The March Hare (1956)

There’s always something special about Ascot. Royal Ascot race meet. Sir Charles Hare (Terence Morgan) is an Irish baronet with a taste for betting who loses his ancestral home Wolfshill in County Kildare and its racing stables after someone fixes a race that Hare has gambled on. Forced to sell his estate, he decides to stay on when the new American owner McGwire’s (Macdonald Parke) lovely daughter Pat (Peggy Cummins) mistakes him for a groom. Playing along with her mistake, romance develops between the two. Meanwhile, Hare’s aunt Lady Anne (Martita Hunt) and his friend Col Keene (Wilfrid Hyde-White), save one foal from the sale and rear it with the help of drunken leprechaun horse whisperer Lazy Mangan (Cyril Cusack) who is invariably drunk but has strong control over the horse by invoking the power of the fairies and introduced him to the Fairy Queen on arrival at the estate. Two years later Hare names the colt The March Hare and decides to impress the absent Pat (on a Swiss sojourn) by turning him into a prize racehorse. At a racecourse where Peggy discovers Sir Charles’s true identity The March Hare only manages to run after Mangan calms him using a specific fairy word. Hare and Pat go dancing on a date in London. After Mangan falls ill, he becomes teetotal, which restores his health but it means he can no longer remember the fairy word. Derby Day arrives and their usual jockey is nowhere to be seen because betting maestro Hardwicke (Ivan Samson) has received the shock of his life when he learns from his minion Fisher (Charles Hawtrey) that five huge bets have come in simultaneously and if The March Hare win his company stands to lose half a million. Hare needs to track down Mangan … Every horse has to have his own special word. Adapted from T.H. Bird’s novel Gamblers Sometimes Win by Gordon Wellesley and Allan MacKinnon with additional dialogue by Paul Vincent Carroll, this combination of society drawing room comedy, sports story, romcom and animal tale is exceptionally well structured with the midpoint allowing for a reset as all the screenplay manuals advise: The March Hare wins, Pat returns from Switzerland and Norway and rejects Charles’ marriage proposal and Mangan gets sick. Everything starts again, on a slightly different hoofing. The stakes are definitely raised in this droll outing which feasts on the cast which numbers several familiar character players including Derrick De Marney as Captain Marlow, Maureen Delany as Bridget the housekeeper, Stringer Davis as the doctor tending to Mangan when he apparently loses the fairy word for the little horse that could and for fans of horse racing the voice of the sport himself (at least in 1955) Raymond Glendenning. Morgan is of course the handsome devil in disguise (at least at the start) with the ever youthful Cummins as the smart as a whip girl he falls for (the second time they were paired a few years after Always a Bride); while Cusack milks his role for all its worth with the rather curious choice of a Northern Irish accent for the back of Kildare. There’s a hilarious scene when Hyde-White approaches an insurance broker (Reginald Beckwith) insisting that The March Hare races with the help of the fairies – he’s literally taken away. As Hunt remarks in one of the few Empire-era jokes, An Irish company would have understood perfectly! There’s lilting diddly-aye music courtesy of tenor Joseph McNally arranged by composer Philip Green which definitely gives a jaunt to the lively proceedings. Gloriously shot in CinemaScope by Jack Hildyard with to die for views of Dublin and London and rural Ireland, County Mayo and County Wicklow standing in for Kildare) as well as great action at Ascot and other race meetings, highly idealised visions now, sadly. Other locations include Dublin Airport, Epsom Downs and Gerrards Cross, Bucks. According to the mighty reelstreets.com the mansion used for Wolfshill is Littleton Park House at Shepperton Studios in Littleton, Surrey and it can also be seen in other productions including Allez France, The Earth Dies Screaming, Make Mine a Million, Cockleshell Heroes and The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery. The pub where Lady Anne and Mangan are found half cut is apparently The Goat, Upper Halliford Road, Upper Halliford, Shepperton TW17 that also features in The House on Marsh Road, Bond of Fear and Appointment in London. This is a delightfully comic equestrian story, gorgeously mounted with a sprightly ensemble who appear to be having as much fun as the viewer. And the colt is a fine creature. Directed by George More O’Ferrall. I’ve forgotten more about horses than you’ll ever know

Animals (2019)

