Magdalene Sisters

There’s some decent acting in this film based upon a true story of young Irish girls being held in a prison in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, an institution run by nuns where girls were sent for such crimes as flirting, having children out of wedlock and getting molested. Writer-director Peter Mullan goes a little overboard at times, and his film often drifts into standard prison-escape territory. But when it works, it’s a harrowing depiction of a supreme injustice that continued into the mid-’90s.