The year isn’t even half over, but it’s been a pretty good one for “The Guard” writer/director John Michael McDonagh. The filmmaker arrived in Sundance with his latest “Calvary” and got some great reviews (we said it was “soaring close to something divine“) and then the movie headed to the Berlin Film Festival where it snapped up the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. Not too bad at all, and now Fox Searchlight is getting ready to give everyone a taste, with the movie due soon, and a new trailer arriving today.
Starring Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Aidan Gillan, Dylan Moran and Kelly Reilly, the story centers on Father James, a good priest who is told one day in confession, by an unseen man, that he is going to kill him. Why? Because he’s a good priest who has done nothing wrong. Twisted, certainly, and Father James is left with a week to make peace with God and his life—something that gets complicated by the arrival of his suicidal daughter. It’s a tricky mix of themes, but one that McDonaugh handles with “masterful control.”
“Calvary” opens in limited release on August 1st. Watch below.