You’re my team. Long-time friends and party-lovers Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat) navigate life and love in Dublin, Ireland. However, when wannabe writer Laura becomes engaged to concert pianist Jim (Fra Fee) her lifestyle of drinking, drugging and sleeping around alongside barista Tyler becomes unstuck, threatening their friendship. Tyler attends Laura’s family gatherings revolving around her parents and pregnant older sister (Amy Molloy). When Laura fancies poet Marty (Dermot Murphy), whom Tyler also likes, the difficulties intensify, and Laura thinks of moving out of the nice Georgian flat subsidised by Tyler’s late father, while Laura’s novel gets nowhere, now ten years in the writing…  Sorry girls, didn’t mean to get all holy on you there with my burning bush. With its action transposed from Manchester to Dublin, Emma Jane Unsworth adapts her much-loved novel. It’s energetically directed by Australian Sophie Hyde (her second feature after 2013’s 52 Tuesdays) who does a fine job commandeering two of the most endearing female friends explored on film in a long time, in all their unpleasant, messy, extreme, inglorious situations. The moon has married us both.  Grainger exhibits wonderful poise on her soulful journey through sex and love, while Shawkat is as convincing as ever, an established comic performer relishing the role of a thirtysomething wild child whose balance is undone, spinning into infinity, all to the backdrop of a quasi-bohemian arts scene where happiness is just a stolen bottle of MDMA away. A graphic depiction of problematic modern femininity which is subversive and true. Was any of it real?

Metal Heart (2018)

Just because you’re miserable doesn’t make you interesting. The summer they finish school fraternal twins and rivals Goth muso Emma (Jordanne Jones) and social media maven Chantal (Leah McNamara) are left to themselves when their parents (Dylan Moran and Yasmine Akram) go on a six-week trip to the jungle. Chantal immediately starts having loud sex sessions in her bedroom with her dumb supertanned boyfriend Alan (Aaron Heffernan) while Emma wants to start a band called Yeast Infections with her best friend Gary (Sean Doyle) who’s secretly in love with her but bullied by his overachiever dad Steve (Jason O’Mara). When a mysterious man called Dan (Moe Dunford) shows up to look after the sick old woman next door it transpires he’s her son and the former member of a cult band.  Both girls fall for him, setting a financial disaster in motion after Chantal gets injured in a minor car prang and suddenly Emma is the popular one … A pie chart is not written in stone! Written by that lauded chronicler of suburban Dublin angst, Paul (Skippy Dies) Murray, this takes the American high school/coming of age template and gives it an Irish re-fit (graduation means picking up your results and getting langered), with zingers aplenty, some great side-eye and caustic lessons in relationships. It’s lightly satirical about South Dublin, beautifully captured by cinematographer Eoin McLoughlin – we’re far from the brutal grey skies that typically blight Irish films and into the leafy cosy middle class neighbourhoods where colours pop amid the tasteful midcentury furnishings (kudos to Neill Treacy for the production design). Similarly, the blackly comic elements are balanced with rites of passage/romcom tropes, giving each sister just the right amount of sympathy and mockery in this well-evoked portrait of those last weeks of experience on the cusp of college and adulthood, dramatising how even in a world where you can monetise your makeup tips on social media or conjure Spiders & Cream treats at the ice cream parlour in the local mall, you still crave the approval of the nearest inappropriate adult who’s really after your stash of cash. Warm, witty and attractively performed in a tale which underneath all the comic fuzz and deceptive charm is a sinister story of a twentysomething man grooming kids for underage sex while robbing them blind, this never hits the wrong notes which makes it a kind of miracle of filmmaking. Think:  Home Alone meets Clueless. Directed by actor Hugh O’Conor, who has a gift for making the most of moments in his first feature. I was never going to be her but I would always be her sister

The Delinquent Season (2017)

