In 2011, John Michael McDonagh wrote and directed The Guard, a clever buddy cop flick starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle. Only McDonagh's second feature, the excellent Calvary strikes into far darker territory: Father James Lavelle (Gleeson) is in his confessional when he learns he's going to be killed. A man—unseen to us—sits in the shadows and speaks in a calm, strong voice hardened by years of anger. When he was a boy, the man says, a Catholic priest abused him; now the man wants revenge. Killing a guilty priest, the man says, isn't enough: He's going to kill an innocent one. In one week's time, he's going to kill Father Lavelle. by Erik Henriksen