#33 — Brooklyn (John Crowley, 2015) In the nineteen-fifties, a young woman from Ireland moves to the United States. Ellis (Saoirse Ronan) has few prospects and only the slenderest of connections to other Irish immigrants in the big city she … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty-Three
Based on Colm Tóibín’s novel of the same name, Brooklyn demonstrates the reservoirs of emotional power that can be tapped by telling a quietly compelling story unadorned by pushy narrative tricks, by letting the particulars of wisely conceived drama stand as the prevailing voice of the film. Set in the nineteen-fifties, it tells the story of a young immigrant named Eilis (Saoirse Ronan). She settles into an existence of minor yet impactful unease after journeying from Ireland to find her place in the title borough. The relatively modest scale of her challenges serves to settle the film into an endearingly realistic space … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2015 — Number Three
Like a lot of people that devote themselves to inordinate amounts of time spent in movie theaters, I have a tendency to equate novelty with accomplishment. Though I maintain a thick enough strain of cynicism to avoid knee-jerk genuflection before hollow material tricked up with self-congratulatory narrative gimmicks (this is where I’d link to a review of Fight Club if I had one), I am absolutely more prone to fall for movies that do something decidedly different, filling the screen before me with something that I’ve never quite seen before. I’d naturally assumed that predilection came from an altogether commonplace impulse … Continue reading Be careful for the danger there, you just might just be unprepared
Coffee for Two 