Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.02: Fréwaka

Every year when I write stuff from the festival up, I feel like I should be prefacing reviews with "I don't grade on a curve and a lot of what you see at an Underground festival is going to be kind of rough", or that for as much as I like the people and energy of the festival, a lot of this isn't exactly my thing.

Which is why I only saw one movie on Thursday, even though I probably could have done three. I've never seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and don't have nearly enough interest to see a movie about it (it's a blind spot, but I'm not particularly ashamed of my horror blind spots). At the other end of the night, sure, there are good reasons to start a movie at 10:30pm when I've got work then next day, but I'm going to need more convincing than I got that a new film from the makers of Relaxer is one of them.

What's that leave us with? Weird Irish stuff. And while I like weird Irish stuff more than most supernatural horror, well…


Fréwaka

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it

I like Irish folk horror more than most other ways for movies to be built around the supernatural, but I'll readily admit: I do maybe need my hand held a little bit. The English or American boyfriend that gets laughed at before his girlfriend explains the town's traditions exists in order to make not just international audiences in general but me, specifically, a little more able to digest the movie a little better. Fréwaka, on the other hand, is mostly shot in Irish, very much intended for a local audience that knows what's going on, so maybe there's a bit more work for the viewer to get to the decent story behind it.

It opens with two prologues: A young woman vanishing on her wedding day in 1973, and a middle-aged woman hanging herself in a cramped compartment in the present day, fifty-odd years later. Soon we're introduced to "Shoo" (Clare Monnelly), the second woman's daughter, and her pregnant Ukrainian bride-to-be Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya), as they come to clean her apartment, with Mila wanting to sort the ephemera carefully while Shoo is inclined to throw it away. Mila will soon be doing that on her own, as Shoo, a home-care nurse, has just been given a placement for a stroke victim who must be an Irish speaker. Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) lives in a large, foreboding house on the outskirts of a small town. She, it turns out, was the lady at the start, and what she experienced when missing has left her agoraphobic and paranoid ever since.

I like a lot of the material that writer/director Aislinn Clarke is working with here - the eerie imagery, the two women who have survived some sort of abuse and shut a lot out as a result, the Irish brusqueness that can stop a film from woolgathering and provides a quick laugh as folks get on with it. Clarke is careful not to present anything that can't be folks in small towns doing weird local rituals until very late in the game indeed, but there's a sort of logic to how the idea of Na Sídhe is presented. Peig describes a house under her house and the idea that the world is thin around the time of major life changes, and her memories of the other side are vague and metaphoric, like the human mind can't record it properly. Clarke's script lets Shoo come at Peig's fears of the supernatural skeptically but not condescendingly, talking about how counting objects and using symbols is how humans keep control of the world around them.

The two leads are strong as well; both Clare Monnelly and Bríd Ní Neachtain find individual ways to make their characters haunted and abrasive rather than serving as too-obvious mirrors of one another. They still spar even once they understand one another, though there's more sad self-awareness of what they have in common. The rest of the cast fills their roles in solid fashion, with Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya giving Mila some frustrated depth, and Olga Wehrly doing a terrific job of convincing the audience that there may indeed be something supernatural going on just by acting weird in a couple of scenes.

The movie kind of needs what Wehrly delivers at that point because it's never quite as scary as it maybe should be if you're not primed by knowing the mythology. It sort of trucks along as decent drama but seldom quite connects with the sweet spot where the supernatural and grounded expanding intersect. Whenever something eerie happens, one is as likely to shrug it off with a thought about how this might be an unreliable narrator situation, but that's quite understandable, given what this particular woman has gone through. Bits are good and well-staged, but seem to be treading water until the last act, when the sense of reality finally begins to shake.

And even then, it ends on final scenes that have me thinking okay, I guess, if you say so, Ireland: A striking image that certainly looks the Irish folk horror part, but doesn't exactly feel like the culmination of this particular story. I suspect it may work better if you know the material, and nothing wrong like that. It's an Irish movie for an Irish audience, and well-done enough that I expect it works really well for them.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.01: The Surfer and Muerte en la Playa

I don't imagine there were a lot of guests scheduled for BUFF, especially the first night where the schedule was Sunday-evening tight, but I wonder how many are backing out. Nicole & Kevin might be joking about how the audience chooses the awards at this festival which means there's still democracy here, but the stories about people getting arrested by ICE folks trying to meet quotas at Logan aren't good, and film festivals sure seem like something where someone might come in on a tourist visa only to have someone who might have looked the other way before decide that was working. Like, I might not risk it.

Bleh.

Still, it was a fun night where the studio movie with indie roots and the restoration shared a theme of rage leading to murder in a sunny beach community. If you want more, The Surfer director Lorcan Finnegan's debut feature, Without Name, is currently sitting on my shelf in a disc released by Yellow Veil, a partner label of Vinegar Syndrome, who are apparently behind the restoration/re-release of Muerte en la Playa. The weird horror community crosses over a lot!


The Surfer

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Huh, I don't think I've ever heard Julian McMahon's actual accent before (and maybe I haven't; if the Sydney-born actor is laying Perth on something thick). There's something kind of funny about how he's been playing [North] American folks for twenty-five years without really scanning as Australian while Nicolas Cage's character is supposedly Australian but they've got to spend a couple minutes claiming that a few years in California twenty years ago has him talking like Nic Cage.

Or maybe it was longer; whatever the length, he's back in Australia now, intending to take his son (Finn Little) to the beach where he surfed growing up, pointing out the childhood home that he is repurchasing from the crest of a wave, presuming he can put together the financing to beat a last-minute all-cash offer. Since then, though, the locals have been bullying any outsider who comes to the supposedly-public beach, led by Scott "Scally" Callahan (McMahon), a motivational speaker who whips the local men into a frenzy. As Cage's surfer continues to haunt the beach, various things start going wrong, and the only ally he's got is a bum living out of his car (Nic Cassim) who blames Scally and his crew for his son's death.

The Surfer is the sort of Nicolas Cage movie that makes you wonder what would have happened if Cage hadn't taken the role. it might have been more timid, or it might have been the same but more unnerving because we're not looking for him to Nic Cage it up. He's good at this, and good in this movie, but it's not necessarily going to take one by surprise; we can sort of track how Cage will play his escalation from seemingly reasonable everyman to deadpan sarcasm to manic violence from previous experience at this point.

I do like the compact setup, though, with director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin clearly establishing stakes and how the title character is trying to recapture things that are gone, in large part due to his own self-destructive action, and seeing up little bits of entitlement that keep him from being totally sympathetic and get him deeper and deeper in trouble. It's so keenly and carefully set out up front that what comes after is kind of drawn out as a result, stripping away everything he's rebuilt in maybe too finely granular a fashion, before a turn that maybe requires more or less of the movie, because there's a whole other basket of issues that demand a bit of attention after that, from the "localism" that seems to drive the folks on the beach to how Scally's guru status is likely more about giving people permission to be cruel than channeling aggression.

The film's got a look, though, a real way of getting across how Australia is unforgivingly beautiful (it is a place where dehydration can sneak up on you while you enjoy the sunshine and interesting plants and animals), and an eye for how the rich folks near this beach are kind of cosplaying at being hooligans enough for it to become real. The comic timing of each new bit of cruelty is impeccable, and the frustration and heatstroke making this guy feel even more unstuck in time is effective.

I hate to be a "cut 15 minutes" guy, especially since the grindhouse flicks that inspired this were often sort of padded themselves, but it does feel like there's a 90-minute version that attacks the viewer as ruthlessly as the opening does throughout rather than vamping because it's going to take a couple of days to wear this guy down. Maybe there's not quite a correct pace for this story, and you've just got to roll with how good many of the moments are.


Muerte en la Playa (Death on the Beach)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon or direct from Vinegar Syndrome

You never totally know about IMDB entries for filmmakers outside the English-speaking mainstream, but to watch Muerte en la Playa is to be surprised that this comes near the end of the career of Enrique Gómez Vadillo rather than the start; it's got the feel of a young filmmaker trying to get things out as an outsider rather than a veteran who has had a decade or so and plenty of opportunities to hone his craft. That's both good and bad; transgressive energy pushes the film through periods where there are awkward talent gaps between some of the folks involved.

It opens with a nastily sexual murder at a boarding school that will have it closed, sending student David (Andrés Bonfiglio) home to his wealthy mother Lorena (Sonia Infante) and her latest paramour, Paul (Rodolfo de Anda), who seems an honest and pleasant enough gigolo. Lorena figures this will be a good time to start teaching David the family business; although she is disappointed that he would rather spend time with a pair of male hippies and deaf-mute servant Ruffo (Antonio Eric) than the various "secretaries" she has recruited to show him the ropes and prove he's the sort of man she imagines him to be, even if Paul and the rest quickly suss out that he is gay. Eventually, he finds new friends Tony (Humberto Lobato) and Nubia (Angela Alaltriste), while Paul quietly makes sure that the unusual amount of dead bodies showing up near the estate aren't investigated too closely.

