Perrier's bounty

Another star-studded home-grown feature film from the UK and/or Eire. Will its cast include Jim Broadbent and/or Brendan Gleeson? Of course; both, and Cillian Murphy. Will it be a gangster thriller/chase? Another silly question; thankfully, there are some surprises in Perrier's Bounty, starting with its title. If an Irish gang boss is called Perrier, you can guess the movie is a comic caper trading on Brendan Gleeson's star role In Bruges.

He's announced a bounty for the capture of a late-paying loan-taking minor hoodlum (Murphy), whose sleep-repressing coke-snorting dad (Broadbent in splendid form) turns up coincidentally. So does the end of an affair for a downstairs neighbour, an English girl (Jodie Venus Whittaker). When she accidentally kills a bounty hunter, the accidental trio of anti-heroes are pursued across Dublin by Perrier and his gang (including the dead goon's gay partner), a pair of professional burglars who'd tried to cheat Murphy, and Garda cops.

Screenwriter Mark O'Rowe (Boy A) adds a load of rhythmic Blarney, warrior dogs and the voice of Gabriel Byrne (as the Grim Reaper) to the mildly intoxicating brew, which is directed effectively in understated Richie style (that is, in a less flashy and jump-cutty manner) by Irish TV veteran and movie newcomer Ian Fitzgibbon.

An above-average example of entertaining nonsense, this is a movie that deserves to be seen only for one good reason: Broadbent playing superbly with an Irish accent, comic facial expressions and charismatic body language.

Secret of Kells

The Secret of Kells, an Irish animated movie with multi-national European funding and creative participation, would probably have languished in obscure festivals. It still will, but will also gain bigger audiences attracted to it by its 2010 Academy Award nomination (and 9 wins and 3 other nominations elsewhere). The Oscar nod was a well-deserved recognition of its animators' use of colour, and originality of story and hand-drawn designs.

Tomm Moore is the main credited writer-director, along with Nora Twomey (direction) and Fabrice Ziolkowski (screenplay). This was Moore's debut feature; Twomey had worked with him on previous projects; Ziolkowski is a veteran French TV series writer.

Their ambitious little (75-minute) charmer tells the tale of a medieval Irish monastery boy destined to complete an illuminated religious book during the era of Viking plunder. Rather than try and emulate the rich and exquisite details of the historical sources, the movie team appear to have found inspiration in Disney's free-wheeling and exuberant modern Fantasia.

At times, the creators' desire to draw fresh and exciting visual images is bewitchingly over-obvious, at the expense of the thinly-developed monk characters, their nervously loyal cat and the wispy wolf-fairy helping them defeat the evil Celtic spirit in the surrounding forest. Those images, however, are often enchanting representations (spiraling, screen-splitting, elaborately-framed, gleaming) of reality and myths. The Irish-accented English-speaking voices behind the characters are rightly under-emphasised.