Imagine a mid-90s rom-com penned in part by Denis Leary and you'd probably get pretty close to the humour and general thrust of Two if by Sea. I suspect the margin of error is minuscule. In the aftermath of one last job, a ne'er-do'well thief and his cashier girlfriend flee to New England, find themselves occupying a massive coastal manor, and befriend a ragtag collection of locals. It's completely true to the form—deadbeat boyfriend pulls it together when good-hearted girlfriend…
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Too Old to Die Young 2019
Big caveat with the rating here, since I spent equal parts of this slow-cinema crime thing rapt at the edge of my seat, marveling at Refn's unrestrained and often downright perverse assemblage of image and sound, and just kind of disinterested, occasionally fighting the urge to check my email or read a book. Though to its credit, I think that's by design. It's what Refn means when he says Too Old to Die Young isn't a movie or a series,…
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Earwig 2021
Once again, Lucile Hadžihalilović hits the ground dreaming with ambivalent caretakers and an almost overwhelming number of signifiers. Earwig is, for all its stillness, always in flux, caught between a fairy tale and a horror film, and routinely soaked in otherworldly postwar malaise. Every frame is a stunning collage of greens, ambers, and reds—and don't even get me started on the exterior shots, which make incredible use of texture and pattern. You can almost smell the rain, run your fingers…
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Belfast 2021
A collage of memories rendered in crisp black and white and set to the tune of Van Morrison's entire discography. Incidentally, it seems like a weird time to be giving the crank this much attention, but the music is so embedded in the texture of the narrative that I don't know what could effectively replace it. In any case, for all its shortcomings Belfast is just really hard to dislike outright, especially with Ciarán Hinds delivering one salty grandpa joke after…
