Breakfast on Pluto

Patrick grows up in a small Irish town, renames himself Kitten and goes to London to look for his mother. The Troubles run in the background, and the film deliberately shows them through its protagonist's eyes, which means lightly and with surprising cheer. Neil Jordan adapted Patrick McCabe's 1998 novel and split the story into short chapters, complete with talking birds between them. Cillian Murphy wanted the part for years and would not let it go. It brought him the IFTA for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination. Jordan won the IFTA for Best Director, he and McCabe took Best Script, and the National Board of Review gave the film a special award for excellence in filmmaking. Reviews split: 58 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with a consensus calling it a well-acted if monotonous drama, and 59 on Metacritic. The box office was small at 3.9 million dollars. It premiered at Telluride on 3 September 2005 and opened in the UK and Ireland on 13 January 2006, running 129 minutes. Who it is for: viewers who like heavy subjects handled lightly, and anyone curious about early Murphy. Who it is not for: people sensitive to pace. The episodic structure really does slow in the middle, which is where the criticism starts.