I wish that I could stop feeling that I want to be an Irish girl in Ireland.

Brooklyn
(2015)

(SPOILERS) Sweet, well-observed little picture that dun well, as Saiorse Ronan emigrates from Ireland (take a wild stab where) in the early ‘50s, discovers a whole new world, then rediscovers a whole old world, entailing conflicting emotions over the romantic entanglements each brings.

Ronan entirely deserved her Best Actress Oscar nomination, assuredly navigating potentially tricky trajectory for Eilis Lacy such that, in the third act, her errant behaviour is never less than understandable. This is, after all, a picture all about the lustre of familiar shores, in which a rather wonderfully cast Jim Broadbent comforts Eilis early on in her US sojourn, that “Homesickness is like most sicknesses. It’ll make you feel wretched, and then it’ll move on to somebody else”. Albeit, it sounds better when he says it.

I was half expecting the usual yarn of the naïve woman giving herself to a seemingly besotted, perfect guy who then promptly loses interest (mostly because Emory Cohen makes Tony Fiorello so perfectly sincere, amiable and likeable, it was obviously too good to be true; it helps too that the chemistry between Cohen and Ronan is palpable). So, when they get rapidly hitched and she subsequently surfs back to Ireland solo, and then finds herself awash with conflicting feelings, Brooklyn revealed itself as a refreshing change from the norm.

John Crowley’s sensitive direction ensures that, for all that Ellis is a good and proper girl, and her new husband is a loving and devoted fellow, the trance she falls into as the old life overcomes her is relatable; everyone around her blithely assumes she will just resume her previous place, and she even encounters an impossibly decent suitor in Domhnall Gleeson’s Jim Farrell.

It wouldn’t really be accurate to call this a love triangle. It’s more a love location-slip, as Eilis perceives two different lives and is unsure which dream is real, at least until the spell is broken by external machinations. Ronan is radiant, and some day that Oscar shall no doubt be hers. The evocation of another era, meanwhile, is indescribably perfect, as if every place, no matter how squalid in reality, was pristine during that decade. That’s a quibble, though. This is, after all, a romantic melodrama, rather than some hard-hitting expose of indelicate socio-economic truths.

As involving as Eilis’ personal predicaments are, perhaps the sheerest pleasure of the picture comes from the evening dinners at her boarding house, presided over by Julie Walters in inimitable manner as landlady Madge Kehoe. If it isn’t the duo of superior, scoffing man-hunters dissolving into peals of laughter, it’s Madge’s delirious put-downs of the same; this kind of quick-fire repartee is immensely pleasurable, naturally very funny and entirely unforced. How much of that is from Colm Toibin’s novel or Nick Hornby’s screenplay, I don’t know, but Hornby at least deserves credit for transposing it so effectively.

Obviously, I’m not alone in such an endorsement, as the Beeb is apparently set to produce the return of Mrs Keogh and her passers-through. Whether that’s a good idea or not is questionable, since making a side order the main dish can often highlight that it was its position as an appetiser that made it so effective. Of course, Brooklyn will only further underline the export appeal of the nostalgia-driven heritage-fixated Britain film industry, but when such backward fascination produces a picture so charming and well-observed, it becomes difficult to begrudge it.

That was the unseen straggler of 2015 Best Picture Oscar nominees , so here’s my rundown ranking:

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

2. Room

3. Spotlight

4. The Big Short

5. Bridge of Spies

6. Brooklyn

7. The Martian

8. The Revenant

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Nanobots aren’t just for Christmas.

No Time to Die (2021) (SPOILERS) You know a Bond movie is in trouble when it resorts to wholesale appropriation of lines and even the theme song from another in order to “boost” its emotional heft. That No Time to Die – which previewed its own title song a year and a half before its release to resoundingly underwhelmed response, Grammys aside – goes there is a damning indictment of its ability to eke out such audience investment in Daniel Craig’s final outing as James (less so as 007). As with Spectre , the first half of No Time to Die is, on the whole, more than decent Bond fare, before it once again gets bogged down in the quest for substance and depth from a character who, regardless of how dapper his gear is, resolutely resists such outfitting.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

Big things have small beginnings.

