Seraphim Falls - Movie Review

Starring Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson in a 2006 western about survival and vengeance, I thought Seraphim Falls was brilliant.

It was actually just before the guy in the top hat at the pond shows up that the thought had crossed my mind that this journey feels like an endless purgatory, so to see first him and then the lady at the end show up certainly fit in with that line of thinking of what this movie was representing. It literally bookends itself with agony, starting in the freezing snow where Brosnan's character is trying to start a fire for warmth, and ending up in the blistering heat of the desert, leaving our characters desperate for water.

I thought it intriguing how both our characters' journeys move forward in opposite parallels. Brosnan's character starts off with a team of soldiers behind him, but after the incident, he finds himself alone and wanting to be left alone. He does some bad things along his journey, but it's all in the name of survival. He kills people to stay alive, he kills his horse out of mercy. Meanwhile, Neeson's character starts off alone and wanting for he and his family to be left alone. But after the incident, he forms a team to go on the hunt, and he does some bad things along his journey, and it's all in the name of his blind vengeance. People die under his watch, he kills people in order to exact his revenge, and he kills his horse out of pettiness after someone abandoned his mission.

But both paths lead these men to the same place in the end, that being an inescapable purgatory where the only way out is to let go. Brosnan finally stops running, and tells Neeson to end it. And Neeson lets go, and instead walks away, lest he lose himself in the process.

I thought this was excellent. And the survival aspect, particularly during the snow scenes, were exhilarating, and often reminded me of The Revenant. I had actually never heard of this movie before now, but seeing how good it is, I'm now a bit curious as to why that might be.

The Banshees of Inisherin - Movie Review

The Banshees of Inisherin is named after a song written in the film that is described as being sad, and I'd say that same description could be used for the film as well. Set on a small island with the fitting backdrop of a civil war brewing within earshot on the mainland, this is perhaps one of the smaller and more personal films that director Martin McDonagh has tackled so far, and it may well be his best yet.

I feel we've all probably experienced the abrupt end of a friendship at some point, whether we're the one suddenly cut off, or we're the one who's grown tired of someone and has as such cut them off. So in that way, I could certainly relate to the story and both characters' perspectives, up to an obvious point at least.

The betrayal that Colin Farrell's character feels is very real, the hurt and confusion and insecurity that comes from such a sudden cut off, questioning what you may have said or done wrong, and how you can possibly get to a place to fix things, even when it's well beyond your control to do so. His performance was phenomenal, and believably sold the range of emotions that one would likely feel in such a situation. And I like how the movie showed how such a breakup in such a small community can have ramifications that shake up the whole town.

And even from Brenden Gleeson's perspective, I can relate in certain regards. He's haunted by his mortality, he sees his life as being wasted, and is striving to leave a lasting impact on the world. I can understand that, and I've certainly reached a point with certain friendships where I've felt they were merely holding me back, at times when I was ready to move on to a new stage in life. But the depths to which he travels in order to cement his place in history turns him into an undeniable villain in the process. His cruelty infests the small island, which in turn transforms otherwise good people towards cruelty as well, which starts a domino effect that leaves behind a legacy of death and malice. He argues that kindness is not enough to leave a lasting impression on the world, and yet his actions take an otherwise beautiful landscape and fill it with darkness, mirroring his song which is both beautiful yet sad.

But despite all of this, he too feels like a real and complex character. He's cruel, yet he has moments where he shows regret for his decisions. He wants to end his friendship with Farrell, yet despite how much he pleads for Farrell to leave him alone, even he can't set aside his own humanity enough to just let Farrell's character be attacked by the police and left a beaten mess. He's a hypocrite, whether he knows it or not, but it all comes across as believable. From his perspective, he's the hero of his own story, until at last he finally sees that he's not.

It's a tragic film for sure, but the movie does a great job balancing just enough humor and lighter moments to keep it from being too bleak, and I loved a lot of the idiosyncrasies spread throughout the film. I always got a chuckle by Farrell always letting the donkey in the house when his sister was away, and got a good laugh when he lets in all the animals after she leaves for the mainland. I liked the simple-mindedness of the barkeep and some of the patrons, how they'd just mindlessly parrot one another, seemingly oblivious that they're even doing it. In fact, I like how real and lived-in this small community feels, and we get to know just enough about the background characters to where we almost get a feel for what it might be like living in such a community where literally everybody knows everybody, too.

(Also, Kerry Condon was quite excellent, and I may have formed a bit of a crush on her over the course of the movie.)

I'd say this was a deep experience worth reflecting on.

Belle - Movie Review

There’s a moment in the movie Belle where the background characters in U mention how Belle’s songs feel like they’re written specifically for them, and I definitely got that feeling watching this movie, that it was something almost made for me. A reimagining of sorts of Beauty and the Beast for the social media era, I personally found I was able to connect with the characters and thought they were incredibly compelling, and Suzu in particular was very relatable to me.

I thought a lot of the character interactions and their various arcs played out in a very satisfying manner. For instance, there's Suzu's best friend, who is just pretty loose at the mouth and can be almost rude and inconsiderate at times, yet one of my favorite moments in the film is when they’re having lunch, and she catches herself slipping up and saying something that she knows was super messed up. Suzu isn’t bothered, because she knows her friend enough to know she didn’t mean to offend her, but all the same she assures Suzu that no matter what she’ll always support her, and I don’t know, but I guess moments like that just kind of hit home and struck a certain chord with me. Even the rival singer in U who gets jealous of Belle, when she has a complete 180 after Belle is revealed to be Suzu, and she sees that she’s able to relate to her, her jealousy goes away, and she becomes a very vocal supporter. It's little moments like that throughout that made me find the movie just very charming.

I also liked how the musical aspect played out. For the most part, these are songs that Suzu had written in her past as it relates to her mother, but she’s never been able to express these thoughts and feelings in song until now. I like how we see her in the process of writing the song for the Beast, and I like how the last song she sings to him is actually a repurposing of another song dedicated to her mother, which was the song she was attempting to sing on the bridge earlier on, but was unable to do so at the time. It all ties in together, feels very organic, and shows how the artistic process can work for people, whether they have something happen to them that gives them a mental block from being able to express themselves, or showing how someone might be inspired and put that inspiration towards creating something beautiful with it. And I also liked how it showed that her raw talent alone wasn’t enough, but that she needed the help of her friend to basically act as her producer to really break out and get noticed, which I also thought felt very realistic.

And I love how it played out the story of how much Suzu takes after her mom, even in ways that she wasn’t aware of. She spends most of her adolescence not understanding why her mother did what she did, only for her to discover near the end that she is very much her mother’s daughter, and isn’t one to just stand by and let a bad thing happen. I like how the movie criticizes the mentality of “don’t be a hero”, and argues that you should help people in need, even if there’s risk involved.

Even as it regards U, I just really like the realistic manner in which it interprets the internet. The mob mentality (shown as a literal mob as they storm the Beast’s castle), and how a lot of people don’t really think for themselves online necessarily. I like how it takes a critical stance against the type who would try to dox someone in the name of so called "justice", and come away thinking they’re the hero for their villainous actions. And I like that it does this all in a manner that doesn’t ever put the movie on hold, it plays out organically along with the rest of the story. In a way, it’s almost chaotic, but there’s a calmness to the chaos that makes it so it never feels like it’s just meandering off subject as all these other side notes play out.

This is a movie I haven’t really written about because it’s one of those where I just have so many thoughts on it. After all, there’s so much I feel that’s worth talking about. But for me, I thought this movie was absolutely wonderful, and it’s easily my favorite of the 20s so far.