Yes, There’s “The Quiet Girl” After the Oscar Quest ’23 End Credits

A quiet Irish girl stares ahead with her deep blue eyes, expression hidden, her inner monologue unknowable.

If you’re not watching out for the quiet ones, you can bet they’re always watching you.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I basically finished my annual Oscar Quest and watched as many of the Academy Award-nominated works as I could access between the nominations announcement and the ABC ceremony. As of eight days ago I’d seen 50 of this year’s 54 total nominees. As it happens, one small holdout from across the ocean finally reached our local theaters the same weekend as said ceremony, just barely in time for inclusion.

Writer/director Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl slipped unassumingly and mostly unseen onto the Oscar scorecard for Best International Feature in the shadow of Netflix’s much-ballyhooed All Quiet on the Western Front, sidling next to other small-scale fare like Close, EO, and Argentina, 1985. It’s one of three deeply Irish films synchronously joining the festivities, along with homeland fellows The Banshees of Inisherin and the live-action short An Irish Goodbye. Apropos of its main character, the film has its group memberships yet seems to prefer hanging out on its own.

Continue reading

“The Banshees of Inisherin”: Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Colin Farrell bothers Brendan Gleeson in "The Banshees of Inisherin".

“So who do you think would win in a fight, Grindelwald or Mad-Eye Moody?”

Years ago I heard a pastor (not at our home church) sermonize to an auditorium full of men about what he called “radical amputations” — times in his life when he made conscious, arguably over-the-top decisions to remove potential chances for sin to enter his life by any means necessary. He knew his limits and his temptations, and took hard measures to avoid jeopardizing his family, his job, his church, and/or his relationship with Christ. Historically speaking, some pastors have fared far worse at their sin management than others. God bless those who find ways to turn away from impulsive stupidity.

The most drastic example he cited from his own past concerned a onetime assistant of his, apparently a lovely woman who was good at her job. They were frequently alone in the office. She didn’t jokingly flirt with him or do anything remotely resembling a romantic gesture in his direction, but he felt himself growing attracted to her and, shall we say, entertaining impure thoughts on a recurring basis. He never acted on those thoughts or tried to perpetrate anything Weinsteinian on her, but his imagination and hormones wouldn’t shut up. After this had gone on for a bit, he realized something needed to change. So he fired her.

This “radical amputation” on his part amounted to punishment for her despite absolutely no wrongdoing on her part — no performance issues, no rules broken, no red marks on her permanent record or whatever. But he could feel himself in danger of moral/spiritual slippage and decided he needed her permanently and immediately out of his orbit for the sake of everyone and everything that depended on him. Years later that story still doesn’t sit well with me (not once in his sermon did he suggest perhaps he should’ve hit the road), but the concept stuck in my head.

I was graphically reminded of that confession (which he positioned to us as family-man advice) as I sat raptly through The Banshees of Inisherin, the latest film from writer/director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), in which blunt decisions, sin, and stupidity become man’s worst friends.

Continue reading

Once Upon a Time in “Belfast”…

Belfast at the movies!

Wait’ll they find out tonight’s feature presentation is In the Name of the Father.

…there was a tiny child named Kenneth Branagh, but everyone called him Buddy. He was a smarter version of Ralphie from A Christmas Story and even had the same preoccupation with the toys and films of his age, plus he even got to unwrap his fair share of Christmas gifts. He didn’t need Ralphie’s narrator powers because he was perfectly happy talking aloud to anyone who’d listen. He never got in trouble for talking too much, even when he kept pointing out little differences between Catholicism and Protestantism like an ’80s standup comic who’s never heard other comics’ routines and feels like he’s blazing new trails in the field of Just Asking Questions.

Continue reading

%d bloggers like this: