2022

dir: Sam Mendes

2022

Empire of Light is a curious thing. It’s a film that has an almost reverential love for old cinemas, but not that much interest in being cinematic, or really that interested in movies. Of the films of the era that are depicted or referred to, Chariots of Fire gets a lot of mentions, but not much else in terms of screen time.

And there are a few scenes from Sidney Poitier’s Stir Crazy, with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, and there’s a bit about Being There towards the end of the film, but it’s not about film itself as a medium, or what it can mean to us.

Because it’s not really about the transformative power of the movies. It’s about racism, and a character who struggles with mental illness, and what it was like in the early 1980s in Britain, maybe?

Olivia Colman is the biggest name in this flick, except maybe for Colin Firth, who has a small but odious role, but, really, only about half the flick is about her character. At first I thought we were just going to be watching a film about a depressed woman called Hillary who works at a cinema but never watches the movies playing, who is having something of a desultory affair with her boss (Firth), leading to highly unsatisfying sex in his office.

But then a new chap starts called Stephen (Michael Ward), and he’s young and beautiful, and Hillary is happy again.

For a while.

The old cinema, called The Empire, is already old and in parts run down, even 40 years ago. Its prime, like that of Great Britain, is long gone. Parts of the cinema are shutdown or unusable, and there’s a rooftop bar that goes unused except by pigeons.

There is an inscription on the wall telling people “Find where light in darkness lies” at this old art deco cinema, and I wish that’s as pretentious as the flick got, but it’s bookended with and divided by poetry, so…

(An Cailín Ciúin)

dir: Colm Bairéad

2022

It’s a bit funny to me that this flick has been nominated for an award in the International Feature Film category in the upcoming Oscars: An Irish flick nominated for Best Foreign Film. As wonderful as the category is, as nice as it is for some of these films to get a bit more notice out in the world, it always begs the question: “foreign” to what?

Everything outside of America is foreign, but, let’s say a film was produced in the States or Canada, and it was in a First Nation’s language or set of languages, would it be considered a potential Best Foreign Film for a given year? Would a film from Mexico, despite being part of the continent of North America, be considered a foreign film?

Anyway, whatever, this noodling doesn’t change anything, really. This is a lovely film regardless of classification, whether it’s considered foreign or exotic or not.

For a very long time I could not really tell when this was set. I am reliably told by the internets that it is set in 1981, but really, it could have been set any time from the 1960s to the 1990s and it would hardly make a difference. The main point is that there is a young, fragile girl, yes, the girl of the title, and she is very quiet.

Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is fearful and evasive. She lives in a house with a lot of sisters. Mum’s pregnant again and expecting soon. Her Da is a bit of a prick. Actually, he’s a lot of a prick, and a drunken one at that. The house and kids are neglected, the farm is rundown, and Cáit always feels like she’s in the way.

So, yeah, this is very much an Irish movie about Irish people being Irish, but without all the clichés. This has none of the blarney of The Banshees of Inisherin.

dir: Steven Spielberg

2022

It’s kinda funny that the most successful director of all time has been kvetching and nervy about making a film about his own life for over two decades.

Most directors might incorporate autobiographical elements into their screenplays, especially someone who’s made as many films as Spielberg, thus obviating the need to maybe have to do their own biopics, but, really, there probably isn’t anyone that should have to talk Senor Spielbergo out of anything.

Both Spielberg, and Spielbergo, his non-union Mexican equivalent, have done enough for both cinema in general and the film industry specifically. He should get the chance to shine whatever light he wants on his own origin story. It’s only fair.

It doesn’t necessarily make it that interesting for viewers. For all his achievements, his life story isn’t interesting, perhaps not as interesting as his achievements. It’s, like, the average stuff of life, told with Technicolor brightness and bland, shiny perfection.

But he’s a person, he grew up, he experienced stuff. He had parents. He has sisters. Things happened.

He, being Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) in this version, became obsessed with cinema after watching a train crash when his parents took him to see The Greatest Show on Earth. As a nervous, fearful child, recording a toy train crashing over and over again allowed him to feel in control for the first time in his life.

How do I know this? Because Sammy’s mum Mitzi (Michelle Williams) specifically sets it out for us, telling her husband (Paul Dano) that it must be the case like the dime store psychologist that she is.

Sammy is off and away, obsessed with movies and movie-making now, to the detriment of any other human relationships around him, but other people aren’t as film obsessed. They’re more fixated on life and love and … that’s about it.

The dad is completely dismissive of his son’s hobby, as he calls it, and it becomes, at least for me, a hilarious illustration of certain parents and their expectations, and how they can never be satisfied.

In real life his dad was called Arnold, but in the flick he’s called Burt Fabelman. You can imagine in life that even later on once his son conquered the world of cinema, if he ever introduced himself to people, and they would ask if he was related to Steven Spielberg, and he replied in the affirmative, you can imagine people going berserk with praise.

And then you can imagine Burt / Arnold muttering, “yeah, but still he’s no doctor.”

dir: Joanna Hogg

2022

I’m assuming that this flick was filmed during the covid years, because, hey, what’s easier to do when there are restrictions than filming one person doing two roles? But I think, considering the director, and considering the greatness that is Tilda Swinton, if you put the question as to whether it was put together during the pandemic, the director might say “What pandemic?”

I’m pretty sure this is exactly what she wanted to make regardless. I can’t pretend that I know that much about this director, since this is the first of her flicks that I’ve seen. You might get a sense of her once you’ve watched this, though.

I say that like it’s a bad thing, but I guess it isn’t. This has the look and the feel of a ghost story, but it’s neither a thriller, a mystery, or a horror flick. Maybe, if I was forced to pigeonhole it at gunpoint, I’d say it was a psychological drama. The thing is, though, a person watching this cold would have no idea what is happening or why until the end, and then the impression you’re left with might be an unfavourable one. It could be the emotional equivalent of the shoulder shrug emoji.

I don’t know Joanna Hogg, so I don’t know if this sounds like an unfair statement about her: I feel like this film is her making a film about how she feels about her relationship with her mother, and that she needs Tilda Swinton to tell her story, because otherwise, who would?

So Tilda plays Julie, a director struggling with writer’s block and unable to come up with her next movie, and Rosalind, her mother. Julie has organised for them to stay at a hotel which, by no coincidence, was previously a house that Rosalind lived in when she was younger.

When I say ‘hotel’, it’s not like the modern version – if you’re old enough to know, the hotel itself doesn’t look that different from the set for Fawlty Towers. With less hijinks, racism or spousal abuse, unfortunately.

We don’t know why Julie only thinks that by hanging out with her mother that she’ll somehow come up with a screenplay, but that’s her plan. Nothing seems to go right, though. Everything is slightly off. They’re the only ones in the hotel, but they still get crap service. Two people work there, one the girl at reception (Carly-Sophia Davies), and a groundskeeper Willy type called Bill (Joseph Mydell). The receptionist glares at Julie, and always pushes back on anything Julie asks for, and she leaves at night (probably 5pm) by climbing into the same car playing earbleed doof doof house music always.

But the absence of people still means something or someone is keeping Julie awake at night. The generally creepy surrounds, the noises coming from upstairs, the poor quality of the hospitality on offer, the wifi being too slow.