Today's Pick

Despite a career which has included a string of critical hits such as "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father," the 60-year-old Irish director Jim Sheridan returns to cinemas this week with his latest film "Brothers," a depressing study in post-tramatic syndrome but a rewarding journey, is set to hit theaters today.
"Brothers" is an adaptation of the award winning Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's "Brødre" in 2004, and it's about human frailty, and tells a story of how the two brothers find themselves changing roles. When a straight-arrow Marine Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire, the "Spider-Man") returns to the war in Afghanistan, he leaves his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and his children behind. He also leaves his black-sheep younger brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is having issues with their father. But when Sam is thought to be dead, Tommy steps up and begins to help Grace with the house, hoping to deal with both of their loss. Happily, Sam is not dead and he returns battered and bruised, but alive. Yet his return is only after he has suffered some painful experiences. And once he is back, he struggling to adjust to civilian life and suffers from guilt, anger, sadness and paranoia, leaving his family broken and afraid. As a result, the siblings whose lives have gone in completely different directions. One is a hero who returns from the front erratic and violent, and the other is an ex-con who learns self-control when he's handed responsibility.
The increasingly impersonal Jim Sheridan is doing his personal best to further the Irish tradition of storytelling. On the big screen or in conversation, the diminutive Irish filmmaker spins tales of a mesmerizing nature, covering politics, history, religion and literature, and sometimes all at once. With strong supporting performances from Oscar nominees, Sheridan's movie delves deep into the mental scars of war in a way that is reminiscent of Michael Cimino's 1978 classic "The Deer Hunter." "It's the difficulty of the warrior coming back to a civilian situation, and how he has to adjust," Sheridan says. As a melodrama, "Brothers" is a powerful statement on loyalty, love, calamity of the human heart and the cost of war. The movie stays with you long after leaving the theater...maybe forever.