Calvary (2014 John Michael McDonagh & scr)

Calvary is not as funny or entertaining as The Guard but boy oh boy, this is a serious and seriously impressive work, laced with laugh out loud moments of black humour, around the subject of a Good Priest in a time when such things don't seem to exist. And it's not just about religion either.

Brendan Gleeson's been sentenced to death ('How's Sunday week?) and it seems just about all the bastards in the village are potential suspects. These are Aiden Gillen, Chris O'Dowd, Dylan Moran, Isaach de Bankolé, Orla O'Rourke, Marie Josée Croze and Gary Lydon. Meanwhile Brendan's daughter Kelly Reilly has attempted suicide, writer M Emmett Walsh wants to go the same way, and Mícheál Óg Lane is a kid on the beach. David Wilmot is the crap priest.

And Domhnall Gleason has a key cameo as a murderer.

Larry Smith shoots interiors warmly and exteriors bleakly. Chris Gill edited, Patrick Cassidy composed.

Is this a deliberate Ryan's Daughter reference?

It's just awesome - the ending and that lateral tracking montage and the final act of virtue that's so important - forgiveness. Gleason is in awe of McDonagh's writing, which is 'so honest'. Interesting also to hear that McDonagh was at one point working the seven stages of grief into the script, and that he didn't himself know who the killer would be until the last 30 pages of the screenplay.

In one of the interviews, McDonagh refers to his next screenplay about an abusive paraplegic who solves the murder of one of his friends - sounds interesting, but that wasn't the next film made, so perhaps that one will see the light of day some time.