Prometheus (2012) Post- Gladiator , Ridley Scott opted for an “All work and no pondering” approach to film making. The result has been the completion of as many movies since the turn of the Millennium as he directed in the previous twenty years. Now well into his seventies, he has experienced the most sustained period of success of his career. For me, it’s also been easily the least-interesting period. All of them entirely competently made, but all displaying the machine-tooled approach that was previously more associated with his brother.

Ladies and gentlemen, this could be a cultural misunderstanding.

Mars Attacks! (1996) (SPOILERS) Ak. Akk-akk! Tim Burton’s gleefully ghoulish sci-fi was his first real taste of failure. Sure, there was Ed Wood , but that was cheap, critics loved it, and it won Oscars. Mars Attacks! was BIG, though, expected to do boffo business, and like more than a few other idiosyncratic spectaculars of the 1990s ( Last Action Hero , Hudson Hawk ) it bombed BIG. The effect on Burton was noticeable. He retreated into bankable propositions (the creative and critical nadir perhaps being Planet of the Apes , although I’d rate it much higher than the likes of Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo ) and put the brakes on his undisciplined goth energy. Something was lost. Mars Attacks! is far from entirely successful, but it finds the director let loose with his own playset and sensibility intact, apparently given the licence to do what he will.

So the devil's child will rise from the world of politics.

The Omen (1976) (SPOILERS) The coming of the Antichrist is an evergreen; his incarnation, or the reveal thereof, is always just round the corner, and he can always be definitively identified in any given age through a spot of judiciously subjective interpretation of The Book of Revelation , or Nostradamus. Probably nothing did more for the subject in the current era, in terms of making it part of popular culture, than The Omen . That’s irrespective of the movie’s quality, of course. Which, it has to be admitted, is not on the same level as earlier demonic forebears Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist .

I’m giving you a choice. Either put on these glasses or start eating that trash can.

They Live * (1988) (SPOILERS) Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of They Live – I was a big fan of most things Carpenter at the time of its release – but the manner in which its reputation as a prophecy of (or insight into) “the way things are” has grown is a touch out of proportion with the picture’s relatively modest merits. Indeed, its feting rests almost entirely on the admittedly bravura sequence in which WWF-star-turned-movie-actor Roddy Piper, under the influence of a pair of sunglasses, first witnesses the pervasive influence of aliens among us who are sucking mankind dry. That, and the ludicrously genius sequence in which Roddy, full of transformative fervour, attempts to convince Keith David to don said sunglasses, for his own good. They Live should definitely be viewed by all, for their own good, but it’s only fair to point out that it doesn’t have the consistency of John Carpenter at his very, very best. Nada : I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick a

Are you, by any chance, in a trance now, Mr Morrison?

The Doors (1991) (SPOILERS) Oliver Stone’s mammoth, mythologising paean to Jim Morrison is as much about seeing himself in the self-styled, self-destructive rebel figurehead, and I suspect it’s this lack of distance that rather quickly leads to The Doors becoming a turgid bore. It’s strange – people are , you know, films equally so – but I’d hitherto considered the epic opus patchy but worthwhile, a take that disintegrated on this viewing. The picture’s populated with all the stars it could possibly wish for, tremendous visuals (courtesy of DP Robert Richardson) and its director operating at the height of his powers, but his vision, or the incoherence thereof, is the movie’s undoing. The Doors is an indulgent, sprawling mess, with no internal glue to hold it together dramatically. “Jim gets fat and dies” isn’t really a riveting narrative through line.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

I think I’m Pablo Picasso!

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) (SPOILERS) I get the impression that, whatever it is stalwart Venom fans want from a Venom movie, this iteration isn’t it. The highlight here for me is absolutely the wacky, love-hate, buddy-movie antics of Tom Hardy and his symbiote alter. That was the best part of the original, before it locked into plot “progression” and teetered towards a climax where one CGI monster with gnarly teeth had at another CGI monster with gnarly teeth. And so it is for Venom: Let There Be Carnage . But cutting quicker to the chase.

Isn’t sugar better than vinegar?

Femme Fatale (2002) (SPOILERS) Some have attempted to rescue Femme Fatale from the dumpster of critical rejection and audience indifference with the claim that it’s De Palma’s last great movie. It isn’t that by a long shot, but it might rank as the last truly unfettered display of his obsessions and sensibilities, complete with a ludicrous twist – so ludicrous, it’s either a stroke of genius or mile-long pile up.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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