I am mildly curious about the sources of Vinegar Syndrome's restoration, because the very start and end of the movie look like they are sourced from VHS copies, priming the audience to see it as the sort of disreputable, shot-on-video underground cinema of the 1980s, except that it quickly shifts to 35mm film and the sort of pretty darn passable cinematography that comes from pointing the camera at people with good physiques in sunny locations and not messing up the framing or the lighting, even if the point of view often movies like someone who just got their first camcorder for Christmas. Much of the rest of the movie feels like they only had so much time and film, so there's not always a great take or two to when they got to the editing bay.

Or they might have been going for a certain level of camp from the start; there are lines that it's hard to imagine being written in sincere fashion, although the actors do a fair job of delivering them without winking or stumbling over just how the character is supposed to be feeling to say this. The film isn't delivering great performances, but everyone is a well-cast match of the sort of guy they're meant to be.

Mostly, the vibe is right; one can feel the movie riding the line between the characters who are cosmopolitan enough to accept David as gay and the ones who will view that with contempt or disappointment. Squint, and you can see the bodies piling up as Lorena refuses to see her son for what he is in more ways than one. Any sort of message you might try to get from the film might be mixed at best and the ending is a bloody mess, but you can't really argue that maybe there's an argument to make being in the closet less scary in circa 1991 Mexico.

Or maybe it's not that deep, but just a portion of sleaze just capable enough to be watchable while also being quite ridiculous.

Fantasia 2024 in Theaters This Weekend: Cuckoo, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, and Oddity

"Cuckoo Walled-in Oddity" feels like it's kind of a horror premise of its own, right?

Anyway, as I'm sort of running behind on what started out as "Fantasia Daily" posts back in '05 (and have been since Day 4), I'm going to try to not let regular releases get too far ahead of me. I often don't really have to worry about it - I'll mostly try and avoid things that I'll have a chance to get to in regular theaters - but Cuckoo played against a streaming series that would have a second screening and felt appropriate to see at the festival because I was part of the crowd that got gobsmacked by Tilman Singer's student film six years ago; Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In was up against a set of shorts that I figured i could do without (and Hong Kong films, even those filled with stars, can be more hit-and-miss about getting a release in Boston); and Oddity... Well, Oddity came and went in Boston during the festival's first week, so this was actually the chance I had to see it on the big screen.

They are all pretty dang good; you can have a good time in Boston theaters (or theaters elsewhere, obviously) this weekend, and for all I know Oddity will be hitting SVOD around the same time.


Cuckoo

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

Tilman Singer just absolutely goes for it in his first post-student film, which feels like someone taking a case that Quatermas might have been involved in back in the day, going spook-a-blast on it, and dropping a thoroughly overwhelmed teenager in the middle. Just a big, loud, science-fictional take on something that seems like it belongs in the domain of slow-burn folk horror.

I kind of love it.

After establishing its weird bona fides, it introduces us to Gretchen (Hunter Schafer), pointedly riding with the movers in a van rather than her father Luis (Marton Csókás), stepmother Beth (Jessica Henwick), and half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu), who is mute though not deaf, as they take up residence in a unit provided by Herr König (Dan Stevens) on his Bavarian resort property as Luis oversees an expansion. Gretchen would really prefer to be home with her mother, friends, and band, but that's not possible, and while König offers her a job working at the hotel, he's also insistent she not try to bike home at night. She draws the attention of a couple of guests - Ed (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey), who floats the idea of the two ladies running off to Paris together, and Henry (Jan Bluthardt), a cop who says there definitely is something screwy going on with König and Dr. Bonomo (Proschat Madani), who operates a nearby clinic, and looks for Gretchen's help.

Like Singer's remarkable student film Luz, Cuckoo takes place in an isolating but still contemporary location, where even the people under the sway of something apparently paranormal are still modern and thinking in such terms. For Singer and his young heroines, the dangers in the world outside one's normal field of view may have deep roots but the ways they are monstrous are familiar: König is a developer who thinks himself a philanthropist, and there's not necessarily anything else behind that particular sort of ego, which is perfectly capable of doing catastrophic damage on its own. When Gretchen and her new allies are attacked, it's more a sort of sensory overload/déjà vu that knocks them off balance enough that they sustain conventional injuries rather than mysterious scars, and if Henry fills the void of the mysterious monster hunter, he's also basically a cop with guns. There are secrets to be uncovered, of course, and they're not just normal creepy-men things, but weird in the way the natural world can be weird and dangerous.

What's maybe most impressive is that Singer often has this simmering while the difficult relationship the Gretchen has with her father and his new family is in the foreground, circling back around a week later, a lot of the most memorable scenes involve her forlorn calls to her mother's answering machine and how Alma clearly adores her big sister despite Gretchen's resentment. It's so much the movie that the extremely impressive job Singer does in the last act of making the weird thing going on clear is kind of amazing: He's got to get a lot of explanations out in the middle of a great deal of action. It's screwy as heck, but audiences who came in expecting a normal horror movie are going to come out knowing what its deal is rather than shrugging and saying "that was, uh, something".

It's also fun to watch Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens run with it. Singer never calls for them to be subtle, so Schafer is wearing her character's heart on her sleeve the whole time while also being a moody teenager who slacks off at work and spending much of the movie having to pull off various injuries. Stevens, meanwhile, is smirkingly manic that the energy level jumps every time he enters a scene, giving off this charisma that doesn't lessen how he's all kinds of dangerous.. Others get in on the act later, and by the time the finale is going, everyone is sort of in overdrive but approaching the chaos from a clear direction.

By the time it's over, Singer has thrown a lot at the audience, from crazy camera angles and oddball music choices, people who are very much not combat-trained trying to extricate themselves from shootouts, and revelations that say they take the title "Cuckoo" seriously in every way they can. It's a blast of modern action-horror that's fun in large part because it's so contemporary.


Jiu Long cheng zhai · Wei cheng (Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

After a trilogy of Monkey King films admirable for their ambition but a mixed bag (to say the least) in their execution, "Soi" Cheung Pou-Soi made a hard shift, directing two contemporary crime films whose vision veered more to the dystopian than the mythic in Limbo and Mad Fate. He doesn't exactly split the difference here, so much as he finds a way to infuse a dark urban vision with big, wuxia-style action. The end result is something that feels like an entertainingly elevated classic triad movie.

It's adapted from a long-running comic book series, so it starts by getting the audience up to speed of how Cyclone (Louis Koo Tin-Lok) became the main godfather in the Kowloon Walled City early in the 1970s. By the time refugee Chan Lok-Kwan (Raymond Lam Fung) arrives some years later, his control is unquestioned, although Mr. Big (Sammo Hung Kam-Bo) runs other parts of Hong Kong. He's impressed by Lok's abilities in underground fights, but when he tries to fob a lousy fake HK ID off on Lok, the latter grabs a bag and runs, thinking it was money rather than drugs, leading to Mr. Big's #2 King (Philip Ng Wan-Lung) chasing him through Hong Kong all the way to the Walled City. King stops there, but Cyclone's lieutenant Shin (Lau Chun-Him) picks up where he left off, thinking Lok was trying to sell without giving Cyclone a slice. Eventually, things get sorted out, Cyclone takes Lok under his wing, and Lok becomes friends with Shin, underground doctor "AV" (German Cheung), and Twelfth Master (Tony Wu Tsz-Tung). Things are good for a while, but this isn't the sort of environment where that can last.

As might be expected from the last two movies, Cheung's vision of the Kowloon Walled City is something else, a mass of buildings that blur into a black monolith when seen from the outside, so tightly-packed and shabby that the distinctions between streets and alleys and hallways collapse. Cyclone's barber shop may be open air, or maybe not, because the Walled City is both a bunch of tiny rooms and one space. It almost leaves no room for wall-climbing action despite the three-dimensionality of the place, although these guys will find a way. There's nostalgia to it, an almost magical sort of stasis, but violence is never far off; it's soon clear that old grudges are never truly buried here, leading to a set of explosive confrontations.

Then it's time for revenge and retribution, and for all that the action in the first couple of acts has been elevated, the climax is at another level. Make no mistake, those action sequences that kick the movie off often feature Raymond Lam fending off a half-dozen guys while on the run, with everybody taking a lot of hits in a way that sells that they are all exceptional fighters. Action choreographer Kenji Tarigaki (often Donnie Yen's go-to guy) gets people up in the air and otherwise on wires so that each blow feels twice as powerful and being of this city becomes a distinct advantage. By the final stretch, what basically amounts to a four-on-one battle, it's like a set of mortals battling an enemy who has sold his soul for the power of the gods, wire fu that seems utterly detached from limits even as it still hits hard and looks like it hurts. It's eye-popping action that keeps escalating until it can seemingly go no further.

The melodrama of it all is maybe a bit wobblier; the movie is at its strongest when it's about the here and now, with Raymon Lam maybe not having a complicated character in Lok but getting across that, capability for violence aside, he's a simple man who wants to live by some sort of rules, the sort of orphan who slides into a found family easily. You see Louis Koo maybe seeing some of himself in the younger man (there's like a five year difference between the actors but it's exaggerated by Koo going gloriously silver in a more period-appropriate haircut) and a lot of charm to the group of friends. Sammo Hung seems to be having a good low-impact time as Mr. Big, chewing scenery more than punching holes in it, although that's nothing compared to what Philip Ng eventually gets up to as King.

