroyers’ frontline fighting.

Director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley‘s feature debut Without Name opens as Eric finishes one job and begins another.

'Sunshower', a 13 minute short film by Irish writer/director Liam Gavin, has been selected for competition for the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. Shot in the Dublin Mountains in January 2009, 'Sunshower' was produced by Maggie Mitchell of Samson Films and was funded by the Filmbase/Rte short film scheme. The short stars Jenn Murray (Dorothy Mills, Day of the Triffids) and Ifta winning actor Brendan Conroy (Kings), and depicts a somewhat frightening but ultimately redemptive encounter between a teenage girl and an old man, after she knocks him down with a stolen car in the middle of the countryside.

Cristiano Bortone's "Red Like the Sky", inspired by the true story of a blind sound editor, was named best feature film Thursday at the 13th Palm Beach International Film Festival in Florida. Bortone also was hailed as best feature film director.

The features jury awarded a special jury prize to dancer-choreograpaher Lachen Zinoun for his directorial debut, "The Lost Beauty".

The best performance award went to the ensemble cast of the Irish film "Kings", led by Colm Meaney, Donal O'Kelly, Brendan Conroy, Donncha Crowley, Barry Barnes, Sean O'Tarpaigh and Peadar O'Treasaigh.

De Lauzanne Xavier's "With One Voice" was named best documentary. A special jury prize was awarded to Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit's "Saving Luna", about a lost baby orca.

Lynn Roth's "The Little Traitor" earned the audience choice award for best feature film, while Jody Lambert's "Of All the Things" was chosen best docu by the audience.

The documentary "Young@Heart" served as the closing-night feature.

Palm Springs International Film Festival

PALM SPRINGS -- The faces of five middle-age Irish men are the landscape of Kings -- a terrain of craggy, ferocious beauty, much like the Connemara they left 30 years earlier and still long for.

Those faces are among the film's pleasures, as is the chance to hear the guttural music of the Irish language, a tongue rarely heard even in Eire.

But despite the fine work of its cast -- Colm Meaney among them -- the film feels increasingly constricted by its stage roots and grows less interesting as it proceeds. Kings, the first Irish-language Oscar submission, is less rewarding as a drama than as a mood piece steeped in alcohol, recriminations and sorrow. It also is an affecting group portrait of the unsettled immigrant soul and of people living disenfranchised lives in the shadows of cities they've adopted but not embraced and, in this case, helped to build.

Based on Jimmy Murphy's play "The Kings of the Kilburn High Road," the story uses the tired contrivance of a once-tight group of friends reuniting for a wake after one of the clique dies. Having made their lives, with varying degrees of success, in England, this quintet holds fast to notions of home they can neither regain nor relinquish. In a sense, they envy Jackie, the friend they've come to mourn, because he's returning to western Ireland, where his grief-stunned father (Peadar O'Treasaigh) will bury him.

Beyond his sailing championships, spotty employment history and struggles with alcohol, Jackie remains a cipher. In mourning him, the men really are mourning their youth. When they came to North London in 1977, full of energy and purpose, they were among a vast wave of Irish emigrants, many of whom entered the construction industry. Jackie died under an underground train -- in a tunnel likely built by Irish workers.

At various points in the past three decades, Jackie's friends all cut their ties to him, and all wrestle with guilt. That guilt is an overemphasized element in the film's emotional mix, especially for the most financially successful member of the group, Joe (Meaney), who can't bring himself to enter the church for the funeral. (Later, though, he snorts some cocaine in a confessional.) Joe broke away from the group many years earlier and formed his own construction company. That Jap (Donal O'Kelly, a standout in this excellent cast) still resents him for it is a good indication of how stunted some of these men are.

Jap shares a squalid flat with Git (Brendan Conroy), both devoted to the bottle. Mairtin (Barry Barnes) is trying to kick the sauce at the insistence of his dour, fed-up wife. Shay (Donncha Crowley), who owns a produce stall, is the only one to have left the "real work" of construction and seems the best adjusted.

As these men fumble through their boozy ritual, writer-director Tom Collins and cinematographer PJ Dillon draw in close, with intimate camerawork and a strong sense of working-class neighborhoods. Yet the adapted dialogues too often feel stagy and repetitive, and rather than building cumulative impact, this rue-infused film feels longer than its running time.

KINGS

High Point Films/Panorama Entertainment

Credits:

Screenwriter-director: Tom Collins

Based on the play "The Kings of the Kilburn High Road" by Jimmy Murphy

Producer: Jackie Larkin

Director of photography: PJ Dillon

Production designer: David Craig

Music: Pol O'Brennan

Co-producer: Michael Casey

Costume designer: Maggie Donnelly

Editor: Dermot Diskin

Cast:

Joe Mullan: Colm Meaney

Jap: Donal O'Kelly

Git: Brendan Conroy

Mairtin: Barry Barnes

Shay: Donncha Crowley

Jackie: Sean O'Tarpaigh

Micil: Peadar O'Treasaigh

Running time -- 89 minutes

No MPAA rating...