St. Patrick’s Day is Tuesday, March 17, and it isn’t always just about parades, drinking green beer and wearing shamrocks, so we’ve taken a look at ten of the best St. Patrick’s Day movies to watch to help you celebrate.
St. Patrick’s Day has become one of the most celebrated holidays of the year, with $4.6 billion dollars expected to be spent on it in 2015. The average St. Patrick’s Day party-goer will spend an average of $36 during celebrations for the holiday.
It’s estimated that 52.3% of Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, which means over 160 million people in the U.S. alone will be celebrating this year, and that’s not counting places like the two countries of Ireland, where the holiday is even more popular due to its origins and the fact that it’s considered a public holiday.
Of the people who celebrate the Irish holiday, 82% of them will even be wearing green today, but what are the best movies you can watch to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? We’ve taken a look at ten of the best St. Patrick’s Day movies to watch, with a few directly related to the holiday, and many that are simply Irish-based.
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Most St. Patrick’s Day themed movies are a bit cheesy, albeit fun to watch, so instead of just including the cliche first Leprechaun movie (which we totally don’t love), we’ve focused on other films which are intertwined with the lovely country of Ireland and great Irish actors/characters.
In the iconic St. Patrick’s Day film, Leprechaun, a father and daughter’s move to a new home is anything but lucky when they find that a murderous (albeit hilarious) 600-year-old leprechaun is living in their basement. Warwick Davis would later become famous for his work as multiple characters in Harry Potter, but seeing him run around scaring Jennifer Aniston is priceless.
A young Irishman leaves his home with his landlord’s daughter after some trouble with her father in Far and Away, and they dream of owning land at the big land giveaway in Oklahoma in 1893. Cruise and Kidman have great chemistry, and while Cruise’s Irish accent is a bit poor, he plays a great Irish boxer, and the story is interesting, despite it’s magical ending, which is laughable at best.
The Crying Game sees IRA terrorist Fergus (played by Rea) bonds with his prisoner, Jody (played by Whitaker). Jody tells Fergus of his girlfriend, Dil, with whom Fergus later falls in love. In one of actor Forest Whitaker’s first roles, he does an excellent job of showing his range, and it’s a unique experience to see him in the early ’90s.
The one animated film on our list, The Secret of Kells a beautiful film about a young boy in a remote medieval outpost which is under siege from barbarian raids and is beckoned to adventure when a celebrated master illuminator arrives with an ancient book, filled with secret wisdom and powers.
The Wind That Shakes The Barley takes place against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence, where two brothers fight a guerrilla war against British forces. Irish-born actor Cillian Murphy, best known for his role as Scarecrow in Batman Begins, performs brilliantly, and gives one of his best performances to date. Why this guy isn’t in more movies, we’ll never know.
Director Steve McQueen’s first feature film, Hunger, tells the true story of Irish republican Bobby Sands, played by Michael Fassbender. Bobby Sands leads inmates of a Northern Irish prison on a hunger strike against the British government in 1976. McQueen would go on to win an Oscar for Best Picture for his 2013 film 12 Years a Slave, which also starred Fassbender. Fassbender’s physical transformation is breathtaking, and is similar to what we saw with Matthew McConaughey’s in Dallas Buyer’s Club.
In Bruges seems to make a lot of movie lists, and that’s most likely because it’s one of the most brilliant films that people always seem to have never seen. It makes the St. Patrick’s Day list because its Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s first feature film, and both Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are both hugely popular Irish actors.
In The Devil’s Own, a police officer, played by Harrison Ford, uncovers the real identity of his house-guest, an IRA terrorist in hiding. Brad Pitt plays the IRA terrorist, and the film gives an interesting look into the Irish terrorist group, and how they were helped by outsiders who were entirely unaware of what the I.R.A. members were doing. Pitt does an excellent job as an Irish terrorist, and the film is one that seems to get looked over in general despite some solid performances from both Ford and Pitt.
In the Name of the Father is an incredible film starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a man who is coerced/tortured into a confession to being responsible for an IRA bombing he did not commit, which results in the imprisonment of himself and his father as well. An English lawyer, played by Emma Thompson, does her best to get them out after finding out the government withheld evidence.
Brendan Gleeson stars in yet another hilariously funny Irish film titled The Guard. He plays an incredibly dumb Irish police officer who works with an FBI agent, played by Don Cheadle, in an attempt to bust an international drug-smuggling ring. Gleeson and Cheadle put in some great performances, and Gleeson’s Irish-self comes through in the best of ways in this movie.