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  When Rob Doyle's debut novel 'Here Are The Young Men' came out in 2014, many reviewers were struck by what it had to say about the state of the young Irish male. Peter Murphy  in the Irish Times  saw it as a rare Irish foray into the world of toxic masculinity explored by Irvine Welsh, Brett Easton Ellis and Dennis Cooper. Claire Kilroy's  review in the Guardian  thought it was a rather conservative take on the Celtic Tiger cubs - a parable about the luckiest generation, born and raised at a time of economic boom. Doyle's novel has been brought to the big screen by Eoin Macken, a 38 year old actor, model and director who has assembled a hot young cast comprising of Dean Charles Chapman, Finn Cole, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo and Anya Taylor Joy. And if that wasn't enough, Ralph Ineson, Susan Lynch, Conleth Hill, Emmett Scanlan, Lola Petticrew, Noomi Rapace and Travis Fimmel are among the supporting cast. At the start of Macken's film, we learn that one of the main ...

As cinematic debuts go, Ned Beatty's first film role was an eye watering experience. The Kentuckian was cast as Bobby Tripe in John Boorman's 1972 hit thriller 'Deliverance' alongside Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ronny Cox. But his character also had the misfortune of being subjected to rape by two Apalachian mountain men in one of the most disturbing moments of 1970s cinema. Even in this era where we have grown accustomed to screen violence, the rape scene in 'Deliverance' still has the power to shock and disgust. But it also set Beatty on a path where he became one of Hollywood's most reliable supporting actors. Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937, he sang in the gospel halls and barbershop quartets of St Matthews and landed a scholarship as an acapella group singer in Transylvania University in Lexington in his home state. However he fell in love with theatre, working in Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana in the 1960s. It was a long apprenticeship before he...

  Prison dramas, whether they are for cinema or for television, have certain beats their creators tend to follow. Usually they are built around the experience of a fish out of water. It can be an innocent man or woman, someone from middle class background or a naive young offender thrown behind bars who the audience immediately latches onto. We watch in trepidation as the central character negotiates a scary world of prison bullies and sadistic prison guards and just tries to survive. Usually, they try to escape the grim reality of life behind bars through education, sport, music, art or drama. Often, there's a kindly prison officer and also a fixer who knows how to get things. Sometimes that fixer is malevolent and plays prisoners off other prisoners, extracting a pound of flesh for the protection or contraband he or she offers. He or she is also adept at wrapping prison officers around his or her finger. A lot of these elements can be found in Jimmy McGovern's gritty three pa...

It's not that hard to imagine Frances McDormand jumping 10 years ago at the chance to play the lead character of HBO's 'Mare of Easttown. Mare Sheehan would have been tailor made for the three times Oscar winner. A grumpy cop in a blue collar Pennsylvanian town, she takes nonsense from nobody - not even her own broken family - and diligently sets about solving a crime that rocks her community. However the part is in the hands of 2009 Best Actress Oscar winner, Kate Winslet and, boy, does she knock it out of the park. At the start of Craig Zobel's seven episode miniseries, Mare Sheehan is called by Phyllis Somerville's Betty Carroll to her home amid concerns about a Peeping Tom. Mare bites her tongue as Betty and her husband, Patrick McDade's ex-cop Glen Carroll bicker over his failure to properly install a security camera on the property and then fret over him getting Sheehan a copy of the local newspaper which celebrates her ternage heroics in high school baske...