Admittedly, one has to laugh a bit at the misty-eyed montage of what was lost when the Walled City was demolished and redeveloped in the 1990s; the aftermath of a gang war that involved smashing people through concrete walls face-first is maybe not the best time to go "but at least neighbors looked out for each other. It's unusually sentimental for the run that Cheung has been on, but maybe not for the guy who spent the previous few years making films about legendary heroes.


Oddity

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 4 August 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
Available for digital pre-order on Prime; where to stream when available.

Not every filmmaker who tries it can manage what writer/director Damian Mc Carthy does with Oddity, which is essentially to say that they are going to start out in fairly weird territory and establish that as a sort of baseline which a viewer is going to have to accept to understand the logic of the rest of the movie. It's a tough stretch - the movie requires one to simultaneously accept and be surprised by the bizarre - that Mc Carthy manages, no matter how difficult that sounds.

It opens with Dani Timmins (Carolyn Bracken) working on renovating the peculiar old house she has purchased with husband Ted (Gwilum Lee), a doctor who works the night shift at a Cork mental hospital. It's an odd one, a square around a courtyard, currently without power or heat - but perhaps with ghosts; Dani has set up a tent to sleep in and a digital camera taking regular pictures so she can hopefully see what kind of spirit she's dealing with. That's when one of Ted's patients, Olin Boole (Tading Murphy) approaches the door, saying he saw someone else enter, but, well, Declan is in the hospital for killing his mother in a rage. A year later, on the anniversary of Dani's death, Ted complies with an unusual request by Dani's twin sister Darcy Odello (Bracken again), bringing Declan's glass eye to their mother's old shop, where every item is alleged to be cursed. She takes Ted's offer to maybe have dinner sometime and shows up at the house a week later, freaking out Ted's new girlfriend Yana (Carline Menton) even without the chest containing a bizarre mannequin that somehow seems to set itself up at the kitchen table when Yana isn't looking. Darcy is going to use her psychic powers to find out the whole truth of what happened to her sister, and Yana, who can't find her car keys, is stuck there with her.

If folks say the star of the movie is the mannequin, I won't argue - whether it be Mc Carthy, production designer Lauren Kelly, art director Conor King, someone working in their departments, or a true team effort, somebody came up with a spectacular design which looks big and hulkling, threatening even though it is obviously inanimate in part because of its gigantic open maw. You can get a good jump stare just out of it changing position while one isn't looking. It looks lifelike if completely immobile from a distance, but when Yana gets up close, one can see seams that suggest it can be posed, even if it seems unlikely to actually move about, and other details that make a certain, unnerving sort of sense.

That, of course, understates what Carolyn Bracken is doing, from initially presenting Dani as someone whose sincere belief in ghosts makes everything else not-ridiculous to how, at the end, Darcy can say she did something and the audience can fill in the absurd mechanism of it with placid acceptance. In between, she and Mc Carthy are taking a character who under normal circumstances is the eccentric occultist supporting character that adds spice to a movie that is really about Yana and Ted, even if it's later revealed that Darcy was some sort of canny manipulator, and making her the protagonist. Darcy's silver hair, spinster's outfits, barbed words, and passive-aggressive attitude, indicate someone who should be stealing scenes from the more relatable Yana and Ted (and, make no mistake, Caroline Menton's increasingly exasperated Yana is the reaction shot that makes a lot of scenes work); instead, the audience is with this oddball and her increasingly peculiar plan, and she's able to get the absolute most out of moments that focus on her sadness and regret. She does nothing conventionally, but the sadness of this woman who lost her sister is palpable.

Meanwhile, Mc Carthy is well aware that the audience is not there for some sort of quiet pondering on the subject of grief, and has a grand old time deploying jump scares and drawing out scenes where you're meant to just marinate in the sheer peculiarity of it. I'm not sure to what extent the film was built around the location as opposed to the opposite, but it's a terrific place for this sort of movie; you'll not only absolutely believe the house was haunted even before Dani died, but every corner of it invites the audience to study how the two floors interact, the halls with the ninety-degree turns, and even the bright yellow camping tent so that it's in their minds as a scene starts to play out there.

<SPOILERS!>

I also kind of love the epilogue, even though it works a bit contrary to how I approach horror movies. The whole thing has, in a way, been a duel between Darcy, whose way of understanding the world is through the occult (the "unseen") and the impressions that strong emotions make on it, to the point of accepting that she will pay for Olin's murder, and Ted, who has made a study of the mind and cool consideration of everything marks him as a manipulative sociopath. It's not just that he has seemed to have won at the end - Darcy is dead and he has successfully placed the blame on Ivan because he is a more emotional psychopath with less self-control - but his way of thinking has won out: He is arguably able to burn the wooden man because he does not believe in it; his rationality has triumphed over Darcy's spirituality.

But, of course, Darcy was dying already, so that's no great victory, and, ultimately, she shows that she understands him far better than he understands her. She knows that he will not be able to help but ring the bell and summon the Bellhop, if only to prove it does nothing. As soon as he does, she's won so completely that the film can stop at just showing the Bellhop next to him savoring the empty victory that has cost him two women who loved him and saddled him with the house that the first wanted but he considered a millstone.

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That finale is a beautiful capper on a movie that has somehow taken a bucket of nothing but the strangest, most irregularly-shaped building blocks and built something that's not just scary, suspenseful, and surprisingly funny but also an impressively solid story.

Happy (Belated) St. Patrick's Day: The Quiet Girl and Unwelcome

I've mentioned that there isn't an Irish Film Festival around Saint Patrick's Day this year, although the group isn't defunct - they recently refreshed their website a bit and hosted the director of The Quiet Girl for a preview show at the Coolidge a few days before it opened officially. They only had a mini-festival in 2019, then when the pandemic hit, there was a pop-up drive-in November 2020, a virtual thing in 2021, and nothing in 2022. I hope they weren't just completely flattened by the pandemic and are able to regroup for something later this year or next.

At any rate, I'm going to guess that both The Quiet Girl and Unwelcome both got a mid-March release so that they'd be around if you felt like doing something Irish on Saint Patrick's Day, although the latter had its run end the night before. IFC has kind of Vasily been getting things into theaters for a week with late shows just before hitting VOD. I'm amused that AMC will open one of those four days before it is available to stream but won't play anything by Netflix (aside from the Glass Onion truce). There must be some awfully bad blood there.

Anyway, this is certainly more my speed than getting drunk or watching a parade when it's barely above freezing!


An Cailín Ciúine (The Quiet Girl)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 Match 2023 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run; laser DCP)

Catherine Clinch is a heck of a young actress to find when you're casting a movie named "The Quiet Girl"; she's got a terrifically expressive face and certainly seems to know how to hold herself to add the right feeling to a scene. Get the wrong little girl and the movie is forgotten, but with the right one it is sublime.

Clinch plays Cáit, the fourth of five daughters with another baby on the way, straining an already-poor family with a father (Michael Patric) that's something of a no-account. At eight or nine, she's still wetting the bed and behind other girls her age in school, which leads her to being shy and ostracized. It feels like she's being exiled when she's sent to stay with her mother's cousin Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley) and her husband Seán (Andrew Benett) for the summer, but perhaps she'll start to blossom with a bit more individual attention. Still, while Eibhlin says there are no secrets in their house, that doesn't mean she's volunteering everything.

Writer/director Colm Bairéad (adapting a story by Claire Keegan) doesn't give any particular reason why Cáit seems to find some things harder than her sisters and classmates or otherwise make her a puzzle to be solved. Some kids (and people of all ages, really) just don't have things come as easily, and there's not a lot of room in the world to give them the extra help they need. This must often baffle parents of large families, but Bairéad doesn't dwell on it, quietly letting Cáit blossom into a likably ordinary girl, capturing how this can be a victory without making Cáit look like a hidden prodigy or handicapped. It's a tricky balance.

A big part of that is the chemistry between the central trio. Carrie Crowley's Eibhlin is patient without being indulgent, not quite hiding how much she wants this, at one point collapsing as quietly as she possibly can to try and prevent Cáit from seeing her; Andrew Bennet has Seán soften quickly. They've got an easy familiarity that speaks to a long marriage, and the dynamic where she's more obviously warm but he's probably the bigger softie rings true. Clinch is quiet, as the title says, but Bairéad doesn't have her overdo that, trusting her to be nervous or deep in thought, and she's able to get words out with the sort of nervous uncertainty that feels true to life. Other family members and neighbors are scattered around them, with Michael Patric especially noteworthy as Cáit's da, walking the line between how the audience sees him as a reprobate but just warm enough to see how Cáit would want his attention.

It all takes place sometime in the second half of the Twentieth Century, with Bairéad being general with period but quite keen at how he represents class: Cáit is initially seen in an open field and a school where the uniforms flatten who has money and who doesn't, and her home is initially seen as maybe uncomfortably cozy, at least until she gets to the Cinnsealachs', where the big, clean house is almost overwhelming. He hides just how beat up the family car is. The film does a good job of keeping things low-key despite being in plain sight until it needs to be important.

