Friday Night at the Breaking Point

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MOVIE REVIEWS
Once Upon a Time in a Cinema (DVD)
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Genre: Drama
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: David Gleeson
Writer: David Gleeson
Cast: Colin Morgan, Calam Lynch, Clara Crichton, India Mullen, Niamh Cusack, Stanley Townsend, Elaine O'Dwyer
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.kinolorber.com

RAVING REVIEW: There was a time when going to the movies was more than just choosing a title and finding the best seat. The person selling the ticket might know you and your family; somebody would inevitably cause trouble during the show (although that seems to have only gotten worse lol); the building probably had something that needed to be fixed; and the theater could function as a neighborhood gathering place as much as a place to watch a film. ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA understands that experience and the larger idea of cinema of the day, and David Gleeson's affection for those places gives the movie its best moments.

That affection comes from somewhere personal. Gleeson grew up in a family of cinema owners, worked in the business himself, and drew from those experiences for a story set during one particularly disastrous Friday night in a small Irish theater. His father spent decades in the cinema business, and that connection explains why so many seemingly insignificant details receive attention. The movie isn't nostalgic simply because old theaters look nice. Gleeson remembers the adventure, the personalities, and the chaos required to keep one running.

Colin Morgan plays Earl Clancy, the increasingly exhausted owner of a single-screen cinema in 1984. Earl has financial problems, old equipment, and a building that can create a new emergency every few minutes, while a possible sale hangs over everything. The evening's screening of BREATHLESS, the 1983 remake starring Richard Gere, brings a packed crowd through the doors at exactly the moment Earl could probably have used an empty auditorium and several uninterrupted hours to rethink his life.

The movie plays out roughly in parallel with that screening, allowing one problem to lead directly into another. Plumbing breaks, customers misbehave, equipment causes trouble, and Earl spends most of the night moving between emergencies with the expression of a man who has accepted that something else will go wrong before he reaches the next room. The real-time approach gives Gleeson a unique structure, although it also exposes one of the movie's limitations. Once the pattern becomes clear, the next disaster starts to feel less surprising.

Morgan keeps that repetition from becoming too forceful. Earl isn't played as an exaggerated bundle of stress, and much of the performance works because Morgan lets the exhaustion accumulate. This is someone who knows the building well enough to understand every problem, even when he has absolutely no idea how he's going to solve it. There's also a sadness beneath the frustration because selling the cinema would mean giving up something that has become inseparable from his identity.

His relationship with younger brother Gerald, played by Calam Lynch, adds needed friction to the family side of the story. Gerald doesn't have the same attachment to the business, creating the conflict between preserving what generations built and accepting that younger people may want something different. Gleeson doesn't turn either brother into the villain of the argument. Their disagreements work because both positions make sense, even when the screenplay sometimes pushes the emotional points harder than necessary.

The same is true of the movie's larger conversations about cinemas. ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA isn't subtle about believing these places matter, and anyone who already feels strongly about theatrical moviegoing will probably be several steps ahead of what Gleeson wants to say. Home video hangs over the story as another sign that habits are changing, while Earl's deteriorating theater represents an older model struggling to survive. The movie occasionally becomes pretty sentimental about that divide, especially when its conclusion starts to focus the pieces exactly where they're expected to go.

Clara Crichton makes a strong impression as Earl's daughter, Kate, who adds another generational layer to the family dynamic. Daniel Woodage also gets plenty from Vincent, an usher who seems perpetually one mistake away from making Earl's night even worse. Stanley Townsend brings pressure as Harry Conway, whose interest in cinema forces Earl to confront the gap between the property's financial value and what the place means to the people who use it.

Gleeson filmed inside Limerick's old Royal Cinema. The building has the wear of somewhere that has actually existed rather than a set designed to appear old. Narrow corridors, worn surfaces, projection equipment, and the auditorium itself provide a physical history that production design alone would have struggled to reproduce with such consistency. Even without knowing anything about the location beforehand, there's a sense that people have been in these spaces long before Earl's terrible Friday night.

That willingness to show the aggravation alongside the affection is important because the movie sometimes comes dangerously close to becoming too warm. There aren't many surprises in Earl's emotion, and several supporting threads resolve in a way that the first half doesn't really feel as natural. The stakes also remain relatively minimal despite the constant stream of disasters. ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA wants to reassure us far more than challenge us, and that makes portions of the final stretch easier to predict than they should be.

The running time prevents those struggles from ever becoming overwhelming. Gleeson keeps enough people moving through the building so regularly that another character or broken pipe is usually around the corner, and the movie has a sense of humor that helps when the drama starts leaning heavily into sentiment. It's pleasant, even during scenes where the destination is already obvious.

There’s something fitting about watching ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA on physical media. The release includes trailers but no behind-the-scenes material, filmmaker commentary, or feature about Gleeson's family history and the real cinemas that inspired the story. This is one of those cases where the background seems almost tailor-made for a documentary supplement, particularly given that the movie was filmed in a historic theater. The absence of that material makes me hope that there’s potentially a documentary or something more in the works.

The film itself has more to offer than the bare-bones release surrounding it. ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA isn't the emotionally overwhelming tribute to movie theaters it occasionally reaches for, and its affection for the past sometimes makes the storytelling too comfortable. Three stars doesn't mean the sentiment failed, though. Gleeson knows exactly why these buildings mattered, and Morgan gives that idea a sympathetic face rather than reducing Earl to someone who darts around and just delivers speeches about the importance of movies.

What stays with me most isn't the film playing inside the auditorium or even the question of whether Earl can keep the business alive. It's the constant life outside the screen. Employees scrambling from one thing to the next, the patrons talking, families arguing, teenagers testing boundaries, and one exhausted owner trying to hold the whole place together. ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA makes a convincing case that the movie was only ever part of what people came there to experience.

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[photo courtesy of KINO LORBER]

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