Now, you don’t need me telling you that you should be watching The Quiet Man or Darby O’Gill and the Little People for St. Patrick’s Day, do you? You come to Film.com for edgier stuff than that. And you’ve probably missed half the great stuff that has come out of the renaissance of Irish and Irish-themed films over the last 15 to 20 years. These are the movies you should be watching if you want a taste of what Irish culture and the Irish people are really like today, and for a deeper understanding of how the immigrant experience of the Irish continues to define American society.

You’ve probably seen The Commitments, the 1991 flick by Alan Parker based on Roddy Doyle’s novel, that caused such a sensation and ignited filmdom’s taste for everything Irish. (Arguably, My Left Foot two years earlier was the beginning of the beginning of the trend.) But have you checked out The Snapper and The Van? They’re based on the second and third books Doyle wrote in the same series that spawned The Commitments, and they’re about the same family … although because of matters of the ownership of film rights, character names had to be changed in Snapper and Van. Stephen Frears directed these two, and they’re a hoot, dealing with small family problems — unexpected pregnancy and job loss — in funny, touching ways that are instantly recognizable to anyone who works for a living and worries about keeping a family together.

Fortunately, the Irish impulse did not immediately spawn insufferably cute movies about leprechauns or fairies, but the mythology of Ireland has not been ignored in this renaissance. Mike Newell gave us Into the West in 1993, written by My Left Foot director Jim Sheridan, and 1994 saw John Sayles’ The Secret of Roan Inish, both lovely films suitable for the whole family about adventurous children and the mysterious but friendly creatures that inhabit the Irish landscape, both physical and psychic. These are among my very favorite movies of any flavor, but if you want a taste of the real magic of the Emerald Isle, don’t miss these two.

Most of the movies of the Irish renaissance, however, are not suitable for children in any way. The Irish mob has provided a huge and potent wellspring for filmmakers to tap, which means bad language, violence, and more violence are being served. (Who’d have thought that Martin Scorsese would turn out to be one of the greatest “Irish” filmmakers of recent years? But his Gangs of New York is a powerful testament to the role that Irish gangs had in shaping the city of New York; and The Departed is steeped in the Irish-American ethos that informs the societies of both Boston’s cops and its criminals.) Paddy Breathnach’s I Went Down, from 1997, may be the best Irish crime comedy you’ve never seen, and the twee-free look at modern Ireland it offers is absolutely refreshing. More somber are the Coen Brothers’ 1990 Miller’s Crossing and Sam Mendes’ 2002 Road to Perdition, both about the Irish mob in America in the early 20th century.

The violence and social repression of Ireland’s recent history has been explored with a grownups-only rawness in films like Roger Michell’s 1998 Titanic Town, about the ironies of life in Belfast at the height of the Troubles, and Paul Greengrass’ 2002 Bloody Sunday, a devastating recreation of one particularly terrible incident in the British occupation of Northern Ireland. Neil Jordan’s 1996 film Michael Collins tells the story of one of Ireland’s greatest champions for nationhood. But the Irish can be their own worst enemies at times, too: 2003′s Veronica Guerin, from Joel Schumacher, takes on Irish drug dealers; in 2002′s Evelyn, from Bruce Beresford, a husband and father whose wife abandons him has to fight 1950′s Irish society to prove that he can raise his children on his own.

The other scourge of the Irish: sex. Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters, from 2002, is the devastating story of how unwed mothers and other “fallen” women were imprisoned, tortured, and abused by the Catholic Church — and with the full approval of the wider society — for their “own good” even until recent years. Suri Krishnamma’s 1994 film A Man of No Importance is a sad tale of the closeted life of a gay man in 1960s Dublin; things had improved slightly for the gay Irish man of the 1970s at the center of Neil Jordan’s 2005 Breakfast on Pluto. But it’s ordinary ol’ heterosexual hangups that make 2000′s When Brendan Met Trudy, from Kieron J. Walsh, fly in the most delightful way.

For many Americans, the connection to Ireland is personal: a huge proportion of us can claim Irish heritage (including yours truly). One of the very best films to deal with the immigrant experience is 1998′s This Is My Father, from Paul Quinn, which sees a second-generation American return to Ireland to seek out his family’s story. This beautiful, haunting film does not, as so many immigrants themselves do, mythologize the “old country” but recognizes it for what it really is, warts and all. Another of the best is 2002′s In America, from Jim Sheridan, about an Irish family struggling to adapt to their new home in 1980s New York City.

I dunno about you, but I don’t plan to spend tomorrow watching movies — I’ll be partying with some actual Irish and Irish-American folks. But if you need a little boost to get yourself started on St. Patrick’s Day, the least you could do is check out Film.com’s free movie of the week, The Book That Wrote Itself. It’s Irish, it’s charming, and it’s a movie that’s all about movies.

(Thanks to The Irish in Film for jogging my memory on some of these great movies.)

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MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com