Like its title character, The Quiet Girl is quiet and fragile-seeming as a film but surprisingly solid when you give it a chance. It's exactly what it aims to be.


Unwelcome

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 Match 2023 in AMC Boston Common #7 (first-run; DCP)

I expected a bit more from Unwelcome; director and co-writer Jon Wright made a genuinely terrific Irish monster movie in Grabbers, and this seemed like it should be in roughly the same wheelhouse. Instead, it makes me wonder if he's better off as a director-for-hire - previous Robot Overlords also had trouble tapping into the vein that would make its high concept work.

This one introduces the audience to couple Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) in a rough London neighborhood, where they suffer a home invasion on the night they find out Maya is pregnant with their first child. When she's nearly to term, Jamie's grandmother passes, leaving him a house in a small Irish town. There are, of course, downsides: For one, a giant hole in the roof in the master bedroom, with sketchy "Daddy" Whelan (Colm Meaney) and his clan the only contractors available on short notice; for another, family friend Maeve (Niamh Cusack) says that Gramma has been leaving food for the fair folk for decades. She offers to take on that job, but Maya and Jamie are obviously wary of someone having access to their property. But be warned - the "redcaps" are not the Disneyfied pixies of Darby O'Gill and the Little People, but something far more sinister.

Give the filmmakers this - when your movie needs a dirtbag who can't believe he's being attacked by fookin' leprechauns, you really can't do better than Colm Meaney, a beloved character actor who hits just the exact level of how much the working-class Daddy should be weird or a jackass or cruel in a given scene. Hannah John-Kamen brings action chops while still playing nervous, and she has the right sort of chemistry with Douglas Booth, feeling like they've built a good relationship but are nevertheless wobbly due to events.

The filmmakers could do a whole lot better in other areas, though. The movie leans as hard into "this horror movie is really about trauma" as possible without detouring into A24-ville, but really doesn't give the characters a chance to do anything with it, or with how Maya & Jamie get targeted as outsiders in both urban London and rural Ireland. It feels like there are four or five things the filmmakers wanted to do and none really settled into the bones of the movie, leading to a finale that is a mess of different tones capped off by pure 'where did that come from?" The nastiness builds up but the whole thing gets unbalanced, with Maya and Jaime often separated and getting little chance to take control of the movie as the redcaps and Whelan clan form the other sides of a violent triangle.

On the other hand, when it gets into goofy 1980s territory - which happens the second a "redcap" just wanders into the house with a shopping bag and the filmmakers seemingly want you to believe that it's a short guy in a rubber mask as much as a goblin - it's gloriously and violently loopy in ways that a more reasonable horror movie just can't manage. It seems like the weirdest combination of leprechaun-sized people in latex, stunt performers composited in at half height, and CGI enhancement, and I honestly don't think I'd have enjoyed a movie that made it look more real at all.

It doesn't really work, but at its best it doesn't really work in the way that a certain pedigree of B movies seemingly don't work.

This Week in Tickets: 13 February 2023 - 19 February 2023 (A Couple of Classics)

It was a pretty good week for seeing movies on the big screen, new and old.

I started off with the first of a couple Film Rolls things from South Korea - EXIT on Monday night and lucky Chan-Sil on Thursday, which are both relatively recent and at completely opposite ends of that country's film industry.

On Tuesday, I hit the night-before showing for Marlowe, which has a darn good pedigree - Sam Neill playing literature's second-greatest detective with Neil Jordan directing a script by William Monahan and a cast that includes Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, and Colm Meaney - but which is missing one important name in Raymond Chandler, alas.

It was back to the Common the next day for the new 3D rerelease of Titanic - I made a point to skip the Valentine's Day crowd for that one - and it's kind of mind-boggling that Cameron has only made a couple features (plus some documentary work) in a quarter-century since then, although all those movies are the sort of grand epic that few other people seem to have the ability to do.

Come the weekend, it was a couple days of noting how multiplexes seem to have grown even more hostile to folks catching two, especially if you're cutting across town. I happily caught Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the big screen at the Coolidge - the schedule out from said "screening on digital and 35mm", although I didn't see where the 35mm times were, took the 66 back to Harvard Square to pick up the week's comics, and then wound up hanging around and grabbing a bite to eat at the Smoke Shop in Kendall Square so that I could make it to the 9:15pm show of Living, which was the most convenient time, since I'd dilly-dallied in seeing it.

And I don't just mean I'd waited until it was almost gone from local screens - I could have seen it in Dublin back in November, as that's when it was released there and in the UK, but apparently I had better things to do some evenings, though I can't imagine what.

Then, on Sunday, I'd kind of hoped to pair something else with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but the 4pm showtimes for the Imax 3D presentations really don't lend to that. But that's okay; Sunday is crossword & grocery shopping day, after all.

The ticket kiosk ate my ticket, by the way, which is why all that stuff is written in on the page. Not as bad as Assembly Row just not having them, but, c'mon, your loyalty program's name is Stubs, and I need my stubs!

One disappointment aside, a fun week! This coming one looks interesting as well, so catch the first draft of this blog on my Letterboxd or wait around for me to consider things a bit.


Eksiteu (Exit)

Seen 13 February 2023 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Hong Kong Blu-ray)

I will, of course, go longer on this one when I reach it in the Film Rolls queue, but it's a thoroughly fun action/adventure that I could probably recommend to the family members with kids even if it's not specifically made for them. Fun, friendly, always moving forward and fairly non-violent once the inciting incident is over; I think I really would have enjoyed seeing it on the big screen, but it had it's miniature North American release right at the end of Fantasia and skipped Boston anyway. I'd feel kind of dumb if I could have seen it in Montreal, so I won't be looking that up.


Titanic

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 February 2023 in AMC Boston Common #14 (25th anniversary, 3D Dolby Cinema DCP)

I'm not sure I've seen this since the original release, and might not have gone to an anniversary re-release without the 3D conversion because, like with Avatar, it is very easy to forget how effective James Cameron's movies are in the moment one you've got a little distance, seen them shrunk to the size of a television, and started to break them down into pieces. The man is a precision crafter of motion pictures, though, and knows how to make a classic story work for a broad audience as well as anybody.

Which is kind of funny - the spectacle has been the hook for Cameron since The Abyss in 1989, with story often considered secondary because he doesn't necessarily surprise or break new ground. And yet, for as much as the grandeur and obsessive detail of this movie's production design isn't nearly so overwhelming as it was 25 years ago, it never feels like it's been passed by. There's a command of the form and knowledge of what rings true here, taking a simple enough story that almost anyone can relate and finding the little details that make it feel alive. One never feels like he's switched over to "blockbuster mode" when the catastrophe and visual effects begin to take center stage, and he uses great action work and some horrific imagery to communicate the scale without changing the type of movie.

And, boy, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are great here, both at a spot to make a big leap after a few impressive parts and both exactly what the film needs, full of youthful energy, their characters more polished and rough around the edges than one might expect, and almost effortlessly in love. Cameron's going for simplicity here means they can't really work at explaining or justifying that - the audience just has to believe it - and they hit that mark. That they'd go on to excel in more cynical material enhances how perfect they were at this time, in a way; you can see them as newcomers who still have some illusions here. A special supporting cast shout out to Victor Garber, whose modest engineer is achingly tragic.

The conversion to 3D is nice, if mostly understated; I'm not sure if they did it anew with the upscale or if it's the one from the last re-release a decade ago. It shines a bit of a light on the rare digital effects that haven't aged as well as the rest throughout the film but impresses in the last act - the extra depth and mechanical structure is nice throughout, but when the stem is vertical and the camera looks down, one sees why they'd do this. The 4K upgrade is mostly impressive a swell, aside from a couple shots where it doesn't quite take; Paramount is going to sell some good looking discs later this year.

As they should. It's easy to forget just how great this is, because it hasn't really been imitated enough to be better than its imitators and romance as a genre doesn't get much respect. But it works like crazy, even when that's harder than it looks.


Chansilineun bokdo manhji (Lucky Chan-sil)

Seen 16 February 2023 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Blu-ray)

The idea of this movie that I had in my head - director Kim Cho-hee, who had spent much of her career as producer for Hong Sang-soo, making a feature about a producer who suddenly has the art-house figure she'd been working with drop dead - had more potential to be a satire that bites the hand that feeds it than Kim goes for. I'm not disappointed that she went the way she did, but no matter how warm and charming this film is, I kind of still want that other one.

As an aside, the Blu-ray edition is gorgeous from packaging to video, and the simple song over the end credits is weirdly catchy. I really wish there were more English-friendly releases like it.


Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 February 2023 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (special engagement, DCP)

I just saw this a few years back (have we really been doing pandemic stuff for three years?), and I once again wonder if Ang Lee would have used flashbacks if the de-aging tech had been available when this came out, and what that would have been like. I think he can be trusted with it as much as anyone, but it's tough to imagine the movie being any better.

