Who's in It:Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham, Orla Fitzgerald
The Basics: It's 1920 in County Cork, Ireland, and two brothers fighting on the same side of the Irish rebellion against British domination find themselves battling each other in the growing civil conflict that results when an unsatisfactory peace treaty — one that gave Ireland some independence while keeping it a part of the United Kingdom — is handed down.
What's the Deal? It's a simple story about revolution turning brother against brother. So you've seen that sort of thing before. But what makes this great is director Ken Loach's refusal to play by typical movie rules. No clear-cut villains or heroes, no technical aspect of it — lighting, cinematography, staging of scenes — to manipulate you into leaning one way or the other. The tragedy of history is enough for him. Even the violence is more brutal, because it's less like what you'd see in a movie and more like what you'd witness if it were happening directly to someone standing next to you. All of this in the service of a movie about how wars of any kind leave people ruined — and though it's about the past, it's perfectly relevant now.
Guess What, Small-Town Film Fans? Someone Finally Cares About You: This movie is getting a simultaneous release in big-city art-house theaters and as a pay-per-view option on the Independent Film Channel. You can thank IFC First Take for that. They'll be releasing 24 movies a year that way.
Pedigree: Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Now, I always used to think that was a big deal, both to me and to others. But then I learned that historically (not counting Pulp Fiction), Palme d'Or winners barely make any money in America. So, yeah, wrong again.
Note to Viewers Who Are Not Already Seriously Experienced With Watching and Understanding the Dialogue in Movies Set in Ireland: You'll get what's going on, of course, and it really does deserve to be seen on a big screen (if you can get to one where it's playing), because its power lies as much in its presentation as its plot; but you'll be out of luck with a lot of the muffled, mumbled, thickly-accented dialogue. It's not as impenetrable as Loach's other movies, like Riff-Raff, an English language film that came equipped with subtitles (at least for its American release); but you'll still benefit from the caption feature on your TV remote if you happen to see it on the small screen.