"William" (Brian Aherne) is the working man made good and is determined to see that his young son has all of the things that he didn't have growing up. The best of clothes, housing, eduction - and it all creates the rather miscreant creature that is "Oliver" (initially played well as a rather odious child by Scotty Beckett, then by Louis Hayward). He values nothing, takes for granted everything he has and gradually, as he gets older, hurts and alienates just about everyone. The only people who seem to be able to see through his façade, and who care enough to try and help are "Livia" (Madeleine Carroll) and the flighty, love-struck, young "Maeve" (Laraine Day) but will it all be too little too late for this increasingly self-destructive fellow? The story is interesting and illustrates the dangers of spoiling a child, but somehow the character of the father is just too soft. Too trusting and forgiving. This is a man who came up the hard way and though clearly he wants better for his child, his character is so weak as to frequently come across as implausible. The one staple in all of this is the friendship between "William" and his lifelong friend "Dermot" (Henry Hull) which becomes more important as the penny drops that young "Oliver" looks like a lost cause. There's no stopping cringing every time "Day" breaks into her Irish scent - it could strip paint, and as the story lumbers on I felt it all dragged down in a wordy dialogue and a paucity of pace or development. Like it's stuck in treacle, it seems to lose it's way until we are rescued by the War. Hayward is good, the story is solid - but the film struggles.
Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.
The life story of traditional Irish folk singer Joe Heaney, who is estimated to have recorded in excess of 500 traditional Irish sean nós ('old style') songs. Heaney moved from Ireland to the UK, and then on to New York City, where he settled shortly after performing at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
A Taiwanese-American man is happily settled in New York with his American boyfriend. He plans a marriage of convenience to a Chinese woman in order to keep his parents off his back and to get the woman a green card. Chaos follows when his parents arrive in New York for the wedding.
Paris, Kingdom of France, August 18, 1572. To avoid the outbreak of a religious war, the Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois, sister of the feeble King Charles IX, marries the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre.
Svetlana Vasilievna is a young, energetic woman who often changes jobs, accustomed to achieving the goals that she has set for herself in life. Her next desire is to marry a "creative, intelligent" person. After a lengthy search, she chose an elderly, but well-mannered, intelligent official Vladimir Dmitrievich Lobanov. Svetlana believes that with the help of connections and sober calculation, you can achieve everything: well-being, respectability, even personal happiness. She does not notice that the fulfillment of her desires does not at all make the person close to her happy. The payback turns out to be unexpected and terrible.
A young couple escapes Ireland, dreaming of a new life during the land giveaway in Oklahoma. As they struggle to survive against betrayal and harsh winter conditions, they must fend off her parents who are determined to bring her back home.
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
A small time thief from Belfast, Gerry Conlon, is falsely implicated in the IRA bombing of a pub that kills several people while he is in London. He and his four friends are coerced by British police into confessing their guilt. Gerry's father and other relatives in London are also implicated in the crime. He spends fifteen years in prison with his father trying to prove his innocence.
Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.
Ray and Ken, two hit men, are in Bruges, Belgium, waiting for their next mission. While they are there they have time to think and discuss their previous assignment. When the mission is revealed to Ken, it is not what he expected.
After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept.