Calvary

Calvary (2014) is John Michael McDonagh's searing drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. In the confessional, a calm voice tells Father James he'll be killed in a week. Not as punishment for sin, but precisely because he is a good priest.

Brendan Gleeson anchors the film as James, a clear-eyed, wry man tending a small parish on the windswept Sligo coast. Given seven days, he doesn't flee and doesn't hunt the threat. He keeps making his rounds through a town full of suspects: a bitter butcher, a sneering surgeon, a hollowed-out millionaire, and his own grown daughter, just out of hospital after a suicide attempt. Every encounter becomes a sharp exchange about guilt, faith and forgiveness, and any one of them could be with the man who means to shoot him.

McDonagh isn't after a whodunit. This is a parable about decency under pressure, about who pays first when a community's rage at the Church finally boils over. Pitch-black humor sits right next to real grief, and the ending lands like a punch. Gleeson is extraordinary. One for viewers who want slow, smart, grown-up cinema. Stream Calvary online on iFILM.