Gethsemane

Calvary

Crit

Implausibility is piled upon implausibility, from the setup (in the confessional of a village church in coastal County Sligo, a nonpenitent tells of having been raped by a priest beginning at age 7, and of his plan to kill his confessor in a week precisely because he's a good priest) to the timing (the priest's daughter from a prevocation marriage arrives for a visit after a suicide attempt) to the setting (a breathtakingly beautiful land seemingly populated by the oddballs from a stack of Flannery O'Connor stories--thus plenty of suspects for the audience to weigh [the priest knows who his promised killer is]). It's a clockwork plot, and not much about it makes sense.

And yet: Brendan Gleeson plays the priest with a conviction and sympathy I couldn't resist, Kelly Reilly plays his daughter ditto, and an ensemble including Chris O'Dowd, Aiden Gillen, and M. Emmet Walsh creates eccentrics that are appealing if not necessarily believable. Oh, and did I mention that it's largely a very funny comedy?

A film I liked much more than I know I should.

Trailer

• Birdman--If these were the old days, when Jennie Tonic and I used to rate just-learned-about films from 1 (would take the best reviews imaginable to get us there; example of a 1 we ended up loving: Babe) to 5 (would take the worst reviews imaginable to keep us away; example of a 5 we ended up skipping: Prêt-à-porter), this would be a 5.