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Our movie guy, James Finnegan, says there is another eclectic selection of films coming on RTE and TG4 over the coming days for the discerning viewer that are well worth watching…
Parenthood (Saturday 9.20 pm TG4) is a wonderfully gentle comedy starring Steve Martin as Gil Buckman, a man trying to balance the challenges of his professional life, with the demands of family life.
He wants a better relationship with his children than he has with his father, yet he finds himself questioning his parenting abilities.
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He fears turning into a similar workaholic that his father (Jason Robards) became, his siblings are also having domestic difficulties and then he finds out that his wife is expecting another baby.
Directed by Ron Howard, and a wonderful cast including Mary Steenburgen, Dianne West, Tom Hulce and Rick Moranis, this is funny as well as thoughtful.
These are not words that can really describe our nest film. Papillon (Saturday 11.25pm RTE2) is based on the autobiography of Henri Charriere (Steve McQueen), a thief nicknamed Papillon because of his butterfly tattoo on his chest.
He is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana. On the way to the jungle labour camp, he meets up with Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman) a forger and embezzler.
A friendship is forged through a mutual understanding. Escape attempts are planned, made and executed with varying degrees of success, but sometimes getting away from the guards is the easy part.
The screenplay was co-written by Dalton Trumbo, whose own biographical film Trumbo I recommended for your attention a few weeks back. The soundtrack is by Jerry Goldsmith and he and director Franklin J Schaffner regularly collaborated together.
The thirty year anniversary of The Commitments (Saturday 11.50pm RTE1) is being celebrated by a series of documentaries about the Barrystown trilogy, so it is totally right and proper that we once again sit back and enjoy Alan Parker’s musical version of Roddy Doyle’s bestselling book.
Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Atkins) an unemployed lad decides to form a Dublin soul band from the Northside talent around him, but the course of music stardom rarely runs smooth.
The cast includes Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle, Brona Gallagher, Glen Hansard and Colm Meaney who all went on to establish themselves as major creative talents in various disciplines
Last week we saw Saoirse Ronan in the film version of Brooklyn. In Hanna (Monday 9.30pm TG4), she plays a role about as far removed from that gentile story as it is possible to go.
A teenage girl is trained to be the perfect assassin by her father, a former CIA agent played by Eric Bana.
They in turn are being tracked down to be eliminated by another CIA operative played by Cate Blanchett. Enjoy and stay safe!
