by Nathaniel R
Brendan Gleeson & Colin Farrell promoting their movie for ET. They also appeared onscreen before the Middleburg showing to introduce the film.
Safely ensconced back in NYC... or Brooklyn, rather (I've moved). Here's a quick take of the last day and a half of the festival. Middleburg is a four day festival but our flight times Sunday prevented us from staying for the Terence Blanchard concert on Sunday night (*weeping*). It was a low key day given the time constraints so my boyfriend and I hit the stables very briefly at the Salamander Resort & Spa to see the horses (I always make time for that though I've only actually ridden one in my first year there) and we squeezed in one final film before heading to the airport. And what a movie it was! The US Ambassador to Ireland was on hand to introduce the film and she explained what banshees were "female spirits who warn of impending death" but followed that quickly with "but I promise it's fun!" eliciting a big laugh from the eager sold out house. Promise kept as The Banshees of Inisherin is a banger...
The movie's premise / jumping off point is remarkably simple. Colm (Brendan Gleeson), a brooding fiddle player, abruptly ends his very long friendship with the simple and nice farmer Pádraic (Colin Farrell) without explanation. The rest of the movie details the ripples of that decision on both the men and the denizens of the tiny island they live on, which is mostly peaceful despite a civil war raging across the water on the mainland. Not one of the film's 109 superbly paced minutes are wasted, offering up rich comedy, thoughtful messaging, a hint of evocative superstition, multiple character portraits, breathtaking scenery, and even two top-notch animal actors in the form of Colm's dog and Pádraic's donkey, two characters that grow thematically the longer you've had time to sit with memories of the film. Farrell and Gleeson, who exhibited tremendous chemistry from In Bruges, are superb again mining dramatic riches from Colm increasingly violent withdrawal and Pádraic's own lonely and confused tailspin, all without unbalancing the film's rich comedic instincts. Barry Keoghan as an intrusive but eventually endearing neighbor and Kerry Condon as Pádraic's too-smart-for-this-island sister are the standouts from the pitch-perfect townies surrounding these former best friends.
The famed playwright Martin McDonagh, who has been up for the Tony award five times (beginning with The Beauty Queen of Lenane in 1998) has made a curious and remarkably successful transition to cinema without ever adapting any of his famous plays. He won the Oscar his first time behind the camera for his debut short Six Shooter (2004), collected a cinephile following with his debut feature In Bruges (2008) and then broke through with the general Academy with the Oscar-winning Three Billboards (2017). He'll surely be up for multiple Oscars again this year. Several people have already called The Banshees of Inisherin his best film and I can only nod emphatically and say "that's fecking right!" in a terribly incompetent Irish accent. A
The Banshees of Inisherin opens October 21st in theaters in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, and Mexico before expanding to Australia and France in December, and other countries in January and early February. Do not miss it.
And backwards to day 3 which was jam-packed.
Director Rian Johnson and Editor Bob Ducsay (GLASS ONION) at Middleburg. Photo by © ShannonPhotoGal for @MiddleburgFilm
On Saturday I was also able to sit down with Brendan Fraser (The Whale) and Florian Zeller (The Son) who were both at Middleburg to promote their films and a gig moderating the Q&A for Amazon's space exploration doc Good Night Oppy (the audience ate the movie right up). There was also a packed nighttime screening of Glass Onion and the closing party (already mentioned). More on Good Night Oppy closer to release.
Regarding Glass Onion: If you use social media, I'd advise you to take our friend Jonathan Diaz's advice and mute all the actor's names and the film's title on your social media accounts. Like Knives Out, half the fun is watching the mystery unfold and getting little comic surprises at regular intervals. Since the film doesn't open until Thanksgiving in limited theatrical and Christmas for streaming on Netflix, it's likely there won't be many surprises left to discover for yourself if you're reading reviews or seeing hot takes on social media. As for me, since everyone is comparing it to the original, I liked it about the same as Knives Out. Kate Hudson was best in show for me, eliciting big laughs and clearly having an absolute ball playing her frequently cancelled celebrity influencer character; that kind of actorly joy is contagious. Come to think of it, that's the same reason that Daniel Craig has been so endearing as Benoit Blanc.
Somehow Saturday also contained our hour long "Coffee & Contenders" panel which was created by myself, Clayton Davis, and Jazz Tangcay some years ago. We're so grateful that it's been well received and popular. This year we decided the conversation should be more interactive so we kept our rundown of the impending Oscar race limited to a quick survey of Best Picture hopefuls we've seen.
Clayton, Jazz, and I in the Salamander Resort's Library for our annual "Coffee & Contenders" panel
We had to also acknowledge that there are four big movies remaining which haven't started screenings yet: James Cameron's Avatar Way of the Water, Damien Chazelle's Babylon, Ryan Coogler's Black Panther Wakanda Forever, and Antoine Fuqua's Emancipation.
The remainder of the time was devoted to questions from the audience which prompted a lot of fun and interesting discussion about the magic of "timing" in Oscar races, the politics of awards season, why some movies that audiences love never end up factoring in at all, and various tidbits about other categories. The only acting race that Clayton, Jazz and I all had the exact same read on at this point was Best Actor (Butler + Farrell + Fraser + Jackman + Nighy) to which Clayton said "uh oh!" and I added "that means we're all wrong -- It's only mid October!"
Do you think that Best Actor quintet is already fully locked up this year?
Look at this Oscar-nerd trying to make a point/joke on the panel. It me.
Thanks for reading along (parts one and two are here if you missed them). Which films are you most excited to discover for yourself as they reach theaters?