Indeed, this film is close enough to perfect that I really don't have that much to say about it: It's some of Michelle Yeoh's and Chow Yun-fat's best work, and what's kind of amazing about that is just how reserved the pair are and how much time they spend basically as sleuths working a case as opposed to would-be lovers totally focused on one another, just really beautiful jobs of revealing who they are through what they do.

And that's considering that what they do is often revealed through impossible action, with Lee and Yuen Woo-ping just making the fact that this group can run up walls and fly feel perfectly natural even though the way they stage it is telling: Chow's Li Mu Bai is a master, defying gravity casually; Zhang Ziyi's Jen is the prodigy, so even if it comes easy to her, she clearly likes to show off; Yeoh's Yu Shu Lien is not quite in the same refined air as Li, so you see her working at it, but always get the feeling that, among normal people, she's one of the best, and never actually looks bad next to the preternaturally gifted folks she meets.

Anyway, I love this movie, and am reminded why every time I see it. I don't know that the new restoration being touted is actually newer than the 4K disc I watched last time, but I have no problem with Sony coming up with a thin veneer of "look, we're going to cash in on Michelle's Oscar buzz". Hopefully they'll have a chance to do so with Chow and Zhang in the next few years.

What I wrote in April '20


Living

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 February 2023 in Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run, DCP)

Living is just an exquisitely constructed and photographed film from start to finish. The opening made me wonder why we don't present the main credits like that any more, and I want to know how they managed the trick where it looked like the photograph at the funeral was about to come to life, as if imbued with its subject's new found vitality. At the start, there is also a seamless transition from nostalgic grain to painfully sharp digital capture with rich dark shades, and a formal rigidity to the shots throughout that threatens to crush the viewer but only if they allow it.

There are folks who don't necessarily like to see the filmmaker's hand so clearly, but in some ways, that seems the whole point of the film - the characters need to see the forces that are pushing them into unfulfilling situations, not necessarily out of malice, but inertia, propriety, and fear of blame if something goes wrong. Director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro often seem to be tipping their hand so that the audience can recognize it applying to them as well. There are metaphors for this sort of control throughout; note, for instance, how Mr. Williams doesn't quite get the knack of the claw game, while the less set-in-her-ways Miss Harris is able to pull her rabbit out.

In the middle of all that, is Bill Nighy, his wiry figure and precise diction the perfect representation of a man who simply doesn't register, but it doesn't take much for him to become a version with a little joie de vivre, even if the flip side is palpable sorrow despite practicality about how much good it does. He's a perfect fit for the role, especially when he is seen as a template for almost every other male character in the movie, from Alex Sharp's newcomer who could choose not to go down the same road, to how the burlier figure and loud clothing Jamie Wilkes sports as Talbot marks him as Williams's opposite.

For a moment, it seems to go on a bit too long, but there's a certain self-awareness in that, as those left behind have to face how their memorable gesture may not last, and one must find new ways to keep oneself on a good path when the system is built to move one away from the daring. Yes, you may feel like it's time to coast out, but you don't really have that option.


Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

* * * (out of four)
Seen 19 February 2023 in AMC Boston Common #2 (first-run, Imax Xenon 3D)

People often fairly complain about how fake and weightless some of these movies are, but consider this: Maybe it's just because he's a good actor, but Michael Douglas looks like he's having the time of his life imagining what weird creatures will be digitally composited into his scenes and being a giant nerd about ants in this movie. Other guys with his resume would obviously be wondering how it came to this, but I'm not sure anybody is having quite as much fun as him, although Michelle Pfeiffer sure looks like she's going to enjoy getting to be a sci-fi badass as long as she can.

That aside, Quantumania is a pretty good Marvel movie, not breaking new ground but delivering the goods folks have ordered. By now, you've kind of got to meet these things where they are - yes, this will sacrifice some things that would make it a better individual film for the epic material; there's going to be a sky full of visual effects in the climax even if it maybe would have worked better with a tighter focus. But, the folks making it also know how to make a solid, entertaining adventure with enough danger to make you consider whether Paul Rudd is signed for more movies and enough wisecracking to grease the wheels without it quite becoming cringe material. It hits its marks and the guys doing creature work are clearly having as much of a blast as the folks at the top of this three-generation adventure.

Is it mostly solid, competent work built to look good on an Imax 3D screen? Yeah, and it probably only really transcends that when Jonathan Majors is putting in the work to establish Kang the Conqueror as a worthy foil for the next few years of Marvel material, tweaking what we've already seen on Loki for something more overtly villainous but the sort of confidence that feels human as well as formidable. I'm eager to see where he pops up next in these movies.

At a certain point, I imagine most folks get in a rut writing about Marvel movies, because they are unusually consistent and unambiguously commercial in their storytelling. I probably gave this an extra quarter-star because I like 3D goofiness, the way this particular Marvel crew seems to value kid-friendliness a bit more than the rest (really, this is probably a couple easily-replaced cusswords from being a straight PG), and, heck, I even still kind of like Bill Murray showing up and doing Bill Murray. These guys know what they're doing and don't screw it up.

Marlowe

I'd be genuinely interested to hear what someone who doesn't have any particular prior attachment to Philip Marlowe thinks of this new film, based not on the original Raymond Chandler stories but one of the works by other writers that his estate licenses every few years, because this just felt off in so many ways to me but may, I suppose, play fairly well for the folks who are seeing it primarily as a Liam Neeson action/crime flick, or are far bigger Neil Jordan fans than I am. They are probably a bigger audience than Chandler fans, after all, and I gather this might not be a bad adaptation of a John Banville story, so it could just be Not For Me despite looking a lot like Just For Me.

Still, it kind of rubs me the wrong way. The ratio of "Marlowe punches someone out" to "Marlowe gets knocked unconscious" is way off. And I'm not usually one to complain about coarse language, but it comes off as pretty dull here when you know how Marlowe speaks when Chandler writes him.

Ah, well. I've got at least two good Marlowe movies on one set of shelves and all the books, and it's not like the Jason O'Mara TV series or Clive Owen movies are ever going to happen, so this is pretty harmless.

Marlowe '23

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 14 February 2023 in AMC Boston Common #7 (first-run, DCP)

Marlowe isn't based on a Raymond Chandler novel, but rather a licensed work by John Banville (writing under a pseudonym), and there are times when Chandler doesn't even feel like a primary influence to this film. Neil Jordan and company know the basics, and certainly know the trappings of the genre well enough to deliver something serviceable, but either don't get the vibe of the character enough to capture him or are trying to subvert expectations without ever really seeing them up to knock down.

It opens, as these things do, with a beautiful woman looking to hire Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson), a Los Angeles private eye but not telling him everything at first. Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger) wants him to find her lover, Nico Peterson (François Arnaud), but doesn't tell him that (a) Nico was found dead when a car ran over him a couple weeks before and (b) she claims to have seen him afterward. Annoyed but undeterred, Marlowe keeps on it, knowing he must be onto something when numerous people - Clare's mother Dorothy (Jessica Lange) and gangster Lou Hendricks (Alan Cumming) among them - alternately try to bump him off or hire him away from Clare, so that they'll have first crack at Nico.

It's got the shape of a classic detective story, with a crooked path for Marlowe to follow, clues that dead end in what is often quite literal fashion, and some seaminess lurking just in the shadows. It's populated with stock characters, some more entertaining than others; Alan Cumming, for instance, couldn't be boring if that was the job. Neil Jordan and co-writer William Monahan tend to emphasize the wrong details, mechanism over personality. It's telling, I think, that where Chandler's books and the movies most directly adapted from them are full of clever turns of phrase that reveal Marlowe as having a sharp, self-deprecating wit, this film more often has him and those he'd verbally spar with quoting other people, expecting points for recognition but not creation.

It's also generally bland in other ways - for a movie that winds up centered on an illicit brothel and has characters described as being seductive, the film is so unsexy that it's hard to believe this is the same character Bogart played in The Big Sleep. It's got tons of Art Deco design but no shadows in which to hide things, and Jordan seldom gives the moments when things escalate from quiet to violent a moment to let the audience feel some shock. Everyone has nice period costumes and Spain stands in for sunny California well enough, although it all looks a bit too brand-new considering Marlowe is supposed to be a bit low-rent. There are moments when the Irish-ness of the film shines through to the point where one wonders if Marlowe's "bad war" was not World War I but the Irish War of Independence, but not so much that the Irish influence on this part of America at this point in time serves as a hook

Liam Neeson could have been a fine Marlowe, but he never gives any indication of why Marlowe tends to get drawn into foolish quests here, more cynical than world-weary on top of barely getting any chewy Chandler-style dialogue or narration to work with. Everybody seems too aware that the actor is too old to pair with Diane Kruger, heading that off immediately with acknowledgment of the age gap but never giving either of them something else to work with (as with the Irish-ness, there's an interesting idea to having an aging Marlowe drawn more to Jessica Lange's domineering mother than the daughter, but the filmmakers don't quite go for it). Marlowe disappears inside Neeson, rather than vice versa.

