The In Bruges gang are back – hitting the high notes in a darkly comic tale
If they gave out Oscars for ‘best use of landscape’, writer-director Martin McDonagh would be home and dry. His new film, The Banshees Of Inisherin, filmed on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, looks magnificent, with his characteristically black comedy unfolding against the hills and ancient stone-walled fields and trackways of his fictional island. Life here, we can quickly imagine, has been tough for a long time.
So small wonder that struggling farmer Padraic (Colin Farrell) and musician Colm (Brendan Gleeson) have a habit of meeting for an afternoon pint at the local pub. Until one day, Colm simply stops talking to his confused and upset friend.
‘Have you been rowing?’ asks Padraic’s sister, Siobhan (Kerry Condon).
‘I don’t think we’ve been rowing,’ replies Padraic, who is not the brightest button on the island. ‘Have we been rowing?’
Despite Padraic’s efforts to repair things, the stand-off gets worse, with the exasperated Colm even threatening violence if his former friend persists. Meanwhile, distant gunfire and the sound of explosions remind us that the Irish Civil War of 1922-23 is still being fought on the mainland.
No one can quite remember why the Free Staters and the IRA fell out or why they are still fighting. Yes, Padraic and Colm’s sulky stand-off is a metaphor and it’s the only slightly clumsy thing in this otherwise darkly funny, beautifully photographed, brilliantly cinematic, and eventually rather moving film. Farrell and Gleeson are even funnier than they were in McDonagh’s In Bruges, and with Condon and Barry Keoghan contributing fine support, award nominations will surely be heading its way.
Harry Styles is heaps better in My Policeman than he was in Don’t Worry Darling and is one of the reasons this Michael Grandage-directed drama gets off to such a promising start.
It begins with Patrick (Rupert Everett), who’s been left an invalid by a serious stroke, moving into the humble seaside home shared by the long-married Marion (Gina McKee) and Tom (Linus Roache). Marion is patient with the irascible Patrick but Tom won’t come near him. Why?
Cue the discovered diaries, flashbacks and younger versions of the characters – played by an excellent David Dawson, Emma Corrin and Styles – soon trapped in a 1950s love triangle. It’s beautifully acted but a little slow and familiar.
If you have a houseful of young superhero fans, Black Adam will just about do. This spin-off from the enjoyable Shazam! is formulaic fare, lacking the light touch of its predecessor, marred by some underwhelming visual effects and enlivened just a little by Dwayne Johnson as Teth-Adam, fabled ‘champion of the people’.
But if he’s such a good guy, why have a self-righteous quartet from the Justice Society of America come to close down him and his newly reincarnated superpowers? It takes a lot of fighting to find out, although 69-year-old Pierce Brosnan is fun as one of DC’s more senior superheroes, Dr Fate.
Raymond & Ray, which arrives on Apple TV+, is a modest little film but a lovely one. It sees Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke as half-brothers infuriatingly given the same name by their violent, womanising father. But now he has died, leaving instructions that he not only expects them to attend his funeral but to dig his grave.
As you might expect, compensations are unearthed along the ultimately touching way.