Our happiness is so fragile and we are all just hanging on by the skin of our teeth. Danielle (Eva Birthistle) meets up with an old schoolfriend Yvonne (Catherine Walker) and they introduce each other’s husbands over a terrible meal when Yvonne’s other half Chris (TV’s Sherlock psycho Andrew Scott) loses it and Danielle’s husband Jim (Cillian Murphy) begs off ever having anything more to do with them. But when Yvonne shows up at their home after Chris has kicked her he falls for her seduction even after Chris tells him he’s dying of cancer and he hasn’t told anyone else. Jim and Yvonne carry on their illicit affair in hotel rooms and on the dunes at the local beach until Danielle asks Jim for the code to his phone and Yvonne arrives at their house again – but this time to reveal the news that Chris is dying … Playwright and screenwriter Mark O’Rowe’s directing debut from his own script aspires to be a morality tale about the middle classes (or smug marrieds) but it is a long way from the quality of Patrick Marber’s Closer or even Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmine Reza’s Carnage. Partly that’s to do with the lack of cleverness in what is essentially a chamber work (or even a chess game) with the pieces assembling and realigning as the relationships shift, mostly unwittingly;  partly that’s to do with the utterly inexcusable overuse of the F word which might be suitable for a local Irish audience but even the casually tolerant tourist would find excessive:  using it in the middle of a word for instance  ‘unF’ing believable’ is inventive and amusing, using it continuously without any kind of rationale for over-emphasis is lazy and offputting. Partly it’s beyond how these people sound (Walker’s line readings and sibilant and consonant enunciation grate like F***, as she herself might say); and how they look, in unattractive surroundings which are in a dull palette, shot and staged unimaginatively.  These people are not remotely interesting. They’re not even nasty enough to make us gasp. There is no sign here that anyone involved is acquainted with the language of film. Not a single member of the cast has sufficient screen technique to overcome the crass limitations of the script. The sex scene between Murphy and Walker is horribly unflattering:  where were the cosmeceuticals?! Or the lights? (Or the sheets). The fight at the funeral dinner is poorly staged even if it’s an effective dramatic device with the passive aggressive Chris finally showing his mettle in public; and the twist in the relationships, when Murphy takes up with a rude working class waitress, is literally unbelievable:  O’Rowe is no Somerset Maugham. The circular structure is a good move (once again, it works for Marber) but the sheer impoverishment of the vision, the inelegant language and the lack of anything to say kills this stone dead. This staggering banality wouldn’t last more than a night on your local Town Hall stage.

Dare to be Wild (2016)

Wasn’t it Voltaire who advised people to tend their own (metaphorical) garden? Garden designer Mary Reynolds does it here, in spades. This story of a young country girl who believes in fairies and grows up to be a willful eccentric who wants to compete at the Chelsea Garden Show is a most unusual Irish film:  it looks great. DoP Cathal Watters and debutante director Vivienne DeCourcy obviously decided, Enough of the grey skies and the muddy vistas, and tore up the rulebook about how to present a country where it rains 10 months of the year. They might even have taken a leaf from the Irish National Gallery and noted the palette of William Leech’s garden paintings with their blistering sunlight, glistening whites and brilliant tones. This is a film of playful, rainbow colours, dominated by Consolata Boyle’s extraordinary costume design telling Mary’s story through her clothes – compensating perhaps for a rather wayward if charming performance at the story’s centre by Emma Greenwell as she makes her way gawkily through Dublin society. She has to fight for funding and gain the trust of fellow outsider Christy Collard (Tom Hughes), an eco-designer whose preoccupation with bringing water to Ethiopia sets them at odds when she appeals for his aid because his family’s business can help supply wildflowers and 200-year old whitethorn trees to build her Celtic dream garden. The tone of the film is somewhat damaged by the unnecessary caricatures of Mary’s bete noire, Shah, the socially mobile employer who steals her design book;  Madden, the Bono-like rock star; and Nigel Hogg, the head of Chelsea. These strike an odd note in a film of otherwise impeccably offbeat taste. The diversion to the desert of Ethiopia is a sensual breath of fresh air, the eventual romance hardly surprising given that Hughes is probably the most delectable flower on display, here or anywhere right now, a right royal heart throb as viewers of ITV’s Victoria will already know. In a fitting touch, Mary’s winning speech is the cosmic order tacked on her refrigerator door. Despite using the true story, the connection is disavowed at the conclusion, rather like Chelsea did to Reynolds when they wouldn’t allow her into the celebration at the Show’s finale. Quirky, lovely and just a little bit wild.

Another Shore (1948)

Ealing whimsy could fall between two stools – and tragicomedy is the acknowledged text of this outing, set in dear old dirty Dublin, a begrimed metropolis one year before the Republic was declared. Gulliver Shields (Robert Beatty) is a bored customs clerk who throws in his job for a ruse witnessing traffic accidents opposite Trinity College, much to the annoyance of the usual hoi polloi who hang around in the porticoes of the Bank of Ireland. His aim is to get enough cash to go to the South Seas paradise of Raratonga. Nice girl Jennifer (Moira Lister) drinks nearby in the Buttery (hi Matt!) and takes a fancy to him, ultimately causing a disruption to his plans which might yet see the light of day after he falls in with (or in front of) wealthy Alastair (Stanley Holloway), who made his money in Tahiti… Beatty probably wasn’t the man for this unconvincing adaptation of the book by Kenneth Reddin (who was to become a judge), handled perhaps as well as the material allowed by Walter Meade, who also wrote that lovely film Brandy for the Parson as well as Scott of the Antarctic. There’s an interesting score by Georges Auric but Charles Crichton would do a lot better in the director’s chair. However the post-war setting is worth seeing – in a country where WW2 was called The Emergency, a state which has yet to be officially lifted.