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| THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN, 1995, Christopher Monger. Hugh Grant stars as a young man who offends an entire town in Wales by declaring their mountain -- a prized landmark -- to be a "hill." But soon he finds the eccentric locals, led by a witty innkeeper (Colm Meaney ) will stop at nothing to defend their honor! While the townspeople rally around their "mountain," a fiery young woman (Tara Fitzgerald ) charms the puzzled out-of-towner into seeing things their way! Based on a true story. (DVD) | |||
| HIGH SPIRITS, 1988, Neil Jordan. Peter Plunkett (Peter O'Toole) hopes to save his mortgaged castle by turning it into a tourist attraction--the most haunted castle in Ireland. When American tourists arrive--among them Jack (Steve Guttenberg) and Sharon (Beverly D'Angelo), a couple whose marriage is rapidly disintegrating--Plunkett's tomfoolery arouses the real ghosts, who decide to give these interlopers everything they're asking for. But when Jack accidentally helps a beautiful ghost named Mary (Daryl Hannah), she decides he's the man to help her break the curse she's been suffering for 200 years. (DVD) | |||
| INTO THE WEST, 1993, Mike Newell. Set mainly in the Ireland the tourist board didn't tell you about, Into the West is the story of a "traveling" family who have given up their traditional life of roaming, and find themselves trying to make it in the gritty, violent projects of Dublin. Gabriel Byrne is excellent as Papa Reilly, a once-proud father and leader whose grief over his wife's death has turned him into a booze-sodden has-been. His two sons, Tito (Ruaidhri Conroy) and Ossie (Ciaran Fitzgerald), escape the projects on an apparently magical white horse, Tir Na Nog, which leads them back to the West. After being forced to steal the horse back from a wealthy and ruthless horse dealer, they are pursued across the increasingly beautiful landscape by virtually all the policemen in Ireland. The much-loved actor David Kelly (Waking Ned Devine) does a nice turn as the grandfather, and Ellen Barkin is a surprising but believable choice as an old "traveling" friend of Papa Reilly. (DVD) | |||
| LOCAL HERO, 1983, Bill Forsyth. When Mac MacIntyre (played with deadpan perfection by Peter Riegert) is sent by his star-gazing, slightly insane Knox Oil and Gas boss (Burt Lancaster) to Scotland's West Coast to buy the rights to a seaside town slated to be the site of an oil refinery, Mac embarks on his journey reluctantly. "Why do I have to go to all the way to Scotland?" Mac complains to a coworker. "I'm really more of a Telex man." But on the way to closing the deal, a funny thing happens: the place takes root in Mac. The town's eccentric inhabitants, eventful night sky, and stunning scenery soak into his psyche and combine to bring a very different Mac to the surface, a Mac who collects seashells, walks on the beach in his jeans instead of his suit, and throws his calendar watch, beeping "meeting time in Houston," into the sea. (DVD) | |||
| THE MATCHMAKER, 1997, Mark Joffe. Janeane Garofalo plays Marcy, aide to dim Massachusetts senator McGlory (Jay O. Sanders). Denis Leary is appropriately slimy as a fellow aide. The senator and Nick dispatch Marcy to the remote (and fictitious) Irish town of Ballinagra, where she's supposed to unearth relatives to use in the senator's PR campaign. Along the way, Marcy not only encounters the eccentric locals, but finds herself in the maelstrom of the town's annual matchmaking festival. The single Marcy inadvertently catches the eye of the movie's eponymous matchmaker Dermot (a captivating Milo O'Shea). Dermot senses sparks between Marcy and the equally cynical, recently returned local boy, Sean (David O'Hara), once a successful journalist who's returned home to work on a book. The intimacies of the small town, the relationships between the locals, and the dialogue are credible and engaging. Look for beautiful cinematography and music, too. (DVD) | |||
| THE QUIET MAN, 1952, John Ford. Blarney and bliss, mixed in equal proportions. John Wayne plays an American boxer who returns to the Emerald Isle, his native land. What he finds there is a fiery prospective spouse (Maureen O'Hara) and a country greener than any Ireland seen before or since--it's no surprise The Quiet Man won an Oscar for cinematography. It also won an Oscar for John Ford's direction, his fourth such award. The film was a deeply personal project for Ford (whose birth name was Sean Aloysius O'Fearna), and he lavished all of his affection for the Irish landscape and Irish people on this film. He also stages perhaps the greatest donnybrook in the history of movies, an epic fistfight between Wayne and the truculent Victor McLaglen--that's Ford's brother, Francis, as the elderly man on his deathbed who miraculously revives when he hears word of the dustup. Barry Fitzgerald, the original Irish elf, gets the movie's biggest laugh when he walks into the newlyweds' bedroom the morning after their wedding, and spots a broken bed. The look on his face says everything. The Quiet Man isn't the real Ireland, but as a delicious never-never land of Ford's imagination, it will do very nicely. --Robert Horton (DVD) | |||
| THE SECRET OF ROAN INNISH, 1995, John Sayles.T he Secret of Roan Inish is a tale of a girl who discovers that her family has been touched by myth and magic throughout the years. Following the death of her mother, young Fiona (Jeni Courtney) is sent to live with her grandparents on the Irish coast across from Roan Inish, the island where her family once lived. She's told stories about the selkies--seals that can turn into humans--who have been connected with Fiona's family over the ages. At first she's not sure if the selkies are real or mythological, but she later realizes that they hold the key to reclaiming her family heritage.(DVD) | |||
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