Darn shame. This has the talent involved to sit alongside the two or three great Marlowe movies, but plays like just another Open Road Neeson entry rather than an interesting take on one of the detective story's best characters.

Irish Movies in Ireland: The Banshees of Inisherin

Amusingly, sort of, this is the movie I put off watching near home because I figured it might be kind of fun watching it with a local audience and getting an idea of what lands and what doesn't, and it's the last one I got to. I was kind of tickled to see this marquee before I'd even gotten off the bus from the airport to my hotel:

I actually took this the night I saw it a few days later, which means that the Irish movie which opened a month earlier was still being treated as the main attraction even though the gigantic Marvel movie had opened in the meantime, as you can see a Wakanda Forever sign somewhere below the big one. At any rate, it's a nice urban multiplex with a basic concession stand rather than a cafe - albeit one that is combined with the box office - and though Cinema Treasures confirms that it was one giant screen cut into smaller spaces over the past century (which likely makes it not quite old enough to be open during the time the film is set), it's one that's still got some lobby and lounge space rather than just being hallways.

The time in question is the Irish Civil War, which few of the historical spots I went to really discussed until I visited Kilmainham Gaol, where the guide straight-up said that it's something they don't mention much, because it doesn't have the British as external villains in the way the potato famine, Easter Uprising, and the fight for independence do, although it plays as a crucial part of their history in retrospect, a reminder that a people can repress and do violence to themselves just as well as outsiders can - or, at least, the sort of history that gets put in museums and presented to tourists. That's not the way it's played in the film, ultimately, but Martin McDonagh has other interesting uses for that background.

After this, I figured I might wind up checking out the Marvel movie on one of the city's premium screens, just to avoid internet spoilers, but it turned out that Twitter was inward-focused enough to put that in my face and I wound up not doing so. Then it was back home, and doing work and such.

The Banshees of Inisherin

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 November 2022 in Savoy Cinema (Dublin) #7 (first-run, DCP)

There are many delightful things about The Banshees of Inisherin, but what makes the whole thing especially delicious is that, while the film reveals more the closer one looks at it, the filmmakers are well aware that one's commitment to art is not helped by pretense or snobbery. It's tremendously entertaining as well as dense, and doesn't treat genius as an excuse for a lousy attitude.

Is Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) a genius? Maybe not, but he's serious about his craft as a fiddle player, easily the best on this particular member of the Aran Islands, and he's come to decide that doing so means cutting friend Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) out of his life. Pádraic isn't a bad fellow, even if he can be unpleasant after a few too many drinks, but he's no intellectual and Colm figures spending so much time with him prevents him from doing and being more. Pádraic can't really comprehend this - hanging out with the dimmer-but-also-amiable Dominic (Barry Keoghan), who has a pretty serious crush on Pádraic's book-smart sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) isn't the same - so he keeps trying to reconnect. Colm then delivers an ultimatum: Leave him alone, or he'll start cutting off his own fingers, even if that would make playing the fiddle all but impossible.

Banshees could have been set during a number of periods, but writer/director Martin McDonagh sets it during the Irish Civil War, which split the country between those unwilling to even temporary compromise on their goal of a unified, independent Ireland and those willing to accept more gradual change. This doesn't exactly map to Colm and Pádraic, the latter in particular, but it's an interesting place to start, especially once McDonagh starts connecting to other things, such as how Siobhan's opportunities will come from leaving the island. This is a time where things should be triumphant, and yet this little society is tearing itself apart by the seams: Friendships that were perhaps a matter of circumstance are fraying or violently unwinding, people with power, like Dominic's father Peadar, are now homegrown rather than coerced monsters, emigration is depriving the community of some of their best and brightest, and painting the red British post boxes green doesn't cover the place's real problems.

There's more to a movie than just setting up a metaphor, and it's the performances here that may be the most metaphor, most noticeably with McDonagh re-uniting his In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who make hitting a couple of tricky marks look almost effortless: For Farrell, it's a sort of well-meaning foolishness that doesn't quite put Pádraic at a remove from the audience, constantly making the clear wrong decision in a way that the audience can still emphasize with. The trick is to see how Colm and others could find him tedious and frustrating without making him a nuisance or the object of pity. There's often an interesting comparison to Barry Keoghan's Dominic, who is genuinely dim (compared to how Pádraic is often described as "dull"), but more pure-hearted, such that one might feel bad about finding him irritating.

Gleeson, meanwhile, has to make Colm a bit more opaque; there are occasional comments about how this is maybe not the first time he's sunken into a self-destructive depression, but McDonagh doesn't lay much more than that out directly. Instead, Colm is a mass of interesting contradictions, having lost all patience for Pádraic but not only not wishing him any ill will, but jumping in to defend Pádraic when it comes to blows. There's this sort of deep misery about his place in the world that gets pushed back when he has a chance to create. In a modern setting, people would talk about his mental health, but here he knits it together into a character whose behavior might not be consistent even if his thoughts are. One might expect Kerry Condon's Sibhan to be a kindred spirit, whatever is misfiring in his brain seems to be working in hers; she, perhaps, hasn't internalized the idea that difficulty or dangerous eccentricity correlates with genius to the point where she indulges it like Colm does (and aside from all that, McDonagh allows her to be sharp and risible enough to totally fall into the cliché of the woman who keeps the three men with their various forms of immaturity in line).

Condon and Gleeson get the more enjoyably chewy bits of dialogue to work with, the sort that reminds a viewer that McDonagh first found success as a playwright, although a big part of what works is that their lines mix well with the more plain-spoken lines given to Farrell and Keoghan, making many scenes a mix of considered explanation and sputtering confusion. McDonagh and his collaborators do lots of nifty things with the setting to help it tell the story: While the Súilleabháin home is snug, it's not oppressive, while Colm's cottage has the dimensions for two floors but isn't divided that way, managing to feel cluttered but with a great big empty space inside, on top of having no neighbors but being near a crossroads. One can occasionally see gunfire from the war on the shore, both far-off and unsettlingly close, and McDonagh quietly cranks what starts as an odd situation up to a surprisingly tense one by the finale.

Not that all this is exactly news; Banshees is one of the most anticipated and well-liked movies of the year, and the biggest surprise is how it hits its marks not just squarely but comfortably. Like Decision to Leave, it's an awards contender where one almost feels the need to point out that it's not just impressively constructed but a very funny movie that goes down easily.

Irish Movies in Ireland: The Wonder

Saturday was one of those days when I sort of struggled to remember how I navigated new cities without a smartphone, in part because that navigation was kind of imperfect: For whatever reason, my Galaxy was popping up notes that my location was approximate in the Maps app, and whatever combination of gyroscope and GPS is supposed to calculate which way I was pointing could be off by 90 or 120 degrees. This always seems to happen to me in a new city, and I can't guess why.

The upshot is that while I was walking from the Georgian mansion-cum-tenament house at 14 Henrietta Street to the Irish National Museum of Art and Design, I got turned around a fair bit, so was zooming in and studying the map, and Google probably knows me well enough to highlight theaters at this point. So when I saw "Light House Cinema" and looked up to see this:

… I couldn't help but think, damn, that marquee game is on point! That is not the marquee, but an observation deck that was probably a smokestack for the power plant which has since been remodeled into a nightclub below at one point. Still, if Light House is a chain, they chose a heck of a location with that landmark across the street from this relatively modest location:

It's actually pretty nice inside, a bit less cramped and segmented than the IFI was, though with the same odd-to-me emphasis on a bar/café at which one can stop and talk before the film as opposed to place to get snacks for during. Probably more appropriate in this case, as I was seeing a movie about someone pointedly not eating, though I got some popcorn anyway.

As with the IFI, I'm kind of struck by how that entryway is a passage that sort of emphasizes how you're kind of going past the outer edge of the building, into a central area that might have been a courtyard before but is now windowless before you go down to the lower levels. Reasonable enough you don't necessarily want a whole lot of potential light pollution.

At any rate, I'm kind of glad I saw this on the Dublin trip as opposed to at the IFFBoston Fall Focus or its run at the Kendall afterward, if only because visiting places like 14 Henrietta and the like did a nice job of hammering the historical context of the movie home. There's "knowing of the Irish famine" and "having the desperation of it fresh in your mind", after all.

The next day would bring me to the Emigration Museum and the replica Jeannie Johnston; the former pointed out the extent to which the famine shrunk the country and the latter was actually used as a shooting location:

The guide pointed out, sort of amused, that the production repainted this half of the ship, as that was what would be on camera, and it would be another year before the trust would be able to paint the other to make it symmetric.

The Wonder

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 November 2022 in Light House Sheffield #3 (first-run, DCP)

The Wonder has an odd sort of framing device which initially made me think of how many people (myself included) initially thought TÀR was based on a real person, if only because they don't really make films about that sort of singular character unless they actually exist these days; was filmmaker Sebastián Lelio doing something similar but more deliberate, playing with the audience's assumptions about whether this really happened and what segments were necessarily speculative? As it turns out, probably not; by the time the film is over, it's got more interesting thoughts on how stories are told than just reassuring the audience they haven't been fooled.

