Breakfast At Tommaso’s

Murphy, Merl & McKenna meet their idol

ith their showcase festival hitting The Whale this Saturday, it’s clear that Wicklow’s new breed of filmmakers are thinking big.

Each of the writers, actors, directors and producers in this cinema collective believe that great films really need to be seen on the big screen.

“Cinema does something to us that no other artform does,” says Wicklow Stories co-founder Brian Matthews Murphy. “Something that no other medium can.

“It transports us, takes us away – and at the same time, brings us home…”

Yikes, we feel a song coming on. But the beard-stroking man is not wrong. Cinema is life writ large, helping us all revel in the small details as we bathe and bask in that glorious widescreen technicolour. Or, on occasion, arty-farty black & white, of course.

“When the lights go down and the cinema goes quiet,” continues Brian, “there is an understanding that something incredible is about to happen.”

You can find out just how incredible this Saturday, October 8th, at The Whale, when the Wicklow Stories Film Festival lights up the big screen at 4pm and 7.30pm – tickets here.

Alongside the line-up of short films – including Sam Uhlemann’s The Forgotten and writer-producer Ronika Merl’s anthology offering The Pier (which boasts five directors) – musical guests include working class hero Cian O’Melia and the retro-groovy Dylan E. Crampton.

In the meantime, we asked three of the Wicklow Stories leading lights – Brian, Ronika and Conor McKenna – to tell us all about their 10 favourite movies…

Brian’s Choices:

Big Trouble In Little China
It’s comedy, it’s horror, it’s fantasy, but mostly it’s a blend all of the above wrapped up in a tongue-in-cheek play on the action films of the time. Especially when it comes to Kurt Russell’s portrayal of Jack Burton, a wise-cracking truck driver who gets caught up in a martials arts fight between two warring Chinese gangs.
His acting choices were way ahead of their time and very misunderstood when the movie came out. In my opinion, it is his fearless and egoless performance that leads to the current trend of leading men who aren’t afraid to be the butt of the joke or just silly, especially in the recent Marvel movies.
You could even see this movie as an allegory for America. A white man wanders in, acts tough but actually achieves very little. In fact the whole film would play out in pretty much the same way without him.
Genre mash-ups have been tried before and after this movie’s release, and though it was a box office failure, it really deserves a second look through modern eyes…

Airplane!
With this movie, Jim Abrahms and the Zucker brothers forged the genre of joke-a-minute, over-the-top, silly comedy. There is something for everyone; if you don’t like one joke, don’t worry, another one will be along in a minute.
The jokes alone have are still quoted today, 40 years later, “I’ve got a drinking problem” and “Don’t call me Shirley” perhaps the most famous.
The genre may have been diluted, even by the filmmakers themselves, over the years, but without Airplane, we wouldn’t have Naked Gun, South Park or even the Farrelly Brothers movies. Whether the results have been good or bad is for you to decide, but you certainly can’t deny their influence.

Jason And The Argonauts
Ray Harryhausen was a complete pioneer when it comes to visual effects. The creatures, forced perspectives and miniatures used in his previous movies culminate in this masterclass. The sheer amount of time put into so many stop-motion special effects for one movie hasn’t been seen before or since. From the fighting skeletons to Cerberus the 3-headed dog guarding Hades, The Hydra and on to Talos the bronze gladiator, the visuals are stunning.
The directing by Don Chaffey as well as performances by acting luminaries such as Todd Armstrong, Nancy Novak, Honor Blackman, Patrick Troughton and Nigel Green are all good but the star of the show is undoubtidly Ray Harryhausen and his amazing creatures.

The Innocents
If you have seen a haunted house movie, you have seen a film that owes a dept to The Innocents, directed by Jack Clayton.
In a retelling of the The Turn of The Screw by Henry James, Deborah Kerr plays a governess starting a new job at a large, stately house. The children are creepy, the maid turns a blind eye to the eerie happenings, and the governess begins questioning her sanity.
The same story has been told in The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Turning, but the simplicity of the black and white setting, the moors, the lights, the shadowy, menacing figures, the ghostly apparitions, the creepy singing and an early use of the music box have never been surpassed.
Most of all though it is the otherworldly, engrossing performances by the child actors Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin as Miles and Flora that has you questioning everything you thought you knew before entering through that front door.

