Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt's childhood starts in Brooklyn; the family moves back to Ireland, to Limerick, and there the poverty takes its real shape. His father Malachy cannot find work, and when he does he leaves the money in the pub. His mother Angela tries to keep the children alive. The siblings die one by one. As Frank grows, his single aim becomes clear: saving enough to get back to America. Alan Parker directed, from Frank McCourt's memoir. Emily Watson plays Angela and Robert Carlyle plays Malachy. The film is set in Limerick but most of it was shot in Cork, using locations such as Farren Street in Blackpool. It opened in the United States on Christmas Day 1999. On a 25 million dollar budget it took 37.3 million worldwide, 13 million of that domestically and 24.3 million abroad. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 52 percent, the consensus saying that for all its effort to record the memoir accurately it fails to capture the drama or the humour of his life. Metacritic sits at 54. Emily Watson won Best Actress from the London Film Critics Circle. John Williams was nominated for the Oscar and the Golden Globe for his score, losing the Academy Award to The Red Violin. Who it is for: viewers who like Irish stories of poverty and period childhoods. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the book's humour. The film leaves most of McCourt's irony outside, and what remains is only the gloom.