Movies & TV

Here's the round up of scores:

Cinematography: 5/5

Storytelling: 4/5

Acting: 5/5

Entertainment: 3/5

Production Design: 4.5/5

Short review: Boasting some of the most beautiful layered landscapes caught on this side of 21st century filmmaking, The Banshees of Inshiren is seductively complex film beneath it's almost charming tale of two friends when one of them suddenly ends their friendship.

I have always enjoyed Martin McDonaugh's works, In Bruges and Three Billboards are some of my fav comedy drama-thrillers out there and while Banshees does lack a bit of dramatic flair of its predecessors (think of that one-shit sequence in Three Billboards or the final scene of In Bruges), what's here is more refined and tightly woven together, every scene says something about the characters and there's a sense of something ominous going on that's outside of the control of our main characters which adds another dimension of tension into the story that's already building sort of this gritty tense standoff that refuses to resolve itself.

I had a chance to watch the deleted scenes of the film as they were included on Disney+, more films need to do that btw, and I was surprised by how conscious some of those decisions must have been. Every deleted scene adds a new dimension to the character and you can tell that Martin maybe didn't want to show off that side of the character whether it be Padraic's (Farrel) insensitive to his sister's crying or Colm's inability to play out a tone and his frustration following that.

Anyway, I think it's a brilliant grand film. One that looks beautiful and vast while telling a very small but relatable story, all the while taking out the time to show the lives of other characters.