The immigrant experience in Manhattan, more precisely the Sheridan Family experience, as revised and related by Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, etc.). Never a dull moment, it would seem; or anyway never a relaxed, a calm, a common, a mundane, a prosaic one; instead a gaudy parade of overheated vignettes such as would make late-period Fellini look like a strict neorealist. (E.g., the family's first look at the lights of Times Square, to the nudging accompaniment of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Do You Believe in Magic?," is more an effect of camera acrobatics than of carefully aimed shots.) The real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger are delightful as the little girls of the family ("Don't 'little girl' me! I've been carrying this family on my back for over a year!"). But Paddy Considine, the Jim figure, seems several storeys over the top as the unemployed head of the family, an aspiring stage actor. His diagnosed "problem" is that he shut down emotionally after the death of his son -- "That's why ya can't get a job acting, Johnny, because ya can't feel anything!" -- and yet he acts offstage like an amalgam of Tim Roth and Gary Oldman: not bits and pieces of each of them, but the totality of both. He may not be able to feel, but man, can he ever express! The elder daughter, who believes she has inherited three wishes from her departed brother, addresses the problem touchingly with her third and final one. Samantha Morton, Djimon Hounsou. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.