Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Circle of Friends (1995)
Director: Pat O'Connor
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Maeve Binchy's novel, adapted by Andrew Davies, whisks us back to rural Ireland, 1957, for a rites-of-passage tale - with the Roman Catholic Church lurking as usual in the wings. Benny (Driver) and her Knockglen chums go to college in Dublin, where she's enraptured by rugby player Jack Foley (O'Donnell, creditable, despite the knitwear) and is dithering about just how fully to give herself when the plot intervenes. Courtesy of father's fatal heart attack, Benny's landed back home and faced with the unwelcome advances of repellent-but-persistent Sean, the prospective shop-owner her parents have long wanted her to marry. The fizzing dialogue gets all the little details right, but the plot's nothing new (cue unwanted pregnancy and Firth's stuffy Anglophile Protestant) and the lingering shots of hibernian greenery aim straight for mid-Atlantic bland-out. While Cumming's turn as the oleaginous Sean offers bravura overstatement, it hardly belongs in the same picture as Minnie Driver's fresh, immensely appealing Benny, one of those rare feature debuts whose palpable inner fire transcends the workaday material.Author: TJ
Cast & crew
Director: Pat O'Connor
Producer: Frank Price, Arlene Sellers, Alex Winitsky
Cast: Chris O'Donnell, Minnie Driver, Geraldine O'Rawe, Alan Cumming, Saffron Burrows, Colin Firth, Mick Lally, Ciaran Hands full cast
Duration: 96 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now