After that, it sets the scene Rural Ireland, just past the midpoint of the Nineteenth Century. Nurse Elizabeth Wright (Florence Pugh), who had previously tended patients on the battlefields of the Crimea, has been hired for a most unusual job: Spend two weeks observing Anna O'Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), who has by all accounts not eaten since her fourteenth birthday, four months ago. She will alternate shifts with Sister Michael (Josie Walker), fittingly, as much of the town committee that hired her, including the local priest (Ciarán Hinds), seek evidence of a miracle, while the local doctor (Toby Jones) hopes for some sort of scientific discovery of how humans can perhaps draw sustenance from the ether. Lib is mostly practical, although she notes that Anna is bright and inquisitive, while her parents are sincere and non-exploitative. That said, Anna is not healthy, and what sort of nurse would allow her patient to starve to death, even if it is happening at an impossibly slow pace?

There is a casual mention of the Irish Potato Famine toward the start of the story, seemingly designed to make the audience discount the scale of the event (Ireland was a nation of 8 million at the start, with a million dying and another million emigrating during the famine, and the population still not recovered 170 years later), perhaps focusing on Lib's own demons. It makes sense; this is the sort of thing one tries not to speak of as opposed to moving forward, but it seeps in through cracks: It explains why Will Byrne (Tom Burke), the reporter sent by a London newspaper to cover the story, is no longer of this place even though he grew up there. As it becomes clear that Anna is choosing not to eat more than not needing to - and that her older brother is gone - the idea of survivor's guilt begins to take center stage, and not just for Anna. The men of God need to find meaning in this; the man of science needs to find a way for it to not happen again. Meanwhile, the full plates placed in front of Lib at the inn where she is staying begin to look downright vulgar as the film passes its midpoint. Co-writer/director Sebastián Lelio and company may not be able to evoke the actual hunger of the famine, but they can perhaps simulate remembering it, and knowing that it will leave its mark upon one forever.

It's such a raw and obvious scar that the audience may figure out what is happening before Lib does, but that serves to bring the film back to where it started and the idea of just what to do with what she's found. The truth, after all, is not going to support the narratives that Anna and the people in her orbit are committed to. Lib is practical, and more rigorous in her science than the doctor who sees her as more instrument than peer, but human minds are often too committed to the world being fair by their own lights, and if Lib is to save Anna, the solution must serve the narratives - including hers. The importance of this makes Niamh Algar's Kitty O'Donnell (Anna's aunt or cousin) an intriguing choice of narrator; despite being as close to things as anybody is, she's so peripheral as to be able to smash the fourth wall without it affecting the story. She pores over Will's stories with difficulty, as she is not quite so well-educated as him or Lib, but both within and outside the story, she's looking to supply context and help everyone - Lib, the viewer, herself - understand the whole situation, including where one can't really know, but has to fill in bits for oneself.

She's nevertheless off to the side for the most part, with Florence Pugh front and center, terrific as always. Lib is a mostly-functional addict, and the way that Pugh captures that not quite being segregated from her work as much as she'd like, especially as the film goes on and the stress of the assignment begins to wear on her. She establishes this aura of being wryly no-nonsense that stabilizes the film when she starts to lose control. It's reflected in Kila Lord Cassidy's Anna, a curious but not precocious kid who has this other layer to her experience even beyond the memory of the famine, and there's something blistering true about how she, in particular, needs a version of this story that makes sense.

That is, ultimately, what makes The Wonder fascinating beyond what's the main story - it's about how truth gets built, without ever being cynical about whether what actually happened is important.

Irish Movies in Ireland: My Father's Dragon

I'm on a not-particularly-scheduled vacation in Dublin right now - I basically saw I had to use some time up before the end of the year, knew I couldn't use Thanksgiving to extend it a little more if I wanted to go extra-far, and figured I didn't want to screw around too much with having to navigate in a land where English isn't the de facto first language - Gaelic may be listed first on some signs, but there's a lot of English in the air.

Anyway, as I tend to do, I spent most of Thursday walking about, in this case near Dublin Castle - not exactly the stone edifice that word conjures up, but impressive and noteworthy all the same. It being November and surprisingly far north - climate-wise, it always blows my mind that Dublin and London are not just north of Boston, but Montreal! - it was soon dark, so I popped "movie theaters" into my phone, saw that the Irish Film Institute was nearby, and had my eyebrows go up at this:

I don't know if My Father's Dragon got any theatrical release in the U.S. at all, or if they just couldn't find a screen in the Boston area, but, hey, I like Cartoon Saloon a lot and I had already been mentally composing at least one "Irish movies in Ireland" post for the blog. So, nifty!

The IFI itself is kind of tucked away on the street; the lobby is down a passageway, past a little shop nook that sells discs and (maybe) film books. The concession stand is smaller than the box office, labeled as a café stand with seats around the circular lobby to the point that I wondered if this was a "no snacks in the theater" type of place, especially considering that there was a fairly bustling restaurant/bar area off the lobby. Maybe that was just the way boutique houses work in this city.

(I could, in fact, bring my chocolate chip cookie and Coca-Cola upstairs to the theater)

I wish there were more places with this sort of vibe around Boston; the closest thing is probably the ice cream parlor at the Arlington Capitol or when the Studio in Belmont was sort of tied in with the burrito place next door (or, I guess, the bar areas that have infested the local multiplexes). I don't think it's really a planned part of the Coolidge's expansion, although they'd maybe be the best fit. I could imagine the Brattle taking over one of the other spaces in the building for something like that, but it would also involve imagining the rents in Harvard Square being less crazy than they are (this also goes for imagining something like that being done with the old Harvard Square Cinema space, still vacant with rumors of a development including a two-screener in the basement seven years after it closed). It feels like we could have something like this, where film-lovers would have a sort of dedicated space to browse and hang out before and after a screening, but the right opening is hard to find.

My Father's Dragon

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2022 in Irish Film Archive #2 (first-run, DCP)

Between their Irish folklore series and The Breadwinner, Kilkanney's Cartoon Saloon has staked out an enviable place in the animation landscape - their films are instantly recognizable, and while often built with younger audiences in mind, they have generally been mature enough to appeal to adults without having to plant "aren't we clever for going over kids' heads" bits. They've been so good that My Father's Dragon being a tick below that is noticeable, if not truly disappointing: The movie is fine; and kids should enjoy it, but it may not click in quite the same way for their parents.

It initially introduces the audience to Elmer (voice of Jacob Tremblay), a bright and energetic kid who knows where to find anything in the small-town market run by his mother Dela (voice of Golshifteh Farahani), although that place can't quite last, and the pair are soon moving to "Nevergreen City", where Dela is having a hard time finding work and landlady Mrs. McClaren (voice of Rita Moreno) isn't exactly pleased to find she brought a kid with her. Other things go wrong - a cat follows Elmer home despite Mrs. McClaren's no-pets rule, he rubs the other kids who are down-and-out the wrong way, and Dela has to spend the money they were saving to re-open the store. That's how he ends up alone by the docks, told that if he can rescue a dragon, surely he could make some money selling pictures and rides and such. But when a bubbly whale named Soda (voice of Judy Greer) gets him to the island, things turn complicated: Boris (voice of Gaten Matarazzo) is just a kid dragon himself, tied to the island by orangutan Saiwa (voice of Ian McShane) to keep it from sinking by flying up.

The script by Meg LaFauve (based on Ruth Stiles Gannett's children's book) is not especially complicated, and neither she nor director Nora Twomey burdens it with more than needs to be there. They could have set up parallels between the island and the mainland, perhaps re-using voice actors or otherwise doing more to hint that the island is an imaginary place where Elmer can work through what's really eating him, beyond there being tangerines in both places. This happens and that happens, with Elmer and Boris not exactly moving in a straight line but close enough that kids can follow them. The film winds up introducing a lot of characters that viewers may figure would be more important, and there's not a lot of reason for this to be "My Father's Dragon" rather than "Elmer's Dragon", there's no flashing back or forward. The filmmakers aren't putting in complicated structure for kids who won't consciously notice it but will hopefully just be involved in the moment. That's fine, as is the moment or two when the film stops so Elmer can state exactly what he's learning; it does the job for the main audience.

So does the voice acting, with Jacob Tremblay and Gaten Matarazzo apparently recording together and capturing the right vibe where Matarazzo's Boris is almost perfectly sweet, though scared, with Tremblay's Elmer often just selfish enough to frustrate the viewers without losing them. There are a lot of enjoyable character actors around them, from Golshifteh Farahani being note-perfect with Dela's faltering optimism to how Ian McShane and Chris O'Dowd are sort of frightening in their pragmatism, with folks like Alan Cumming, Dianne Wiest, Jackie Earle Haley, and Rita Moreno in between. Special props go to Whoopi Goldberg and Judy Greer, whose sly cat and happy whale are opposites woh work quite well together.

