ROSE PLAYS JULIE

Ann Skelly stars in the psychological thriller ROSE PLAYS JULIE.

Rose Plays Julie

For those looking for artistic descendants of Alfred Hitchcock and his unique style, building suspense and sometimes horror, check out Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s Irish film ROSE PLAYS JULIE. The film is now running virtually as part of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s “From Your Sofa” series.

Ann Skelly delivers an astonishing performance as “Rose”, a college student in Dublin studying to be a veterinarian. We don’t know how long Rose has known she was adopted, but her inner monologues reveal her overwhelming yearning and frightening resolve to find her birth mother.

The filmmaking here is precise and perfectly sets up the suspense in this psychological thriller that will have you climbing the walls of your living room. It works, big time.

We follow Rose on her mission of discovery, while studying “Euthanasia and the healthy animal”. Her friend recounts putting down dogs, cats, and even horses as she reassures Rose, “Trust me, you’ll get used to it.”

Rose knows her birth mother is an actress in her mid-fifties.  Rose somehow finds her phone number and starts stalking Ellen, her mother, played engagingly by Orla Brady.

We’re not sure of Rose’s intentions. After an awkward ploy to view her mother’s home for sale, she and Ellen finally retreat to a wooded area by her home to “talk”. The filmmakers have trusted their actors to convey so much of this story without dialogue, which adds to the suspense. We’re not sure where it’s going and violence seems imminent until Ellen blurts out, “I was raped.”

ROSE PLAYS JULIE is very much a woman’s film. Mother and daughter form a strange alliance. Rose dons a variety of disguises to play “Julie” and seeks out and meets the father, a creepy archeologist named Peter Doyle.

The rest I won’t give away, only to say that this is a psychological thriller that will give the hair on the back of your neck a great workout. It’s eerie, creepy, and scary as hell;   taking you on an adventure in identity and revenge that seems almost supernatural, particularly in the performance of Ann Skelly as Rose/Julie. Her face can take you in a hundred different directions all at once with no dialogue necessary.

ROSE PLAYS JULIE is available online at https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/rose-plays-julie until April 15th and could potentially be extended beyond that date. Do yourself a favor, get some popcorn, prop up the cushions and hunker down for one helluva ride from your sofa.

CROCK OF GOLD; A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN

Reviewed by Mike Houlihan, Special to The Irish American News & The Irish Echo

Christmas 2020 will hit in a few weeks and I can’t think of any Christmas song more perfect for this year of horror, death, and dystopian nightmares than “Fairy Tale of New York”, by Shane MacGowan of The Pogues and featuring the late Kirstie MacColl. The tune tells a haunting story with its lyrics of despair from the NYC drunk tank one Christmas eve and yet still manages to kindle the seasonal love and hope and promise of a new year. You’ll be singing the chorus yourselves sometime this season, you know you will. The song’s been called the best Christmas song of all time by various UK and Ireland polls and no doubt you’ve seen the video hundreds of times.

Here’s a link to the You Tube of this classic.

That video was my first introduction to Shane MacGowan of The Pogues, maybe the most unlikely male torch singer I’ve ever laid eyes on. Pretty, he ain’t.

But the guy is so damned committed to the music and the poetry and the craic, you can’t take your eyes off him. Soul, he has in abundance. And this holiday season we’re all about to be treated to a hilarious, and ultimately sad documentary film about this man who lit a stick of dynamite with a lifestyle and passion that appears to have finally taken its toll on his Irish body and soul.

The film is CROCK OF GOLD: A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN, and it’s available through the Gene Siskel Film center VOD starting December 4th.

You might want to have a cocktail or two handy when you watch it. Filmmaker Julien Temple finds a variety of ways to tell the story of Shane MacGowan, including animation, historical and archived concert footage, old interviews, and a series of MacGowan’s friends, including Irish patriot Gerry Adams and film star Johnny Depp, probing him for details of his deliciously defiant life of performing traditional Irish music through drugs, sex, and rock and roll. I found myself laughing out loud at the comic absurdity of Shane’s antics until falling under the spell of his poetry and staring into the abyss by his side. It’s a wild ride.

Shane tells us God chose him as a little boy to be the one who saves Irish music, because of course, “God is Irish”. Being born on Christmas Day has its perks, “I was born lucky.”

The film takes you on the journey of Shane’s life over sixty years starting idyllically in Tipperary where he would visit relatives in the summers and started drinking and smoking at the age of six.

We follow him and his family growing up in London, meet his mom and dad, his sister, friends, and girlfriends, all through the prism of Shane’s wacked out psyche. There’s plenty of Irish mythology and poetry and pints and whiskey, acid, and heroin to keep things interesting.

The tragedy of Shane MscGowan is the tragedy of all the great Irish bards like Behan, Joyce, Flann O’Brien and plenty of others who dared to kiss the sky. We all ultimately share the same fate as Icarus. The film is packed with Irish history, politics, mythology, religion, and plenty of soul.

Gerry Adams reminds Shane of one of his own favorite lyrics from Fairy Tale of New York. “I could have been someone.” And of course, the retort, “Well so could anyone!”

Do yourself a favor and watch CROCK OF GOLD, A FEW ROUNDS WITH SHANE MACGOWAN. Just like Shane, it’s a masterpiece.

To order your screener go to Gene Siskel Film Center’s website at www.siskelfilmcenter.org. Video on Demand starts December 4, 2020.

YOU CAN WATCH THE TRAILER HERE!

Merry Christmas!