Ronika’s choices:

Last Days in the Desert
Rodrigo Garcia’s Last Days In The Desert is a small film – in every sense of the word. It has a cast of four, takes place in a desolate desert, and is quiet. Ewan McGregor plays an iteration of Yeshua (Jesus), and there is a moment when he is tempted by the Devil. They sit and talk over a fire, like we’ve all done. Like humanity has done since our time began. And I think that moment incorporates the very essence of what the performing arts are – why they exist. They bring us back to this moment in our history when we had nothing to while away the dark nights but to tell each other stories. And myths. And great secrets that can only be uncovered in the quiet moments when the dawn seems centuries away.

The Newsroom
In truth, this is a typical political TV show – it’s got A-List actors, it’s got run of the mill
cinematography. It’s well-crafted. But then there’s this moment – the moment when Jeff Daniels’ character has
enough. He finally goes and says the unsayable: that America is not the greatest country in the
world.
“We waged war on poverty, not on poor people,” he decries. “We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior.”
This is what good writing does – it makes us feel like we are part of something bigger. That is why the art of filmmaking, the art of cinema, is so vital to a healthy society. It teaches us, time and again, that we can still aspire. That great deeds can still be done.

I, Tonya
Fiercely feminist. Oddly tragic. Inexplicably hilarious. Margot Robbie’s career-defining performance, I, Tonya was satisfying and turned expectations on its head. The film had everything – breath-taking tension, characters that were built perfectly, and talent that was nothing short of absolute genius.
What stuck out to me, though, was how grounded Robbie’s Tonya was. She was a working class girl, and she was not the pretty one. Margot Robbie played this inner conflict, Tonya’s damaging insecurities, so well that it left me questioning my own inner world as a woman.
Sebastian Stan brings his A-game in his role too, and it propelled him from a superhero blockbuster hot shot to a serious actor who knows his game.
This film matters.

Conor’s Choices:

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire
This film follows a love affair between Marianne, a painter, and her subject, Héloïse, a reluctant bride to be. Director Céline Sciamma created a film that is passionate, exquisite, and incredibly moving while at the same time being a story that explores themes of love and regret. The two lead actresses (Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel) are outstanding, and watching their relationship on screen is quite
heart-warming.
Like how the film itself is seen through the perspective of a painter. Every frame looks and feels like a painting brought to life. Each frame is a thing of aesthetic delight, of color coordination, of subtle lighting and design elements. It’s a feast for the eyes, a visual delight. The atmosphere is so dreamy and despite the fact there’s very little dialogue the film is filled with incredible depth.
It’s Sciamma’s perfect marriage of character, story and visuals that make this a masterpiece worth watching again and again.

Mandy
The plot is simple enough. After The Children of the New Dawn, a nightmarish cult, violently murders his wife, Red goes on a vicious rampage of rampage.
Director Panos Cosmatos takes the straightforward revenge narrative, and turns it into something equal parts, grindhouse horror and psychedelic thriller. Its heavy metal influences come through loud and clear, guided by an outstanding soundtrack by the late Johann Johansson. Nicholas Cage’s performance as Red brilliantly balances the chaotic action sequences and the emotional backbone of the story, allowing the film to feel grounded throughout all the chaos that ensues. Cosmatos takes risks and experiments with traditional storytelling techniques to deliver an original experience for the audience.
Mandy is a beautiful, deranged and hypnotic work of art that needs to be seen to be believed.

The Lighthouse
Robert Eggers’ gothic horror masterpiece showcases the downfall of two lighthouse keepers as they try maintain their sanity whilst stranded on a remote New England island in the 1890s.
Led by career best performances by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe that hold the viewer on the edge of their seat for the near 2-hour runtime. For me the true star of the movie is Jarin Blaschke’s masterfully crafted cinematography which gets underneath the viewers skin made all the more terrifying by the films’ claustrophobic 1.19:1 aspect ratio. I could talk endlessly about how the decision to shoot using vintage lenses and on black and white 35mm film makes the film feel like it’s straight of the era it’s set in.
So needless to say The Lighthouse has become a huge inspiration to me as a cinematographer and has thought me how well-crafted cinematography can immerse the audience in the world of the story.

You can check out the Wicklow Stories Film Festival at The Whale right here. You can also get in touch with the gang on [email protected].