The Banshees of Inisherin

Unranked at the time of writing.

At the time of blogging, this is not ranked in IMDb's Top 250, although its score is high enough to be (presumably, it doesn't yet have enough regular American voters), and it certainly deserves to be.

2022 has been an amazing year of film for me: there has been not just one - not even two - but three contenders for new all-time faves. The third being this one, in case that wasn't clear...

I like a lot of film in my film. Many of my favourites are dense and dizzying (check out some of my top picks in the sidebar to the right). But I have a huge amount of admiration for a film that takes a simple premise and sticks to it with absolute purity. In this case, the simple premise is: in a small Irish community, 1920s, one character decides he no longer wants to be friends with his best friend. That's it. That's the whole film right there. And it's thoughtful, moving, beautiful, gentle, shocking, and - for all its darkness - surprisingly funny.

Writer-director Martin McDonagh previously paired these two leads, Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, in his debut feature In Bruges from 2008, which stood out as a memorably quirky black comedy. In the intervening years, McDonagh - primarily a playwright - has refined his filmmaking craft, while keeping a firm hold on his darkly twisted sense of humour.

I hope this film gets the audience, and recognition, it richly deserves.