kijii The movie opens with a young Irish family of four—father, mother, and two young daughters—crossing the Canadian-American boarder in their station wagon. We realize that they are entering illegally when the father prompts his family to say that they are entering America on holiday. But, the younger daughter accidentally blurts out that her dad has no job. When the boarder guard gets distracted while admiring the two girls, he smiles, waves them through and says, 'Welcome to America.' Thus begins the modern story of a brave and persevering Irish family trying to 'start over' while carrying the ghost of their late son and brother, Frankie, with them in their minds and spirits. (They all seem profoundly affected by Frankie's recent death.) The four principal characters in the story are Johnny (Paddy Considine), his wife, Sarah (Samantha Morton) and their two daughters, Christy and Ariel (played by real-life sisters, Sarah and Emma Bolger.) The movie's story is told through the eyes and narration of the older daughter, Christy, who constantly carries her camcorder around with her.After the family arrives in NYC, they are forced to live in a virtually unkept building filled with perverts and drug addicts. One of the inhabitants includes the mysterious recluse 'man who screams' and has a KEEP OUT sign on his front door. Sarah takes a job selling ice cream while Johnny searches for employment as an actor and the girls enroll in a Catholic girls' school. As they struggle to survive, they must sell their car and Johnny has to take a night job as a cab driver. The movie is a thesaurus of emotionally moving scenes and subplots, including the quest to get an air conditioner to survive the New York summer heat and the girls' discovery of an American custom: trick-or-treating on Halloween. As the girls go trick-or-treating in their building, they knock persistently on the door of 'the crazy screaming man.' When he finally answers the door, he is angry. But he is soon won over by these wonderful little girls' vulnerability and openness. This is when 'the crazy screaming man,' a black African artist named Mateo (Djimon Hounsou) first enters the movie as a full character. Mateo becomes very close to the family. But, he is also dying of a terminal disease. (We are led to believe that the disease is AIDS).Sarah becomes pregnant, but her pregnancy is difficult and requires even more sacrifice from the family. (She is determined to see it through to the end, no doubt trying to replace their lost child, Frankie.) We—the audience--are now caught up in three simultaneous struggles: that of Sarah to give life to their unborn child; that of Mateo's death; and that of the family to give up the pain of Frankie's recent death.This autobiographical movie is lovingly put together by the Sheridan family. Jim Sheridan directed this film as well as co-writing its Oscar nominated script with his nieces, Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan. The movie is dedicated to Frankie, who—according to the IMDb-- died of a brain tumor.

Ed-Shullivan Whose life has not had some tragedy strike it? It is not when tragedy strikes that makes us wonder what life is all about, but in this film, how this Irish family of four overcomes tragedy and the support unit they have that makes a family unite in love and wonderment. Theirs is a story where all family members have had their hearts broken, but yet they still believe in magic, and one little girl named Christy, in her three wishes.Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton who play Johnny and Sarah are the parents of two daughters named Christy and Ariel. Their daughters, Christy and Ariel are played by actresses Sarah and Emma Bolger who are sisters in real life. The film opens with this Irish family crossing into the American border via Canada with their car, a station wagon, that holds what little worldly belongings they have. Older sister Christy needs to use the first of her three magic wishes to ensure that the border patrol officers let her family enter the U.S. border on the pretense that they are only here for a vacation.So with Christy's first wish coming true they are allowed by the border patrol officers to drive across the U.S. border with some iconic 1980's Americana songs playing on their car radio and as they witness in wonderment the bright lights of New York's Times Square and life is grand for this Irish immigrant family. With little money and even less furniture and clothes, they settle into a drug infested Hells Kitchen dilapidated apartment building where the pigeons have overtaken their top floor apartment on first site. With a lot of spit and polish Johnny and Sarah try and make their two little girls a new home in New York's Hells Kitchen and overcome the grief of losing their little brother Frankie to too young a death from a fall and a brain tumour. Johnny tries to eke out a living as an actor and driving cab, while Sarah's steady income as an ice cream parlor server at a store appropriately named Heaven helps get them through each months endless bills.A relationship is formed by these two innocent Irish girls Christy and Ariel, with the reclusive and tormented neighbor Mateo who lives below them. Mateo's character is played by the very versatile and dramatic actor Djimon Honsou. His is a life of trying to get through each day by painting on canvas and with a fridge full of medications as he has also ended up in Hells Kitchen with demons tormenting his life. As the two children befriend Mateo, Johnny and Sarah grow to also adore Mateo and so they spend more time with him through the springtime, to the hot summer, to fall, to winter and back to spring they all bury their pain and enjoy each others company with more 1980's iconic Americana music scores by Lovin' Spoonful, Culture Club and The Byrds, brightening up each scene and drawing their films audience closer to these two diverse apartment dwellers who reside in Hells Kitchen carrying their fair share of the world's nightmares in their heads and on their shoulders.This film is inspiring how these two little girls innocence encourages their parents and their new neighbor Mateo, to put aside their past tragedies, overcome their current poverty and health deficiencies and by relying on each other, and with young Christy's two remaining wishes we witness that dreams can come true.Jim Sheridan wrote and directed In America, and the film was a semi- autobiography dedicated to his brother Frankie who died at the age of 10. This a a beautifully written and directed film, that will tug at your heartstrings and will most certainly bring back some of your own childhood memories if for no other reason than the excellent choice of 1970's and 1980's pop music filtering through the film at the right moments.I give the film a strong 9 out of 10 rating.

gavin6942 A family of Irish immigrants adjust to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.The film was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay for the Sheridans, Best Actress for Samantha Morton and Best Supporting Actor for Djimon Hounsou. Yet, the real reason to watch this is for the two sisters and how charming they are.Ebert wrote, "In America is not unsentimental about its new arrivals (the movie has a warm heart and frankly wants to move us), but it is perceptive about the countless ways in which it is hard to be poor and a stranger in a new land." More than this, it shows an interesting cross-section of race and nationality. Not the great film it wants to make itself out to be, but still a rather light-hearted walk down the path of modern immigration (keeping it even lighter by having the immigrants speak English).

evanston_dad Ugh. The love of this film totally escapes me.Jim Sheridan's story about Irish immigrants struggling with their new life in America is clearly heartfelt, but it's also sappy and overbearingly sentimental. Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton play a father and mother of two little girls who have left what to all appearances was a prosperous life in Ireland to escape the memories of another child's death. But the film never successfully establishes why they'd rather scrape together an existence in America than simply move to a different home/city in their native country, or to the UK, or to Canada. I was supposed to feel bad about how cold and uncaring the U.S. appeared to these people, but I didn't, because all of their decisions were completely voluntary and this isn't the 1890s.Grade: C-