CAPSULE SUMMARIES FROM THE CHICAGO MOVIE HOOLEY 2017:
The information contained in these summaries was collated from available PR preview information and WEB research.
The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and Irish American radio personality Mike Houlihan concluded the presentation of three films comprising the third annual “Irish American Movie Hooley” at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., Chicago which ran September 29, 30th and October 1st 2017.
Friday night, September 29th at 8PM, the Hooley presented “The Dunning Man”, directed by Michael Clayton, written by Michael Clayton and Kevin Fortuna. This film features James Carpinello, Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Nicolye Banks, Scott Oakley, Matthew Rimmer, Langston Fishburne, Lindsay Blackwell and Alexandra Lucchesi.
Connor is out of a job and has been dumped by his girlfriend. He returns to Atlantic City to try to rebuild his life with the last source of income that he has, a few apartments in a low-rise condo complex near one of Atlantic City’s newest and most expensive casinos. Unfortunately, Connor’s tenants don’t want to pay him, so to try and collect, he buddies up with a strange group: “a pair of Chechen animal trainers with underworld ties, a rap star who parties so hard the neighbors can’t sleep, and a struggling single mother who steals his heart.”
Based on Kevin Fortuna’s critically acclaimed short stories, this comedy-drama “plumbs the black-humorous depths of Connor’s existential despair when a harried single mother (Gardner) complains of noise, bringing the reluctant landlord face to face with his other freeloading tenants, including a high-living rapper with an active love life and a pair of sinister Chechen animal trainers moonlighting as gangsters.”
Saturday night September 30th at 8PM, the Hooley presented the Chicagopremiere of the award-winning “EMERALD CITY”. Written, starring and directed by Colin Broderick, and featuring a very large cast, this is a keen portrayal of Irish emigrant construction gangs in New York. Critics have referred to it as “a cinematic gem that may speak for a generation,” as well as “an emotional haymaker” and said it delivers “colossal laughs and monumental heartbreak”.
The film treats on “the hardscrabble world” of a group of New York Irish construction workers, and has been described as a tale rife with humor, pathos, love, and tragedy. A small-time contractor is “struggling to keep his hard-partying crew focused on his perpetually behind-schedule rehab jobs while hiding the problems with booze, money, and the law threatening his marriage. He’s got all the charm of the Irish without the luck, and his guys, including an ex-boxer and church-going teetotaler keep the plot simmering with high drama.”
Sunday afternoon October 1st, the Hooley hosted the big screen Chicago premiere of “THE YOUNG OFFENDERS “at 5PM. Written and directed by Peter Foott, starring Alex Murphy, Chris Walley, and Hilary Rose, this hit comedy is currently breaking box office records in Ireland and all over the world. “Two teenage boys cycle 160 km on stolen bikes pursued by police to find a missing bale of cocaine worth 7 million euros, the action is set amidst Ireland’s biggest cocaine seizure (in 2007) of 440 million euros” worth of the drug.
Described as, “An Irish buddy movie that has already set domestic box-office records, this tale of a pair of gloriously feckless 15-year-old aspiring drug dealers has a homegrown charm that is hard to resist.”
Critics have commented, “This wacky, rough-and-ready comedy, a runaway hit on home shores, is loosely based on the real story of Ireland’s biggest drug bust. Taking exceptional advantage of Cork’s picturesque vistas, it’s a buddy movie with a road-movie caper plot featuring… a pair of restless lads from the wrong side of the tracks, who nonetheless harbor millionaire dreams. Their naiveté is borne out in a half-baked scheme to ride to the coast on stolen bicycles in search of a bale of cocaine gone missing in a shipwreck. With a ruthless gangster poised at one end of the equation and an obsessed cop who’s in hot pursuit on his bike at the other end, the boys soon find themselves between the proverbial rock and a hard place”.
For information on the Irish-American Movie Hooley, go to: hiberniantransmedia website
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