OK, I think I'm challenged; Alex2507 is referring to movies I might like, so here's one I did like - Yeah, not much action, but it's just so well done - Calvary - Sometimes Ireland seems just so strange, or maybe its current pre-eminant filmmaker John Micheal McDonagh is the one that is strange. After The Guard, a couple years ago, his most recent is Calvary. Is it a black comedy as some say, or a metaphor for Christ and holy week? I just don’t know. I know how long he has to live and the days are counting.
Brendan Gleeson, in my opinion, one of those actors whose films are worth seeing just because he’s in them, is a Catholic priest, who came to religion after marriage, kids, death and drinking. Now he’s being threatened with death by an anonymous caller because of the acts of other philandering, pederastic priests who have given the church a bad reputation in Ireland. This is unfortunate because “Father James” is really about as close to a saint as a priest gets. Attending to the psychological needs of a whole variety of parishioners with life problems, Father James is the priest that you want if you live in a nowhere town on the Irish coast.
Father James has one week to live and, for a guy who really wants to be a priest and help his flock, he does it well. Smoothing things over with his suicidal daughter, settling grievances in the town, dealing with the eccentricities of the desperate, it just doesn’t seem right that Father James has a crucifix-shaped target on his chest.
This is an excellent movie if you can stand it. It’s slow, verbal, tense and, with its heavy Irish language, hard to understand, but there’s so much subterranean, oppressed emotion and Irish angst about almost everything that there’s a lot going on, even though it’s quiet and static. The cast is completely convincing, the setting and cinematography are terrific in that understated, under-lit Irish sort of way and there are even surfers on the desolate, cold coast, witnesses to the strange oppression of Irish culture. Not being Irish, I just don’t get a lot of it (especially the comedy), but like The Guard, in which an African American cop (Don Cheadle) meets Brendan Gleeson in a similar bleak town, this film definitely has its own look. I don’t know if this is a recommendation, but if you need a couple hours out of the Big American City, this is definitely it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGM5rq_vX4U