And, almost needless to say, the film is gorgeous, animated in classic style, with character designs that seem coloring-book-ready and which allow a lot of expression without distortion. There's a house style that makes Cartoon Saloon productions recognizable but seldom repetitive, especially the backgrounds that feel busy without quite being dizzying, the distinct color schemes for the village, city, and island. There are big, clear shapes, and rather than overwhelm the audience at crucial moments, Twomey will throw away perspective or reduce action to silhouettes to make sure what's actually important gets the most full, impactful emphasis.

That simplification, both in story and style, makes me wonder if the studio was animating with knowledge that this was heading for Netflix with very little time on the big screen. My Father's Dragon feels streaming-scale rather than grandly cinematic - fine enough for kids, but not as thrilling as this group's best work.

Lady Friends in the British Isles: Ammonite & Wolfwalkers

Some days, an afternoon at the cinema resolves itself into a themed double feature whether you want it to or not. Yeah, they're intended for different audiences and there's only this very surface-level similarity, but you can't not see it.

Anyway, it was a quiet day at the theater. I'm pretty sure that I was the only person in both shows, and I only saw one or two other patrons while I was there. This is probably a good thing - it means that Boston-area folks are taking things seriously, even on what I mentioned was a pretty darn good movie weekend on Friday. The danger of movie theaters may be exaggerated, especially with concessions not being served, but I know that very few people are in the same situation I am (working from home with nobody sharing my space, happy to walk a few miles to avoid the subway). There aren't enough of us to sustain theaters and I wonder to what extent Landmark is being kept relatively-afloat by private rentals. It certainly can't be enough that I can have personal screenings for $14 a pop on the weekend.

Given that, this image from theater #8 amused me:

For this screen, second-row center is where it's at; I want my vision filled and don't want to be off-center if I can help it, and the front row is too close even with recliners. The bullseye was taped off, though, so I went for the front row. I find it sort of hilarious that the situation means I have the theater to myself and I can't use the best seat.

Anyway, I liked Ammonite well enough and loved Wolfwalkers, and I really hope that it's not exclusive to AppleTV+ for very long. It feels like a perfect niece present and I'd hate for it to completely disappear behind the gates of a relatively small streaming service, especially since I have been waiting years for Cartoon Saloon to make a movie with the sort of girl heroes that my nieces love. That it not only comes out in the middle of a pandemic, but it's also set to disappear into Apple's walled garden as soon as its small North American theatrical release finishes, is some monkey's paw garbage.

Ammonite

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 November 2020 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (first-run, DCP)

The opening scene of Ammonite - a woman on her knees doing scut work being rudely brushed aside so that men can do something which involves erasing the important contribution of a woman - isn't the movie in miniature, thankfully, but that just makes one wonder why it's so prominent. The film is instead a small love story where the tension is the point, one that would probably impress a bit more if it hadn't appeared in such relatively close proximity to Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which shares more or less the same structure.

This one also offers a woman, Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), who is very good at what she does, who is hired not just in her official capacity but to serve as a companion of sorts. Though Roderick Murchison (James McArdle) is an admirer of the Lyme-based fossil-hunter's findings, he is planning an expedition to the continent which his wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) is clearly not up for. Could Mary keep an eye on her? When it turns out that Charlotte has rather more than "light melancholia", and it has been exacerbated by the water therapy that was in vogue in the 1840s, Mary and her mother Molly (Gemma Jones) wind up taking Charlotte into their tiny home, and their proximity soon reveals attraction.

It's a bit of a plodding film at times, a romance that is often mincingly tentative, with Mary and Charlotte spending a lot of time circling each other. It makes sense; being gay in this particular time and place would mean making absolutely certain that the other person reciprocates your interest and is willing to respond in kind. Writer/director Francis Lee has hit upon a nifty way of illustrating this in Mary's work of finding the ordinary-looking rocks that may have something different inside and carefully bringing that out, but he seldom dives into it. That's too bad, because the process of it would be fascinating to see and it would maybe give this love affair some structure and individuality rather than the way it often feels like Charlotte is willing to fall for anybody who treats her kindly while Mary holds back because she can't be sure and doesn't want to test the waters.

Fortunately, the film has Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, who are both good at delivering just what it needs. Winslet gives Mary the proper working-class combination of earthiness and intellect while Roman delivers a sort of innocent insulation from that, but they spark against each other in a way that crosses that boundary without making that big a deal of it. We could maybe do to learn a bit more about each of them, but we don't really need to with what we're given. There are some nice performances around them that do good work in sharpening who Mary is in particular - Gemma Jones's hardened mother, Fiona Shaw's one-time lover, Alec Secareanu as a doctor whose attraction is not going to get anywhere - and it might be nice if there was a bit more of that on the other side; James McArdle never seems wrong as Charlotte's husband, but her world never seems as precise as Mary's.

It's a muddiness that often works to the film's advantage - everything that steers things to Mary's more hardscrabble world rather than the more thoroughly-chronicled intrigues of those in the upper class lets Lee get closer to the raw emotions of these women and how being circumspect is hard and painful - but just as often makes any joy the pair are deriving from their pairing hard to discern. The sex scenes in particular are often more primal release than something happening between two individuals (which, admittedly, does give Ronan a big "oh, so this is how good that's supposed to feel" moment without using those or any words) and the film is otherwise more comfortable in showing the depth of the pair's affection through potential separation rather than how they are together.

There's a coda that hints at a more individual romance which draws on their differences in age, class, and experience, and I suspect I won't be totally alone at getting to the end of Ammonite and wishing I could have seen that story. It's not that movie, and while it's good to have a movie that looks at the board uncertainty as much as the specific, it does make things slow going at times.

Also at eFilmCritic

Wolfwalkers

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 November 2020 in Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run, DCP)

The pace of animated film production means that, so long as their work is staggered properly, I can probably get away with calling two or three people the best purveyors of animation out there without it looking too much like I'm being overly enthused about whatever I've seen last. Tomm Moore and the rest of the team at Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenney, Ireland are in that group, and Wolfwalkers may be their best movie yet, a kid-friendly adventure that hits familiar notes but never misses.

The film is set in 1650, when Kilkenney was a walled city expanding its farmlands to keep up with its growth, displacing wolves as it cut down forest. The Lord Protector (voice of Simon McBurney) has hired English hunter William Goodfellowe (voice of Sean Bean) to deal with the wolves, and daughter Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) is eager to help. In doing so, she chases her pet falcon Merlin into the woods where she discovers Mebh Óg MacTíre (voice of Eva Whittaker), a "Wolfwalker" her own age who lives in the woods and has access to wild magics, most notably the ability to manifest as a wolf when she sleeps. Mebh's mother has been looking for a place to relocate their pack, but she has been gone a long time, her sleeping body inert.

Those in the audience older than Robyn and Mebh (pronounced like "Maeve") will likely find that much of the story hits familiar beats, but this isn't a mark against it; screenwriter Will Collins (working from a story by directors Moore & Ross Stewart and Jericca Cleland) takes care to earn the story's next steps without crossing a line from challenging to cruelty. It's familiar, but more because the writers are following what kids and adults would do in this sort of situation rather than trying to fit a framework. They're canny about setting it at a point where magic seems possible but naturally imbuing it with material that feels contemporary, from bullying to the long and contentious relationship between Ireland and England to fanaticism to environmental impact, all of it interconnected. The story is simple but the background is rich and relatable to its viewers.

And, of course, it's gorgeous, and the different ways in which it looks fantastic are worth considering. There's the conventional ones, where action-packed animation is smooth and not overwhelming, or how it will occasionally pause for an especially great image. The character designs are shapes that kids can draw themselves but which still manage to be expressive, able to use things like the complementary curves on Robyn and William's heads without it being too cutesy or switch styles to quickly show the power of a wolf's senses and other magic. On top of that, there are numerous moments in this film where they buck conventional practice in deliberate, striking fashion - where so much of even hand-drawn animation is concerned with realism, these filmmakers will just as often use the medieval Irish art as a guide, and the effect is often amazing, as when a flattened style makes Kilkenney look as massive as any modern city without it becoming anachronistic, or where they go even further and just get rid of conventional perspective because something else works better. It's downright beautiful to look at while still feeling alive, such that the film seldom narrates something other filmmakers might, because the visual tells you enough.

On top of that, its two young heroines are delightful, an odd couple whose pairing has a genuine edge to it in their early encounters though they nevertheless quickly become fast friends. The animators give them contrasting shapes and different body language that translates surprisingly well to that of wolves, and the voiceover work by young actresses Honor Keafsey and Eva Whittaker is really quite excellent, whether it's how the two girls play off each other, how Mebh's bluster occasionally cracks, or Robyn imitating her father. In the middle of all that, the filmmakers are able to give some attention to how William, the bravest man Robyn can imagine, is scared all the time in a way that seems far more raw than is usual, with Sean Bean absolutely nailing the line where it all comes out, without taking away from how this is the girls' story.

A few heavy-handed pushes near the end aside, this film does everything right, moving at the sort of steady pace a younger viewer can follow without ever seeming hobbled. It's an exciting story that works as a couple hours' adventure and is packed with enough mythology, history, and art to start a curious child down any number of paths and one which encourages young girls to see and do what's right even when well-meaning adults say otherwise. I love it and hope my nieces do as well.

Also at eFilmCritic