Douglas Henshall and his brothers go to pieces after the death of their widowed mother. Their invalid sister copes best, but she's forgotten in their dysfunctional display of ill-defined grief. Henshall's stabbed in a pub brawl, kid brother Stephen McCole goes looking for the assailant while the eldest, Gary Lewis, keeps an all-night vigil over mam's casket in the church. The church roof blows off in a gale. It's that kind of an evening. Peter Mullan's dazzling directorial debut is a corrosive emotional drama that's blisteringly funny and achingly sad all at the same time. The performances are fantastic and Henshall hits the highest point of tragi-comedy when he breaks down in front of his bemused workmates: "I want me mammy..." he blubbers, before collapsing into the Clyde. Mullan is the actor from Ken Loach's drama My Name Is Joe, a typically downbeat work that aims to be lifelike. Orphans is much the better film, vibrant and honest as, for all its bizarre bluster, it reaches a kind of raw emotional truth lacking in Loach's staid pictures.
Reviews
3 Reviews
A Warden's Ransom
(2014)
It's the audience who pays the price
31 March 2015
Gloating serial killer Devon Sawa, a media-friendly and fabulously wealthy playboy, is sent to Roundwood, a medium security prison in Michigan run by glamorous warden Diane Neal. It's a dead end for Final Destination kid Sawa, but is it a step up or down for Ms Neal, who played assistant DA Casey Novak in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? From scene one, this ridiculous prison flick's dismal script is guilty of so many cardinal cliché sins (does Neal's 'difficult' teen daughter Jodelle Ferland live with her at the prison – you bet). And it's yet another shame-faced Canadian TV time-waster coyly pretending to be American. Fair warning: producer-director Mike Elliott also made Blue Crush 2 and Scorpion King 4.
The Arrangement
(2013 TV Movie)
Miami sunny side up
24 March 2015
Mexico's Miss Bala star Stephanie Sigman plays a Colombian fugitive courted by ambitious young Miami-Dade planning commissioner Bryan Greenberg as a politically expedient 'Green Card' partner. Dealing lightly with corruption, a glossy caper inspired by Elmore Leonard's story When the Women Come Out to Dance, with music pitched midway between sitcom and soap. The script isn't entirely serious either. "Say hello to my little friend," jokes Manolo Cardona. He's referring to the oversize telephoto lens on his Nikon. Despite the Florida setting, this is no Cat Chaser. The neat-and-tidy ending suggests this was intended as a pilot for a TV series. In any event, Ms Sigman is sensational, smart and sexy.
Tell Your Friends