Affliction
Directed by Paul Schrader Starring Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Sissy Spacek, Willem Dafoe
Writer and director Paul Schrader returns to the peak of his form with his quietly powerful and profoundly affecting film of the Russell Banks novel, Affliction, which features Nick Nolte in a raw, risk-taking portrayal of an emotionally damaged wreck of a man seeking redemption and drawn into violent, self-destructive behaviour. The roots of his sadness and deep sense of failure are explained in grainy flashbacks to his childhood - when he was brutalised and demeaned by a cold, domineering father, a mean-spirited, alcoholic bully who crushed the boy's spirit and capacity for self-belief and trust in others. The father is played in an Oscar-winning performance by James Coburn.
American History X
Directed by Tony Kaye Starring Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly D'Angelo
Edward Norton, arguably the most interesting and adventurous American actor of his generation, well deserved the Oscar nomination he received this year for his chilly, complex portrayal of a bright, articulate white supremacist whose younger brother is in thrall to his incendiary torrents of racist rhetoric. The film builds with a simmering power as it unflinchingly tackles the inculcation of extremist beliefs, the naked hatred of their expression and their appalling physical manifestations. Be warned that one scene, in particular, is shockingly violent.
Waking Ned
Directed by Kirk Jones Starring Ian Bannen, David Kelly, Fionnuala Flanagan, Susan Lynch, James Nesbitt
Shot on Isle of Man locations, this lame and clicheridden Oirish comedy ladles on the blarney in its twee and slender tale set in an Irish village where one of the locals dies when he learns he has won over £6 million in the National Lottery, and a pair of crafty old codgers (Bannen and Kelly) scheme to collect his winnings. An even more threadbare subplot involves a young single mother torn between two prospective husbands, one of them a pig farmer with a personal hygiene problem. "If it wasn't for the pigs, we'd be settled by now," she laments. Nevertheless, cinema audiences lapped it up in the US - and in Ireland.