Weekly Cinemeh

Welcome to Weekly Cinemeh! This week's theme was Irish movies, though the first one slightly cheats by being French, Belgian, and Irish. I didn't have a whole lot of experience with Irish movies at the beginning of the week, but with what we saw I definitely want to see more.

1: The Secret of Kells
This was an animated movie about the creation of and story around the Illuminated Bible known as the Book of Kells. If you click that link you can take a look at some of the amazing pictures painted on the pages. These people where amazing artists and did all of this in 800 C.E.. The movie itself deals with a boy who helps one of the original artists of the book finish it. The movie also focuses on Kells (a city based in an old Irish hill fort) and its need to defend against coastal raids by the Vikings. The animation in the film is amazing. Its art style reminded me of the old cartoon show Samurai Jack (one of my favorites from my teen years) and was very well done in general. It is a very beautiful movie, in terms of story, art and music. Very good movie for adults and children alike watch it.

Eshi: This was a really good week for me. I love Irish cinema and this was a great way to lead off.  The way the Vikings are portrayed is masterful, they aren't just big scary men, they're wave upon wave of Darkness coming to wash all civilization and goodness from the world. Kells is a super well balanced story in terms of moral and, despite some relatively jebus heavy bits, doesn't overly rely on any particular tradition. Beautiful, watch it.

2: The Guard
This movie is from the writer-director John Michael McDonagh and is about an Irish police Sergent and an FBI agent working to stop a very violent drug cartel working out of rural Ireland. Much like his brother Martin McDonagh (who is amazing by the way, 7 Psychopaths and In Bruges are great films) he is a fan of black comedy it seems, though this movie ends in a much less tragic way as all of the Martin McDonagh films I have seen (and considering the third movie from this week, that was a good thing). This movie loves its dark humor and revels in making the main character, played by Brenden Gleeson, seemingly go out of his way to be as crass as possible to great effect. It also has one of the greatest scenes in a crime movie that I have ever seen because it calls out the ridiculousness of this scene in other movies. This was a great movie that I would suggest watching. I will definitely be watching more movies from him.

Eshi: Brendan Gleeson is boss as fuck in this film. I like the dark cop-type dramedy (see Filth) and Mr. McDonagh does some fine fucking work on that front. Don Cheadle is also pretty great in this one, flowing relatively cleanly between stuffy MIB and charismatic lawful good buddy... Fuck it, just watch anything with "McDonagh" in the credits.

3: The Wind That Shakes The Barley
I want to get this out of the way first: this movie is fucking depressing as hell. It is about one of the wars of Irish Independence and the Irish Civil war that took place shortly afterward, and the relationship between two brothers as they fight through it. As a historical film, I knew how it was going to end (No one can be happy in that kind of situation) but regardless it was a fantastic movie. It was powerful and was great at showing the horrors of war and the consequences of the actions that take place in trying to end a war. I usually have a pretty good stomach for bad shit happening in movies but I had to look away in a few scenes when shit got real. Cillian Murphy (he played the scarecrow in the Nolan Batman films and Thomas in Peaky Blinders) is a great actor and handles the weight of his role well, and Liam Cunningham has great screen presence (he was also in The Guard as one of the heads of the cartel). This movie made me go and look up more information about the fight for Irish independence because while I knew about it, I didn't know about the civil war that followed. This movie is amazing and I am still thinking about it two days later, watch it.

Eshi: This movie is 127 minutes (fucking really, that was only two hours?!) of continuous heartbreak. Cillian Murphy is, as always, fucking amazing. I can't honestly bring myself to say too much about this one. Not because I'm afraid of spoiling anything, but because two days later its still raw enough to hurt. This is not a fun, get together on the weekend and watch this on a lark film. The Wind That Shakes the Barley is the kind of movie you spend a couple of days prepping for and only watch it with someone you're comfortable both crying and yelling in front of. It hurts really fucking deep, but it is entirely worth it.

Honorable mentions: As usual our honorable mentions tend not to be movies we saw this past week but other similar things we like. This week I would like to suggest some Irish comedians who have great stand up specials or T.V. series. Dylan Moran (Black Books and several funny stand up specials), Dara O'Brien (Mock the Week and several great specials), Tommy Tiernan (I have only seen one special and it was fantastic), and Ed Byrne (several funny specials).