Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Films for 2014: #127. John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary

Published on February 13, 2014

Calvary

Director: John Michael McDonagh
Writer: John Michael McDonagh
Producers: Chris Clark, Flora Fernandez Marengo, James Flynn
U.S. Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Marie-Josée Croze

John Michael McDonagh follows up The Guard with the top tier critical and Park City crowd-pleasing Calvary which once again showcases his skillset as a filmmaker and his genius association with Brendan Gleeson.

Gist: Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is a good priest who is faced with sinister and troubling circumstances brought about by a mysterious member of his parish. Although he continues to comfort his own fragile daughter (Kelly Reilly) and reach out to help members of his church with their various scurrilous moral – and often comic – problems, he feels sinister and troubling forces closing in, and begins to wonder if he will have the courage to face his own personal Calvary.

Release Date: Fox Searchlight picked up the title from Sundance – look for further festival play dates and a theatrical release this year.

[related]Top 200 Most Anticipated Films of 2014[/related]

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).