Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach, 2007)

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, Zane Pais, Ciarán Hinds, Halley Feiffer, John Turturro. Screenplay: Noah Baumbach. Cinematography: Harris Savides. Production design: Annie Ross. Film editing: Carol Littleton. 

Belfast (Kenneth Branagh, 2021)

 

Cast: Jude Hill, Catríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds, Lewis McAskie, Lara McDonnell, Colin Morgan, Michael Maloney. Screenplay: Kenneth Branagh. Cinematography: Haris Zambarloukos. Production design: Jim Clay. Film editing: Úna Ní Dhonghaíle. Music: Van Morrison. 

Viewing terrible times from the point of view of a child is a familiar movie trope: In 1987, for example John Boorman did it in Hope and Glory and Steven Spielberg in Empire of the Sun. And Kenneth Branagh did it quite well in the semi-autobiographical Belfast, set in the titular city during 1969, the year when his family decided to emigrate to England to escape the bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Branagh has been a middling director of films except for his Shakespeare outings, particularly his Henry V (1989) and Much Ado About Nothing (1993) – I’d also include his Hamlet (1996), but it’s a little too gimmicky with its cameo roles for actors like Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston, and Robin Williams. Belfast, however, is a heartfelt personal project, which is its greatest strength but also – in a certain lack of distance and sentimentality in the storytelling – its chief weakness. The standout performances come from Catríona Balfe as the mother, whose grit and determination are finally undermined by the rioting, and Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds as the grandparents. For once, Dench is not cast as a crusty old dame in the mode of her Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, but rather as a sweet and slightly dotty old woman devoted to her husband, played also somewhat against type by Hinds. The whole thing is set to a score and songs by Van Morrison, another move in the film’s favor. Solid, somewhat old-fashioned moviemaking. 

First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018)

First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018)

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Patrick Fugit, Christopher Abbott, Ciarán Hinds, Olivia Hamilton, Pablo Schreiber, Shea Whigham, Lukas Haas, Ethan Embry, Brian D'Arcy James. Screenplay: Josh Singer, based on a book by James R. Hansen. Cinematography: Linus Sandgren. Production design: Nathan Crowley. Film editing: Tom Cross. Music: Justin Hurwitz.

Sometime in the middle of First Man, I found myself wishing that Buzz Aldrin had been the first person to set foot on the moon. Not that Neil Armstrong didn't deserve the honor -- Damien Chazelle's movie makes us certain that he had the right stuff -- but because Armstrong, as conceived by screenwriter Josh Singer and played by Ryan Gosling, is so remote, chilly, and uptight. Aldrin at least had a sense of humor and was a bit of a maverick, but all we get of Armstrong is a grim determination, a sense of duty that the job was paramount and had to be suffered through at the expense of human tenderness. Gosling's Armstrong is death-haunted, emotionally frozen by the deaths of his young daughter and of his fellow pilots and astronauts. We don't connect with him except through his wife, Janet, played by Claire Foy, who endures her husband's remoteness but is powerless to get him to snap out of it. The result is a somewhat depressing treatment of heroism as a kind of dead end, which seems to fit the facts of Armstrong's rather colorless and uneventful later life, and also suggests why he and Janet separated in 1990 and divorced four years later. It's a well-made movie but a curiously unsettling one.

There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds, Dillon Freasier, Kevin J. O'Connor. Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, based on a novel by Upton Sinclair. Cinematography: Robert Elswit. Production design: Jack Fisk. Film editing: Dylan Tichenor. Music: Jonny Greenwood.

Extraordinary filmmaking made even more extraordinary by Daniel Day-Lewis's performance, the second of his three Oscar wins. There are some who think the film is a little diffuse and eccentric, especially in its later scenes. But who needs ordinary movies?

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008)

Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in In Bruges

Ray: Colin Farrell
Ken: Brendan Gleeson
Harry: Ralph Fiennes
Chloe: Clémence Poésy
Jimmy: Jordan Prentice
Yuri: Eric Godon
Canadian Man: Zeljko Ivanek
Eirik: Jérémie Renier
Marie: Thekla Reuten

Director: Martin McDonagh
Screenplay: Martin McDonagh
Cinematography: Eigil Bryld
Music: Carter Burwell

Martin McDonagh's In Bruges is a bloody little gem about two hitmen, Ray and Ken, who have been sent by their boss, Harry, to the picturesque Belgian city of Bruges to await further instructions. Brooding, depressed Ray thinks Bruges is a "shithole," whereas Ken is rather taken with the medieval architecture, the cobblestone streets, and the canals. Ray's deep funk stems from guilt: While carrying out a hit Harry ordered -- we never find out why -- on a priest (Ciarán Hinds in an unbilled cameo), Ray accidentally killed a small boy who was standing behind the priest, waiting his turn in the confessional. Ken drags Ray around the city, trying to raise his spirits with sightseeing, but the only thing that works is Ray's discovery of a crew making a film on location and particularly of the pretty Chloe, a production assistant who is actually a drug dealer. Ray is also enchanted that one of the actors is what he calls "a midget" named Jimmy, which allows him to investigate his theory that little people are particularly inclined to be suicidal. Wait, I'm getting lost in the filigree that In Bruges is full of. To return to the main plot, it turns out that the real reason Harry has sent Ray and Ken to Bruges is so Ray can have a good time before Ken kills him. But to understand that, you have to go back into the filigree again: Harry has his own personal gangster code, one article of which is that you must never kill a child, so Ray has to pay the price, but since one of Harry's few happy memories is of the time he spent at the age of 7 in Bruges, he naturally assumes that the trip will be so delightful for Ray that he can die happy. Writer-director McDonagh's imaginative intricacies of characterization and motive might have resulted in only a somewhat twee black comedy if it weren't for the brilliance of his performers, especially Farrell in a part that turned him from a second-string leading man to a specialist in eccentric characters in oddball independent films like Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster (2015). In Bruges is crowded with unexpectedly colorful secondary characters, including Zeljko Ivanek as a Canadian whom Ray insults in a restaurant by mistaking him for an American; Jérémie Renier as Chloe's former boyfriend, who attacks Ray but winds up getting shot in the face with his own gun, loaded with blanks; and Thekla Reuten as Marie, the proprietor of the boutique hotel where Ray and Ken are staying, who meticulously takes down a message to them from Harry, who emphasizes every word in the message by modifying it with "fucking." It's true that the film ends in a bloodbath, but somehow the tone McDonagh has established, with the help of a fine score by Carter Burwell, allows it to transcend its violent excesses.