The best Gabriel Byrne’s documentary movies
We present our ranking of the best Gabriel Byrne’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Gabriel Byrne.
Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach
7.2/10
A surprisingly candid behind-the-scenes account of the career of Ken Loach, one of Britain’s most celebrated and controversial filmmakers, as he prepares to release his final major film I, Daniel Blake.
A Man's Story
6.3/10
Documentary about British fashion designer Ozwald Boateng.
John Ford: Dreaming the Quiet Man
7.5/10
Dreaming the Quiet Man’ includes interviews with aficionados of Ford like, Martin, Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovicz, Jim Sheridan, William Dowling, and Joe McBride. There is mesmeric archive and rare photographs of the making of the film. The main location of the documentary is Ford’s ancestral homeland of Connemara, on the west coat of Ireland, where his parents were born. We meet Ford’s cousins, the Feeney’s who tell the story of Ford’s parent’s departure from Ireland after the Great Famine and the young Ford’s return to Ireland in 1922 to visit his cousins the Thornton’s and saw their house being burned down by the infamous Black and Tans. Ford, under the pretense of scouting locations for a movie, gave money to the IRA. We travel to Portland Maine where Ford grew up and went on to become a director in the first bloom of Hollywood. The boy made it good but Ireland was always on his mind.
Keyser Soze, Lie or Legend - Featurette
7.1/10
Featurette in which director Bryan Singer tells more about the mysterious criminal Keyser Soze.
Excalibur: Behind the Movie
7.4/10
This retrospective documentary looks back on the making of director John Boorman's 1981 movie, Excalibur. Self-described as the toughest film he ever made, Excalibur told the tale of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone and helped start the careers of actors Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart. In this one hour film, they join other cast and crew to share their memories from the filming of this Arthurian masterpiece. Documentary originally released in 2013 with the title Behind The Sword In The Stone; a later, renamed version with updated biographical information on the actors involved was then released in 2016. The 2016 version has since been shown on various on-demand channels.
Round Up: Deposing 'The Usual Suspects'
7.3/10
Documentary that includes interviews with Singer as well as the rest of the cast - mainly Spacey. There is no "plot" or "promotional" elements to this documentary - all of the information offered is substantial and informative as we are let in on all the details of trying to seek out the right actors for the parts, as well as the thoughts of the actors about joining an independent production helmed by a young director. Part 2 is a more interesting look at the production itself, complete with the problems and obstacles that faced the low-budget feature, as well as the happier memories of the work that the cast and crew went through. There's a lot of discussion of the infamous laughter during the lineup sequence, complete with a few outtakes of the scene.
My Astonishing Self: Gabriel Byrne on George Bernard Shaw
7.8/10
Award-winning Irish actor Gabriel Byrne explores the life, works and passions of George Bernard Shaw, a giant of world literature, and - like Byrne - an emigrant Irishman with the outsider's ability to observe, needle and puncture.
A World War II Fairytale: The Making of Michael Mann's 'The Keep'
Exploring Michael Mann's 1983 film adapted from the F. Paul Wilson novel and its impact.
Pirates
6.5/10
Discovery examines the history of "Golden age of Piracy." The program takes a detailed look at the harsh lives of pirates, their tactics, motivations and why they would choose such a life. The geopolitical forces that lead to the proliferation of pirates and their final demise are explained.
Michael Des Barres: Who Do You Want Me To Be?
7.9/10
The son of a junkie aristocrat and a schizophrenic showgirl becomes a master of reinvention on a 50+ year journey through rock and roll, TV, and movies.
Horses: The Story of Equus
6.7/10
The story of three horses who were all born on the same night but their lives take very different paths.
Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death
7.2/10
We don’t know how. We don’t know when. But death comes for us all. To be human is to wrestle with this truth and with the great unanswered question: How do we live with death in our eye? We can deny, we can rail, we can challenge, we can accept. What is our story, and will it sustain us at the end? “Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death,” a two-hour documentary, features men and women of uncommon eloquence and intelligence who are grappling with these questions. For them death is no longer an abstraction far off in the future, it is real. They come from all walks of life, all ages, dying and healthy, believers and unbelievers, well known and obscure. These are people who have been shocked into mortality and are forever changed. They have stories to tell, and we can listen and learn from them.
Irish Cinema: Ourselves Alone?
5.8/10
The Irish entry in the BFI’s Century of Cinema series of documentaries
